They woke soon after the sun started rising. Craig was stiff and sore after a restless night - sleeping on a thin foam roll under the stars was not as ideal as it was made to sound in movies. Tweek, on the other hand, seemed rested enough to turn down a coffee made with water boiled over the little gas camping stove, and then lug most of their stuff down the ridge without dropping or breaking anything at all. Craig ate a light breakfast, consisting of a bread roll and a floury apple, and managed to carry the binoculars all by himself. When he got to the bottom of the ridge and hauled himself into the passenger side of the car he was sweaty and light headed. Even more than usual for this hour of the day.
“Jesus Christ man." Tweek unloaded both of their packs into the trailer and rounded the driver's side of the car. "It's muggy today, right?"
"Mmm." Remembering he had left his pills in his caravan like some kind of an idiot, Craig rolled down his window and looked skyward. He still had a bad taste at the back of his throat from sleeping with his mouth hanging open, and the dampness on the air was making his lungs feel thick and difficult to fill. The sky was quilted and colourless, bordering on grey, just like it had been a few days ago when reports of rain were first coming in over the radio. For the first time in a long, long time, a part of Craig wandered if the rain may actually fall. If he could look forward to the sound of water pattering on compacted dust sending him to sleep in his trailer that evening after so many months of silent nights. Perhaps it was just exhaustion, making these impossible thoughts seem so possible today.
"It'll pass."
He pulled his head back in the window and buckled his seat belt.
"It hasn't rained for years. Although I'm glad the clouds waited for the morning to move in. You have no idea how fucked off I would have been if I missed the blood moon."
"Yeah..." Tweek glanced upwards, looked like he was about to say something, but then didn't. He started the vehicle instead, and executed a reckless u-turn around the compacted parking area. Sucking a sharp breath in through his teeth, he pointedly failed to apologise for flinging Craig against the passenger door, before jamming the vehicle into second gear as though he thought a gentle touch would not be enough to do so.
"Don't fuck the gearbox," Craig warned him, adjusting his seatbelt as they rumbled and shuddered off down the dust road toward town. "Kenny will murder us."
"Sorry. I never drove a stick before."
Craig was understandably shocked to hear this.
He had thought Tweek had seemed pretty confident driving yesterday, and he was almost certain that his Sigma was manual. Underneath him, the Isuzu grumbled and laboured over compacted sand and dust. Only a few feet either side of them was the desert terrain, unforgiving of those who didn't know how to handle a four wheel drive at least. He could only imagine how badly it would fuck up someone who couldn't even use a gear shift.
"You what?"
"Never drove stick. Everything I know about driving manual, I taught myself when I bought that silver car off some guy in Montreal on my way here."
He adjusted his rear-view mirror, even though there was not another car around for miles. Craig sat there staring at him. Was this some kind of a joke? Did he realise he was endangering both of their lives right now? His eyes drifted uneasily to the demister right next to Tweek's right hand, and he almost didn't want to ask if he knew how to use it should it be necessary to do so.
Tweek coughed, clearly uncomfortable with Craig's staring, and made a weak attempt to change the subject.
"Anyway. I don't mean to be rough with it. It's just the gearbox on the other car is sticky so I developed the bad habit."
"... Were you not nervous at all about piloting a vehicle you couldn't drive hundreds of miles across the USA ?"
"Terrified, actually. Most mortifying experience of my life."
He really had been in a hurry to get here then, Craig thought. In a way, it was kind of admirable that whatever it was he had come here for, he had cared about it enough not to let a wanton lack of practical driving knowledge get in the way.
“Was it really that urgent?”
“Uh huh. Armageddon isn't something a guy can be tardy for."
"Well, not technically. But that lot have a new Armageddon party three times a year. Surely they could have gone one more without you?"
"Hmm..." Tweek glanced sideways at him, and for a moment Craig thought he was sizing him up. "You say that like someone who doesn't know what it feels like to believe something. Besides, there is a reason they keep having Apocalypse services over and over again. It's not because they think the previous one hasn't arrived yet."
This made Craig scoff.
"But it hasn't."
"Yeah, and the people I spoke to when I first got interested in the group? They genuinely believed that was because they had stopped it."
Oh yeah.
