Celestial Bitch

i wrote this while working in a program for new writers. on wednesdays, two of the teachers would be contractually obligated to read our writing aloud to the group of 300+ teens. i had never read my work in public before. i had something like 6k poems and was panicking about it. none of them are good enough. sometimes the train is howling. it is hard, actually, sometimes, even as an adult.

and then i thought - what is one thing i wish i could tell all of them. each of these 300 kids. what did i need to hear, at 16?

i wanted to tell them about the day you wake up, and the sun feels warm finally. i wanted to tell them about carving a life out of soapstone, your hands turning bloody. i wanted to tell them that sometimes yes - it actually does feel easy. i wanted to tell them about weddings and cookie dough and long road trips. about albums of new music and old friends laughing and the sound of snow falling.

you will learn the pattern of the train. you will learn to close your eyes when you hear the engine rumbling. you will learn to let yourself have the grey days in their lily-soft numbness. sometimes it will feel like life is wet paint, and god has smeared your canvas across a sewer grate. sometimes it will be so boring it isn’t even pronounceable - the tenacious, soundless blankness. survival isn’t just ugly nights and wild mornings. it is also the steady, unimportant moments. it is just driving with your seatbelt on. it is calling a friend on the way home. it is burying your face into the fur of your dog.

when i had finished reading this poem aloud, the auditorium was silent for a solid minute. someone stood up to take a picture of where it had been projected onto a screen, and then three more people followed the action, and then - like a bad internet story, people remembered they were supposed to be clapping. kids came up to me after it - thank you for writing that. i think i hear a train coming.

i would write this differently now, i think, but it has been 7 years. i still live by the tracks. i also haven’t picked up a blade in over 10 years. the scars are still there, but these days i only pick up scissors to cut my hair. i know why you can’t tell your mom about it. i know how the numbness slips over everything, a restless horrible cotton. i know how when you dropped the dish, you weren’t crying about the broken glass. i know about feeling like all the roads have closed their exits, that you aren’t supposed to still-be-here - and yet.

i am still here, and still yours, and i haven’t forgotten. what i’m saying is if any hope is calling to you - i know it’s hard, but you have to listen. i’m saying keep driving, but slow down the car. sit down in the shower, i’m not judging you. we can stay in the dark with the good hot water and do nothing but stare. notice the stab wound. make it through another tuesday.

i know what it is like to miss yourself. do what you need to. come home to me. i am writing to you, my past self, from the future. i’ll be waiting for you.

all culture, language, style, religion, dance, music, food, philosophy, art, and music are gone, save for what is filtered through his experience. most if not all of the main cast are māori but they have no thread connecting them to their cultural experience except for john gaius.

https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/muir_interview/

In the extra material at the end of Harrow the Ninth there's this document. "Blood of Eden Memorandum for Record." It explains everything their enemies know about necromancers, cavaliers, and how to fight them. And one paragraph perfectly explains why the people with swords keep winning hands down against the people with guns.

The relationship between necromantic abilities and death by bullets has been both overstated and understated by most personnel. It is certainly not the case that necromancers cannot be harmed by bullets. On the other hand, firing on House troops without proper advance reconnaissance is extremely unwise. The “death sense” is not only applicable to the enemy gaining intel, but is sophisticated enough that the death of a minion can be used to create a connection between the gunner and the necromancer. The perfect sniper round that kills a necromancer’s minion will not only tell the necromancer exactly where the sniper is, but give them a conduit to kill or disable the sniper directly. A necromancer’s range has been clocked at three thousand metres using this method.

So basically: If you're a cav and the enemy takes you out, your necromancer can instantly retaliate and kill your killer with their brain. And also they just gave their position away and can be tracked using that thanergetic link for quite some time after.

To effectively fight Cohort troops, BoE needs to move with absolutely no detection (which with necromancers means no killing anyone) until the instant they can attack and take out all the necromancers. If there's a single necromancer left alive, the person who delivered the critical strike is as good as dead, and an active threat to anyone around them.

200 dead children

literally Joan of Arc

First Flower of the Ninth House, the Best Cavalier They have Ever produced, Their Triumph, the Best of Them All,

The first time is in Doctor Sex, when they'd been being mature and professional all day, and now earned the respect of a bunch of their superiors and got Palamedes the missing credit he needed to keep the graduation schedule he wanted, a huge win. And once they're alone, she says, "Palamedes?" And they finally let themselves drop all pretenses and be the dumb kids they are and laugh until it hurts, until they get chased out for being too loud.

The only other time we see and last time she ever will is, “Palamedes, yes. My whole life, yes. Yes, forever, yes. Life is too short and love is too long.”