and whenever she can see them, they are beautiful and composed, like a house where no one lives, but which a staff cleans daily.

It’s so easy to crush a planet that you may overlook the value of a whisper to a snowbank.

But which egg preceded what platypus? The ends don’t always resemble our means.

As the prophet says: Everybody’s building them big ships and boats.

I love you. If you’ve come this far, that’s all I can say. I love you and I love you and I love you, on battlefields, in shadows, in fading ink, on cold ice splashed with the blood of seals. In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of a planet crumbling to space. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the depths of lonely

London Next—the same day, month, year, but one strand over—is the kind of London other Londons dream: sepia tinted, skies strung with dirigibles, the viciousness of empire acknowledged only as a rosy backdrop glow redolent of spice and petalled sugar. Mannered as a novel, filthy only where story requires it, all meat pies and monarchy—this is a

But maybe this is how we win, Red. You and me. This is how we win.

glistening viscera

(Adventure works in any strand—it calls to those who care more for living than for their lives.)