{"id":4551,"date":"2021-02-17T11:17:33","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T16:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4551"},"modified":"2021-02-17T11:17:33","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T16:17:33","slug":"seventeen-02-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4551","title":{"rendered":"Seventeen – 02"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This post is from David O’Credne Miller’s point of view.]<\/em><\/p>\n

You have to find them before it\u2019s too late.<\/em><\/p>\n

But too late for what?\u00a0 Too late how<\/em>?<\/p>\n

And how the hell will I know what it is or how or when it\u2019s too late?<\/em><\/p>\n

No one had been able to tell him, to teach him how to handle what he saw and felt, the gut feelings and the glimpses of otherwhens.\u00a0 His father had tried, but Gray Miller only had so much expertise in that realm.\u00a0 Aunt Teca hadn\u2019t been able to offer much additional insight, either, though she\u2019d tried\u2014they\u2019d all tried.\u00a0 Every adult in his life had tried.<\/p>\n

Except his mother, vanished when he was barely old enough to remember having a mother at all.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d only asked his father about her disappearance once, when he was ten years old, and then never again.\u00a0 Even at ten, he saw the pain that it caused his father and at the same time knew that he didn\u2019t dare tell his son the whole truth of it.<\/p>\n

That, he\u2019d decided, was fine.\u00a0 If his father wanted to protect him from something\u2014or protect himself, as the case might have been\u2014that was perfectly all right with him.\u00a0 His father, after all, had never done anything to hurt him, had only ever tried to help.\u00a0 Most hard truths were ones that his father told him.<\/p>\n

If whatever circumstances had precipitated his mother\u2019s departure were harder than those<\/em> truths, there must have been a damned good reason for it.<\/p>\n

A fresh chill shot through him, the sensation nearer now.\u00a0 The tumbling images were starting to ebb like the tides drawing back from the water\u2019s edge.\u00a0 In part it was a relief, but also a frustration.<\/p>\n

Whatever had been just beyond his grasp was still out there, still beyond his reaching fingers.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s not time yet.<\/em><\/p>\n

That realization didn\u2019t make much of a dent in the pressing feeling that time was running out, though.<\/p>\n

The chill he\u2019d felt started to become more localized, closer and closer.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t shiver, though he wanted to.\u00a0 Oddly, it felt good, as if cooling the summer heat.<\/p>\n

It was<\/em> summer, wasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

It would be great not to feel so far gone half the time.\u00a0 It must be summer.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 It has to be.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was a hand\u2014the chill was someone\u2019s hand against his face.<\/p>\n

In a rush, the images washed away and pain filled the gap where they\u2019d been.<\/p>\n

Consciousness flooded in with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This post is from David O’Credne Miller’s point of view.] You have to find them before it\u2019s too late. But too late for what?\u00a0 Too late how? And how the hell will I know what it is or how or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[336,337,366,14],"tags":[340,359,170,350,149,148,168,147,165,146],"class_list":["post-4551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ambrose-cycle","category-book-8","category-chapter-17-book-8","category-story","tag-ambrose-cycle","tag-david-ocredne-miller","tag-fiction","tag-knights-errant","tag-original-fiction","tag-post-apocalyptic","tag-serial","tag-serial-fiction","tag-story","tag-web-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EBlN-1bp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4551"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4552,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4551\/revisions\/4552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}