Craig remembered Tweek mentioning that last night. The shear impossibility of such an idea, however, seemed significantly less mystical and magical in the daylight than it did on a ridge in the middle of the night. And it hadn't seemed particularly mystical or magical in the first place.
"Look," Craig was starting to get a little irritated now. His inability to understand the inner workings of the FTUC was bothering him much more than it should. "How does it not occur to these people that there is literally nothing powerful enough to stop the end of the world if the end of the world is approaching? The gravity, the energy... nature is too much for a person to comprehend, let alone bargain with or control. How would you even begin to achieve such a thing?"
"Well, you're forgetting that the average Disciple doesn't think they are dealing with nature and gravity or whatever. They believe they are dealing with a God. And the thing about God is that when you look at something, like the universe or a plant or your hands, and you decide that 'God' was the thing that made it, you give something as incomprehensible and utterly irrational as nature or luck a quantifiable, negotiable form. From there, you can bargain with your idea of 'God', and interact with it in a way that makes you feel like you have some kind of control over the things that happen in your life. For example, putting off the apocalypse."
The Isuzu choked under them, and it was actually a fairly concerning sound but Craig didn't notice. He was far too busy staring at Tweek, unable to tell if this was an idea he had come up with himself, or if he had read it in one of his books. Probably the latter.
"Alright..." there wasn't much in that point for him to argue with, much to his frustration. "I'll bite. How is someone supposed to negotiate the apocalypse with a God?"
"You asked me this last night. I told you. When the overhead lights indicate, you make an exchange."
"You didn't tell me that!"
"I did! We talked about aliens, remember?"
Craig didn't remember. But for the sake of hurrying him up he just nodded and went with it.
"Okay. Fine. Okay. But what do you mean by exchange?"
He was actually on the edge of his seat. This was something he would love to hear. Whatever it was, it had to be good in order to keep people believing.
Tweek shrugged, eyes fixed straight ahead on the road.
"Traditionally, the payment made for spiritual life is physical life on a date of cosmological significance. Like I dunno… a lunar eclipse? And apparently, the best way to convince a physical life to forfeit their body is to wait for some Stupid Canadian Loser to come along and say 'Hey, I want to die, but also I want my death to mean something so maybe can you guys help me out?'."
He jerked the gearstick, and the vehicle lurched forward in a way that made Craig's stomach turn over.
He didn't really have much to say to that, and Tweek's expression had shifted to one of bitterness unsuited to his features so he wasn't sure he wanted to question him further anyway.
He thought he might just take some time to think this new information over. In a way, he kind of thought it sounded like a joke.
It had to be a joke. Didn't it?
If it was, Craig thought it wasn't very funny.
Trying to project a sense of outward relaxation, he watched from the corner of his eye as Tweek felt around between them, before scraping the 4x4 gearstick into a final approximation of use. Significantly less comfortable than he had been when they started their journey, Craig settled back in for the ride, looking at the sky and trying to distract himself by thinking about what kind of reaction the thick clouds were garnering in the town.
Craig could hardly believe it.
By the time they got back to town, it was raining.
It wasn't heavy rain, or even particularly wet rain, but he could see when they had parked the pickup in the garage lot that there were spatters of water on the windscreen, and when he stumbled out of the car and stretched his cramped and aching legs there were tiny dark spots of water on the tarmac under his feet. Bewildered, he looked to Tweek, who was critically inspecting his sunburn in the rear view.
"Oh man, I look like shit." He was saying, as though he had never been host to such phenomena before. Craig frowned, unsure as to why Tweek wasn't paying more attention to the weather. Had he not noticed? Maybe he had noticed, and just wasn't aware of how unusual it was.
"It's raining," Craig pointed out helpfully. Tweek stood up straight to examine his hands, seeing if any errant droplets of water would be considerate enough to fall onto his palms.
"Hardly."
Craig sighed and rounded the car, peering into the convenience store to see if Scott was in there today, watching Netflix on the old store computer and waiting for customers to buy ice creams or Gnome repellent or batteries .
The store lights were off, and it looked to Craig as though the petrol pumps had not even been unlocked this morning. When he turned around to look down the street, he saw that there was not a single soul around. A feeling of unease began to creep through his stomach, although he couldn't really put his finger on why. It wasn't like Barbelo was teaming with life most of the time.
"Let's get back to the hotel," he said, reaching over to grab his stuff. "I wonder if Kenny and Butters have finished arguing yet."
