Balcony Gardening - poem
Golden Goose - story
Create My Own Perfection - story
Tulips - story
Taste Explosion - story
Sunset Warning - story
All Ticked Off - story
Not to be Sniffed At - story
Sing Me a Song - story
Fine Feathers - story
Loving Lines - story
Let Down Your Hair - story
Testing Grounds - novella
Guns and Roses - story
Guns and Roses
The raygun clutched in the dead man's hand was my first clue that something weird was going on. It looked too real. And yes, plenty of people get angry at the folk crewing the tollbooths and road rage happens - to sometimes tragic effect - but the tollbooth operators don't usually shoot back.
Or if they do, it's with bullets, not rays.
The second clue of something weird going on was the roses growing all over the place. Really odd places, like out of the operator's chair (and out of his arm, but that was one for the mortician doing the autopsy)
Once the raygun had been checked over for prints, I pointed it cautiously at a patch of bare ground and pressed the trigger with a gloved finger. There was a streak of red light, and then another rose appeared, growing out of the ground where the ray had hit.
Well, that ought to make finding the culprit easier. Just follow the roses.
Happy Book Birthday to Testing Grounds!
Queer friendship, secret identities, and Warrior training:
On the 1st of Dec, a novella brings to me:
12 old scars
11 dodged questions
10 types of weapon
9 Warrior braids
8 different titles
7 bad memories
6 young women
5 things to climb
4 Warrior teachers
3 squad members
2 old friends
and a week at Testing Grounds
Let Down Your Hair
It was time. 'Zelle put her hairbrush away, gathered up her mountain of hair, and took her place at the bow of the ship, where the figurehead stood in a water navy. Static crawled across her as the protective mage-shield snapped into being around the crew's quarters. She leaned up into the magic and shook out her hair. The static drew it out into a perfect halo: a golden, gossamer fine, sail to catch the solar wind.
With that in place, she herself shifted, her body settling back into its statue form as if she had never walked and talked and laughed with her crew. As if she had never been anything but the ship itself.
One that was named, certainly. Lifted by the wind like a living thing, eager to dance across the asteroids. But hardly more than a feisty container for those she carried. (Those she carried knew better, but the paperwork didn't)
Her crew cast off, the wind filled the sail, and the Rapunzelle was on its way once more to the Spring festival on Mars.
Loving Lines
"Can I draw you?" Steph asked.
Callie turned and looked back over her shoulder. "Here?" she asked incredulously, indicating the footpath that ran along the edge of the field.
"Well..." Steph hesitated. "Just a sketch? The light's nice here."
Callie sighed and then shrugged with amused resignation. "Very well, as you wish. How do you want me?"
Any way I can have you, Steph thought but didn't say out loud, only asking Callie to stand so that the sun caught and highlighted her hair and face.
Callie struck a teasing, dramatic, pose, then settled into something more comfortable to hold.
Steph drew quickly, wielding her preferred fountain pen in swift, sure, loving strokes to bring Callie to life on the page. Details, like love confessions, would have to wait.
Fine Feathers
The phoenix feathers had to be worth millions surely, Davy thought, as he crouched in the tool shed, clutching the small bag of feathers to his chest and waiting for the guards outside to move on.
Someone was certainly willing to pay a lot to have them back. The problem was, he couldn't be seen running with a bag of sparkling feathers without whoever saw him catching on. They were just far too obvious. But what else could he do?
It should be something clever, something you could turn into a good story later. But what?
He looked wildly around, but there were only garden tools and equipment stored in here. And yet, it was all he had to work with.
His gaze fell on a stack of cushions for the patio furniture, stored in here to keep them dry. Wait...weren't some cushions stuffed with feathers? He unzipped the cover on one of them, and grinned. Pulling out the pad inside, he replaced it with the bag of feathers and closed everything up again. It looked a little plumper but no more than a cushion should be, and he could carry a cushion anywhere!
He waited a few more minutes. Then, in a lull between the guards, he was over the wall and gone, reappearing further down with the cushion slung casually over his shoulder.
Success was his!
Going through the two week ranking assessment is a chore for Cavallan, simple but necessary. Doing it under a pseudonym is a bit more of a tangle, but he's prepared to buckle down and just get on with it.
But when he arrives, he meets an old friend and makes a new one. Suddenly it isn't as much of a chore, but it's no longer simple, either.
Now he has to dance a knife-edge between truth and deception, and the only thing waiting for him if he slips is pain...
Now on
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Sing Me a Song
"Tell me a story, Granny!"
The old woman looked at the small girl dancing around the tiny room and smiled. "Very well, if you come and help me shape the bread, I'll tell you about a strange sighting I had when I was your age."
