What is that sound?
Everyone waits, holding their breath.
Will the Honeydrop Phoenix appear, honey-barbecuing us, or will Xanadu be spared for another year?
"Is that wings?" someone in the crowd asks.
"I don't think so," someone else answers. "It just sounds like the river, that's all."
"But what if it's the phoenix?" A third person turns his face up to the sky. "Do you feel a drop of honey?"
Before long, the crowd has whipped itself up into a frenzy, which Kubla Khan and Abora quell. "Courage, my people, courage," Kubla Khan calls out. "If the phoenix had decided to visit her wrath upon us, we would know it by now."
For several long minutes, we wait. It seems like hours. The crowd stays silent. Not a peep from anyone. There's the usual fidgeting and restlessness associated with waiting, but everyone listens to their emperor and remains calm.
