She looked around. What little tidying she had managed to get done in the Infirmary might as well be none at all, for how cluttered it still looked. In truth, she had no idea what this module had been while Diodorus was squatting here—but it had cabinets, and one of those cabinets had a first aid kit and a dust-covered medical scanner inside, so Yana had dragged two cots and a chair in and deemed it the infirmary. It was that very scanner that she fished for. It stuck slightly to her hand when she held it, and when switched on, produced a worrying staccato that clawed at her ears and vibrated down her arm, but as far as she could tell, it functioned, and that was all she cared about at the moment. She pressed its flat surface to Rook’s dumb thick skull, ran it up and down, ignoring their protests throughout, until she was satisfied. “No concussions. No internal bleeding.”

Unlike most people's snips for today, mine isn't particularly fun for anyone involved.

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Mar. 31

Firstlight cracks
the horizon,
touching every limb,
every blade,
every drop of water.
Winter lingers
in memory;
spring unfolds
its deliberate certainty,
and the month
concludes
in luminous grace.

#BlueSkyPoetry #prompt #firstlight #BSPP51 #MarLumina

And yet, restless feet soon paced around the freshly-mopped corridors. Ship logs showed Rook checked the time to arrival at least seven times a day, which was to be expected, as the good Security Officer always had pent-up energy to spare. But even placid Diodorus, who kept himself busy—there was always something to maintain, after all—could be spotted here and there, servicing perfectly functional pieces of machinery, or moving around talismans only to return them to their original spot.

Good morning, #WIPSnips!

I know I've shared this bit before, but it's been changed recently and, I think, for the better.

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New «For All Mankind» transcript!

s05e01 - First Light

#TV #ForAllMankind #Season5 #FirstLight #episode #script #transcript #TVTranscripts #TvT

tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewforum.ph...

A snippet from my upcoming steampunk dystopia, Steam and Steel

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“May I interject?” “Go ahead, Six.” “I took the liberty of examining the transmission while you made your way to the Bridge, and I found some discrepancies in Tk’lo’rav-Contemplative’s behavior.” “What do you mean, discrepancies?” “I will provide examples: at the message’s beginning, Tk’lo’rav-Contemplative ‘requested’ immediate assistance. This is an inappropriate use of Extali grammar: when interacting with non-Extali, the correct form would be, ‘demanding immediate assistance’.” “They could just be worried and tripping over themselves,” Rook said. “I know I’d be.” “That is a plausible option,” Six said, “but I found other discrepancies. Upon reiterating their request for help, Tk’lo’rav-Contemplative refers to the Femno System; it is unlikely that an Extali would not preface that with the ‘proper’ denomination for the system, in this case Extali 0424.” “You think they weren’t just panicking, then?” Yana asked. “That is a possibility. So is deception,” Six said. “But my results are not as conclusive as expected. I believe there are additional factors at play.” Diodorus lowered himself into his seat, which creaked under his great weight. His features caught the light at an angle that made him look even older than usual. “If this is a trap,” he said, “it worked on the Mariposa.”

The Trilo's crew debates their options, in a scene that somehow draws even more from Star Trek TNG than the rest.

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Then came the day’s end. For all her time aboard the Trilo, Yana had never gotten used to calling them shifts, or cycles—days felt just right, when her drifting eyes stopped gazing over a cargo manifest, and her alarm went off with the gentle crashing of waves of a sea she’d never seen, and she sighed, and stretched, and cradled her fifth tea cup of the day all the way to her quarters. She passed by the Engineering Bay, roaring with activity and smelling of incense and burnt metal. Rook’s quarters, with its wide-open door and no one inside. And as usual, she reached hers, and as Six, either willingly or as an involuntary spasm, opened the doors for her, she stepped inside without a second thought.

Everyone's very gentle in this WIP. I can tell, because I had trouble deciding which excerpt to use.

This one feels the gentlest, though.

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Yana wandered the commercial districts of Orbital Station Sousa Mendes under the pretense of a goal, as if watching the festivities counted as work—and as if that mattered at all. She must have seemed so strange, so gray and put together, wading through a sea of smiles and colored tassels, as if closed hardware shops had more to offer her soul than the fires of celebration.

Today, a little bit of prose that I kinda dig.

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Maia had listened. She’d intuited. She sought no more than time fondly spent together, and accepted no less. Yana could have found it in herself to match her enthusiasm for physicality if Maia had only asked, but she never did. She was too considerate, too reasonable, too concerned with Yana’s happiness to bind her to Habitat, or to request that not willingly offered. Dandelion seeds, she’d said, must fly.

Only flower I could find! Well, there's another one, but this one works best out of context.

