The Best Part, 2019-1

"Men at Arms," by Terry Pratchett.

“[G]ive me some more coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night.”

Harga looked surprised. That wasn’t like Vimes.

“How black’s that, then?”

“Oh, pretty damn black, I should think.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What?”

“You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night.”

Vimes sighed.

“An overcast moonless night?” he said.

Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.

“Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?”

“I’m sorry? What did you say?”

“You gets city lights reflected off cumulus, because it’s low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in – “

“A moonless night,” said Vimes, in a hollow voice, “that is as black as that coffee.”

“Right!”

“And a doughnut.” Vimes grabbed Harga’s stained vest and pulled him until they were nose to nose. “A doughnut as doughnutty as a doughnut made of flour, water, one large egg, sugar, a pinch of yeast, cinnamon to taste and a jam, jelly, or rat filling depending on national or species preference, OK? Not as doughnutty as something in any way metaphorical. Just a doughnut. One doughnut.”

“A doughnut.”

“Yes.”

“You only had to say.”

Harga brushed off his vest, gave Vimes a hurt look, and went back into the kitchen.

Pratchett is at heart a writer’s writer, who often explores odd little tropes of writing with enough exaggeration to point out how most of the rest of us are mucking things up.