The door to the study slams distractingly open.<\/p>\n
Maria is standing there. She has patched her space gun back together with duct tape and umbrella glue. It is blinking red in its unhappiness but it is stable. It is set halfway between the mundane and the sacred; between mortal death and a blast of holy light.<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t whining. It\u2019s already chimed.<\/p>\n
This gun is ready to disburse all sacred death and endings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t drink that,\u201d says Maria, \u201cif I were you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jane looks at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you\u2019ve been an immortal for five hundred years,\u201d says Maria. \u201cHeaven would send a terrible finger to destroy you. And if you survive that, Jane, even if you survived,<\/i> it\u2019d send a terrible fire and wind to destroy you another five hundred years after that.<\/i> There\u2019s a reason there aren\u2019t many Taoist immortals around, Jane. It\u2019s the casualty rate!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The door to the study slams distractingly open. Maria is standing there. She has patched her space gun back together with duct tape and umbrella glue. It is blinking red in its unhappiness but it is stable. It is set halfway between the mundane and the sacred; between mortal death and a blast of holy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-3996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-4","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Just-Maria.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996","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=3996"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6329,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions\/6329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3996"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=3996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}