Chased by Monsters

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Jane missed how it started.

She went out to set perimeter alarms and came back to find that they were comparing feet.

The children, of course, had crow feet, complete with scales and talons. Little Joey’s scales were black as his spikey hair. Jane’s baby sister, Boo, had white scales to match her pale blond curls, but her feet were otherwise identical to the boy’s. Since neither child had shoes, most likely they had triggered show and tell.

Taggart was holding his camera on his lap, viewfinder tilted up. He was filming the comparison of feet without being obvious. Jane locked down an automatic kneejerk hate of being in front of the camera. If they were going to get the news out to Earth that Pittsburgh needed help against the oni, it was stories like Boo’s that would win over hearts.

Nigel had taken off his boots to show off his prosthetics that looked like pieces of curved metal. The naturalist was discussing feet in his faint Scottish burr. “The heel is essentially a finger pointing backwards. See, the leg comes down and connects to the ankle, which is a pivot joint like the wrist. From there, the foot shifts out in two directions. Forward are the toes and backwards is the heel. This bone is called a calcaneus. Because it has to bear the weight of the entire body, though it’s evolved over time to a large, strong bone.”

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