heliopausa

I caught a plane which took me from summer to winter, and from the longest day to the longest night. It used (three days ago) to be summer, with long warm days, and it's currently cold and dark and blustery outside, and is quite a shock to the system. Brrrr...

And while I was in transit from one side of the solstice to the other, ie in transit using free airport wifi, I posted the epilogue of my long story 'The Ivory Merchants'; it's on both ffnet and AO3. I was probably already a bit dizzy with the travel; I remember dithering for ages around midnight over the last five or six words, and writing it one way in one, and another way in the other. I know which I prefer now, but I guess I'll let the other one stand as a memorial to dithering. (Does anyone have any strong opinions about editing work once published ?) Meantime, I feel that I've learnt a few things in the writing of it, especially about not getting distracted by my own world-building, and about the need for action to keep the story moving. (Thank you, helpful commenters/reviewers!)
I don't expect to be having the time/focus to write another long story anytime soon. Maybe something short - I'm waiting to see what the schedules are for the Narnia Fic Exchange that amazing Snacky is running - that might be a spur to attempt one more Narnia fic this year.

And, still on themes of ivory and transit: while in transit, I saw a newspaper with this article about (and with a picture of) a very beautiful narwhal tusk, given once upon a time (ie 1860s) by an Imperial Russian naval representative to a leading Chinese businessman (and Russian consul) in the Straits Settlement city of Singapore, and now donated by his great-granddaughter to Singapore's Natural History Museum. Gorgeous romance of it all -- the tusk coming from the icy north to the tropics as a mark of honour, and treasured by the consul's family, and hidden behind silk curtains (at least, behind bed-curtains, the article said - I'm extrapolating the silk part) during the Japanese occupation,and now given for everyone to wonder at in the museum. Wonderful!

Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum

(I seem not to be able to delete the three attempts I made to copy the proper name of the Museum - sorry, everyone!)