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A still, quiet morning, lakeside in the Cascade Mountains.
#washingtonstate #washingtonisbeautiful #pnw #pacificnorthwest #cascadmountains #mountainlake #westcoastkin #earlymorning #firstlight #stillness

Awareness came to Rook in fevered spasms that pushed against the layered wall of dulled perception, ebb and flow, stir and sink. Then, by degrees, came the pain in dull embers, pressing against the inside of their skin. They awoke in a pool of their own sweat, with a jolt, and took in the sharp air in a staggered gasp.

Rook doesn't have a great time in this book.

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Here's Boston Legacy preview for the season.It's Friday and that means NWSL is the highlight of my day. youtu.be/opgvO97k9Mc All team Previews are available in a playlist #bostonlegacyfc #nwsl #FirstLight #woso

Then it shrieked, and the piercing sound cut through metal and composite fabric, through layers of dampening material and radiation shields, through the helmet’s visor and Rook’s bones unimpeded. They stumbled back, stunned, in pain, grasping at walls for balance, finding another hole to their right; they held on to it as tightly as the polished surface allowed. Something stabbed at their shin, a sharp and precise pain—scalpel-like. Its little claws hooked into the exosuit’s leg as it attempted to pierce the protective layers with what Rook could only describe as a flexible metallic needle. It stabbed again and again and again, each strike a painful reminder of how little protection an exosuit provided against weapons, and just as it lined up for yet another strike, Rook slammed a heavy boot down on it, disorienting it for just a moment. But the claws still dug deep, and burned where they scraped skin. Panicking, Rook gave it another kick, and a third one for good measure, and only then realizing no amount of stomping could squash this bug, pulled out their pistol from its holster, took aim, and hoped the surrounding air didn’t ignite the moment they pulled the trigger.

I really tried! No 'dart', 'run', 'dash' or 'sprint'. So I get to share the scenes with the needles again, because what's a needle, if not a melee dart?

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With a deep, rolling sigh, Yana sank even further into her chair. At this point, a shot in the dark would be easier—for all this fog of additional factors, of ifs and maybes, might as well have been complete ignorance. “If,” she began, and the room fell silent around her, even as she hesitated, “we jump to Femno, how long until we can jump back out?” “After a jump of that length, the spike drive would take about seventeen minutes to recharge,” Six said. “We could do this.” “An observation: such a course of action would delay our delivery considerably. Captain Gloria is unlikely to be pleased.” “And this could be a trap,” Diodorus added. “But it could also not be a trap,” Rook said, “and we might be able to find out what happened to the Mariposa and her crew… and even if we can’t, can we really ignore a distress call? We are NEVs, after all.” That last sentence hung heavy about Yana’s mind. When other thoughts tugged in all directions, frayed at the edges and melding with each other until they bloated into one unbound mass of doubt and anxiety, this one sentence remained clear, like dish soap on dirty water. We are NEVs, after all.

Not sure how to feel about that last simile. My editor will probably skewer me for that one!

But I like the rest of the excerpt, at least 😉

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a man in a red hat is holding a video game controller . ALT: a man in a red hat is holding a video game controller .

100e Platine : #inFamous #SecondSon de @suckerpunchprod.bsky.social ! Un épisode très beau pour le lancement de la PS4, sublimé par le patch "4K" de la PS4 Pro, le tout en 60 fps constant sur PS5 ! Plus qu'à faire #FirstLight maintenant (et pourquoi pas #FestivalOfBlood sur PS3 derrière ?)

Today, the light that was hidden takes its first breath. In the eyes of the newly born, the cosmos remembers itself. The eternal returns. 🦉🌟

#NebulasNestling #FirstLight #EternalReturn #FantasyArt #VisionaryArt #OwlArt #Symbolic #Halo #ILoveOwls

New Discovery, the City of Two Skylines. The name, while appropriate, could not begin to describe what stood before them, for there were, indeed, two skylines, though they were not separate, nor were they comparable in beauty or grandeur. Great spires and minarets reached out towards a green-tinted sky, their tips fading into the clouds. Some wore ridges, and delivered rivulets of condensation into the soil below, where fungiforms and arbormophs bloomed in arrangements so deliberate as to humble the finest of gardeners. Others arched with organic zest, cartwheeling between their towering comrades, drawing points of contact between them, and together, creating the world’s ancestral skyline, that of those who came before the Terrans.

Yana and crew arrive at New Discovery, the City of Two Skylines: the human species’ first colony outside of the Sol system, and their last to be established in a previously inhabited world.

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My snip for the word of today: Repeat
From my third rewrite/edit of my Southern Gothic
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The doors to the bridge opened, and Yana glanced over her shoulder to see a somewhat pale Rook step in. “Sorry I’m late, Captain.” “How are you feeling?” she asked. Rook froze in their tracks. Their eyes sought out Diodorus, and squinted slightly. “You told her, didn’t you?” “I follow my duties as Chief Engineer of this vessel. As our Captain and only physician, it is imperative that she knows of your weak stomach and lack of moderation.” “That’s a lot of words just to say that you’re a narc,” Rook said, voice filtered through a smile that would not be there, were it anyone else speaking those words. “What did I miss?” “If you wish, I will update you on our course of action at a later time,” Six said. “My assessments suggest that Captain Yana dislikes repeating herself.” Yana shrugged, as if to ask who did.

