Of three things, Gideon was certain. One was that he really didn’t want to make dinner if Ori was so stressed out, because her stress always seemed to make him twice as stressed. But make dinner, he did. The second thing he was sure of was that it was in fact, January, and far too cold for lightning. The third, however, was that Ori seemed thoroughly convinced that she had seen lightning, and almost been hit by it. Which made him sure of a fourth thing. Ori had seen lightning and almost been struck by it.
His sister wasn’t a liar, and Gideon would never accuse her of being one. “I… I know you’re not lying. You’ve never been able t-to lie to me, but…” he tried to distract his mind, rather than sit and think of the fact that his little sister might not have come home that day. “Lightning…” he repeated, chewing on his lip.
What was the next step. “We need to… we need t-to look something up. Maybe lightning in January isn’t as uncommon as we think it is,” he started, trying to rationalize, counting the chops his hands made on the carrot he was chopping up. Sixteen, he thought as he slid them into a pot. “I’ll p-put the soup on and then we can look on the internet. There has to be some rational way t-to explain this away…”