Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [34]

But somehow, Dad’s friend Reverend Robinson has managed to keep his church from being destroyed. We rode our bikes to it this morning—me, two of my brothers, four other neighborhood kids who were ready to be baptized, plus my father and some other neighborhood adults riding shotgun. All the adults were armed. That’s the rule. Go out in a bunch, and go armed. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 34

Note

A baptism pilgrimage rendered as an armed convoy. The flat census of the party (‘me, two of my brothers, four other neighborhood kids’) gives way to the clipped imperative ‘Go out in a bunch, and go armed’ — worldbuilding delivered as a rule of thumb rather than exposition, and the rhyme of bunch/armed does the work of a whole sociology.