The Mercury Annual

"And, as always, the wake of the sun caused temporal havoc.

A Razalian hour passed normally enough, then shrank to ten minutes, then sneezed out a good half-day, then stabilised at an hour and a bit.

Bobbing on the top of planetary time like corks in a bucket, the three moons spread out and were still - this time like kids glued to a screen.

For, as the sunlight disappeared and the minutes passed more confidently, Razalia shook off its desolation.

Across its face, a million torches shone under the amethyst skies: Razalian faces, each its own sun." Small, unfinished, more like a blueprint for a world than the real thing, Razalia props up one end of the Arc of the Fifteen Planets.

In some places, its landscape looks like the efforts of a water-colourist suddenly called away from his easel.

The Razalians live with the gaps - those spaces of unfathomable white - in many of their ridges, valleys, forests. And then the white begins to move..."