These are your scholars. In their presence, the story is a bird, shot through. The stone of the sling passes through its chest taking with it the heart in a dazzling array of blood. In their presence, the blood sticks to everyone’s clothes.

Because the story is a sequence of projectiles, someone is liable to be struck. And the profundities of your rule are little gods. Facts rain down like the casing from a fired gun. Hollow jackets clang against pavement and the ring of their emptiness encumbers the ear.

We are ever wary of their direction. We are ever careful of their trajectories.