He'd grown up on the Plains, far west of the Mississippi , but not far enough that the Rockies were anything more than an imagined wisp on the horizon on the clearest days. Thunderstorms were common the year round by then, and he and his friends would run along the edges of those freak storms as they raged across the prairies. It was thirteen years since the Great Ghost Dance had broken the power of the United States of America, and Kyle Teller was nine years old.