Mist off the flagstones every murkrise, corvids circling what's left of the visibility, flies at the ankles. No sun. Hasn't been one in living memory. I checked.

Eighteen months to the Dark Peak year, twenty days each, five at the end with no names and no souls — feasting days, obviously. Years run on a sixty-year wheel of weather and beast. Right now: spit-hoverwing, year 43 of the 79th cycle. Consult the calendar.

The bar is where everything happens — deals, gossip, Cribbage, and Van pulling crickerjacks off the air mid-sentence. Music you didn't ask for. Ale you did. That's your evening sorted.

Jellyheads look content. What they are is distracted — the hivemind runs off the psycmask on their face and handles everything so they never have to think about it. Most of them don't. I'm from the off-world and I still think about it more than I should.