“And so later Hannah was back at the kitchen table in her house. Sitting where she’d sat earlier. Her place. Hannah didn’t know that humankind has a deep-set belief in the idea that we create and maintain reality through ritual, that repeated actions are what keep the spheres in alignment. She also didn’t know that it doesn’t work, and that there are far older, more complex, and much darker designs in motion, ones that override ours as effortlessly as a crack of thunder blotting out birdsong.”
