Let me start by telling you a story. No, not the one about the glass-crafting. A different story, sort of. Two stories, actually, both about love. 

Long ago, there was a craftswoman and she fell in love with a savant. You wouldn't think they'd have much in common, one so much in the act of making things to change the physical world, the other constantly buried in a book and thinking of high-minded ideas with her head soaring in the clouds. But they did fall in love. Maybe they're still in love. Some things happened though and one of them retreated to hide while the other one broke herself all up into pieces and forgot all about what she used to be. I think there's more to their story still to tell, but right now it's shattered and scattered about. I think that one of those pieces is here with us in Town, myself. Maybe several of them.

At the same time, and also much more recently, the Sun fell in love with the Bleak. The Headmistress of the Bleak Academy, most specifically. She hailed, some say, from a far and sunless land. The Sun, whose name was Jade, knew that falling in love with someone from a sunless land was a terrifically bad idea and that probably it wouldn't be good for either of them. She did it anyway though because sometimes love is like that, and sometimes the sun is like that, and sometimes people are like that. It turned out though that one day the Headmistress rode up on a flying chariot of darkest night and she fired an arrow into the Sun's heart and the Sun died. This was very troublesome for a short while because not having a sun makes it hard to do a lot of things, like take walks in the sunshine, grow flowers, or do roof repairs. The Sun had a daughter though, and some things happened, we're not really sure what, but some things, and now there's a new Sun. Her name is Jasper. Mostly this is working out pretty well, but there's a lot of questions about how this story ends and some people might feel pretty bad about Jade getting shot by her lover. 

*****
Those are far away things though. Maybe the kind of things that someone might mull just after lunch on a warm day weekend in late spring. The kind of day where it's too warm with the sun overhead for the birds to sing and too still for the clouds to be in any rush to go anywhere. Where everything is quiet save a bit of rustling grass and a distant cricket and you might be forgiven for thinking that time has decided to take its own siesta for a little while and let this go on forever. It's that sort of day. 

So, some questions to our fine residents of Fortitude. 
Jasper: What are you up to on such a fine afternoon? Who are you with?
Rinley: Why can't you just lie down and take a nap right now?
Dulcinea: How are you keeping cool in this weather? 
Miramie: Are you relaxing or do you have an errand to run?