A to Z 2026 - B - Contessina’s Collection of Human Treasures”

Shelby watched as the cat leapt into Contessina’s lap.

“Michelangelo,” the Puck said, “Hello!

“Books, my darling! I love all their books. I love that they embraced, over night, everything they could find from all the cultures they were suddenly exposed to, without any hesitation, instant translations of Darkness Falls on a Dark Land, even Shuri’s Deadliest of the Species, my favorite of the great Arkosian epics.

“But their own works! There are so many nations, here, and they all boast, or so it seems, their own proud traditions! They joke about it, how some of them seem so insistent on being depressing, or some of them, even when otherwise based on reality incorporate elements of what they call magical realism, which I confess I’m still trying to understand…They had a period where all the best literature was some kind of depressing romance. They publish the words of their plays as if they’re equally enjoyable with one reader filling all the voices in their own head (but I’ll certainly have more to say about that later)…

“And of course there were writers who immediately seized on humanity’s new intergalactic status for their novels, not even hesitating, ignoring the instinct some had to try and continue their long isolation (to put it mildly). The Whitfield itself inspired all manner of material, with some of it I believe following the tradition of what humans call science fiction, or even the subgenre of space opera, conjuring details that they surely can’t really have absorbed yet, creating out of whole cloth, say, what a Vanadi was doing on Earth many years prior to the Calamity, totally fictitious, as far as I can tell…

“And maybe that’s part of why the Puck love humans so much, because we love reading almost as much as they do! And we love the physical form of books, too! Although far as I can tell, humans haven’t discovered the delights of edible books yet…Well, still early days, isn’t it?”