Fierce as the Baltic sea
It is my birthday. I am forty-four years old, the age some fictional character must be. I woke to a pair of packages, one from
nineweaving that proved to be Vaughn Scribner's Merpeople: A Human History (2020) and from my parents which was a DVD of The Sea Wolf (1941). Hestia was a small black round of purr like an extra present at the foot of the bed. It is bright and brisk and cloudless as all the classical autumns outside.

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