12/16/21 Snippet, THE STARS ARE WRONG.

Profane geometry!

I expected hard looks or even stealthy blows from the Razor District. Was I not a Guardian, rushing in where twelve of my fellows had fallen? But no hand was raised against me as I plunged into its terrifying streets. I did not even feel the weight of hostile eyes upon me as I headed towards where I guessed the bell-clangour had come.

But even if I was not impeded, I was not welcome, either. The Razor District has no love for the rest of the world, and it particularly disdains those of us who keep the world as it should be. Here the modern world was permitted to intrude only grudgingly, and with strict fetters on what it might do. There were places where the streets themselves had been broken down and remade, to ape the ancient roadways. The buildings themselves seemed deformed, all edges and lines, with too-large windows that seemed to try to drink up all the gloom.

And the plants! The Kee had planted strange shrubs and small trees from their valleys and mountains; their scents mingled badly with the smell of the ocean. Even their grass — what the Kee used it for was a mystery — was not proper grass. It grew everywhere it could, even in the cracks in the stones themselves. It was believed in the city that once Kee-grass had taken root in your neighborhood, the Kee would soon follow, despite all anyone could do to wash it away.  I had heard that some rich, jaded fools even kept tame fields of it, solely to deliciously scandalize their neighbors. I doubted they had ever seen Kee-grass in its wild, disciplined state.