the_fantastic_ms_fox | (no subject)

[Rabbit-hole day]

Unity,

Frvi, Orat, I hear you've returned! Or rather, that you will return between when I write this and when you get it. The rest of the house can give you my other texts. This is just a short for you.

It was unnerving once, but I find the tent's wind-whipped shuddering relaxing now. Aluminum struts frame the sand-colured plassy into curving trapehezoids that bounce in the wind. Even with two layers with a forearm's worth of fluff sandwiched between! It reminds me of the the beds when the teams reconvene in the travel seasons and take advantage before the close-ban kicks in again.

(You can guess what's on my mind: it is thirty and twelve spins before I see my warm one again.)

We made the frame out of the scrap lying outside, with the plassy grown in a tank. It's spartan; post revolutionary even; but we ornament; make our own. I paint moryal spirals onto the undertop of each tent, each slightly different.

Outside though - I thought the karsk was inhospitable! Sometimes I wonder at that we can breath the air here - at least with mask and goggles: the very last of the second-gen former weeds are dying out now, and the soil is still blowing off. It must've turned dark as dustwinter when it started. I doubt we could stabilize them in anything larger than a fief-sized area. Maybe a later gen?

There are electrical storms here almost every other day. We outfitted all the tents with lightning rods, and we're using spare current to run an ionic distractor at a safe distance. Did I just call it a "day?" Prsh, I must be acclimatizing.

There was a city to our East here once. We go in on every sixth local turn (one of their turns equals two of our shifts - it plays hell with the Terrie's cycles), root around, find anything study-worthy, or totally unremarkable and recyclable. We sleep uneasy out of a meld of excitement and fear/respect of ghosts.

The shorter spins are nice: you can see a whole turn in one waking. How will I go back to picking dawn/dusk or noon/night? At least I'll get to see the arch again, this place has only two tiny moons.

We're collecting writing samples, trying to crack it; hear them. We find scraps of the firsts now and then: hoffium and other stable transuranics; isotope-bones of the less stable ones; adapters for neural networks, etcetera, etcetera; many we can't identify. These are my favourites; the storage ring around our tent is full of more junk than I'll be able to go through. If only there were more relics at home - Terran relics, by a species like us, not those unnatural progi spikes and hoops at the poles.

They made this planet on it's way to high Terran once; not Reunion by any stretch, but nicer than Doloi; "nicer" than home. It's still temperate even now, although the offworlders complain it's cold. I guess we're all offies here. I shouldn't talk like that - my manners have eroded.

Does this sound dreary? It's not. I'm happy here. I like my work-team, but I'm looking forward to getting home too.

One half-dream cycles in my mind though - we could have wound up like this; this could have been us. No wait, it couldn't. With all the travel, I've realized that as far as hospitables go, our planet is a freezing ball of salt, but it's a stable freezing ball of salt; reliable; a place to return to.

By the time you get this message, I'll be on my way, sleeping. I look forward to coming home, and I think I'll stay for awhile. Make sure the tools are clear when I get back eh? I imagine that the wiring will need a hand.

See you in six years.

(our years - don't worry)
Your crechemate,

Kazt