iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 02/10/2026

#FridayFling "world" — a bonus, just because the author was maybe working through something in this part idk

"No," Mado said. "It doesn't matter what the rest of the world is like, because we don't have anywhere to go. If we run, they'll find us—whether it's [spoiler] or [spoiler]. So here we are. It's a wreck, but it's our wreck. Your mother lives here, and I know you don't want to live the rest of your life without seeing her. Vara, Xirri, all your friends—I can't take you away from them, not again. You deserve to live here. This is your home."

"Only if it's yours, too," he said,

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 02/10/2026

#FridayFling I have a lot of instances of "world" in this draft

When she leaned her head against his shoulder, he froze, honored and terrified, like the world's most ornery house cat had deigned to curl up in his lap. No matter how soft, this was a creature with claws and opinions. The last thing he wanted was to disturb her.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 26/09/2026

she was about three when we first adopted her. we took our first picture of her using a digital camera, as it was 2009 and no one in my household owned a smartphone

a black cat lying on a flat-woven red kilim rug. she looks so young and energetic

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 25/09/2026

#FridayFling "grounds" I did actually have a few "grounds" (ending in s), but none of those passages were any fun, whereas "ground" (singular) gave me far too much choice. Lotta people getting knocked down in this manuscript

“It’s been interesting, watching you suffer,” Arde said. “I thought I would like it better than I do; certainly I’ve wished you plenty of ill. But confronted with the sight of you vomiting or crying or trapped on the ground, I feel sympathy for you, even when I know you brought it on yourself.”
“You’re a good person, Arde.”
“I know. It’s exhausting.”

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 23/09/2026

and then immediately after that, we come to the book's thesis, which I have not stopped thinking about since reading it: "[The military histories] never told what happened to people's babies. No—they were all babies, out there."

She preferred her military history with more temporal displacement. A century or two in the past, say. She imagined some cool future scholar looking through a time-telescope at her, and gave him a mental rude gesture. Anyway, she now realized, the military histories she'd read had left out the most important part; they never told what happened to people's babies.

No—they were all babies, out there.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 23/09/2026

Cordelia encounters Sgt Bothari, who is running "to kill thought," and then she catches up on the war via "newsvids," and we get a pretty spot-on description of doomscrolling Lois McMaster Bujold, BARRAYAR (1991)

he said, and resumed his running.
Compulsively, too long, far past the optimum eftect-for-time-spent trade-oft. He sweated to fill time and kill thought, and Cordelia silently wished him luck.
She caught up on the details of the war from Aral and Kou and the controlled newsvids. What counts were allied, who was known to be held hostage and where, what units were deployed on each side and which were ripped apart and scattered to both; where fighting had taken place, what damages, which commanders had renewed oath... knowledge without power. No more, she judged, than her intellectualized version of Bothari's endless running; and even less useful for distracting her mind from unbroken concentration on all the horrors and disasters, past or impending, that she could presently do nothing about.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 22/09/2026

Happy #BiVisibilityDay ! All my current and forthcoming books have at least one bisexual main character and so will all the books I haven't written yet. (I don't know what genre those will be or anything else about them, but I know they're all gonna have bisexuals.) 🩷💜💙 www.feliciadavin.com/books/

Happy Bi Visibility Day! A grid of ten book covers: Thornfruit, Nightvine, Shadebloom, Edge of Nowhere, Out of Nowhere, Nowhere Else, Errant, The Scandalous Letters of V and J, The Mischievous Letters of the Marquise de Q, The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 18/09/2026

#FridayFling "fear" from a draft that I might finish today, maybe 😬🤞

During their time in Corche and through years of intermittent encounters at headquarters, she’d never seen him in anything but a suit. The sight of him kneeling on her floor in jeans and threadbare white cotton—barefoot, pushing a rag through the spilled water—made her feel like her delirium had come back. A little tuft of dark chest hair was visible at the V of his neckline. Her poor, defeated body couldn’t drum up anything like lust, but he looked so beautiful and alive and healthy. Her envy was so strong it was a physical pull. Only her fear was stronger.

“You should leave,” she said again. “I’m still contagious.”

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 16/09/2026

I'm sorry, the A side of this single is the singer trying to convince his friend to buy a fridge?? incredible, I must hear it

screenshot from Wikipedia: O frigideiro (Il frigorifero) racconta la storia di un tale che cerca in tutti i modi di convincere un suo amico a comprare un frigorifero prima che arrivi l'inverno per invitare gli amici, elencando tutti i vantaggi che comporta il possedere un frigorifero.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 15/09/2026

it's #SapphicSeptember so I should tell you all about Errant, a series of fantasy novellas about a stoic swordswoman and a cheerful pickpocket actress causing each other a lot of trouble. Co-authored with @ghostalservice.bsky.social & KR Collins books2read.com/errant1 feliciadavin.itch.io/errant1

an illustrated book cover depicting two women facing each other, one tall, white, and slender with short brown hair and the other shorter, curvier, with brown skin and long brown hair. the taller woman is touching the shorter woman's face while the shorter woman is picking the taller woman's pocket. the title is "Errant," written in gold text surrounded by an elaborate gold frame, and the author is L. K. Fleet

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 11/09/2026

I've already shared this passage in a previous #FridayFling ("vehicle") but I don't think I'm gonna do better than this for "flower"

Tenev said, “But if I have to lie in a cold ditch at two in the morning to execute an ambush, there’s no one I’d rather do it with than you.”

