Hellsborough Exposed — boggy-lomas

Sophie Hinchcliffe had not spoken aloud once in her life, and the first voice ever to answer her out of the dark chose to correct her grammar. "And who's thee like?" "And whom am I? Tha, thee, needs t'improve tha vocabulary if tha is about to take on the world, gal. Tha needs to enunciate proper like. Tha needs to start talkin' in strict Ing to be where tha's gooin' - so I doant want to 'ear no more o'that pidgin Ing that tha's talkin' now gal - does tha understand me?" "And how should I address my unseen new friend?" "Me, ha! I am the weaver of worlds."

Boggy Lomas was made by the nascenti during the first uprising — not born, made — a distinction Van considers relevant and Boggy declines to discuss. When he scraped his chair across the flagstones and sat down uninvited at our table, he announced that The Hinge was on the verge of collapse and it was Van's fault, with the calm conviction of someone who has waited a long time to say this to the correct person.

Cognitising, Boggy-Lomas told Sophie, had once made him loopy — past crazy, past coming back — until someone pulled him out of the deed and returned him to something adjacent to sanity. Sophie found this detail inspiring rather than cautionary, and laid out the plan regardless: cognitise the youth of Hellsborough into a nascenti army before the netherlanders got to them first. Boggy's expression, as she spoke, was the face of a man rehearsing an argument he already knew he would lose.