He told himself as they started down the sidewalk that it was probably nothing. The convenience store was closed today because it was a Monday - one of the quietest days in the local week. So what if it was only just nearing noon? Business had been slow, and because of the rain Scott had thought it would be safer to close up and get back to the hotel to help Kenny. There wasn't anything sinister about it. He was just being paranoid.
The little knot of worry in his belly eased a fraction as they came around the side of the hotel and everything outside looked as-per-usual. There were a couple of cars out front, and in the windows Craig could see locals taking their midday meals, probably pouring over the weekend edition of the bugle and glancing worrisomely out the window from time to time, attempting to establish if the rain would fall harder or if the clouds which brought it would eventually disappear. The telephone in the hotel kitchen was probably ringing off the hook - whenever a rain scare came around, Butters always got orders for delivery meals and Civil Defence Services, which really were not his responsibility, and now that the dreaded water had actually started falling the older citizens were probably in fits of anxiety, cloistered in their homes with two-by-fours nailed over the windows.
The rain started coming down a little harder, and Craig could definitely feel drops of wetness on his nose and cheeks now as he crossed the little parking zone out front. The almost inaudible tick of water dripping on the roofs of the cars parked outside the hotel brought back memories of winter in the city. Of grey skies reflected in glass sided buildings, and tarmac which smelt chemical and sharp as he walked across it.
For the first time in several years, Craig shivered from the cold. Or from the memory of the cold, which in a way seemed more acute than the reality.
"If the rain picks up, you won't need to shower when we get back." he observed dryly. Tweek, whose hair was starting to get damp and whose grubby white tee was starting to go transparent on his shoulders, looked confused.
"Huh?"
"Yesterday you said you were going to shower when you got home." He led them to walk a little faster, closing the gap between the middle of the car park and the veranda over the hotel front door. "But if it rains any harder, you won't need to. Get it?"
"Oh." Tweek frowned, as if he didn't think this was particularly funny. "Yeah. Okay. I get it."
They opened the hotel door, as per the instruction on the 'We are OPEN, come on in!' sign in the window, and a blast of heat rushed forward, dissolving any lingering memories of winter from Craig's mind.
"Jesus Christ!" Tweek seemed just as startled as he was. "Is it hot in here or is it just me?"
"Its about a million degrees," Craig assured him, venturing forward into the bar to investigate what the situation was.
Apparently, the situation was that Kenny (or some presumptuous local) had saw fit to load the disused bar fireplace and light it, as if doing so would diminish the rainy greyness outside. The locals who had gathered in the building were a sight to behold, dressed in scarves and dusty coats that looked untouched for decades. The people in this part of the Americas had rarely encountered weather of any persuasion other than 'blazing', and the conversation over club sandwiches and slice was subdued and terse. A few people stopped talking to stare at Craig when he walked toward the back of the bar, or maybe at Tweek following uncomfortably in his wake. The conversation softened to near silence, which made Tweek uncomfortable, but he didn't say anything. Craig felt tugging behind him, and realised that Tweek was actually clutching the bottom of his shirt. He couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed as Tweek followed him dutifully across the space, only to stand right up beside him as he reached forward to ring the bell sitting next to the till. His fingers did not uncurl from the fabric of Craig's tee.
"Don't freak out Craig, but I think that guy over there is staring at us?"
Craig ignored him. The bar top bell seemed to shatter the stillness that had fallen over the onlookers. Kenny didn't even have a moment to appear before someone with an old and crotchety voice Craig didn't recognise called to him, and Tweek's grip on his clothing became almost violent.
"So you'd be the mechanic who doomed us all?"
The man was weathered and old, sitting under the front facing window of the bar, and Craig was slightly confused at the accusation he was making. Although not confused enough to not be offended.
"... Excuse you?"
He turned around and scanned the room for a familiar face, making eye contact with Sherriff Black, sitting huddled with Bebe the schoolteacher and her brood. Token coughed uncomfortably, and looked away.
"You. You call yourself a mechanic and you can't even fix a car. Now most of us with broken vehicles are stuck here, waiting for the floods to sweep us and our families away. You've doomed us all. You and your city boyfriend there, who brought down the floo-"
"Oh fuck Craig, thank God."
