Some people will just never see what you are getting at, especially if you use the ultraviolet spectrum.

I have a new book! So for the next few webcomic episodes, I am going to be co-posting with Francesca Frati, the illustrator who worked with me on it. The book is called Pet Poems, and you can find it right here on Secret Vespers:
http://secretvespers.com/petpoems/

Some of the text in these upcoming episodes will be quoted from the book, but with original images not found in Pet Poems. Also related to Pet Poems, there is a new short story on the site, The Rat, which I hope you will like.

Have you ever responded to threats or danger with stillness? Or been afraid you might?

The last of four close-ups on a larger picture. The first is found here.

The third of four close-ups on a larger picture. The first is found here.

The second of four close-ups on a larger picture. The first is found here.

The first of four close-ups on a larger picture. They’ll appear at five day intervals.

What do you do to add the unexpected back into your life?

Rain could be a lot more colourful. Maybe if our eyes were a bit different, it would be. That could be wonderful or distracting. Would you like to be wonderfully distracted?

Halloween was delivered to us, a relic in a box of ash. We burned the witches to fill it.

There is smoke on the wind. It may be chimneys, it may be sacrificial pyres, it may be the forest burning. There is a smell we call fresh but comes from the decay of leaves. There is a smell like mercury, like amnesia, the wind has blown over a lake that is cursed and it has brought a mist into our nostrils. I am happy to forget everything I can.

The world is bereft of understanding or of expectations that are sane. There is a rainbow around the moon. There are songs that summon ghosts, and songs that send them away. Your flute is made of bone. Your perfume has the bottom tone of rot and the top of apricots and sage. It does not matter what happens in an hour that does not exist. It matters more than anything what happens in an hour that does not exist.

I want us to take laurel and peyote, to touch and see each other just enough to share the hallucination. I want us to look back at the world from the other side and to kiss like it is a ceremony the spirits invented in order to feel mortal.

And if the night is over and my memory has not come back, that hour is all I want to keep.

When you are at a loss for words, where do you go? If you could have a hero mechanical animal, who would it be, and do you like your technology sleek or clunky?