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Three unrelated items:
1. The new Ash and Stars title is Burn the World, which, I feel I should clarify, is a reference to funerary practices and not... whatever that sounds like if you don't know anything about Barrayaran funerary practices. But it should be read as "poignancy, despair, extravagant grief" rather than "anarchic destruction". If you pick up this letter quickly enough, you'll get to listen to it before I do, lucky bastard.
2. My gravity friend purports to be hovering on the edge of breakthrough, so I might write you another letter any day now forwarding her schematics. Genius, alas, cannot be scheduled.
3. A looming personal crisis finally hit this morning, so I might not have time to summon you anytime soon.
Enjoy the music. I'll write you again if I think of anything else to say.
Miles
thisvorlunatic
from_scratch
Cam conjures this letter while he is eating breakfast cereal and bacon one morning. (Out of sentimentality he usually keeps to a Pacific time zone schedule, although Greenwich would make more professional sense - or would have, before he started getting summoned to planets on completely unrelated day cycles.) He conjures up the album and puts it on. It's lovely, very melancholy most of it.
Cam hopes the personal crisis blows over in whatever manner appropriate for its unspecifiedness and that the gravity friend comes through so Cam can get busy pretending to invent the thing.
Cam hopes the personal crisis blows over in whatever manner appropriate for its unspecifiedness and that the gravity friend comes through so Cam can get busy pretending to invent the thing.
middlingalong
Meanwhile, Ivan, having gone home upon Aunt Cordelia's return to tentatively make sure his erstwhile hookup isn't still lurking and finding the coast clear, is not present to witness the immediate content of the crisis, but he shows up a bit later after work lets him out.
thisvorlunatic
Miles is in the basement, amid his spellbooks and his zorkmids and his miscellaneous research materials, ignoring them all in favour of listening to Burn the World on repeat.
As Ivan walks in, he is saying, "...didn't hear anything." It's not clear who he's saying it to.
As Ivan walks in, he is saying, "...didn't hear anything." It's not clear who he's saying it to.
unmarred
"Me. What did I tell you," says a voice from behind the stacked crates of zorkmids.
thisvorlunatic
"Ivan, meet Mark, who is hiding in the corner for unclear reasons. Mark, meet your cousin Ivan. Or don't, as you prefer."
middlingalong
"...Hi, Mark. I assume you are not actually a basement monster. What did you tell him?"
middlingalong
"Wasn't exactly being stealthy. Why are you behind the crate of zorkmids? I'm not going to be horrified by the sight of you, I look at Miles all the time."
thisvorlunatic
"He's been there for half an hour," says Miles. "You are not the cause of the hiding. Mark, why are you hiding?"
middlingalong
"Maybe he's stealing your zorkmids. Your precious, irreplaceable zorkmids."
middlingalong
"Well, since he's apparently decided he prefers not to come out and meet me I'll just get out of your hair, shall I."
thisvorlunatic
Miles makes a this-is-what-I've-been-dealing-with-all-
thisvorlunatic
"No, you heard him right. Mark, care to explain what hidden assumptions you left out this time?"
unmarred
"If I like someone, why would I want to make them interact with me?"
middlingalong
"Because the alternative appears to be being very depressing about it instead? Go on, come out."
