what do you do when the music stops?

Well you can do it all
Just don't let the music fall

It's cool down here, dark waters at night, brief dim glimpses of rippled moonlight penetrating from the surface on down. I swim beside the train, one eye on the deep ruby glow of the engines.

I lead with my left hand
I stop with my right foot
Well I just want to freak out
I just want to move

I look around, seeing bones of old construction, columns worn by deep water currents, once, half of an iron-sided submersible. Briefly I stop there as the train moves on, wondering if I can replate.

Dance with me baby boy tonight
Dance with me and we'll be all right

Train wheels churn through sand, creating murk impossible to see through. Briefly the glow rises, and I feel it like physical pain, old worries, old pains, fog of loss...and then with a hiss, the glow begins to die down.

Is there a drum beat
And is the bass beat
Well then the rhyme is complete
Then get up on the floor
It's time for you to move your feet

I wait, I watch, I swim left and right, peering at the melted engine compartment. It takes a while, but soon the metal's cool to the touch, and I climb in. Lots of restoration work here, but...nothing vital harmed.

Hmm. That's new.

Dance with me baby boy tonight
Dance with me And we'll be all right
It's a rough loving follows gasping with me
So follow my lead and we'll one two three

Coal scuttle's useless, nothing but what can't stop burning would light under the waves, anyhow. I consider, brief wicked thought tossed up in a moment, and swim swift through the air to Morgaine, holding my breath. I land on the floating mountain, search a bit, converting back to breathing oxygen but not changing the rest of the form.

Finally I find what I'm searching for, and head back to the train, with one brief stop at the lab. Spend some time craning under the control panel, wiring chips of cavorite into place, using the little power-generator I'm, err, going to "borrow" from Mr. Allen for a while. I stand back, flicking the new switch, watching as the dim green glow emerges from beneath the instruments.

What do you do when the music stops?

I turn the train, gasping in air as we surface, changing back to an air-breathing form as we move towards shore. Winterfell, Caledon, I don't know at this point and I don't care. We're landbound for the station. We have time now to fix, to repair, to heal.

What was I worried about?

I shake my hair, changing to green in honor of the death of worry, and seasonal festivity, smiling as we trundle onto land.



Well, glad that's over with. Now all we have to worry about is what happens next...

(Lyric selections from the Pipettes, "Pull Shapes".)