01/19/2023 Snippet, GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND.

Temples! What could possibly go wrong?

“You may, of course, say no,” Oft told me a half hour later. In person, because you don’t have these conversations using communications devices that make you throw up if you don’t like the subtext. We were in Dave’s office, instead. We even had coffee. Coffee! I hadn’t bought any before I voluntarily put myself under durance vile, and I had run out two days ago. I could get caffeine added to the survival goop that my apartment produced, but it just wasn’t the same thing.

“I’m not saying no, Oft,” I replied, after another heavenly (ha!) sip. “I just want to know if this has anything to do with any of,” — I waved with my free hand, helplessly — “the stuff we’re dealing with, right now.”

“Honestly? If it was up to me, I would have said ‘No.’ That’s why I didn’t ask to be brought to Yánarta. Sorry, that means ‘Fane of the Exalted,’ in English. We still don’t know what the original worshipers there might have called it.”

I carefully didn’t ask why they were calling it ‘Yánarta,’ then. Iluvitarians are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, but they get real weird about the origins of their religion.