Memories of What Never Was Chapter 24

I've finished up Chapter 24 of Memories of What Never Was, and you can find it at the bottom of this page if you're so inclined to read it.

This chapter really kind of illustrates the changes I've made in Temari's character between this version and the previous one.  Originally I had her as sort of a comic relief character because everyone else was so serious.  But then it occurred to me that she's the only one of the core cast that isn't white, and having the only minority in the main cast also be the comic relief character seemed a little on the racist side to me, so I switched things up and made her more solemn and stoic, and switched the comic relief duties over to Brand.  Which works better anyway, because he's there for the whole book, rather than just half of it like Temari. 

In other news, they're rearranging routes at my post office because after that mail count we had last month, pretty much every route came back as being evaluated as overburdened.  So, they're cutting off the two most horrible, awful, difficult and time consuming pieces of my route, and replacing them with a piece of another route that is actually really nice, and closer to the rest of my route than the two pieces they're cutting away.  Man, that's gonna be nice.  My job is going to be so much easier once those changes go into effect.  Too bad I have to wait three whole weeks for that to happen though.  Someone needs to invent time travel so badly.