Busyness has come. The city’s tootling on with its day. Sunlight bursts through gliding clouds and a big happy blue hollers for the three of them to get out. Outside the window a plastic bag turns cartwheels on the street, joy riding on the breeze. People hurry about in their too-busy-for-stopping way that city feet do. The doorknob spins and spins catching on nothing. They’ve all had a go and everything is too quiet in this pale cocoon of a room but not in a calm way, a birds-hushed-before-an-earth-quake way.
‘I wonder what happened in this place. You know, before,’ Tidge wonders aloud.
Mouse still can’t talk. Thinking too much.
Our turn will come. And all we can do is stand here and stand here waiting for goodness knows what.
Because of what you did once.
Then said I. Lord, how Ions?