One day Martin will hear about it on the radio.<\/p>\n
He will say, \u201cJane! Good news! The last of the Fan Hoeng has been stopped!\u201d<\/p>\n
He won\u2019t understand the tears that fall into the cookies that she\u2019s baking.<\/p>\n
He won\u2019t know why that could possibly upset her.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll just look a little goofy, and he\u2019ll tousle her shoulder, and he\u2019ll walk away.<\/p>\n
That is not today, though, anyway.<\/p>\n
That is later.<\/p>\n
Today the evil prophet of space isn\u2019t dead. Today she won\u2019t<\/em> be dead.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t possible. It\u2019s just not acceptable. She can\u2019t be dead. She just \u2014 she just lost at rock-paper-scissors once. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not death. That\u2019s just \u2014<\/p>\n A thing.<\/p>\n You are allowed to live, you know, even if you lose at rock-paper-scissors once. It is not against the rules.<\/p>\n She eats her way out of the mountain in the form of an acidic cloud. She is staggering and gasping. She is blind. She is broken.<\/p>\n Death is near her. She can feel it. Death is bleating.<\/p>\n But she will not let it in.<\/p>\n There is a pressure on her mind.<\/p>\n She is blind \u2014 of course she is blind. She lost at rock-paper-scissors! That is what probably happens \u2014<\/p>\n But even blind, for a moment she sees it. It is not bounded by things like perceptions. It is not merely a sense-impression but an actual \u2014<\/p>\n \u201cThat is not Death,\u201d she realizes, \u201cbut an actual goat.\u201d<\/p>\n It bumps her with its head. It leaves her cut. She is a fog of evil potential, a mist of awful destiny, a film of the wickedness and the power of the wicked god of space \u2014<\/p>\n She is bleeding, violet blood from every piece of her.<\/p>\n She staggers. She almost falls.<\/p>\n She has only lost once. That is OK. You can recover. It is all right to lose once, even if it is at rock-paper-scissors. It doesn\u2019t mean that your ideology or your hopes or your dreams are fundamentally flawed.<\/p>\n \u201cLook,\u201d she says to the goat. She giggles. She throws paper. One, two, three!<\/p>\n The goat is sharp.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, look,\u201d she whispers. She holds out her prophecy. \u201cPaper!\u201d<\/p>\n She throws paper. One, two, three!<\/p>\n The goat is sharp.<\/p>\n It eddies forward.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d she whimpers.<\/p>\n That goat\u2019s too sharp. Paper can\u2019t beat it. She brandishes her evil prophecy, but to no avail!<\/p>\n \u201cOne, two, three,\u201d she whispers \u2014<\/p>\n She doesn\u2019t throw paper.<\/p>\n She opts on cheating.<\/p>\n She lunges. She bites down upon it. She gulps it down. One bite.<\/p>\n Thus ends Hans\u2019 goat. It is swallowed up by her evil.<\/p>\n One bite!<\/p>\n That\u2019s all it takes!<\/p>\n She eddies on across the Antarctic wastes. She has only lost once, maybe two to four times \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One day Martin will hear about it on the radio. He will say, \u201cJane! Good news! The last of the Fan Hoeng has been stopped!\u201d He won\u2019t understand the tears that fall into the cookies that she\u2019s baking. He won\u2019t know why that could possibly upset her. He\u2019ll just look a little goofy, and he\u2019ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-6949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-23","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Lucy_NoScroll_Top.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949","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=6949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6950,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949\/revisions\/6950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6949"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=6949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}