She pulled them out and shook off the water, scarcely noticing how chapped and red they’d become. The chips she ordered each night from the icehouse were already melted, and it wouldn’t be long, on a night now close to dawn, before the water would be too warm to shock her back into wakefulness.Two days to finish her paper on fire. The row of candles on her worktable were by now flickering stubs, and she replaced them all before sitting down again. She held her hand above a flame and felt it warm her palm. Interesting how heat traveled so much more slowly than light, and how it diffused in all directions, whereas light always moved in a straight line. How light didn’t always feel hot, though every source of illumination was.The calculations on her sheets of foolscap were so long that they strung out over several lines, and having no time to rewrite them, she turned the paper to continue along the margins. She dipped her quill and cursed under her breath when the ink dripped onto the page.
![Die Geigenspielerin[Ein Vivaldi Roman] (2009) by Laurel Corona](/i/cover.jpg)