jesse_the_k | Network

Well, this was sure a year.

For me it was defined by three (3) things:

1) Kid

2) My dad died

3) Genshin Impact

myfyr had been trying to get me into Genshin for a while, and then around when Dad died I needed something to fixate on as a coping mechanism, so I tried it, and I really liked it.

It helps that I've been really lucky with 50/50s and the precise set of characters available in that time, because I'm really enjoying the game with a fantastic set of characters that I like and that work really well together, so that's something. (For anyone who plays Genshin: in no particular order, Mavuika, Chasca, Xilonen, Wriothesley, Escoffier, Furina, Sigewinne, Arlecchino, Yelan, Lauma, Citlali, Navia are my five-stars I use a lot, but special mention goes to Best Boy Ororon. My standard banner characters? Mizuki C1, Qiqi C3, and Mona. That's it. I have had insane luck with 50/50s. I also have Jean but I got her from that event where you could get a free standard banner five star.)

To give a scale of my hyperfixation: I resisted writing Genshin fic for the first couple of months but I've since written something like 700k words of it. Because hyperfixation is a coping mechanism and Genshin apparently specialises in making their characters really interesting.

Truly astonishing amounts of it were written on my phone while holding a sleeping toddler. He still has tummy issues and he sleeps better when being held.

I've really been struggling with Dad's death lately, because the thing about having a birthday two weeks before Christmas is that first birthday without Dad slams hard into first Christmas without Dad into a whirlwind of suck.

It looked like I'd found a good therapist, but personal/health issues of some sort means she's quitting, which is unfortunate, because All The Things but especially Dad stuff.

The thing is?

When I was a kid I had the best dad.

And then around my late teens/twenties he got... frustrating, and our relationship got fraught, and it just struggled and there were ups and downs but a few years ago I decided it must be early onset dementia and I started consciously trying to think of him as my mother's husband because I wanted to remember my Dad better...

... and then he started treatment for his neuroendocrine tumour and he was my dad again and I'm so, so fucking angry about the decades we lost to fucking cancer.

Around mid-year I had my annual surveillance scan to see if my neuroendocrine tumour has come back and the techs were very nice about the way I broke down sobbing on the CT machine tray and were very sympathetic to the explanation that it was my first surveillance scan since my dad died of the same kind of cancer.

So that was a thing.

Anyway.

The kid.

Toby is 21 months old now and amazing. He's putting sentences together - sometimes long chains of them, like: "Rubbish truck comes along. Rubbish truck picks up the bin. Tips into the rubbish truck." (He's very into rubbish trucks right now.) He can recognise every letter in the alphabet and knows what sounds they make and can recognise all the numbers.

He can also recite the numbers in order - usually stops at 20 or 30 - but is only beginning to associate that with actual counting.

He has an excellent collection of animal noises and the best laugh ever.

He's learning to drink from a cup, and loves doing it. His hobbies include tipping things, throwing balls and Duplo.

He loves singing. He will randomly bounce between the songs he knows, which can be a disconcertingly eclectic listening experience because he'll bounce between I Want It That Way (Backstreet Boys), Rainy Days and Mondays (The Carpenters), I'm Blue (whoever did that), One More Time (Daft Punk), We Will Rock You (Queen), Rock-a-bye Baby, Goosey Goosey Gander, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep. He also randomly sings the alphabet but that doesn't bounce with other songs.

He's starting to get the hang of melody. Emphasis on starting, but it's absolutely delightful.

No-one has ever loved my singing as much as he does. Rainy Days and Mondays is often his going-to-sleep song when I'm settling him, so if I start singing it before he's sleepy he'll say, "No! Different song!"

(It used to be: "No! Mama sing!")

He's pure joy. I think he got my mother through the first difficult period after she became a widow, because she adores him and delights in him (as a grandmother should).

At some point soon we're going to have to cut his fringe to stop it getting in his eyes, but

velithya doesn't want to cut all his hair because she finds the curls at the back adorable and is worried they won't grow back. (With good reason, I think.)

