We had a good reason to seek shelter.
But at that point, the emergency responders
had been long-shadowed onto the sunny-skie’d
horizons. East of the Skerries, too: no outliers, no
“meanies.” Nobody’d predicted any real tough stuff was astir.
Local emergency managers were concentrating as far away
from “the news” as possible, pinning down timelines, gridded
and chaptered by quadrant, of the transport of the “shelter population”
But at that point, the emergency responders
had been long-shadowed onto the sunny-skie’d
horizons. East of the Skerries, too: no outliers, no
“meanies.” Nobody’d predicted any real tough stuff was astir.
Local emergency managers were concentrating as far away
from “the news” as possible, pinning down timelines, gridded
and chaptered by quadrant, of the transport of the “shelter population”
up and into the newly upgraded hotel caverns alongside and directly
abutting the range’s continuous line of cliffs. In the strongest part
of the front, offshore winds were being blown into the blue glass
in front of temporarily amused children (homework blew before their
noses like maple leaves; with synchronic slaps of fresh sea gull doo doo
popping like paper flattened against each full window). Mostly unpersoned
kitchens, kitchenettes and breakrooms downtown piped out baritoned
“with occasional sleet,” “some snow off the Peninsula,” and “thought to be
the harshest in this region in a decade” as the same were invariably
noted/unnoted. Bitterly cold and wet conditions emblazoned
the tops of cartoon hemispheres like choruses of scrunched-amuck,
bright-colored aurorae polaris that formed solid embankments (or,
as one daredevil proclaimed) “simultaneous explosions” all the way to
The Great Wall of China. These tidbits were caught in the corners of a
few eyes that were “always on the aware” (mostly those of mothers).
Offshore, six ferries and other carriers were parked knotted each to the
next in order to provide possible shelter to residents in both neighboring
countries (neither population in the nail-biting business, as it were). A
hurricane was recorded and then disregarded Down Central, and the arrival
of gale force winds. A system of shipments from the frontier somehow
survived “completely intact,” it would be noted in several sermons dotting
the rural areas a couple of stiff days later, including a vessel carrying
plutonyum [sic?]. This got the kids, bundled goofily in god knows what,
all titters again. The officers will soon be released from duty to seek shelter
themselves. The center of the storm: a public school or other structure,
parts of the Old Country, or off the coast where everyone had begun
speaking Portuguese (just because of it being “such a beautiful
language.”) The talking heads persisted. Items they meant all to
consider included, as possible shelter: a bathtub, an inside room,
a closet, your school or “any embankment at least twice taller than
yourself,” alongside other repetitions such as cutting snow, snow
caves, Bantry Bay, the death of more than 50 pigs and 17 young
dandies (all on the same farm); ice and snow as far as eyes
will have it and, as Mawson says, “our own makeshift
driftwood shelter," which some take to mean
entire kegged hallways full of gin.