A small interaction today, and a callback to the Sausage Arc, the most narratively ambitious moment in First Light so far.

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The station may have made her body feel lighter than usual, but such a change brought only discomfort—rather than this, of all places she’d visit, none exuded such open hostility to the human form, to the human senses, or to the very concept of non-Extali life as a whole, and it wasn’t just the lack of illumination, barely compensated by the lights she carried, but the uneven floor, covered in ridges both long and sinuous, like ripples across water, forcing her feet to bend in uncomfortable ways as she trudged onward, and it was the dizzying way shadows stretched from the perfectly patterned textures that lined the walls, and it was the way those same textures glowed bright under her light, and all this together, this kaleidoscopic swirl of distilled enmity, more than dreary, less than living, made her head spin and her stomach turn.

I love dreary, it might be one of my favorite words, which is why I try to inject it into everything and then cut it in editing.

You know what's not getting cut in editing, though? This super long and convoluted paragraph of mine.

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“Captain, in your estimation, how long will it be until Rook regains consciousness?” “Uh… eight to sixteen hours, at least. Why?” “Please meet me at the Engineering bay at your earliest convenience,” Six said. Then she added: “After you’ve showered, and slept, and eaten. It has now been fourteen hours and thirty-six minutes since you last had a meal replicated.” The mere mention of food had Yana’s gut twisting with nausea, but still, she nodded. “That’s fair enough,” she said. “Can I ask what this is about, at least?” “It is my desire to mount my own surprise, and I will require your and Diodorus’s assistance.” The machine dinged again. Yana collected her uniform, its color once again dull—just as she liked it. “Somehow, hearing you talk of surprises worries me a little. But sure, I’ll be there.” “Thank you, Captain. Incidentally, I have just finished infusing your shower water with aromatics and relaxants. I recommend you take your shower before they lose their freshness.”

As the acting ship's consciousness, Six has unblinking eyes in every room. Would you like having your bedroom watch you sleep, or your bathroom watch you shower? The crew of the Trilo clearly don't care, or at least don't think about it.

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She looked around. What little tidying she had managed to get done in the Infirmary might as well be none at all, for how cluttered it all still looked. In truth, she had no idea what this module had been while Diodorus was squatting here—but it had cabinets, and one of those cabinets had a first aid kit and a dust-covered medical scanner in there, so Yana had dragged two cots and a chair in and deemed it the ship’s infirmary. It was that very scanner that she fished for. It stuck slightly to her hand when she held it, and when switched on, produced a worrying staccato that clawed at her ears and vibrated down her arm, but as far as she could tell, it was perfectly functional. She pressed its flat surface to Rook’s dumb thick skull, ran it up and down, ignoring their protests all throughout, until she was satisfied. “No concussions. No internal bleeding.” Rook glanced down at their ruined uniform. “Just external, then?” “Here, take a fresh towel. Hold it up to your nose until it stops.” “Don’t worry, Captain, I’ve dealt with nosebleeds before.” “Got in plenty of fights back in the homeworld?” Yana asked jokingly. “Yeah.” She blinked. There was a bluntness to Rook’s answer that she had not expected. “Really? You never seemed the violent sort to me.” “Oh, I’m really not. But you gotta get into fights sometimes, you know? It’s just how it is.” She stared them down, unsure of the seriousness of their answer.

#WIPSnips

Rook used to love a good brawl. Still does, but it rarely comes up in their current assignment.

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Something between a screech and a howl jolted Yana out of her first dreamless sleep in days. Gasping, she opened her eyes. Her room’s lights were already on, illuminating a ceiling that still sparkled from its recent polishing. Her heart raced as she tried to identify the source of the noise, only for it to fade, then begin again. “Six to Yana.” “What’s going on?!” “We are receiving a distress signal.” She sat up, and used the brim of her blanket to wipe the sweat off her face. “I’ll be in the bridge as soon as I can. Wait—how did we get a communication mid-jump?” “We finished our last Spike jump twenty-six minutes ago. We are currently in the Goulart system; the drive is now recharging.” Yana stared, blank-faced, at the opposite wall. A digital recreation of her diploma stared back. “I guess I slept through that somehow.” “You were sleeping quite soundly,” Six said, “hence my decision to employ the alarm.” Shaking herself awake, Yana hopped off a mattress that seldom looked so inviting and scrambled into her NEV uniform.

My phone's alarm back when I was in uni was an acapella song that went "GOOD MORNING! BEAUTIFUL DAY! WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY!" and it's branded into my brain to this day.

