The Mercury Annual

And as always the wake of the sun caused temporal havoc. A Razalian hour passed normally enough then shrank to ten minutes then sneezed out a good half-day then stabilised at an hour and a bit. Bobbing on the top of planetary time like corks in a bucket the three moons spread out and were still - this time like kids glued to a screen. For as the sunlight disappeared and the minutes passed more confidently Razalia shook off its desolation. Across its face a million torches shone under the amethyst skies: Razalian faces each its own sun. Small unfinished more like a blueprint for a world than the real thing Razalia props up one end of the Arc of the Fifteen Planets. In some places its landscape looks like the efforts of a water-colourist suddenly called away from his easel. The Razalians live with the gaps - those spaces of unfathomable white - in many of their ridges valleys forests. And then the white begins to move...