The shallow drowned lose less than we

My short story "ζῆ καὶ βασιλεύει" has been accepted by Ideomancer. It's not my first foray into alternate history, but it is possibly my most specific—ancient, not modern—sparked by a dream I had in September. The title means s/he lives and reigns; it is the answer traditionally given to the siren Thessalonike when she rises from the sea and asks ποῦ εἴναι ὁ Μεγαλέξανδρος—Where is Alexander the Great?

For derspatchel's birthday, I took him to Coppa. We had never been before; I wanted to take him somewhere entirely new and it was a surprise until we came up the block. He has described it over on Facebook as "where good carnivores go when they die^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hthey want insanely delicious meat dishes," which I can substantiate. Coppa serves small plates for sharing. Ours were duck prosciutto, oven-baked meatballs, parsley cavatelli with prosciutto-braised snails, spaghetti alla carbonara with pancetta and sweet curds of sea urchin, and a bone marrow and beef heart pizza that was possibly the best experimental pizza I have ever eaten, displacing at last the Blue October of late lamented memory. We overreached ourselves by exactly one small plate of pasta. (Between the two, the carbonara was the better dish, all ingredients sumptuously integrated: rich without being cloying, peppery without being overspiked, with the uni providing a creamy cross-current of brine. The cavatelli themselves were wonderful—although they looked almost exactly like green beans—but their sweet, herbal, slightly cool flavor was more or less blown off the plate by the dark, savory meatiness of the snails. I can see the earthy theme their pairing was going for, but it didn't quite balance. On the other hand, tonight I had prosciutto-braised snails. I have no regrets.) We did not have nearly enough room to sample their amazing array of salumi and cheese. Rob had favorable things to say about the Nutella tiramisu and I want a recipe for olive oil cake now that I have had it with cream and fruits and we have this bottle of oil straight from Pylos sitting in our kitchen. Their cocktails are also very fine, but it's the heart-and-marrow pizza I want to go back for. I have no excuse for being anemic these next few days.

Afterward we walked home by way of the Esplanade, so that we saw the Citgo sign reflecting a blueshift column in the motionless water and the glossy seams and seals of ice spreading out from the banks and the construction on the Longfellow Bridge glare-lit from under the arches like an industrial portrait. There were barges on the half-frozen river, green and red lights steering starboard and port. Coming around the Museum of Science, a pair of mallards sculling in the lock of the old Charles River Dam, their webbed feet busily visible in the clear black water. I was badly chilled by the time we got home, although I suppose the adrenaline drove it out of my head when I discovered that, in our absence, one or more little cats had slipped the lock on my office door and scattered half of my contributor's copies across the floor. There was yelling. I am finding somewhere else for those books and magazines stat. They are personal; they are irreplaceable; I have moved them with infinite care through dormitories, apartments, and boxes, and I will not have them torn to pieces by cats who think their tops look like a nice place to knead their claws.

Hestia has been alternately sleeping, grooming, and purring in my lap for something like two hours now, though, so you can see how long anger at a cat lasts. Autolycus is sleeping in his tote-bag nest beside the radiator. They have been truly the salvation of this last year.

Today was good. To a better year. And more offal-based pizza.