The children are counting today, one, two, three. They're pressed flat against the (four) wall like the rest of us. Five. We're pressed (six, seven) against the wall because of our (eight) game, Touch-the-Wall, with one (nine, ten, eleven) rule. It goes like this: (twelve; one less voice among the children) there is no ground, only the sky, (thirteen) the wall and us. Fourteen, fifteen. Touch the wall (sixteen); if you lose contact with it, you (seventeen) fall. (I should say more properly that you move rapidly (eighteen) out of sight. Gravity without ground, at least as far as we know; we've never heard a splat, but the (nineteen) Fallen never come back.) The more of you that's not (twenty) in contact, the heavier you are. Twenty-one. It can get difficult to (twenty-two, twenty-three) hold on up here (there goes the twenty-fourth), what with this devil wind blowing. Twenty-five. So far today we've lost (twenty-six) twenty-six, but who's counting?