“Romantic,” Mado said as she maneuvered the truck back onto the road. “I see how you acquired such a reputation as a suave ladies’ man.”

“It was the most sincere compliment of my life, but if that’s how you’re going to be, fine, I’ll buy you flowers about it.”

“Which flower symbolizes ‘I admire the way you shoot to kill’? I hope it’s peonies.”

“I don’t. Where the fuck am I going to find peonies at this time of year?”

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 08/09/2026

want to keep in touch with me somewhere that's not social media? I write two newsletters! feliciadavin.com

FeliciaDavin.com

author announcements: new books, sales, sneak peeks — maybe once a month

Word Suitcase: book reviews (mostly romance) and notes on interesting words — every other Sunday

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 04/09/2026

#FridayFling "strange" Instead of an excerpt from my WIP, here's an excerpt from The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier, in which Isabelle is NOT having a good time. No, really. She hates this. It's very important you know that she hates this.

The wood brushed my back. I shrank from it. The door forced me into deeper, fuller, much worse contact with the stranger in our soundless scramble to make space. We generated an unfortunate friction. One of their thighs, disagreeably thick, parted my own.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 01/09/2026

Some of these signed copies of my books are still available at Lovestruck Books in Cambridge, MA. They also ship within the US if you want one! lovestruckbooks.com

paperback copies of THE SCANDALOUS LETTERS OF V AND J, THE ANONYMOUS LETTERS OF C FORESTIER, and THE MISCHIEVOUS LETTERS OF THE MARQUISE DE Q on a table

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 29/08/2026

Tons of ebooks on sale this weekend at indiebook.sale, including my novel THE SCANDALOUS LETTERS OF V AND J, which is a romance about 2 horny youths writing letters & getting in trouble in magic 1820s Paris. One can shapeshift! The New York Times called it "luminous" & Reactor called it "wicked fun"

Indie Book Sale: Fantasy, Sci Fi & Horror, 29-31 August, with a montage of book covers

A book cover that says THE SCANDALOUS LETTERS OF V AND J, with an oil painting of a white hand holding a quill and writing a letter, and the title text on ripped pieces of paper scattered over the painting.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 29/08/2026

sometimes I pass by the mirror and am like, you know, she’s pretty cute

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 28/08/2026

#FridayFling "disaster" I seem to have a personal preference for "catastrophe," at least in this draft, but my search did find one "disaster."

“Iosi. Be serious.” Tenev put both hands between them to push Iosi upright and out of kissing distance—though not entirely off his body. “This is a disaster. This cannot happen. It’s against the Sages and almost certainly wildly dangerous, we have no idea what we’re doing, we’re both in love with Mado and we’re going behind her back again, oh, and also, we’re supposed to be working out some way to outsmart the Office before they kill us.”

“See, you think I’m the problem,” Iosi said, leaning down until their noses touched. He dragged the tip of his nose along Tenev’s stubbled cheek, lowered his lips to Tenev’s ear, and let their cheeks brush as he smiled. “I think I’m the solution.”

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 14/08/2026

#FridayFling "bake" sometimes you run into the guy who's probably fucking your estranged wife, and you're both undercover and he's making bread, and you feel Totally Normal about it. you know how it goes

Iosi’s motions were hypnotic. He’d turned some of the dough out onto the counter and was massaging it, stretching and folding its soft form. The dough was pale yellow against the warmer, more golden shade of his large and capable hands. He began to roll it into long, smooth ropes. These, he pulled and smoothed and then twisted together, shaping intricate, round loaves. They were gently placed on a metal tray and then covered with a white cloth.

Tenev’s face was warm. It must be the heat of the oven.

A little sweat misted Iosi’s temples. He’d been working without pause for a dozen loaves now. He finished, swiped the back of his hand across his forehead, and left a trail of flour behind, white against his flushed skin. When he realized what he’d done, he scrunched his nose.

Tenev dropped the potato he was holding and the peeler bit into his thumb.

“Fuck!”

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 07/08/2026

#FridayFling "rotate," which I did not have but here's some premeditation. baby's first assassination

The conversation had spun Mado in so many dizzying circles. She was cold and tired and sick with emotion. It took her the whole hike back to her bed before she understood that there were some words that could not be spoken, even alone in the woods in the dead of night.