Kenny's head appeared in the kitchen doorway, and Craig noted with a guilty pinch that he looked dishevelled and a little irate. It was the first time Craig had seen him this way, and it didn't suit him, but then past few days had done many things to him Craig had never seen before. Noting this made Craig even more uncomfortable with this turn of meteorological events than he had been a few seconds previously.
"Thank God you're back. I thought you two were fuckin' goners. Ignore the crazy guy, come through in here." He gestured for the two of them to come into the kitchen, and exchanging a look Tweek and Craig did as invited. They passed into the kitchen, which was just as sweltering as the pub itself, and had a look around.
The place was a mess. Kenny was a great host, but a terrible cook, and by the looks of things cooking was what he had had to do all day today and possibly the day before. Butters was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's your friend?" Tweek asked, and Kenny scowled and indicated that he should close the door behind him just in case anyone outside might be eavesdropping.
"Fucking Butters," he glowered, hitching himself onto the food preparation table to sit and patting his pockets. Craig watched with a sense of disbelief as he produced a packet of Dunhills and a lighter, and pursed one of the cigarettes between his lips. "Butters is gone. He ditched me here. Left everything broken and fucked and I have been swamped -"
He was cut off by the phone ringing, on its hook by the kitchen door. The filthy look he shot it would have been enough to kill a man of a weak constitution.
In a good show of initiative, possibly because he was accomplished at observing when persons in his immediate vicinity was on the verge of snapping and murdering everybody, Tweek edged toward the phone, picked it up off the hook, and pressed his finger down on the button to hang up. Kenny exhaled, eyes shifting off the phone back to Craig, and Craig observed he was shaking a little as he lit his cigarette. His face was pale, and although he was doing a good job of being angry in order to stave off concern there was something about the way he moved which betrayed a genuine fear of the coming evening. Possibly even the future of his job itself.
For the first time, a gasp of true terror brushed against Craig's nerves. He quashed it, reminded himself that history had proven the town capable of fending off minor rainfall at least, and hoped that Tweek would not fall into the anxiety trap with the others. The few days Craig had known him had confirmed that he was certainly the sort disposed towards hysterics and ungrounded fear.
"I've been swamped by people all morning. The rain is making them nuts. And they are blaming everything and everyone for it. They reckon it's your fault all the cars are breaking down, and it's my fault for hiring you, and worse yet groups of Disciples have been walking around the town all morning. It's fucking spooky as hell, and I don't want anything to do with it."
"Okay?" Craig was tentative, glancing sideways at Tweek who, if possible, was more astonished by all of this than he was. "Well, that's kind of weird I guess. Do you know what they're here for?"
Craig couldn't even begin to imagine. It wasn't common for Disciples to stay in town longer than it took to purchase toilet paper and vegetables.
Kenny narrowed his eyes at the pair of them, as if he was trying to size them up. Beside him, Craig felt Tweek fold his arms defensively over his chest and shuffle closer.
"You want to know?" He asked, and the way he asked gave Craig a deeply foreboding feeling.
Suddenly, he wasn't sure he did.
"Yes.”
He tried to keep his voice as steady as possible, and ignored how Tweek was edging so close that their shoulders were touching. Craig felt a bit like he was being used as a human shield.
Kenny's eyes flickered to Tweek, and he nodded his head incrementally in his direction.
"They're looking for him."
This was probably the worst possible thing he could have said. Next to Craig's arm, like a small animal caught in bright headlights, Tweek's body went rigid and cold. Craig felt a swinging nausea in the bottom of his belly that may have been shock, but may also have been a twinge of possessiveness.
"They what?"
Kenny shook his head a fraction and slid down off the table.
"That's just what I've heard," he stubbed his half smoked cigarette out on the sink. "Everyone's been asking where you two were. What you were up to. They have this weird idea that the Foundation made it start raining. They reckon it'll stop if they hand him over."
"Hand him over?!"
How utterly abominable.
Suddenly, Craig didn't recognise his friend in front of him. He didn't recognise the kitchen they were standing in, or even the humid grey view of the desert beyond the kitchen window. Since when had this town become so critical of outsiders? Craig had truly believed, for two whole years, that the community he had decided to settle amongst was above that.
