The yard is green and blue. The grass is damp. There is a fountain in the middle of it, white in the darkness, with a cherub perched in its marble center. It is a Lethal cherub; there are letters marking it as such scrawled across its base.<\/p>\n
The sidewalk is clean but poorly maintained and there are startled ladybugs in the air.<\/p>\n
Above it all there is a window that is missing, its glass shattered and turned to dust, its wooden frame burnt, its screen melted away. This is a safety hazard; for instance, somebody trying to scare off the Edmund-beast by hopping at them while brandishing brand-new boots might slip on the blood and viscera of Andrea\u2019s mortal body and fall sideways out the window. The remnant window wouldn\u2019t be an obstacle to this at all!<\/p>\n
Above that<\/i>, the sky boils with nithrid.<\/p>\n
It is an unchained storm. It darts whithersoever it pleases. It burns the sky and it burns the ground: lightning lashes from it to set the flagpole merrily on fire, to burst the gardens of Principal Goethe, to chase two errant students who had waywardly been necking into the cover of a nearby Hall.<\/p>\n
It was Andrea but now it is a seething sky-fire. Now it will bring an end to the civilizations of the earth.<\/p>\n
Cheryl and Tom are arguing.<\/p>\n
Tom is of the opinion that he can bloody well keep going even though he\u2019s barely patched up, and Cheryl should stop worrying about him. Cheryl, conversely, is of the opinion that they should abandon the hunt for Edmund and instead harness the energy of the sudden living lightning storm all around them to conquer space.<\/p>\n
She makes a particularly stern argument. She snaps her arm out, flat-handed, as if to assert an emphatic conclusion to the same.<\/p>\n
Peter thuds smoldering into the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cCheryl!\u201d chides Tom. \u201cThat\u2019s not how one emphasizes one\u2019s points in the House of Dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe matter is coincidental,\u201d avers Cheryl.<\/p>\n
\u201cLoose lips throw people from windows,\u201d Tom sighs, and shakes his head.<\/p>\n
Cheryl is at Peter\u2019s side. She checks him for signs of consciousness. She looks up at the window he\u2019s fallen through.<\/p>\n
Edmund stares out at them with hunger-whitened eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, right!\u201d she says, suddenly remembering. \u201cWe\u2019re hunting cannibals. Tom, you should be resting.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Tom squints up at Edmund. He tries to remember which argument he\u2019s having. \u201cThere are souls toiling in Hell,\u201d he says. \u201cRealistically, we should be using lightning to wake up the dead and let them go. That\u2019s what Frankenstein would have done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmund glares down at them with a vague, possessive anger.<\/p>\n
He vanishes into the building at a run.<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. Frankenstein is fictional<\/i>,\u201d Cheryl says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like this,\u201d frets Tom, ignoring her.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re barely conscious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d says Tom. \u201cI mean, the part where we\u2019re all about to get eaten.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPriorities, man!\u201d she says. She waves upwards at the lightning. It flashes, almost simultaneously with the roll of thunder.<\/p>\n
Tom stares at Peter.<\/p>\n
Then he shakes his head. \u201cHe\u2019s still a good role model for proper scientific behavior,\u201d Tom says. \u201cKnew what was what, Victor did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheryl\u2019s shoulders sink.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, but \u2014 space.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Tom picks up Peter\u2019s arm. He makes Tom-wroth gestures with his head until Cheryl picks up the other one. They drag Peter off.<\/p>\n
Behind them they can hear the Edmund-beast howl.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll conquer space one day,\u201d Tom reassures her, but Cheryl is too busy dragging half of Peter to really pay attention to his words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The yard is green and blue. The grass is damp. There is a fountain in the middle of it, white in the darkness, with a cherub perched in its marble center. It is a Lethal cherub; there are letters marking it as such scrawled across its base. The sidewalk is clean but poorly maintained and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-5022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-storm-that-saw-itself-chapter-2","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\/5022","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=5022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6170,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5022\/revisions\/6170"}],"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=5022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5022"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}