Lightning Sword

The crash was clearly explained by the presence of a body occupying the space where, a few minutes ago, a perfectly serviceable windscreen had no doubt been in place. Style was now managing to pull it's weight against reality and so Sean arrived just in time to see the fleeing figure of a giant of a man who appeared to be sheathing what Sean vaguely remembered from high school history, as a bastard sword. He had always wondered about the origin of this name, but being lazy had never put in any special effort to find out and had concluded it was probably the last thing warriors of old shouted in battle when they realised, too late, how heavy the damn thing was.

Sean decided to let the stranger go unobstructed, because he was still sober enough to realise the only barrier he could form would be one for this dangerous looking person to fall over, which would no doubt not leave him best disposed towards the intrepid obstacle.

As soon as any possibility of anything even slightly exciting was remote enough to be negligible, Sean made his way towards the body to poke his nose where it did not belong, a family tradition which had been passed down the generations since the first amphibians decided to see what there was to do on that big dry thing, one slow Friday evening millions of years ago.

Sean was nervous as he approached the victim, feeling a gnawing anxiety in the pit of his stomach that he should not be interfering. However, from all over his being generations worth of DNA screamed at him to keep going, to go that extra mile, dig that little further. He trotted quickly to the damaged car, noting with a perverse satisfaction, that it was a new model Mercedes. Now, though, it was a heavily scratched and blood smeared, new model Mercedes, with severely impaired forward visibility.

In spite of this blow against class barriers (the Mercedes was surrounded by 'lesser' vehicles), Sean's attention was almost immediately drawn to the body which had caused this damage, and was horrified to find it, in defiance of all biological laws (as bendable as the laws of physics with a big enough budget and a bit of imagination), that the corpse did not, in fact, yet fit into this very subjective demographic. It had once occurred to Sean at 'that' time of the morning after 'that many' pints of strong cider, that death was really a state, which, was very much based on the eye of the beholder. For example, Sean had many times found himself dead drunk, yet this had so far never once stopped him fulfilling a days honest work (he was stopped from this by abject laziness and total lack of any useful practical skills).

Anyway, the figure in the windscreen was not quite dead, so Sean put aside, at least temporarily, any plans for going through the man's pockets and stood back, unsure what to do next. This decision was taken from him, however, when the stranger spoke.

'Have you come?' he asked

Sean was rather taken aback by this, while he knew the guy was not dead he had not really expected him to strike up a conversation, and certainly not one with such an unusual opening line.

'Um, I guess so,' he replied, hoping that it was not in fact some deep philosophical question as he really was not in the mood for that kind of coconut.

The wounded man relaxed visibly. 'Thank fate,' he replied. Which Sean though was a rather odd thing to say, but then it had been a rather odd day, and it was getting less and less sane by the second. He hoped that this was due to the alcohol, but was not overly optimistic. He was not in the mood to be optimistic, which is to say, he was breathing.