All it took, all it had ever taken, was one small thing. One crack, one spark, one note off key in the choruses the world had been repeating since long, long before any of them had been born. Their world… Continue reading

The bay glittered ahead, glimpses through the stone-and-glass canyon of streets mazing their way towards it. One slim shard of the sea cutting inwards from the coast, while the rest of it stretched implacable, unaccountable, a cracked and rippling mirror… Continue reading

Of course the arguments for life didn’t end at the compound’s walls. It had collected the people who wanted to be closest to a sure, abundant source of food and were willing to live by the rules someone else had… Continue reading

Fior had seen her first corpse when she had still been twelve for the first time. When she had still been counting days, that one single day, over and over, carefully enough to be sure of it. It hadn’t looked… Continue reading

Dawn had been something going not quite right behind the mountains, a hum of tuneless amber and violet warping like sheet metal. The voices carried in that static had been too faint and distant for radios to catch them as… Continue reading

Dawn was already diluting the night through the concourse’s broad eastern windows. Stirring black to an uncertain sepia above, liminal shades that shimmered just outside of daylight’s names. The clouds were working busily to separate them, sieving gold from blue,… Continue reading

“I think it’s something we all have to confront sooner or later,” Eve said. “The question of whether we’ve wasted too much of our time. I’ve spent nearly two decades accommodating their wishes. Growing their crops, letting them decide how… Continue reading

Looking from the painting, sunlight reclining across a rumpled bed of foothills, to Eve on her couch felt like turning from one piece of art to another, two of a set. From sunlight to golden hair tangled with flowering vines,… Continue reading