“All right, now. I want you to look at this and tell me what you see.” She kept her scoff in the back of her throat, where the doctor wouldn’t hear it. She had already told him and the two… Continue reading

Every brave fisher or traveller waved away from the harbour and never seen again was a question unanswered. A prayer on their loved ones’ lips late at night. Promising anything, promising everything, if only they could know for sure. But… Continue reading

“Don’t touch that!” she snapped. Her voice rang out cruelly across the beach, and he looked up at her with tears shocked into his sweet brown eyes. But at least he took his hand back from the flower he had… Continue reading

The train had been humming through the night for longer than it felt as if the night should have lasted. Their watch had stopped along with the brass-rimmed clock above the door to the next carriage, at a precise, unremarkable… Continue reading

Innocent and guilty, alibis and truths, were all different expressions of electricity. Reading them directly removed any need to translate truth from a suspect’s imprecise, self-serving verbal testimony. It, the it that lived equally in the specialized helmet worn during… Continue reading

Her hands couldn’t shake as she set his plate on the table. She had always taken the same pride he took in her precision, the smoothness of her joints and balance of her servos, but watching that china platter of… Continue reading

They had started writing her myth before she’d even been born, so there really wasn’t anything she could do. In accordance with its opening paragraphs, her mother had started teaching her how to weave as soon as she had enough… Continue reading

Building a city on a sleeping god means being ready, always, for the end. But that’s not remarkable, really. If this god ever peels its body up from under the crust of centuries, it’ll be the end for everyone. The… Continue reading

No one else would ever know that he had screamed. It was no comfort. The pain came from every side as he screamed, the jaws came, and that was no comfort, but it meant there was no time for him… Continue reading