Right as Rain

I did not quite make today’s quota, but I’ve been ahead for the last few days so I think it’ll be okay. I finished up Meghin and Pyotr’s conversation. Low and behold I now know what the next two chapters are going to be about. Meghin has to find out some more information that will lead them to Deep Dark and Pyotr has to join Meghin on Zajdel. I keep hacking away and the word count keeps getting higher. I don’t really have anything else to say, I guess, so here’s another bit from today’s writing. I claim all rights to my original characters and words. Do not re-post without consent.

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Pyotr stumbled up and to the door. In the hallway he gasped for breath. Strange that he should feel so restricted. This was a life he had chosen. He had things pretty good. All things considered. He walked to the picture window at the end of the hallway. Night had come. The rocky uplands stretched away in the darkness but the sands looked almost pearlescent in the thin moon light. Far away was Olympus Mons, so tall that the top of its western slope was still sunlit. With darkness all around that ruddy peak looked afire. It was the Fire of Olympus, to be sure, and he felt its mythical pull. He felt a deep longing for open landscape and the need to escape from his bonds. He placed a hand on the cold glass and stared at the Martian night. The fate of the original fire-stealer never came to his mind.

A scream startled him out of his dreams. Now he did remember the eagle with a taste for liver. Spinning, half expecting to see flapping wings filling the hallway, he saw Skorpios Temeni grinning from ear to ear. “Day’s done Nabokov! Time for to cheer!” Pyotr’s fellow scientist lifted his face to the ceiling and screamed again. “You going three doors down?” There were several bars near the lab. One in particular was frequented by those just rotating off shift. “Wash says they got a new girl at Squat’s. I hear she’s got knockers out to here!” Temeni held his hands an unlikely distance out in front of him. “So, you coming tonight?” His smile was huge and his eyes wide.

“You know I don’t go in for that, Temeni”

“Man, what’s wrong with you?” Pyotr could only shrug. “Whatever. We’ll get you one of these days!” He turned without any more pleasantries and trotted away down the hall. He let loose yet another yawp as he disappeared around the corner.
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By now I should have 16,670 words.
My current count is 18,898 words.