Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [765]

“Oh, God, there you go again. You’ve always got a disaster up your sleeve.” … “I see what’s out there. You see it too. You just deny it.” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 765

Note

A two-beat exchange that defines the friendship’s terms in twelve words of complaint and twelve of rebuttal. The idiom ‘a disaster up your sleeve’ is a miniature of the charge against Lauren — doom as a conjurer’s trick, an act of performance — and the reply’s symmetry (‘I see… You see… You just deny’) turns accusation into diagnosis without raising its volume.