Today's Keyboard Smash

So I finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet yesterday. This was problematic, insofar as getting teary-eyed over the ending was not broadly compatible with continuing my work. It's very emotional! I had a lot of feelings!

I think I will save those feelings for a longer post this weekend, perhaps. It's all very spoilery, so it needs to be separate and under a cut tag. But in short, I really enjoyed it. Very good scifi, full of genuinely weird alien life and really smart world building. There were some great moments when I could see Chambers putting Chekhov's gun up on the mantle, had some ideas about how and when it would go off, and was pleasantly surprised by the ways I was right and wrong.

I...did not have to stay late today. I almost don't know what to do with myself. But only almost. I am going to take the very hottest of showers and eat all the bread in the house and sit blissfully still for more than five minutes at a time. It feels like the start of the weekend, having this much extra time to unwind. It very much is not, as I still have to come in on Friday, but I'll take what I can get.

Lake Lewisia #636

In winter, it hunted in the glint of light off snow, and in summer, in the bleached-bone glare of noonday sun, darting closer in the blinding whiteness that brought hands up to shade faces even as eyes squinted shut. It sprang out of the backlit silhouette you thought you recognized, sharp as broken glass, inconstant as a prism twirling white light into slivers of rainbow. It served as a reminder that not all bright things were good, and not every shadow should be driven out of sight.

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LL#636