• The first drop hits the ground.

    Pink.

    Then the next three.

    Purple, purple, yellow.

    Colors hit the ground, first in a sprinkle--

    Then, a downpour.

    This is a FANTASY world, children.
    Explains Mother Hubbard, gathering children in her thick, sinewy arms.
    It rains even here. She says, pressing them
    into her great silk skirts, smelling of cookies and mothballs and--was that rat poison?

    Why, yes.

    Can't have the rats in the dough. Taste something awful, love.

    She coddles them roughly against her and ushers them inside for more ratless cookies.

    Outside-still-the rain plinks down.

    Red, red, red, blue, pink, green--

    And there's still a pair of eyes outside, open and watching, watching---

    He can't close his eyes.

    Huddled up against the figure of the Gryphon, defaced and debased, with all sorts of vandalism smearing once-virgin stone.

    He can't close his eyes, can't stop shivering.

    A scream is ripping at the edges of his throat,
    curling around his tongue and his teeth,
    oozing from the corners of his lips.

    It's a FANTASY world, children.
    It's a FANTASY world, children.

    And there are people that count those rain drops, even here.

    There are people that will die if this rain keeps up because the PATTERN
    is not good. Not good. Not even.

    The numbers

    a
    r
    e

    w
    r
    o
    n
    g.

    Even in FANTASY.