Lucy faces off against a goat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew,\u201d she says, \u201cwhen I came to this world, that there were two players. Just two, at my level. Two obstacles to remove, before I could kill this stupid world. I could feel <\/i>it. One of them slumbers. He is of no account. He will not play rock-paper-scissors against me until it is too late. But then \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
She counts. She throws. One, two, three, paper<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The goat has inexplicably failed to participate in the game. It dies, as a goat will die that plays against the evil prophet of space unwisely; or too well; or not at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen,\u201d she says, \u201calso there was a goat.\u201d<\/p>\n
She frowns.<\/p>\n
Her evil monologue has gone unremarked-upon. Her enemy has failed to show the competence that she expected.<\/p>\n
She pokes over its corpse.<\/p>\n
She scowls hatefully.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy,\u201d she says. \u201cWhy can\u2019t I ever find happiness? Why must the world keep <\/i>it from me?\u201d<\/p>\n
She casts the runes but she already knows.<\/p>\n
Of course it wouldn\u2019t help anything to kill it.<\/p>\n
This is not that goat.<\/i><\/p>\n
It might not even \u2014<\/p>\n
Judging by the patternlessness in its spilled-out entrails \u2014<\/p>\n
Be an actual<\/i> goat at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lucy faces off against a goat. \u201cI knew,\u201d she says, \u201cwhen I came to this world, that there were two players. Just two, at my level. Two obstacles to remove, before I could kill this stupid world. I could feel it. One of them slumbers. He is of no account. He will not play rock-paper-scissors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-5024","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\/2011\/09\/Looming-Goat-e1344352690849.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024","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=5024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6169,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024\/revisions\/6169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5024"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}