07/08/2025 Snippet, BRAVING THE MALSTORM.

Need to do more show, not tell.

…

They woke me up at a horribly cold hour, but I didn’t fuss about it. I’m used to working with humans. If you can’t get your head around the idea that they can function at temperatures that would make you want to curl up into a ball, you probably shouldn’t work with them too closely.

I also had the advantage that my God thinks that hot drinks are perfectly fine. I was practically wrapped around the coffee jug on the trip to the train station. Which was the other reason why I wasn’t fussing. The chance to take a real, honest-to-Hershey steam-powered train was an excellent reason to go out into the cold.

On the other hand… “This isn’t exactly inconspicuous, is it?” I asked Ezekiel as our coach trundled up to the station. “The trains aren’t running that often, even now. People will pay attention to the passengers.”

“Let them,” he told me. “The colonel and I make this trip regularly. Professor Thackeray is officially at the conference, just like you are. Alas, she came down with a bad case of food poisoning after last night’s banquet, and will end up missing the whole thing.”

Thackeray (Melissa, by now) looked up from her book, and smiled. Her glamour was military-level; her newly red hair and paler skin looked perfectly normal. Even her scent signature was subtly different. “Every woman has her weakness. Mine is Ensenada abalone. It is such a shame they don’t always travel north well.”