White desk with pink notebook, roses, keyboard, and gold paperclips that Francesca Varela uses to copy edit for romance, science fiction, and fantasy authors

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  • Two Moments

    1–2 minutes

    You’re at the park near your house, walking your dog, and you stop for a moment to look up, to feel the pulse of the firs as they flicker orange in the light. Playing behind them, in tandem, almost as if a filter screen has been transposed over it, you see just as clearly a

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  • The Fallen Fir

    1–2 minutes

    It’s the kind of fog that you can feel as you walk through it, all the droplets hanging static, not enough of them to wet your hair, but enough of them that they pelt your face like grains of sand, each waterdrop present and tangible, as though the air itself is made from mist, and

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  • First View of the River

    1–2 minutes

    If you walk up the hill, ducking beneath the hazelnut tree, its branches looped and willow-like, and you continue past the elderberry bush, the one with the bead-like berries that only the birds eat, you’ll find the part of the forest where the dirt is bare, where the ivy doesn’t grow, and you’ll continue on,

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  • Queen’s Cup

    1–2 minutes

    See the mats of clematis running across the trees like mangled telephone wires; notice the dry dirt beneath the ivy, how gray it looks, how it is sickly compared to the rich, dark mountain soil that is gossamered with those little flecks from the edges of fir cones, and peppered with roots of things, pipsissewa

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Francesca Varela specializes in copy editing for romance, science fiction, and fantasy authors