Jessica has floated out of herself, up to watch herself watching the night, to hover in widelegged, shoulderpadded white, satinpolished on her nightward surfaces. Until something falls here, close enough to matter, they do have their safety: their thickets of silverblue stalks reaching after dark to touch or sweep clouds, the green-brown masses in uniform, at the ends of afternoons, stone, eyes on the distances, bound in convoy for fronts, for high destinies that have, strangely, so little to do with the two of them here . . . don't you know there's a war on, moron? yes but—here's Jessica in her sister's hand-me-down pajamas, and Roger asleep in nothing at all, but where is the war?

Until it touch them. Until something falls. A doodle will give time to get to safety, a rocket will hit before they can hear it coming. Biblical, maybe, spooky as an old northern fairy tale, but not The War, not the great struggle of good and evil the wireless reports everyday. And no reason not just to, well, to keep on. . . .