Thelma thought it strangely appropriate that the sky should be red this morning. She couldn't remember the exact wording, but she did remember the rhyme: red sky in the morning equalled a warning. And there it was, up over her head.

A sky as red as a river of blood.

She was standing on the outskirts of the woods, watching the sunrise. It was the first time she'd been outside of her tree-lined sanctuary in over a day, and it had given her a brief surge of surprise to realise that the sun was still rising and setting, as if nothing had ever happened. But even if she'd been emerging from a long coma with no knowledge of the events of the last twenty-four hours, Thelma thought things would still have seemed different.

Even in the early morning light, a haze of grey smoke obscured the green and pleasant landscape. The air was unusually cool for summer, and thick with foreboding. Tremors rippled underfoot every so often, but apart from that nothing moved. Everything was just so, so still. It was as if the world was holding its breath, and waiting.

She'd had the best of intentions in upping and leaving. Ella and Leon were obviously gagging for it, and it was nothing she hadn't seen before, even if she had felt like watching. Thelma might have been doomed to an eternity of celibacy, but it was only fair to let them make the most of the brief lull in action—so to speak. Of course, for all she knew, they really had spent all night playing 'I Spy': but somehow she doubted it.

Naked 'Twister' was probably closer to it.

But it wasn't really because of them that she'd cut and run in the first place, although she had no intention of telling them that; she had yet to name her price for giving them some time alone together, but bangers for a, well, bang, did seem a pretty fair exchange.

It was because of her.

It was when they'd been joking about Malachi killing himself for them that Thelma had felt the strangest need to be on her own for a while, so she could consider everything that had happened and everything that was going to happen. She'd needed to cry about it, to rail against it – to reflect on it – while she still could.

Because it would be action, not introspection, that would determine who won this war. There would be no time for soul-searching during the End of Days, so it had to be done now, during this odd midpoint between the start of the war and the beginning of the battle. But the precious hours of calm had been running down like sand through an hourglass, and now they were nearly gone.

Yet another strangeness, in a world that was full of them: now that the storm that had been gathering far off the horizon was almost upon them, Thelma felt the calmest she ever had.

Soon she would have to wake Ella and Leon, and then they would leave limbo, and the woods, behind for good. But for now, she would stay here, and enjoy the last moments of a peace that might never come again.

Like Malachi had done before her, as Azazeal had done before him, Thelma stood under the shade of an ancient tree, and watched.

And waited.

And then, as thunder clapped loudly in the distance, she walked away and did something neither of them had ever done, or ever could do. The one thing that just might make the difference in the battle that was about to engulf them all.

She went to fetch her friends.

END