Haircut today. Then judo. Both went well.

Now I’m going to do some writing. Here’s a sample from my current project, Salyx:

There was an upright piano, a slab of black lacquered wood and polished brass, stationed in the center of a navy-blue disc of rug woven with a fine filigree of white lines. The piano had the look of a factory job, a templated, nano-shit reproduction, but it was the rug that drew Igraine’s eye. She stood for a long moment, squinting at the patterns, till with a start she realized what was so familiar about them: they were control-system hierarchy maps copied from one of the manuals for the Terns, their lines distorted by the fact that they were wound around themselves in a spiral that converged on the rug’s center, hidden beneath the edges of the piano. She smiled and took a sip of the green-apple wine that William had scared up for her.
Kane, speaking from just over her left shoulder, said, “You noticed.”

She laughed. “You surprised me,” she said.

Kane stepped from behind her. “My wife wove it,” he said. “She had a big loom, and I had about a dozen of the old books…”

Something in his voice when he spoke of his wife told Igraine that she was dead now, Kane a widower, and she lowered her eyes for a second. “Musuf would’ve liked it,” she said.

“Musuf?”

“He was my husband,” she said.

“Ah,” said Kane, “I think I remember him. Tall man, smiled a lot?”

“That’s the one,” said Igraine, her voice absent, her thoughts lost in the whorls of the rug. Musuf had been a control expert. This was his kind of thing.

Someone sat down at the piano and began to play “Rags to Riches”. Igraine finished off her wine and said, “I need a refill, if we’re going to talk about the past.”