Sunsets in Cotanique were like bathing in orange juice. From university hill, and the scrubby red mountains draped as they were with the fraying edge of the city, the whole bay and spar were visible. The spar itself was enrobed by the red sun, a thin line in the far distance piercing through. Wreathing this torch were pearls, and peaches, and dripping pomegranates, and layers and shades of cloud growing outwards from the setting sun like hungry roots. Shafts of crepuscular br

Lana thought it had been a long time since she was here last, watching the dawn light splash out to sea and break over the Spar. It really hadn’t, only a year or two since her last research visit. Still, the spar and the enormous space elevator at its end featured so heavily in her dissertation that it haunted her nightly. It had been a year since she defended her thesis and moved on to greater things. Greater things like escorting a Spider postdoc to the university, appare

A short story by Willow Beaudet The First Night When Dolicker sat by the fire with me and dropped a burning twig into the ceremonial plate, the air grew lush with spice. The whole trip he had been telling stories, he and his pikemen retelling fables up even the steepest climbs. It had been four whole days of tales and gossip, Dolicker himself identifying plants and pointing out cloud formations, this man or that telling the stories of their scars. I had seen the passion in th