Anyway. Happy New Year, everyone.

thisbluespirit posting in

yuletide

22 recs in As You Like It, British Airways, Cabin Pressure, Cadfael, Dogsbody, Enigma, Flower Fairies, The Good Place, Georgette Heyer, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, Ludwig, The Prisoner, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Shakespeare & Hathaway, Time Master, Welcome to Our Village Please Invade Carefully & Yes Minister at my journal.

smokingboot

Fitful night, watching the outdoor lights casting giant shadows through the room like massive glass moths. So odd I got up and didn't go back to bed til 3 am. Woke up at 8.45, just before the cleaner arrived in time to see me in my dressing gown. Now I sit here, heavy eyed and bleary.

2025, a strange year. For me, it was comparatively gentle. I faced only two great pains, the never improving issue of my mum and the death of our dear old cat, Ralik.

All else for me was recuperation. The radiotherapy came and went, and everyone warned me that improvement would be slow. True. But I also experienced the visions of Europe's earliest artists at Lascaux, and these filled my heart. Malta, France, Spain, the Fringe, the wilds of Lancashire, all contributed to my healing and inspiration. I tried to paint. I was bad at it. I will try some more. I am not blazing with power right now, but I am OK. Love and friendship held me together. I have a lot for which to be grateful.

Having said that, friends remain of great concern to me. Resting myself, I was in a position to see how this year has been one of difficulties for so many of the old crew; break-ups, redundancies, illness, accidents and worse.... Tragedy was close by. Even for one of the most successful of my friends, there was a heart-wrenching decision, hard enough to drop his head over his pint for a moment, pause, then look up at the world with the smile everyone expects. Even for the tough, these are tough times.

But there was music and laughter too, including one particularly awesome party. And the year moves, we move with it.Everything changes but today is a good day to look back. https://substack.com/home/post/p-182920271

ysabetwordsmith posting in

allbingo

I have made bingo for Amnesty this month. Counting each 5 fills as a bingo, I have made two. \o/

5-1-25 B3 "In a Splash of Color"
11-1-25 B3 "The Sand of Celebration"
8-1-25 B2 "Until the Rain Comes"
5-1-25 O5 "A Palette of Appetizers"
11-1-25 O5 "User Interfaces"

2-1-25 B5 "Protect the Inner Core"
5-1-25 B5 "The Marvels of Brush and Ink"
11-1-25 I2 "The Car That Didn't Like Bullies"
11-1-25 B2 "Learning New Skills"
11-1-25 O4 "The Unicorn Door"

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith posting in

allbingo

Dreamwidth offers a place to post pretty much whatever people want to share. However, a lot of creators put their stories, webcomics, etc. on some other platform and only share links on Dreamwidth. The same holds true for the recommendation communities for fiction and other topics: most rely on links that lead offsite. The problem with this is that more and more platforms are closing to nonmembers, becoming unavailable in some parts of the world, incompatible with some software or hardware -- or shutting down entirely like Cohost did. That makes offsite links less useful than in the past, because there's no telling who can see the content or not. When creators post the full content on Dreamwidth in an open blog, however, anyone already using Dreamwidth can access that content. (Creators still have the option of using access lists and filters if they want to serve a more specific audience.) Furthermore, copying the material to multiple platforms increases the chance of more people seeing it and of it surviving if one platform collapses. We've lost enough fanwork archives already.

A signup post over at

goals_on_dw provides a place to list communities and individual blogs where people post full content. It will help readers find new sources to enjoy, and creators find new audience members. It supports goals related to blogging, reading, writing, networking, Dreamwidth, and so on. It's a bit like Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, except not limited in time and you can echo your work on other platforms in addition to this one. MOAR GOODEEZ for everyone! \o/

You can pick whichever challenge(s) you want to set as a goal in 2026 and reply with a comment. The post includes a list of sample full-content journals and a short form for listing what you have chosen. You can make a post in your blog like "I signed up for the Full Content on Dreamwidth challenge in

goals_on_dw" or similar. Then make a tag for it like "Full Content" and put that on the post; it should stick that way. Check your Interests page to see if you have Writing, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fanfic, Webcomics, etc. listed there, which helps people find you. You don't have to sign up to participate, it just helps spread the word and attract more readers.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith posting in

allbingo

Happy Snowflake Season to all! As we prepare to kick off the 2026

snowflake_challenge, please feel free to promote this event within your own circles. You are welcome to use any of these new banners for that. The community page also has icons.

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

proteinscollide posting in

yuletide

9 recs over at my journal for: IVE, Two Husbands One Wife, Bend It Like Beckham, Billy Elliot, Blackadder, NMIXX, Revenged Love, Sabrina Carpenter - Manchild, Set It Up

alisanne posting in

adventdrabbles

Prompt 30 is from [Bad username or unknown identity: flareonfury!]