Neloda was never going to say kill him.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 31/07/2026

#FridayFling "bargain" NARRATOR IN VOICEOVER: She was.

Soon enough they’d discover that she’d lied to them about her bargain with Neloda, and then she wouldn’t be around, anyway, so it was good they had each other for comfort. She wasn’t jealous at all.

#FridayFling "bargain" Felicia Davin

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 24/07/2026

I just flipped through my copy of the Beaumarchais play and the book basically fell open to a relevant scene, lol

CHÉRUBIN sees the Count enter and throws himself behind a chair with fright. I am lost!
SUZANNE. What fright?...

Scene 8.
SUZANNE, THE COUNT, CHÉRUBIN, hidden.
SUZANNE notices the Count. Ah!...
She goes closer to the chair to hide Chérubin.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 24/07/2026

#FridayFling oh I do very much have the word "wardrobe" if you are wondering if something horny just happened or is about to happen in this scene: yes

From the other side of the door, Mado asked, “You need a hand, sweetheart?”

All the blood drained from Tenev’s face. He shook his head warningly.

With theatrical flair, Iosi considered the closed door, then Tenev, then the half-empty wardrobe, and then the space under his bed.

When Tenev realized he was being measured, he redoubled his head-shaking efforts, but it was too late.

“Yeah,” Iosi called to Mado, giving Tenev a nasty smile. “Yes, please, I mean. Come in.”

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 17/07/2026

#FridayFling "temple" I actually have "temple" as in "religious institution" a LOT in this draft, but of course all the most fun moments are temple-as-in-body-part.

“I told you that in confidence,” Mado said to Iosi, petulant but not angry. What he was doing to her hair felt too nice for her to muster anything close to anger.
“I don’t know if you know this, but I actually collect secrets as my job. It’s called espionage.” Iosi dropped a kiss on her temple.

#FridayFling "temple" Felicia Davin

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 15/07/2026

our first one of the season just bloomed this week. this variety is called Crazy Legs

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 14/07/2026

I heard it's Nonbinary Awareness Day! So I am making you all Aware that these are my romance/fantasy novels with at least one main character who's some flavor of nonbinary they're available on itch (and many other places) itch.io/c/7803881/no...

a graphic with the nonbinary pride flag and 5 book covers: Nightvine, Shadebloom, The Scandalous Letters of V and J, The Mischievous Letters of the Marquise de Q, The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 13/07/2026

also, Grace Hartwell was signing books at the event, so her book was a handy reference and we did a second photo shoot (I don't think @lizaldenwriter.bsky.social is really on bsky, but she was a very good sport about taking silly pictures with me)

romance authors Felicia Davin and Liz Alden, in Regency-ish costume, embracing in imitation of a clinch cover. we're in front of a fake garden backdrop

the cover of Grace Hartwell's All That I Am, with a couple embracing

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 10/07/2026

thank you! they keep doing this bit for perhaps longer than is necessary, but I was having too good of a time to stop this is when they come back to it a moment later:

“Oh, I’m buying you flowers now?”
“I don’t see why not. I was only pretending to be a suave ladies’ man to cover up my homosexual tendencies. I’ve been buying women flowers for years and no one has ever bought me any. It’s about time that changed.”
“Iosi will be jealous. I’ll have to get him his own.”
“I love Iosi,” Tenev declared with easy pleasure. “But I’d never bring him with me for this. He’d complain about the damp and the hard ground and missing his bed. And he’s a mediocre shot.”
“One of his best qualities,” Mado said. “Though he acquitted himself remarkably well when we were attacked. He saved my life. And to be fair, I miss his bed, too. But don’t worry, I’ll buy him different flowers. Ones that mean ‘I love how averse to violence you are,’ instead of the opposite. What kind of flower says ‘I would kill a lot of people so you never have to’?”
“From you?” Tenev asked, amused. “All of them.”

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 10/07/2026

#FridayFling "vehicle" there she goes, putting too much text in the image again

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 04/07/2026

important to revisit the words of the Founding Fathers on this day

wint @dril

"This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender," i holler as i overturn my uncle's barbeque grill and turn the 4th of July into the 4th of Shit
12:24 AM - 16 Jun 2012

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 26/06/2026

#FridayFling "jaw" in fairness to this poor suffering man, my first question about any feeling is also "how do I make it go away"

"I see that now, but I still—" Tenev broke off. His jaw clenched of its own accord.

"Yeah, that's called having a feeling."

"Fuck off." And then, abashed, Tenev said, "How do I make it go away?"

