“They seem more like toys than jewels, but I have to admit, they’re striking.” “Oh, yes, a typical tech toy. High-end this year, everywhere next year… - Lois McMaster Bujold

Parallels, spirals, and reflections are some of my favorite literary patterns.

Over and over in his career, Pen had confronted the insight that the gods did not care for humans' material concerns, much to the humans' dismay. Only with what record of them was carved into their souls by their unique and individual lives, presented as the final offering upon the alter of their deaths. All deaths, in whatever form. One by one, each attended to with the same singular consideration. Each valuated with the discernment of a connoisseur adding to his collection. Each placed in the niche found most fitting to it. Denied by self-will sometimes, by the gods' will at others, but never lost by carelessness.

The building had a strange hermetically-sealed flavor to it, redolent to Miles’s experienced nose as paranoid security in action. Ah, yes, a planet’s embassy is that planet’s soil. Feels just like home.