Four weeks is a marked improvement over fourteen years. I’ll take it.

Awakening, Part 17 picks up in the quiet after Part 15’s meeting.

the green flash ##

They are a real thing.

I think I’ve seen one maybe once in person. I’m generally landlocked, and a clear oceanic horizon helps with your chances.

10=8 ##

Younger me thought a good way to make a culture more alien would be by not counting to ten. Now I have spreadsheets and scripts to help me help myself. Thanks, younger me.

Alecha often makes estimates that, to anyone living a base-ten life (or base-sixty like our clocks, thanks Babylonians), sound possibly over-precise for an approximation. “Sixteen minutes” or “thirty-two hours.”

Val’Traxans count in octal: they have eight hand-digits. The “translation” to English prose uses base-ten numbers so that we don’t all need scientific calculators to read the story. The characters themselves still think in eights and sixteens and sixty-fours, and it leaks into how they estimate things.

I will continue to make everything difficult for myself. You’re welcome, future me.