				25
			12	18	22
		15	20	17	09	05
	03	19	23	13	01	11	07
04	16	21	08	02	24	10	14	06

	26	27	28	29	30	31	00

( Click here if you have trouble seeing the prompt )

We’re almost done, guys! Let’s finish strong, yes?

dine

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

meteordust

Normally Estival is the highlight of my Fallen London year. It's an annual event held in the northern hemisphere summer, and unlike the other regular festivals, it's a unique storyline every time. This year was the fifth one:

2021
2022
2023
2024

I haven't had as much time this year to play Fallen London, and I'm behind with some of the major storylines like Firmament. But I was still keen to take part in Estival, and I just hoped the scavenger hunt didn't require access to areas I hadn't unlocked.

For more details, including a day-by-day recap of events:

Timeline of events (on the wiki)
Gameplay guide (on the wiki)
Estival: Hell is Missing (official promo post)

It was a lot more experimental this year, and I didn't really get as hyped about it. It started off wild and interesting, with your character waking up to find the laws of reality have started going out of control. But after that initial fun exploration, things got a lot harder and less appealing.

On a mechanical level, some of the puzzles were so difficult or obscure, they felt impossible to solve unless you burned up a lot of actions trying different things. Though apparently, if you were on the Discord solving them together with other players, it was a good time.

Normally I'm fine with lagging behind the early adopters, and being guided by hints or even looking up solutions. But there's still a feeling of logic and choice. This time, it felt like I was glued to a walkthrough, jumping through arbitrary hoops to get a desired result.

There were also time limits on some stages, which meant if you took too long getting to that stage, it wasn't available anymore. For example, I missed out on doing the quest for the Book of All Hours, because I wanted to complete the quest for Pinning Down the Corners instead of skipping that activity.

And on a story level, it didn't really seize my imagination or get me deeply invested, the way past Estivals have. The emotional core of the story was about the Bishop of Southwark, one of the veterans of the war of 1868, and his survivor's guilt about his fellow soldiers who were imprisoned by Hell. And the plot climax of the story was when we were able to free those prisoners - sort of - by carving out a bubble of reality for them as their enclave, outside of the reach of Hell but also apart from the rest of the Neath. So a kind of bittersweet ending.

But more than that, even though I'm sure it was cathartic for Southwark, it felt like we were experiencing that catharsis secondhand. I don't know why freeing the prisoners from the Sixth Coil felt so emotional, and freeing the prisoners from Hell didn't.

There were things I enjoyed. I liked searching for the Urchins disguised as the Masters. I liked meeting Milton the Devil. I liked visiting the tutorial version of New Newgate Prison again. I liked the new activities of hunting rogue laws and forging new laws. I liked taking on the challenge of getting Scathless the hard way. But overall, it didn't hit the heights for me that past years have. But maybe that's too much to ask for every time.

Further discussion:

HELL IS MISSING had potential, but the execution was a mess
Thoughts on this year's Estival?

Failbetter Games has announced:

We're taking a break from Estival in 2026.

You'll be able to get Estival tokens and to spend them, and we may include a few other things as well. But there'll be no big overarching storyline. And given the nature of Estival, it seems right to emphasise – we're not being coy, and this isn't a fake out. There will be no falling stalactite. No broken law engines. The citizens of London will not need to come together to fend off some surprising threat to their fair city. For we have looked upon our spreadsheets, and reluctantly accepted that next year we cannot do everything we might wish in Fallen London while making adequate progress on Mandrake, which we're working to bring to Early Access.

It's obviously a lot of work to put together a brand new Estival every year, and have to meet the high expectations for the event, and manage the pace of player progress in real time. And you don't want to burn out. So a break sounds like a good idea.

(Of course the playerbase is like, "But this is what they would say if it was a fake out!")

Current Mood: thoughtful

merriamwebster_feed

https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/charisma-2025-12-30

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 30, 2025 is:

charisma • \kuh-RIZ-muh\ • noun

Charisma refers to a special magnetic charm or appeal that causes people to feel attracted and excited by someone. A person with charisma is captivating and often admired.

// The young singer has the kind of charisma that turns a performer into a star.

