For all the crazy excess and excitement in her life, it was the days like this that she lived for. The dusk came down like a curtain, sheathed in rain and all a-glimmer sequined with street lights and lanterns. Out there in the darkness beyond, the old forest hulked and threatened and beckoned. It felt, as always, as though the rain and the dark washed away the semblance of ordinary that the forest had clothed itself in to escape unwanted attention in this magic-bereft age. In there somewhere the old 神 still ruled – she was sure of it. She was counting on it.