The girl bounced over, her protective pendant swinging across the neckline of her cut-down tunic, and plopped herself down beside her Granny. "I'm here!"
Granny split the bread dough, giving the girl a smaller piece. "It was late at night, down where the marsh meets the Nile," she began, her strong old hands kneading the dough into shape in time to her words. "Where we cut the papyrus for the scribes to use. I was sleeping up on the roof in the Dry season, and I could see without being tempted out to where they could get me..."
"Who, Granny?"
"The singers, sweetie. There were two of them, singing sweetly together, and they sounded so very sad, and yet so very loving."
"What were they like?"
"Let me think..." There was a twinkle in Granny's dark eyes. "One was wrapped in something as dark as the night sky, singing a plaintive song with the sort of soft huskiness that speaks of disuse, yet with silvery undertones lacing through it. It sounded as if the stars themselves were singing, if stars could sing. The other was draped in the palest white-gold of ripe barley, singing a warmer, richer harmony to the first one's. A deeper voice, earthier, well-used, catching the plaintive tones and turning them back into a love of all the earth and everything on it. Maybe they were gods - Nut and Geb, Gods of the sky and the earth, once beloved lovers, now forced apart, ever close and never to touch again. Maybe they were ghosts, missing those family members yet living, and calling them to join them. There's no way for us to tell - we leave that to the priests. And that," she finished, dabbing the pendent with a floury finger, "is why we all wear protective pendents. It means the ghosts can't lure us away..."
Not to be Sniffed At
I opened the trunk of the clown's car and a large flower popped up asking me to smell it. I held my washcloth up at its smelling range instead, and the flower obligingly squirted water onto it. That gave me a headstart on washing the custard off the outside of the car and popping the expandable sides back into place.
Inside, they'd somehow managed to avoid getting actual custard on it for once, so I just hooked up the vacuum cleaner, hoovered up the pastry crumbs, and gave it a standard valet, catching the squirt of milk from the horn in a glass out of weekly habit and practice, and drinking it.
You get used to the pranks when you encounter them every week, and as for money...
Well, at least the pay isn't a joke.
All Ticked Off
The tick board in the old pawn shop hung from a length of rope. Customers came and went. Some turned goods over for a little cash. Some paid outright for the items they wanted or wanted back. And some paid on tick, returning each payday to hand over the next installment of payment for the purchase they were already using. Each installment was duly ticked off on the tick board until it was fully paid off.
Every time someone paid off something bought on tick, the rope grew a little thinner, a little more frayed, as if each tick cut through a single fibre. Every time someone had to default on something bought on tick, the rope grew a little thicker, a little sturdier, as if it was taking what was owed it in a more direct fashion.
It went on year after year like that, the rope waxing and waning in response to the fortunes of the customers, but never quite breaking even at its thinnest, until a loan shark moved in next door.
The loan shark lured in customers, wrapping them in debts they could never pay back while he fattened on them like the rope. Nobody could afford to pay on tick anymore, and the board hung empty, the rope gathering dust rather than strands.
As the customers' debts grew, they brought more to be pawned and bought less, until the shop was paying out more than it took in, and the loan shark smiled, and smiled, and smiled.
The owner of the pawn shop took the board down and unfastened the rope. It swung lightly from his hands, like the twitching tail of a snake, as he told it softly, "We had a bargain, you and I. You collected what was owed, only what was owed, and I pledged my honesty against yours. But now there is one who takes with a smile, until they owe their lives and their souls to him. There is no honesty in him, and he seeks to drive me out and take you over. He owes us the truth. He owes us an apology. He owes us an explanation. I call on you this final time to collect what is owed."
The rope slid from his hands to coil on the floor, and one frayed end caught the light of the setting sun, turning it into strands of shadow that stretched out across the floor towards the loan shark's building.
Next door, the loan shark began to scream. The sound grew thinner and rougher and more frayed as it went on, as if he was unravelling from the inside out.
Nobody ever found his body.
When the owner of the pawn shop hung up the tick board once more, the rope was thick and strong and fresh, as if had never been frayed at all.
Sunset Warning
(This story takes place in the post-apocalyptic Split universe of "Holding Onto Day", but is otherwise not connected to it)
An alarm went off in the virtual auditorium. "Ten minutes to sunset! This is your ten minute warning!"
There was a muffled groan from the students. "Sunset comes so early in winter, it's not fair."
The professor shook xer head. "Earlier every day until solstice, my dears. Go ahead and prepare, we'll pick up the lesson after it sets."
Images shifted from faces to ceilings across the auditorium as tablets in a score of tiny settlements were placed on floors or tables so that they wouldn't be temporarily lost in the shift. Students shifted and stretched, set down their notes, yelled the warning to anyone in their settlement who might have missed it. The preparations were routine, something they had done every day of their lives (or that their parents and guardians had done for them), but still a necessary chore.