See the entry >

Examples:

"Sports and showbiz have gone hand in hand since newsreels in the 1920s showcased the skills and charisma of Babe Ruth." — Carole Horst, Variety, 16 July 2025

Did you know?

The Greek word charisma means "favor" or "gift." It comes from the verb charizesthai ("to favor"), which in turn comes from the noun charis, meaning "grace." In English, charisma was originally used in Christian contexts to refer to a gift or power bestowed upon an individual by the Holy Spirit for the good of the Church—a sense that is now very rare. These days, we use the word to refer to social, rather than divine, grace. For instance, a leader with charisma may easily gain popular support, and a job applicant with charisma may shine in an interview.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/charisma-2025-12-30

$radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)$

radiantfracture

Because when I make fan art, I like it to be as obscure as possible

Sure, it looks like a linocut of a loon but really it's a symbol of queer hockey transcendence

§rf§

[ETA: I want to use some of the shimmering ink* to create the iridescent effect of the black feathers and to do the red eye -- painting ink on overtop of the print didn't do what I wanted, so maybe painting it right onto the printing block somehow?]

* specifically, Octopus Fluids' Witch, pine green with purple sheen

cornerofmadness

I went to bed at 2 AM. It was 64 degrees out (in the Pittsburgh area!) so I opened my windows (Dad likes this place to be an oven) when I wake up at 9 it's 34. By ten its 24 and the sustained winds were over 20 mph with gusts up to 30-40 mph. Mom and my plan to go to the Phipps conservatory was done. Too windy. It was meant to snow (that didn't happen until after 8 pm as it turned out)

But the good omens continue as my parents are both really pissed at prejudice woman and hateful husband. Turns out PW's aunt HAD to go to the doctor today (or get billed for that nursing home rehab stay) so rather than delay their trip home to NC a few hours they pushed taking her onto my 83 year old mom. They didn't even ask ME to do it. They just fucked off south expecting Mom to do it (she did. In that cold. In that wind. Both old ladies are okay) and they didn't even leave early because they were both drunk last night and hung over and only left 5 minutes after mom got to her bestie's house. They could have taken Aunt S2 to the doc. Dad is very protective of mom and he is furious as is mom.

It's also another round of do your damn job. CVS tells me that my insulin is ready but not my wellbutrin. FInally I get cranky and call them and say where is that. Oh, that is out of refills. OMFG
1. I called my doc about that 2 weeks ago so her nurse did NOT do her job
2. CVS did NOT call me once since friday when I called in my refills
3. CVS AI bullshit phone system said there WAS refills

But in doing your job right and going above and beyond goes to whatever Amazon driver showed up in the dead of night and put both of the lightweight envelopes I got (a usb hub in one, my dexcom pretty patches in the other) half under the planter on the front stoop so they wouldn't blow away (we gave them high praise) contrasted with the UPSP dipshit who delivered my Hazbin poster to the man door of dad's detached garage....

I'll be hosting the public domain bingo in January over in

allbingo if you want to come look at some cool creative prompts (but woo boy, this is taking me a lot of time to put together but it's fun though)

Still not getting my story done. Sigh. Power went out a few times today too (wind galloping).

But I did blow off the hill (almost literally) to the post office to get my holiday gift from JK, a super cute p.oed. handmade Husk plushie, some Husk pins and Hazbin stickers. Fun stuff.

Music Monday. This week's prompt is prompt #7 a song you like with no words

( Music under here )

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Killer Grannies

flemmings

So the rain and the 6C temps yesterday removed the snow from the sidewalks as far as I could see, and the wind got up overnight and the temps dropped. So I was prepared for dry pavement today. The corners would still be pretty ridged, but easier to get over than Friday's slush. Only of course I woke up to more snow. This is clearly going to be one of Those Winters. Can only hope the Old Farmer's Almanac is right about December being the worst of it.

However snow on Friday did bring my nursing friend and her son to Christie Pits on Saturday, which is prime tobogganing territory, and they came up the street for a visit. A. has a car now, which is excellent news, because having a job and a kid who must be picked up from after school is extremely dicey with TO's unreliable transit system, especially in winter and especially in a winter like this one. She still has trouble with her rotator cuff: those things take forever to heal. But she brought me a box of chocolates and conversation, both of which were appreciated.

