incandescens | trying not to check the time

Blasted rain made blasted bus late, blasted train was late, blasted self was blasted late into blasted work.

Not that late, true, but annoying all the same.

Sun ended up shining through most of the day, quite surprisingly, but the clouds drew in during the last part of my journey home, and I ended up walking from the bus stop to my house with a very nervous eye on the sky. Glooming was a good word to describe it. Ominous also.

The rain hit mid-evening, and I got to listen to it earlier on the window and on the leaves outside.

My fingers twitch to order the last 4 volumes of B'TX and find out how it ends, but I restrain myself -- well, at least until Archonia has other manga in that I want to get. Must save on the postage; am hardly saving on the manga.

Have started playing Sacred again on my PC a bit. It's not Diablo, but it has good moments. (Now if only I wasn't stuck at the end of a long tongue of desert full of skeletons and zombies and orcs and goblins, and no potions of healing or undead destruction left . . .)

I wonder if Brust will write more of his Paarfi-era Dumas-pastiches? I'd like him to, I'd like immensely to read them, but he may have to start again with new characters if he does, given that the previous ones seem to have come to the end of their story for the moment.

---

The Man In The Golden Mask

[...]

The landlord of the inn that housed the plot
Opened his door, and near fell on the spot
To see a shapeless cloak and pointed mask
Confronting him. "Forgive me! I'll not ask
For any names; your gold has spoken clear:
Do as you please; my staff are sent away,
Your guest is here, but nothing has he learnt;
And nothing shall disturb the Monsieur's play --
Although I beg you leave the walls unburnt --
I hope you shall be very merry here."
Aramis said, "The field ought to be clear."
He called the lackeys to him, and wrote out
Some lines upon a paper. "Look about
And find the chair that brought the Chevalier;
You must be chairmen for an hour or so.
Take up the Chevalier, and bear him post
To Abbe Scarron's house; give this the host:
It will explain the stratagem. Now go."
The cloaked man said, "Most wisely rused, Abbe."
Aramis said, "'Tis good of you to say,
But ere we start, Monsieur, just one more word --"
"I know my voice is one that you have heard,"
The masked man said. "I would have Monseigneur
Believe his secret is entirely sure
From gratefulness for his assistance, and --
Well, not all happy prospects end as planned.
There is not much that anyone can tell;
The bridgegroom was a soldier, and my friend,
He died all nobly, fighting as he fell,
The lady is his widow. There an end.
Except to say: when I this tale allow,
I say a Capuchin performed the vow."

[...]

-- John M Ford