Premature Rejoicing
What’s that over there?
Thiepval Wood.
Take a steady look at it; it’ll do you good.
Here, these glasses will help you. See any flowers?
There sleeps Titania (correct–the Wood is ours);
There sleeps Titania in a deep dugout,
Waking, she wonders what all the din’s about,
And smiles through her tears, and looks ahead ten years,
And sees the Wood again, and her usual Grenadiers,
All in green,
Music in the moon;
The burnt rubbish you’ve just seen
Won’t beat the Fairy Queen;
All the same, it’s a shade too soon
For you to scribble rhymes
In your army book
About those times;
Take another look;
That’s where the difficulty is, over there.
–Edmund Blunden
About Victoria Janssen
Victoria Janssen [she, her] currently writes cozy space opera for
Kalikoi. The novella series A Place of Refuge begins with
Finding Refuge:
Telepathic warrior Talia Avi, genius engineer Miki Boudreaux, and augmented soldier Faigin Balfour fought the fascist Federated Colonies for ten years, following the charismatic dissenter Jon Churchill. Then Jon disappeared, Talia was thought dead, and Miki and Faigin struggled to take Jon’s place and stay alive. When the FC is unexpectedly upended, Talia is reunited with her friends and they are given sanctuary on the enigmatic planet Refuge. The trio of former guerillas strive to recover from lifetimes of trauma, build new lives on a planet with endless horizons, and forge tender new connections with each other.