Rearranging books the other day, thought I might as well do a reread of Silverlock, especially now that there's google to tell me all the references I didn't get at 17. The 60 year old paperback is falling apart-- the front cover fell off almost immediately-- so best to read while the reading is good. This counts as putting my enforced homestuckness to a useful purpose, though kanji and Greek would be more so. Five years since my last review of the former, and ohh but those Papuwa doujinshi are reminding me of that fact.

torachan

1. Back to work today. A good chunk of the morning was spent catching up on messages from the past four days, and then I helped bagging downstairs for a couple hours (the week between Christmas and New Year is the busiest for us), and had a web meeting this afternoon, but otherwise did not have a ton of stuff to do so that was fine. I volunteered to help bag tomorrow and Wednesday, too. And then it will be another four day weekend!

2. Carla is planning to go to Wisconsin again for a few days at the end of January for her aunt's birthday. Originally it was just going to be Wednesday through Sunday, but one of her cousins texted today to ask how long she was going to be there and said she had hoped they could go into Chicago one day. Since that cousin has to work, and the birthday celebration will be Saturday, the only good day would be Sunday, but there wouldn't be time to do that and get to her flight on time. So we looked into changing the return day and were able to do it with no fee! So now she'll be coming back a few days later but will be able to go spend the day in Chicago with her cousins.

3. Yesterday I spotted Tuxie loafing on the lawn. He seemed very happy the sun was out after so much rain!

osprey_archer

And Picture Book Advent draws gently to a close. A note for my future self: although traditionally Advent ends on December 24, I think it would be nice to have a final picture book for the morning of Christmas. (My sister-in-law’s large extended family does a BIG Christmas, so we’ve simply ceded Christmas Day to them and have our own little family Christmas later on, which leaves Christmas morning open.)

Because of the way the dates of Advent fell, I had only two books left to review. First, The Wee Christmas Cabin at Carn-na-ween, by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Max Grafe, a picture book version of a story I first read in Sawyer’s story collection The Long Christmas. After a lifetime helping out in one cabin after another, with never a home of her own, old Oona is at last driven from her final house on Christmas Eve… only for the Good Folk to build her a house, and grant her wish that every white Christmas hence, the hungry and the lonely will be able to find her home for succor.

A lovely story. Another solid example from Sawyer that the spirit of Christmas is “generosity” and not “copious evergreens.”

And second, The Christmas Sweater, Jan Brett’s new Christmas book this year! Theo’s Yiayia knitted an extremely gaudy Christmas sweater for his dignified pug Ari. Hoping to win Ari over to the cozy warm sweater, Theo takes her for a snowshoe in the woods… only for a fresh fall of snow to obliterate his tracks! But fortunately, Ari(adne)’s sweater caught on a twig near the edge of the woods, so they can follow the unraveled yarn back home.

From the dedication, it looks like one of Brett’s children married into a Greek family, and this book is an homage to that family connection. I particularly enjoyed Ari’s expressive face, and indeed all the dogs running around in the snow in this book.

catherineldf

It was one heck of a year!
We released 3 titles:

Point of Hearts (Astreiant #6) by Melissa Scott
Running Dry by M.Christian
The Complete Astreiant by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett

Award News:

Point of Hopes (Astreiant #1) by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett won a Midwest Independent Publishers Association Award for speculative fiction
Catherine Lundoff won an Alice B. Readers Award for her body of work in sapphic fiction
Terror at Tierra de Cobre by Michael Merriam was a finalist for the Inaugural Small Spec Book Awards, Horror Category
The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones was nominated for the Indie Ink Awards in 2 categories, including Aromantic/Asexual Representation
The Complete Astreiant by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett is eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Series this year

Other Cool Things:

The University of Minnesota Library Upper Midwest Literary Archive is officially collecting us, with a finding guide and everything, crossed listed with the Tretter Collection.
Point of Hearts was reviewed in Locus Magazine, our first title in Locus.

Apart from that, we did 36 events this year! That includes conferences, book festivals, bookstore readings, book events at breweries and other venues, podcasts and probably something I'm forgetting. It was a lot! If you were one of the folks who hosted us, bought our books, reviewed our books, supported our Patreon and/or generally helped us get the word out about our books, you rock! Thank you!

