. . .
![. . .](http://books.hitherby.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Navvy_Rock_a-1819970_200x200.png)
She is crying. She is terrified. She cannot even see for the tears and snot of her, any more than he can once he’s found her, but she’s alive, there by the toppled, broken utility pole with Navvy Jim.
Eldri’s rock-paper-scissors-playing robot is battered and cut all along the gleaming metal of him, he is stumping, he has lost a leg, but he’s found her. He’s kept her safe.
He’s not a bodyguard robot.
This shouldn’t be happening. But it is happening anyway. He is standing there beside her. He’s kept her safe.
Maybe she threw rock, or scissors, or something, as the blades came down, and he had to be there. Maybe even tiger’s claw or whale. Maybe it wasn’t anything that she had done, just, you know, all him.
He is shaking his fist triumphantly in Eldri’s direction as Eldri staggers near.
His eyes are burning with triumph and with joy.
“Rock beats scissors,” says Eldri’s greatest robot, smugly, and Eldri takes his bloody, snotty, whimpering and clinging god-daughter and his battered robot, his beautiful god-daughter and his beautiful robot, his family and his heart and his dear dear loves, back home.