They are widely misunderstood. Many people believe that “smoke maps” are impressions made by smoke on paper—that is, a kind of drawing or painting done in smoke. These are interesting to look at, no doubt, but they have no mapping properties in and of themselves. If anything, a more interesting map might be made by drawing with smoke on cloth, which is the standard medium for mapping weather. —From Sophia Tims’s Born of the Disruption: Tales Told by Travelers NOSH AND BITTERSWEET left on the afternoon of the thirteenth, setting out to find Datura. Sophia found it difficult to say good-bye. From the moment Nosh’s gentle face had appeared so close to hers in the Salt Lick train station, the moose and the boy had surrounded her with a sense of considered protectiveness. She had traveled with only two Eerie in her short life, but both of them had a kind of measured stillness that was reassuring in difficult circumstances. She felt worried, uncertain, and suddenly less safe.