Anyway, here's some vibes for today's #WIPSnips.

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From this morning... #GoodMorning #firstlight #daybreak #dawn #sunup #sunrise

“Poor souls,” Diodorus spoke up. “They probably thought they could spike in and out before they were noticed. I have never known the Despotate to take prisoners, either.” “Are you at all familiar with the Extali, Diodorus?” He rolled his shoulders, a heavy motion, a rusty cog’s first spin. “I occasionally traded with a political exile in the Scrapsea in Bayinnaung,” he said. “A difficult spirit, but from what I could gather, much softer than its kin back home. It lived in the Scrapsea out of choice, in burrows of its own making—claimed that it considered the density of non-Extali in the residential layers ‘a gnawing, a splitting, a rotting of the soul’.” “Charming. When charting the course, let’s make sure we stay clear of Extali systems.”

Fresh from First Light Book 2--which I am pleased to say, had its first draft completed just yesterday! A WIP not for much longer, I hope!

Poor Yana, she really thinks the plot will let her avoid the Oops, All Xenophobes! species.

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“Now that,” Xyd said, “I believe wholeheartedly.” He turned half-around, so that one of his eyes faced her direction. Side-facing eyes, Yana thought—prey eyes. “I do not wish to be misunderstood. I think it’s a wondrous thing, the way your own unconscious mind protects you, cares for you—tries to, anyway. I shall do the same, and rein in my curiosity.” “Habitat.” “Hm?” “I come from a Space Station called Habitat. I was a researcher there—epidemiology.” “I have heard of Habitat,” Xyd said. “Is there much demand for epidemiologists there?” “No, but I had prior work experience.” “Homeworld?” “Yes,” Yana said. “Vara IX. Are you familiar?” “Wholly unfamiliar, I’m afraid.” “Look into it,” she said with a bitter smile. As always, summoning memories of that chapter in her life was torture—and yet, leaving Xyd guessing felt worse. “Full of anthropological lessons, that one.”

Post every single chapter heading, you say???

Follow-up from a previous #WIPSnips. The fun thing about writing novellas is that you can sometimes string these together and make a big snip. A megasnip, if you will.

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I wrote one of these just yesterday! It's genuine, I think--it's complicated, and I'm pretty sure Yana doesn't know either.

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It surprised Yana, how quickly she got used to having a Tellari wander the ship. For such a massive creature, Xyd had a knack for staying out of her way—a trait that had done much to endear him to her over the last few days. Even the residual awkwardness from the first day had faded; having quickly intuited her schedule, the alien had taken to sleeping during her work hours, and, after Yana had allowed him use of one of the bridge’s vacant terminals, spent most of his waking hours working on what she assumed were documents, written in what she assumed was an alphabet.

I use "massive" a lot when referring to Xyd. A lot of these are placeholders until I find more situation-appropriate ways to convey his sheer size, but this specific placeholder is in a paragraph I quite enjoy.

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“I started getting into fights. The excuse didn’t really matter—could be someone talking behind my back, or making fun of me. Could be someone not respecting a no dogs allowed sign in the public parks. In most cases, I was doing it just to feel something—just to feel my knuckles scrape a jawbone, or to see stars after someone floored me. Got pretty decent at it, I think. We kept getting reprimands from the system, threats they’d pursue some kind of ‘punitive action’ that never came. My parents were too ashamed to be seen with me in public, which was fine, because I barely spent any time with them anyway. The idea was, if I could be as disruptive as possible, they’d offer me a chance to get out of their hair, so to speak. Like a study tour of the nearest colony without a return ticket.” “What happened then?” “Well, my plan backfired. The more I misbehaved, the more they pampered me—harsher restrictions, more luxury. More things. The Caretaker systems take their programming seriously, let me tell you. They WILL take care of you, no matter what, whether you consent to it or not.”

In today's #WIPSnips, Rook opens up a little bit about their past as one of Veter IV's Domeborn--the human pets of the all-powerful AI cluster known as the Caretaker System.

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Orbital Station Sousa Mendes welcomed her in a way few stations did, with crisp air and the background hum of distant music. Strings of glimmering lights hung from the thankfully visible ceiling like glowworms in a cave; their gentle glow cast color over an otherwise sterile environment. Food carts, little more than wheelbarrows, patrolled the walkways, offering choice treats from the system’s choice cuisines—green and red nuggets, vials of colored dust, savory chewstraw. “I think we may have arrived at some kind of festival,” Rook said from behind her. They hopped down to the platform, closed their eyes, and breathed deep. “Yeah, that’s outdoor cooking I smell. Fried something. What do you say, Diodorus? Want to check it out?” “I smell nothing,” Diodorus said. “All that incense has no doubt destroyed my sense of smell. Will you manage all by yourself, Captain?”

#WIPSnips surprises me again with a word I didn't think I ever used.

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