– 7 –

“Oh, man,” says Emily.

“I know,” says Lucy.

“He looks like — like he’s just going to, you know.”

“Yeah.”

She sees him; and for a moment she almost loves him. It’s the sense of potential around him. It’s the fact that he, like she, had come there. Most of all, it’s the way he smiles. But she doesn’t fall for him. Not then.

He’s dead.

“He doesn’t look dead,” she says softly. “He looks like, wham. One of these days. He’s gonna show you what for.”

“Yeah.”  Lucy looks at Sid uncomfortably. She looks back at Emily. “But he won’t, right?”

“He’s dead,” Emily says.

“I know,” says the evil prophet. “But like, he’s not going to be a zombie or ghost or whatever, right?”

“That’s deeply insensitive,” Emily says, rubbing at her nose.

“I just worry,” Lucy says. “If there are ghosts then I am possibly in trouble. Or zombies — though I guess that I could probably handle zombies with my evil prophecy.”

“Or with hobbit-Spock-spider,” Emily says.

She’s just being mean.

“What?”

“You could play hobbit-Spock-spider with them,” says Emily, helpfully. “And with your amazing space skills that would probably beat all the zombies up!”

One, two, three counts Lucy, in a sudden fury, and throws paper, but Emily has thrown Spock.

“Paper dispro—”

Lucy cannot make herself say it. She cannot make herself say paper disproves Spock, even if that is a standard, accepted move in expanded rock-paper-scissors. Even if it will let her incinerate and disprove Emily.

Instead she sulkily turns away.

“I do not like you,” says Lucy. “But I will fight you. That is my graciousness.”

Her eyes are green, with only the faintest hints of wolf-white.

“Good,” says Emily. “Because I want to dance you for it. For the whole shebang. For humanity. For everything.”

“OK,” says Lucy.

“I win,” says Emily, “and you go away. And you apologize to my murdered friends.”

“OK,” Lucy says.

“Even if I beat you?”

Lucy giggles.

“What?”

“That would be so amazing,” Lucy says. “You beating me. That would be so terrifying and so great. Because it says right here.”

She unfurls the scroll.

She points at it. She points at it because it is prophesied.

Emily is crushed.

“Rocks fall,” says Lucy, “you see. Everybody dies. The end.”

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