Mr. Gulley wakes from a nightmare. He staggers downstairs. He gets himself a cup of coffee. He toasts a delicious strawberry Pop-Tart, ignoring his distant dismal knowledge that the rain of scissors killed off strawberries along with a good portion of the biodiversity of the Earth.<\/p>\n
What is actually<\/em> in his Pop-Tart? He does not know.<\/p>\n He puts it on a plate.<\/p>\n He takes a sip of coffee. He turns around.<\/p>\n There is a wolf.<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d he says. \u201cI had thought that was the nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n The wolf stares down at him.<\/p>\n He looks at it. He thought that he\u2019d be frightened, but he isn\u2019t. He\u2019s smiling instead. He says it. \u201cI\u2019m smiling,\u201d he says. \u201cWhy am I smiling, love?\u201d<\/p>\n The wolf hasn\u2019t said anything.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to kill you,\u201d he says, \u201cyou know.\u201d<\/p>\n The wolf licks its lips. There is drool on the carpet. Mr. Gulley remembers promising Helissent that there wouldn\u2019t be wolf drool on the carpet, but that was a long time ago.<\/p>\n Starlight falls on the world, from Sirius, from Barnard\u2019s Star, from Wolf 359, and most certainly from the sun. Plants grow. The ocean surges, rises, falls.<\/p>\n The Agency is marshalling, he assumes.<\/p>\n They wouldn\u2019t have missed the freedom of the wolf. Surely they wouldn\u2019t have. Most likely the armies of the world are readying as well.<\/p>\n There are children being born. There are children playing. There are children who have grown old and grey.<\/p>\n He touches it. He leans against its fur. He loses himself in the softness of it.<\/p>\n He tries to remember what his cool, awesome parting line was going to be.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sor\u2014\u201d he starts.<\/p>\n With one great snap it eats him, and Mr. Gulley\u2019s done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mr. Gulley wakes from a nightmare. He staggers downstairs. He gets himself a cup of coffee. He toasts a delicious strawberry Pop-Tart, ignoring his distant dismal knowledge that the rain of scissors killed off strawberries along with a good portion of the biodiversity of the Earth. What is actually in his Pop-Tart? He does not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-6791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-19","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Icon_Wolf_v2b_noBG.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791","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=6791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6792,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6791\/revisions\/6792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6791"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=6791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}