She is crying. She is terrified. She cannot even see for the tears and snot of her, any more than he can once he\u2019s found her, but she\u2019s alive, there by the toppled, broken utility pole with Navvy Jim.<\/p>\n
Eldri\u2019s 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\u2019s found her. He\u2019s kept her safe.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not a bodyguard robot.<\/p>\n
This shouldn\u2019t be happening. But it is happening anyway. He is standing there beside her. He\u2019s kept her safe.<\/p>\n
Maybe she threw rock, or scissors, or something, as the blades came down, and he had to be there. Maybe even tiger\u2019s claw or whale. Maybe it wasn\u2019t anything that she<\/i> had done, just, you know, all him.<\/p>\n
He is shaking his fist triumphantly in Eldri\u2019s direction as Eldri staggers near.<\/p>\n
His eyes are burning with triumph and with joy.<\/p>\n
\u201cRock beats<\/i> scissors,\u201d says Eldri\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She is crying. She is terrified. She cannot even see for the tears and snot of her, any more than he can once he\u2019s found her, but she\u2019s alive, there by the toppled, broken utility pole with Navvy Jim. Eldri\u2019s rock-paper-scissors-playing robot is battered and cut all along the gleaming metal of him, he is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-3051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-3","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Navvy_Rock_a.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3051"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6499,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions\/6499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=3051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}