I always try my best to maintain Christmas Posture, to run along the authorized channels, but Christmas is dark time literally and also figuratively. It’s dark. I looked out my window last night into the kind of darkness that would make a man invent God.

That grim darkness, like the darkness of a far future that contains only war, is always flapping around in the ceiling corners like a trapped bat. Better out than in. One bright spot is the opportunity to work with members of Acquisitions Incorporated: The “C” Team now that we’re on Hiatus to make little vignettes like the one you see directly below these words. For additional context: Audra was my grandmother’s name.

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Propha Dran was asleep, in her usual fashion: seated upright, against the headboard. One of her legs was out from beneath the covers, her foot on the ground. Her boots were nearby, as was her equipment; her maul Confessor had worn a little groove into the floor. Audra smiled.

Propha even slept like she was going to war.

Audra was no less prepared, but you’d have to look close to see it - and you’d have to know where to look. Her gait was a branch of mathematics, a coherent philosophy of physical and social space. Her War Lute, even with its sleeping blades and hidden places, was the most literal manifestation of her trade. And like that trade, it held manifold secrets within it, folded into one another.

The name Audra Courtier had an aspirational quality, and like the rest of her tools it was sleek. It worked best when it worked without notice; upon her very introduction, it told them everything she wanted them to know about her, which was very little; it merely had to suggest that she was supposed to be wherever she happened to be at the time.

It was the name she had now, and it fit her like a fine cap. She hoped it would be her last one.

(Today’s Art is by Amy T. Falcone, who we also call “Walnut Dankgrass” and “Amy The Falcon.” She thought you might like a poster version too!)

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By the Hammer of Grabthar, our Human Polos are 20% off this week! Also this week, a poster may be affixed to any order, in the manner of a jolly caboose, for a single dollar.

(CW)TB out.