And a big thank you to our authors, cover designers, book designer and my assistant, Alexa, for all your hard work this year! Additional shout out to Kate Larking who did a bunch of marketing and publicity work for us! See you all in 2026!

file770_feed

Posted by Mike Glyer

https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-12-29-25-ive-seen-scrolls-you-pixels-wouldnt-believe/

https://file770.com/?p=127659

(1) THE PATH TO NOW IS PAVED WITH BOOKS. Front Porch Republic takes readers “Inside the Workings of Joel J. Miller’s The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape our Future”. …Today, in some spheres, books are often … Continue reading →

https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-12-29-25-ive-seen-scrolls-you-pixels-wouldnt-believe/

https://file770.com/?p=127659

enchanted_jae posting in

adventdrabbles

Title: Bundled Up Against the Cold
Author:

enchanted_jae
Character(s): Harry/Draco, ocs
Rating: G
Warning(s): None
Art medium: MS Paint
Summary: Playing in the snow
Disclaimer: Characters are the property of JK Rowling, et al. This was created for fun, not for profit.
Created for:
♦ Jae's Advent Drabbles No. 29
♦

dracoharry100 Christmas Challenge 2024 No. 29 - Christmas Star
♦

adventdrabbles Prompt No. 29 - snowman pals

Bundled Up Against the Cold

goodbyebird

+ I thiiiink I'm up to date on my comment replies? My inbox turned into a right mess with all the holiday emails thrown in, sorry if I've skipped over you.

+ Tis the time for End of Year Lists, and I enjoyed Every Sapphic Book I Read This Year by

Lesbiature.

+ I actually spotted the Beehive Books illuminated version of Carmilla in a local bookshop! I didn't know their fancy editions were becoming that widespread. I backed their very first kickstarter back in the day, happy to see they've expanded. Their editions are works of art. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for a sale so I can snap it up.

+ Finally installed Vegas Pro 22 I got from Humble Bundle, and there were separate ticky boxes for Vegas Pro and Deep Learning Model. I'm assuming that's their AI bullshit? If so, GOOD. Maybe I'll venture into discord again, most vidders have abandoned ship here and I'll very likely be in need of moral support. These gay vampires won't leave me alone and I may just have to do something about it. (this is 98% likely to never result in a finished vid, my track record is very conclusive)

+ Big shoutout to

lgbtrainbow for letting me do one icon at a time. Such a fun but also easy way to go about iconning. Though I now have three colors laying in wait for when they come back around lol. I am ready to pounce. Please join us and icon All The Gays.
(I may actually have an icon post before the year ends whee)

In the meantime I've written up not one but two tutorials based on earlier PSDs, because once again I'm having to re-learn how to make icons 🫠

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 29
Stranger Things
love is a battle i can win by

palmviolet (24,653 words). Christmas 1994. Nancy faces her fears. The sense of found family and friendship in this <3 (also another Christmas fic yay)
She taps the end of her ballpoint on her lip and looks idly around the terminal. The bank of seats she’s sitting on is empty. But as she watches, actually, someone comes down to sit a few seats away from her. It’s a woman, short-haired, in men’s trousers and a collared shirt. She’s got sharp eyes and freckles dusted over her cheeks; the shirt, open at the throat, shows off the hint of warm brown collarbones.

She doesn’t sit for long. Soon enough she spots someone entering the terminal and she jumps to her feet, the sort of raw delight emanating off her that’s hard to look at. She rushes forward and embraces the person. Another woman. And it’s 1994, and the world’s come a long way, but not long enough for them to kiss here in public, but Nancy can tell that they want to. She can just tell. And she doesn’t know where this sense came from, where she learned it or when. How does she know? How does she know that’s what they want to do?

Not because she’s felt that way herself. She remembers the few times she and Jonathan were apart for any length of time, the way she’d feel itchy and unsettled the whole duration and yet still strangely reluctant to see him return. She wouldn’t kiss him in the airport, though she’d kiss back if he kissed her. It was a problem of knowing neither how to live with him nor how to live without him; it was a problem they all experienced with each other, moving away from New Hawkins in dribs and drabs as they did. Joyce calling Jonathan four times a day and forgetting the time difference, waking them just as they went to bed. Nancy doing the same to Mike and Holly, just in the mornings.

She checks her watch. It’s eleven twenty-eight; she puts her notebook away and gets her things together, passing the two women on her way out, and she has to avert her eyes. She can’t look at them. Her cheeks are furiously hot.

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December 2025

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save your energy. save yourselves. avoid the planet Earth at all costs

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