The nithrid is nervous about attending school. It is an inhuman creature. It is lightning bound down to form. It assumes that everybody will see it and recognize its nature \u2014 that their eyes will pierce straight through its human guise and down to its murderous soul. They will point at it and shriek: \u201cThere goes a deadly threat to the world! Stop her before she ravages everything, leaves it burnt and in ruins! Tackle her and tighten her chains until she pops!\u201d<\/p>\n
Events, to a certain extent, justify her fears.<\/p>\n
The students at the Lethal Magnet School for Wayward Youth are percipient enough to spot her strangeness. They are alert to it: shadows of omen pass across their consciousness when they look at her. They recognize her, consciously or subconsciously, as nithrid.<\/i><\/p>\n
They simply do not care.<\/p>\n
She stands there, wringing her hands, in the quad of the school, and nobody attacks her. Nobody bothers to attack her. They are all too busy or \u2014 if not too busy \u2014 too distracted, too laid-back, or too lazy to do anything about the world-ending threat that has no idea where to go to schedule her classes or to arrange for a dormitory at her new school.<\/p>\n
It is then that she meets Peter.<\/p>\n
He is suddenly beside her. His eyes are hard like two bits of flint and his hair is dark but she finds the voice of him oddly warm.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like you,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019re not natural.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c. . . no,\u201d she concedes.<\/p>\n
He looks her up and down. \u201cYou\u2019re also obviously lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCome on, then,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
She follows him, nervously. He leads her to the administration building. He asks her, as they go, \u201cDo you like scissors?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPardon?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m an enemy of scissors,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I see scissors, I\u2019ll stomp them! I\u2019ll rip them apart. I\u2019ll throw them in the fire. So if you like scissors, you\u2019d better not mess with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
He stops. He looks at her. He waits.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t had anything to do with scissors,\u201d she says. Then, apologetically, \u201cI was bound in a hole with a duck.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019d you cut your hair?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t cut my hair,\u201d she says. She wiggles a hank of her hair. It darts about like lightning, if lightning were a sandy brown and stuck at one end to a functionally human head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI use trissors,\u201d says Peter proudly. \u201cThey\u2019re a three-bladed trissoring device.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just aces,\u201d the nithrid says.<\/p>\n
He takes her to the principal\u2019s office. He pounds on the outside door with a palm. \u201cYou go in there. They\u2019ll set you up. Get you classes and a room. I <\/i>am going to go to class and not care about you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOK,\u201d she says, confused.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name is Peter,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
She opens her mouth. \u201cA nithrid<\/span>,\u201d she starts to say, but that would be practically giving the game away. She stops herself at \u201cA nuh.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnuh?\u201d<\/p>\n He stares at her for a moment. \u201cAnnie? Andrea? Anthology?\u201d<\/p>\n Nobody is named Anthology. I mean, nobody except Anthology is named Anthology, and she is a special case. This book isn\u2019t even about<\/i> Anthology, so I don\u2019t know why you are thinking about her. She is frozen under the ice! The problem is with Peter\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n \u201cAndrea,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cOkay,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ll see you around.\u201d<\/p>\n He turns to go. He walks away.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I see any scissors,\u201d she says, after him, \u201cI\u2019ll blast them!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s good thinking,\u201d he says. \u201cBut don\u2019t just blast them. Call me! They could have friends. They run in packs, you know. Swarms. Whole swarms of them.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s gone. She blinks.<\/p>\n \u201cReally,\u201d she says. \u201cScissors.\u201d<\/p>\n She squints a bit. It would never have occurred to that world-ending storm to concern herself about scissors, but now that she thinks about it it is possible that they, like Mr. Gulley, are capable of grounding her.<\/p>\n \u201cHa!\u201d she says, in vague relief. \u201cJust imagine how stupid that would have been! Burst out, storm across the world, and then get sucked down into the earth by billions of scissors stuck in it!\u201d<\/p>\n This is actually pretty unlikely, but in all fairness, there are alternate timelines in which this was her fate. There are even alternate futures<\/i> where that happens, although they\u2019re comparatively pretty rare. The Norns weave carefully and cleverly, when they weave our fates, and even such as the lightning must have a care.<\/p>\n Then she goes in and she signs herself up for classes and a room.<\/p>\n She will study the literature of Earth, and citizenship, and basic math; an alien\u2019s guide to study, school, and scholarship; Runes I, Physical Education, and Pre-Combat; and, being the lightning, of course, she takes electives in both electronics and in dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The nithrid is nervous about attending school. It is an inhuman creature. It is lightning bound down to form. It assumes that everybody will see it and recognize its nature \u2014 that their eyes will pierce straight through its human guise and down to its murderous soul. They will point at it and shriek: \u201cThere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-4938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter-1","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Icon_Andrea_NoBG.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4938","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=4938"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6190,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4938\/revisions\/6190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4938"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=4938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}