"What do you mean 'hand him over'? Are you serious?" He looked at Tweek, who had gone an unhealthy tissue paper white, and tried to imagine him having anything to do with the rain coming down over the Basin. Regardless of whether or not the Foundation had decided to blame him for the rainfall, they had hundreds of new recruits every year! It wasn't like they couldn't find a new Jesus or whatever. Tweek had even failed to actually show up at the compound in the first place! It was unthinkable, that this java-guzzling nervous wreck of a so-called architect could be responsible for any unusual turn of events, save a sudden shortage of coffee grounds.
Craig couldn't have made this up.
Kenny shrugged, and whipped a tea towel off the hook above the stove.
"They said it. Not me."
Craig could tell from his tone that whether he wanted to be or not, Kenny was engaged in the same internal struggle as everyone else in Barbelo - between his rational mind and that fitful, irrational part of himself which wanted nothing more for this whole horrible thing to be over, and for everything to return to the way it always was.
For a moment, Craig stood there in gobsmacked silence, feeling a shocking, numbing feeling as all of the stability and trust he thought he knew in the town was ripped away. This had been his home. This monotony of sun and sand and heat beating down day after day. He had hated it, but it was home, and now dark clouds were gathering, and he realised how fragile his illusion of security here had been the whole time.
"... So what? Are you going to 'hand him over'?"
Tweek gave him a look of pure horror, and Kenny scoffed, beginning to dry the dishes sitting in the dish rack next to the sink with an unfamiliar fever.
"Maybe you two better go camp out in the trailer," he informed them. "I'll pretend I never saw either of you."
Craig balked at this. Did Kenny think he was being generous? He gave him a look that intended to be furious, but more likely just came across as hurt.
"The Isuzu is in the garage lot." He said coldly, "I left the keys in the ignition."
With Tweek scurrying after him like a scared child, Craig stalked across the kitchen to the rear exit and the relative safety of his stupid fucking trailer in the yard.
When the door slammed behind them, Kenny stopped his dish drying and let out a shaky breath.
The phone, which Tweek had ignorantly replaced in the cradle on the hook, began ringing once again.
Craig dug some microwave meals out of the back of his minifridge, and in silence they sat on Craig's bed looking around at the posters and forcing themselves not to comment on how, with the clouds overhead darkening by the minute, it was very nearly dark at four pm.
Rain ran in rivulets down the windowpanes, and much to Craig's disgust it actually was cold now - the microwave meatballs on rice had done nothing to diminish the chill settling in their bones. Craig had needed to dig around in the drawers under his bed for a sweater, and he had provided one for Tweek too even though it was far too small. The mugginess of the morning had completely disappeared, and only the clear cold of a stormy few days remained. It seemed very much as though the rain was intending to stay.
"... My stuff is still in the hotel." Tweek told him, after a sufficient period of awkward silence. He was sitting cross legged on the far end of the mattress, and he had hardly touched his meal. Craig had yet to ask him for his thoughts regarding his status as the Radiant Basin's Most Wanted. His sentiments were written all over his face anyway, and if Craig wasn't too wrapped up in his own sulking he would have tried to console him.
"We can get it some other time." Craig said from his corner, gazing out the window over the head of his bed and observing the way that the rain was making his breath fog on the glass when he exhaled. "You won't leave without it I promise."
"Mmm... I dunno Craig. I kind of want to leave right now."
Craig smiled a humourless smile and looked to him.
"Same," he said, and he realised that he meant it. For some reason, being here was making him feel strange and claustrophobic. He had the most peculiar urge to get up and leave right now immediately, and never ever, ever look back. A sharp contrast to what he had wanted almost every moment of the past few years until now. Maybe his feelings were hurt by the way Kenny had treated him. Maybe he was bitter, about the way the townsfolk he had thought of as his peers had decided to blame him for their shitty cars breaking down. Perhaps it was the rain, stirring uncomfortable feelings in him, which made him feel too big and emotional for the confines of his body, and this caravan, and this town. He listened to the rain falling on the trailer roof and he wondered, what would it be like to walk out there shivering, and let the water soak into his clothes and his skin and his hair.
"But you can't leave your stuff. When it stops raining, we can pack up our shit and leave. I will fix your car tomorrow. You can drive me to State City and we can go our separate ways."
Tweek gave him a shaky little smile and set his half-eaten dinner down carefully on the floor next to the bed.
