Forgot to say I took a little time off to re-read Bradbury's The Silver Locusts, the book on which The Martian Chronicles was based.
It made me cry.
I'd forgotten it did that to me. It's one of those seminal and adored books that stay with you forever, written before Ken and I were born and hence the technology horribly dated, but wholly eclipsed by the sheer poetry and tragedy of the story.
I've handed it to Kai to read, if he feels like it, to see what effect it has on him - though I've had to explain that it was written during the Cold War (which he's touched on in history), influenced by McCarthyism, and at a time when the vile racial injustices of the American south were still suppurating (though from what I read they still are...) It'll be fascinating to hear what he thinks of it.
On the subject of crying... A hiss of air had me looking upwards from the garden a day or so ago, to see a balloon drifting serenely overhead - and I heard the ghost of Quyn's barking as he used to challenge these things that dared to pass over his territory. Then I remembered I'd never hear him guard us again.
I miss him.