Sublime

Marlowe stands close and lights it for him, smelling of hair cream and something else as well. The faintest whiff of brimstone. Marlowe enjoys a different kind of immortality, achieved by different means. No magic acorns or slumbering under trees. He sold his soul on the dotted line, joined an exclusive members’ club. Eternal life. But not eternal

A Mad Max future grafted onto a cowboy past.

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

Two great empires broke themselves here, each a reef to the other’s hull.

fixing the problems that living for a thousand years on a dying world had caused.

portent.

Makiel’s hands paused for half a second, and she felt a ripple in Fate as possibilities began tumbling like a handful of dice.