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 24/06/2026

don’t worry, most of my annotations are the opposite of learnèd. I am keeping things balanced

annotation: hmmm (honestly it's been so long since I wrote this book that I sorta
forgot where this is going, lol)

annotation: tbh I don’t remember what this is about

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 24/06/2026

when people read a horny book, what they really want to see is a handwritten MLA citation in the margins, I just know it

handwritten MLA citation that says
Toelken, Barre. "The Yellowman Tapes: 1966-1997." The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 11, no. 442, 1998, pp. 381-91. JSTOR, htps://doi.org/10.2307/541044
always thinking about this article

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 19/06/2026

#FridayFling lotta instances of CONFUSE in my draft lol

She’d probably have questions, like what the fuck and how can you know that and why would Tenev fake his death, and Iosi mostly wouldn’t have answers. But she was smarter than him, and maybe together they could figure it out, and then he wouldn’t be confused and alone with this terrible secret.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 12/06/2026

#FridayFling "ring" oh this man is SAD. sad and wet. a pitiful creature

"You probably know a lot about love, since you’re married.” She pointed helpfully at the ring on his finger.

It wasn’t like Tarras to make cruel jokes. Her sincerity baffled him. Had no one at Se Iyek told her about his marital troubles? Hadn’t she been here long enough to hear him blab about it?

He shook his head and it nearly cost him his balance. “No, I don’t. I don’t know anything.”

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 11/06/2026

9 this (from Nightvine, lol)

Ev started to stand, but Alizhan said, "Wait."

"Ooh, the little one's in charge," said the prisoner. "I was picturing it all wrong."

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 09/06/2026

appreciated this (from www.theringer.com/2026/05/28/t...)

Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 06/06/2026

Happy Pride! This weekend you can download Errant, Volume One—two fantasy novellas about a stoic swordswoman and a cheerful pickpocket actress causing each other a lot of trouble—for free! books2read.com/errant1 feliciadavin.itch.io/errant1 co-authored with @ghostalservice.bsky.social & KR Collins

an ereader with the cover of Errant Volume One (an illustration of two women embracing). the background image is a larger version of the cover illustration

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 05/06/2026

for the curious, I'm trying to translate this little bit of verse, found in a dictionary entry in Frédéric Mistral's Tresor dóu Felibrige, and I think I get everything except the first word

Testilis touto à flo dins lou mourtié n’embrigo
Juvert, mentastre, aiet, rouqueto e pebre-d’ai.
J.-F. Roux

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 05/06/2026

#FridayFling "concern" wow I use this word a lot anyway, don't worry about it, Iosi, I'm sure it's a normal dream you're having, in the privacy of your own head and all

They were both surprisingly clothed for a sex dream, though. And it was a weird setting—and weird to have a setting at all. Normally Iosi’s horny dreams started right in with the kissing and touching. His brain wasn’t too concerned about the how or the why.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 04/06/2026

Happy Pride! I have books on sale! For $10, you can pick up all of French Letters—yes, the title IS a joke—a trio of queer romances (x/x, m/f/x, f/x) set in magic 1820s France and told in letters and diary entries. Gender, magic, murder, letters: feliciadavin.itch.io/letterspride...

three book covers, each showing an oil painting detail of a hand holding a quill or a book: The Scandalous Letters of V and J, The Mischievous Letters of the Marquise de Q, The Anonymous Letters of C Forestier

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 04/06/2026

Happy Pride! I have books on sale! For $7, you can pick up my queer fantasy trilogy The Gardener's Hand, in which a tiny angry mindreader enlists a sensible farm girl and a slutty poet to help her stop a magical conspiracy: feliciadavin.itch.io/gardenerprid... (or each book is half price)

three book covers, each with botanical illustrations: Thornfruit, Nightvine, Shadebloom

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 29/05/2026

#FridayFling I don't have "mine" in any of the usual romance contexts so please enjoy this un-romantic exchange

“You could’ve moved faster and kept all this food to yourself if you’d left me in Adinac.”

“They’d have interrogated you, you’d have revealed some tiny habit of mine that would’ve ended my life, and then they’d have dumped us both in an anonymous grave,” she said. “We’re not in a grave yet, and you might still have your uses.”

Iosi might, indeed, have an extraordinary use he’d failed to mention.

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Felicia Davin @feliciadavin.com · 23/05/2026

histrom writers we gotta step up our feast game

the other ingredients were often sent from a country
estate to a noble family’s home in London, particularly
at Christmas. In 1763, while he overwintered in town,
James Lowther was sent a huge pie baked in the
kitchen of his Westmorland mansion. It was stuﬀed
with preserved game and wild birds – including 20
rabbits, two geese, 12 partridges and 46
yellowhammers – and weighed 22 stone. Probably
made for a masquerade or ball supper, this indecent
edible monument to Georgian gluttony made its way
over 280 miles to Lowther’s city dining room on a cart
drawn by two horses.

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