language and clarification

A pall of smoke, rosy in the new sunlight, cast a glow across the city as the denizens awoke, unsure of what the night's events had wrought. And as they watched, the haze-obscured mountains gained definition, but perhaps only from the light of the rising sun.

Miss Molly, ever optimistic, lowered the ward about her house prematurely, and the foul miasma leaked inward, so she returned the ward to full strength and then checked with the oracle, which reported that the PM2.5 reading was 60 at Rose Elementary, so after recovering from a minor bought of fantasy-language, she figured she'd just stay indoors for a while until the inversion layer turned over, except all her presents came in cardboard boxes, so they're living on the patio.

She also failed to fairly report on the mall trip yesterday. At four o'clock, the place was still reasonably crowded, but by five, it was really clearing out, and few people shop for clothes at five on Christmas Eve, particularly not for themselves, so the fitting room was deserted, and since it was a Sears, nicely offgassed, in that I've never seen a recently remodeled Sears.

And since it's Christmas, and I have all kinds of trivia including sections of the gospel of Luke stored in my head, I will report that when somebody reads the part where the angel comes down to the shepards in the new version, where they are terrified instead of sore afraid, it makes me giggle.