if you’re a neurodivergent weirdo like me who has eidetic smell memory, today is more poignant because you can literally smell all the lilacs people are sharing
JOMP Book Photo Challenge || May 24 || This Did Things To Me:
“He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
The year that Tiffany Aching danced with the Wintersmith, there was a hard frost in Ankh-Morpork the night of May the 19th.
For the most part, it went unnoticed. There was no snow, and, unlike on the surrounding plains, people didn’t grow many things in the city. That was part of the problem, Sam Vimes learned as he sat through meeting after interminable meeting. Anhk-Morpork imported its food, and at the moment the crops that were supposed to be feeding the city in a few months were out freezing in their fields. He listened to Lord Vetinari and the Guild leaders and some panicked representatives from the Sto Plains talk about supply chains and international imports and which crops could still be re-sown until his ears ached.
As he marched home that night, he didn’t notice that every lilac he passed was shedding, green buds that had just been beginning to swell when the frost hit littering the ground at his feet. He didn’t notice until he woke up on the 25th of May and realized with a jolt that he hadn’t smelled a single lilac the previous day. Normally, the city was thick with the scent and he did his best to ignore it until the day when he couldn’t.
We get, rightfully imo, pretty sad and somber and naval-gazey about Discworld and Sir Terry on the 25th of May but I need everyone who might be discovering this series through this annual outpouring of love and sadness to know that these books are mostly just really fucking funny. Like, they’re heart-wrenching and poignant but really they can only pull that off because they’re also the funniest books ever written. There’s a line near the end of Hogfather that, when I read it, made me feel more deeply connected to, like, the concept of humanity then I ever have before, but the book was only able to deliver that because the rest of it is about what if Santa Claus got kidnapped and a Big Skeleton had to take over his job? It’s a patently ridiculous series but that is absolutely also where it’s power comes from.
There, still wearing his hugely oversized coat but now with the addition of a helmet much too large for him, was Nobby Nobbs. “How did you get there, Nobby?” “My mum says I’m insidious,” said Nobby, grinning. A concertina sleeve rose to the vicinity of Nobby’s head, and Vimes realized that somewhere in there was a salute. “She’s right,” said Vimes. “So, where—” “’M an acting constable now, Sarge,” said Nobby. “Mr. Colon said so. Gave me a spare helmet. ’M carvin’ meself a badge out of, of—what’s that, like, waxy, kind of like candles but you can’t eat it?” “Soap, Nobby. Remember the word.”
ALT
