{"id":144,"date":"2009-11-27T19:12:37","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T19:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/?p=144"},"modified":"2009-11-27T19:12:37","modified_gmt":"2009-11-27T19:12:37","slug":"chapter-54-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 54: Rain."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- \t\t@page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } \t\tP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Grey, dreary and heavy, the sky let go of everything it had been holding for days, visibility was low and it seemed to Doll that only the small area around the dojo was left in existence, beyond was just a constant void of grey and rain.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Doll dug deeper, she could have used her Qi to dig faster, cleaner, but Doll realised that for all the people she had killed, she had never dug a single grave, so she dug for herself, fighting desperately to keep the mud from falling back in, and struggling against the weight the sky was giving it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">She did not complain, she deserved this punishment hundreds of times over, Doll savoured the sweat and stinging across her body, it helped cleanse her&#8230; if only a little.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">&#8211;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Doll finished filling in the grave and the rain started to thin and stopped roaring, seemingly in respect to Timon.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Doll looked across the grave and down the cinnamon hills into the grey, how she longed to just fall into the grey, as though her sister was waiting for her there, a place where neither had any memory of this world and they could just be together.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Doll took some time to think, but nothing came to mind. Eventually she went back to the dojo&#8217;s old lodge to check up on Aella.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">&#8211;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">what light fell on Aella&#8217;s bed was grey, and the shadows were pale. Doll pulled a seat beside Aella and watched her breathing.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153<span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Poor girl.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Doll brushed Aella&#8217;s hair from her face and sat down beside her, watching her slowly breathe as she fell asleep in the chair.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">&#8211;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\">\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><span style=\"font-family: Lucida Sans,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Aella was in the center of the storm, thunder and lightning danced in the cloud around her, but wouldn&#8217;t dare come near. The storm didn&#8217;t dare rain, Aella cried enough for a thousand storms.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grey, dreary and heavy, the sky let go of everything it had been holding for days, visibility was low and it seemed to Doll that only the small area around the dojo was left in existence, beyond was just a constant void of grey and rain. Doll dug deeper, she could have used her Qi [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sophiehoulden.com\/writings\/fair\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}