At five minutes before nine I did exactly as the instructions told me to. Then immediately jumped back as light spilled from the rock around my hand. I let out an embarrassing shriek and jumped back. It wasn't as if it burned my hand or anything like that. It was just such a surprise. I hadn't expected that, not that I knew what to expect. It'd been much like having your hand over a flashlight and once my hand was gone the large triangle of light, much like a spotlight shown in front of us.
The light was gray and kind of reminded me of when stations went out on an old TV set. The light went up about 2 feet in the air, for which I was grateful, because if it had gone up so that the councilmembers were life-size it would have been drastically more intimidating. And I at least hoped that at