"One minute to sunset! This is your one minute warning!"
A score of human teenagers did last minute checks and stood back.
Sunset rolled through, shifting the world outside the fairy rings that encircled each tiny settlement, and every person inside them. Clothes and held items vanished, replaced by whatever the person had been wearing or holding when sunrise caught them. Items that weren't being held, remained as they were
And every person shifted with the change, from human, to non-human. Minotaur hands and werewolf paws picked up tablets again, gryphon claws tapped cautiously, unicorn noses nudged buttons.
The professor tucked xer dragon feet comfortably under xem, scooped up xer pointer with a twist of xer flexible tail, and waited until all the faces had reappeared in the virtual auditorium. "Now, as I was saying before I was interrupted..."
Taste Explosion
"Shush! Put a sock in it!"
"Whose sock, George?"
"Any sock!"
"Do I look like I keep spare socks for this sort of thing? There, I found the mute button, will that do?"
"It'll have to, Freddie. Now, where do you think the stuff's hidden?"
"In the oven?"
"Oh for pity's sake... This is a restaurant kitchen, not a gingerbread cottage!"
"Found it! Back of the spice rack. Guess someone was hoping for a taste explosion!"
"A regular explosion, more like. Come on, let's get out of here before anyone comes to see what all that noise earlier was about."
"Yep, sure, after you..."
Create My Own Perfection is now out!
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Tulips
The tulips can appear anywhere. Flickers in the air around a table, in a buttonhole, over a heart. I don't know if anyone except me can see them, but I gather them when I can find them, from wherever they are, and take them home. They're never in the same place twice, though they all look much the same - like glass so thin and clear it's barely visible, like a dream on the cusp of being tangible, like the ghost of a tulip, caught in mid-bloom.
I plant them out behind my home, row on row. They don't seem to grow there yet, except to take root, but with every new tulip I find, they gain a little more colour, a little more solidity - and so do I.
Put simply, they are the key to my life and my heart.
I died in a tulip field, on the day that the tulip bubble burst. I became the ghost of all the tulips in the field, and all the dreams that had been pinned on them. Only when I finally gather them all back together will I be whole enough to rest - or to return.
So, if you'll excuse me, I will be taking the tulip tucked behind your ear now.
Don't worry, it won't hurt.
Much.
Today I'm being interviewed over on Let's Fox About It!
Come and see me talk about some of the things that inspired my retelling of Medusa and more!
Create My Own Perfection is available for preorder in the following places:
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Come and see me talk about why I mixed greek mythology with selkies, how long I've been interested in medusas and more!
Create My Own Perfection is available for preorder in the following places:
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B&N: https://bit.ly/2Uo3RcIGolden Goose
Sam pelted down the storm drain as fast as e could go, eyes peeled for the opening to the sewer itself. Spotting it at last, e slowed just enough to lower emself down, feeling with eir feet for the ledge. It was narrow, and damp with the stinking, sloshing, dregs of the sewer water and e scuttled along the memorised route.
Somewhere along here there should be a suitcase containing the spare radio to contact eir bosses - if e could find it before the hounds caught up with em. E glanced back over eir shoulder, ears pricked for the telltale cry of discovery, and then hurried on.
E had to get the information through - and hope that the traitor didn't intercept it. Only then would Upstairs know where, and when, and how to target their precision strike.
The suitcase, when e found it wedged into a tiny hole, was intact, as was the radio and the coding pages. Sam took a moment to catch eir breath, and then hurried on, finally clambering up through a manhole, and along a different storm drain into the cellar of a wrecked safehouse.
Eir fingers shook as e set it all up for contact, and e scrubbed grimly at eir tear-streaked face. Once this was done the hounds would probably catch em and tear em down like the rest of eir cell. Like the rest of eir friends. E had survived the last attack only by sheer luck, and luck like that couldn't last.
E took a breath, calmed emself, coded the message with steadier hands, and opened the channel. "Goose reporting in. Message is as follows..."
Arcs are now available for Create My Own Perfection, my queer, aroace, retelling of Medusa!
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Create My Own Perfection - my aroace retelling of Medusa - now has a cover!
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Once there was here and yet was not,
A boy whose name, they say, was 'Jack'.
He grew his beans in tiny pots
And never now felt any lack.
Jack was nimble, and Jack was quick.
He lived in a studio flat.
No cow was there, nor magic trick,
Just a single, smiling, city rat,
A cutting brought from his beanstalk,
And a grin both bright and bold
As if to say (if beans could talk)
Now who's the goose? I've got my gold.
