Not a chance. Every experience with kids I've ever had - including back when I was one - has told me that kids are squirmy and good at disappearing at the worst time possible.
[Declan and Siobhan had disappeared, panicked and run off into the night, during that one Magog attack, and then...]
[...]
[The kid really does look a lot like Declan. Declan'd had the darkest hair out of all of his cousins, many of whom were blonde like Harper.]
[He relaxes his grip a little, because he doesn't want to hurt the kid, but still keeps a solid hold.]
Look, we're going the same direction anyhow. I just want to make sure we don't get separated, okay? I don't like look of this fog. There's something...freaky about it.
[The fog feels like it's starting to close in, in a way he doesn't like, slowly surrounding them like a trap being sprung. The air is silent, heavy, and chill. His instincts for danger are very finely honed and this whole thing is starting to reek of it.]
Have you heard many scary stories? There's a whole lot of 'em that start with people getting separated and end with some of the characters finding the other characters in parts.
We don't know what kind of story we're in yet.
[He notices something, realizes what has him on edge. There'd been light noises earlier: the chirping of distant birds, the wind through the leaves, the chittering of some kind of bug. But now...]
Listen. What do you hear?
[There's only one possible answer: Nothing.]
[There's dead silence around them. Even on Earth, with its blasted landscape and decaying environment, there are still crickets, still a few birds. And other worlds that are still thriving with life are usually noisier. Even when there aren't the sounds of human suffering, there's always noise when you're planetside. And on ships, there's the constant hum of different systems.]
[Pure and total silence is unnatural. This is the kind of silence that happens only in vacuum, sealed in an EVA suit, and only if airflow and scrubbers are silent enough.]
no subject
[Declan and Siobhan had disappeared, panicked and run off into the night, during that one Magog attack, and then...]
[...]
[The kid really does look a lot like Declan. Declan'd had the darkest hair out of all of his cousins, many of whom were blonde like Harper.]
[He relaxes his grip a little, because he doesn't want to hurt the kid, but still keeps a solid hold.]
Look, we're going the same direction anyhow. I just want to make sure we don't get separated, okay? I don't like look of this fog. There's something...freaky about it.
[The fog feels like it's starting to close in, in a way he doesn't like, slowly surrounding them like a trap being sprung. The air is silent, heavy, and chill. His instincts for danger are very finely honed and this whole thing is starting to reek of it.]
Have you heard many scary stories? There's a whole lot of 'em that start with people getting separated and end with some of the characters finding the other characters in parts.
We don't know what kind of story we're in yet.
[He notices something, realizes what has him on edge. There'd been light noises earlier: the chirping of distant birds, the wind through the leaves, the chittering of some kind of bug. But now...]
Listen. What do you hear?
[There's only one possible answer: Nothing.]
[There's dead silence around them. Even on Earth, with its blasted landscape and decaying environment, there are still crickets, still a few birds. And other worlds that are still thriving with life are usually noisier. Even when there aren't the sounds of human suffering, there's always noise when you're planetside. And on ships, there's the constant hum of different systems.]
[Pure and total silence is unnatural. This is the kind of silence that happens only in vacuum, sealed in an EVA suit, and only if airflow and scrubbers are silent enough.]