You're packing a suitecase.

Don't like that one so I'm going with the next one: The smell of air in winter.

I never got tired of seeing It from the beach. Being a city dweller I would usually just get views of the beach and inland or on the back of It I would spend hours staring out to sea from Carparque.

My father used to say "You can only truly know a place if you've spent significant time away."

Not that I didn't love the city. Its where I grew up. Its where my family was its where my friends are. But I always agreed with him and would always try and find an excuse to leave the city, if only for that one view from the foot hills about a mile from shore.

That's where I was when the first snow flake of the season started to fall. The clouds were puffy but not all encompassing like they would be later in winter. I could still see Hope blotting out one quarter of the sky, its rust and mustard colored bands easily discernible. Chance, was low in the sky, almost behind the city but still visible. The city casting long shadows that almost reached to where I stood.

It had been cold for weeks and the sea had begun to freeze around the base of the city, but the carpet of redgrass had just now started turning light blue from the fall. The grass's dusky odor was a sure sign of the winter storms to come. The wind gusted off the sea, across the beach and the red grass and brought that cold bitter copper smell I grew up with. In the summer time the sea smelled sweet as the algae blooms turned the water yellow with flowers, but in the winter time they would die back and the sea would be a sullen gray, small waves breaking on shore.

And then there was the city. Even from here I could see lights and vehicles moving in and around it. It was hard to imagine something that big ever used to be alive.

My mother had been told by her mother that Earth had creatures similar to the city but much much smaller. She had called them crabs as well, but apparently on earth they only grew to be about as big as your hand. I always thought that would be something to see. A crab as small as your hand. The city was fully fifteen miles wide and stretched into the sea for four. Some scientists thought that this behemoth gave up the ghost as it pulled itself out of the water some 1,000 years before we even stepped off the first colony ships. While the crabs get big around here no one's seen one this big. Seems like the bigger the crabs get the more they like to stick to the depths. I wonder if our city crab had similar feelings I do. Head out of the depths to truly appreciate them.

Heading to Earth would be a heck of an adventure too, but I'd have to take Fora and the kids with me. There and back was a lone wolf's sport unless you had the money to ship your entire family. Even with cold storage we would age ten years and about fifty would pass here before we got back.

If I squinted I could make out my extremity. My family lived halfway up Leg12, further towards the sea than land, on the left side from where I was standing. I gave a wave in case my family was looking and then felt foolish, there's no way they could see me.

Some day maybe we could afford top Carapace or maybe even Subclaw, but that would take a lot of luck and planning. And then that's only if we wanted to move within the city and not to a farm here on shore. There were certainly pros and cons to both.

If we moved out of the city I would definitely miss walking down the boulevards of Body, or just getting lost for the day with Fora and the kids driving Capilicars.

But then there was right now, the view of the city, the crisp fresh, non-recycled air. And snow. Soon the entire continent would be covered in fresh snow and that was something to see.

Those kinds of decisions would have to wait, however. Fora was expecting our 3rd child and I was just accepted into the diplomatic corps. For now it was time to see what else was out there and to try and re-establish ties to one of the other colonies that had gone quiet a couple years ago.

I turned my back on the city and caught back up with the rest of the party that had just gone around the bend. It was going to be a while before I looked on home again.