"You want to come with me?" He asked, and Craig shrugged, trying to look non-committal even though that was exactly what he wanted.
"I don't know. For some reason I just have the urge to go a fast food place at four am on a Friday, and be enrolled in a real college again, and buy my alcohol from a bottle shop instead of a petrol station or hotel bar."
It was like he was being born all over again.
"Hmm..." Tweek fixed his eyes on Craig, and Craig got the feeling he was being x-rayed. Examined for a lie, or a trick, or a joke even though Tweek's mouth was curved into a sad little smile. "None of those things are that great."
"Neither is sitting out here doing nothing."
He looked at the poster of the northern lights, which he had tacked on the door of the cupboard over the sink. From this angle, he could only see part of it, but all the same it seemed to hold the promise of something new and distant. A completely different angle from which to examine the same stars. He had never felt the urge to see it in person before, but he did now.
"I guess not." Tweek let himself flop sideways, onto his back in the middle of the bed. Craig sat in the corner, looking upwards at the bilious, growling sky.
“Come lie with me,” he invited. And for a moment, Craig was taken aback. Was this really an appropriate time for Tweek to be making a move?
Then he decided he didn't care, and with a weary huff he wiggled down the bed and lay there, head resting a few inches further down the mattress than Tweek's shoulder. He closed his eyes. The rain made it easy to recall lying in his bed in his home town in the mountains. A little snowy place where nothing happened, and nothing changed. It was kind of like Barbelo except everybody knew his history there - tanned even in winter and towering tall over everyone, the exceptionally bright albeit delinquent Craig Tucker stood out like a parrot in a flock of sparrows.
Everybody had expected him to achieve great things, but now he was already well into his twenties and he had achieved nothing.
Maybe it was about time he made an effort to do so. Maybe it was time he went somewhere new.
Last time Craig had decided to make a change in his life he had been thwarted by the Foundation and its promises about salvation. For him, getting on a bus and visiting a fellow amateur astronomer he met at a convention one time had somehow become a life changing decision. It had turned out that his astronomer friend was of the sort easily seduced by promises of eternal life. Craig seemed to have a habit of attracting those kinds of people - Kenny would have called it his 'Type'. Regardless, the randomness of circumstance, and the unexpected twists a life could take, never failed to impress and terrify Craig simultaneously. Likewise, the way in which repetitions and patterns emerged from chaos left him sympathetic, but only slightly, towards those who might have thought their lives were guided by benevolent, omnipotent hands. He never would have thought, leaving Boulder on a bus in torrential rain, that he might someday leave Barbelo the same way, except with a flighty stranger and the significantly more ambitious goal to be alive. To stay alive. To find something worth living for even if killed him.
If Craig didn't justify his own existence, then nobody else on earth would do it for him.
Almost a whole hour passed, before either of them spoke again. Craig was already drifting, the sound of the rain morphing into a nearly forgotten harmony of traffic and electricity and the sound of connection. His ears rung with the chorus of Restaurants on cold evenings and beaches on warm ones. The warmth of fluorescent mall lights lingered on his skin. At the back of his mouth, he thought he could taste the very particular flavour of a McDonald's soft serve at one am. When was the last time he had been to the cinema? When was the last time he went to a playground? A swimming pool? The notion of a large body of water seemed like a dream. Mythical. Magical.
He wasn't sure how it had eventuated, but Tweek's hand was laced in his and it was warm. The sound of his voice when he spoke was soft and tired. Craig cracked his eyes open and looked to him, noting the way his green eyes were unfocused, like he was contemplating something an uncountable amount of miles away.
"Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters," he said, "and let it divide the waters from the waters."
"Huh?" Craig stirred, shuffling up the bed so their heads were level with one another. Despite not wanting to release him, he wiggled his fingers a little looser in Tweek's grip. His palm was starting to get sweaty and a little gross – how unfamiliar.
"And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Craig still didn't understand.
Tweek shook his head, turning his eyes down from the faintly glowing constellations painted on the ceiling above and fixing them on Craig. Outside, the rain fell so much harder - like fragments of the blue beyond the clouds were suicide dropping onto the earth.
"The sky is falling." he clarified, and Craig was most taken with the way the words looked on his lips. "After aeons and aeons of time, the sky is finally starting to fall."
And there was evening and there was morning--the fifth day.