Five days’ travel to the next homestead, they said. Five days, but ten nights, they joked, for how the few scant hours of daylight flicked past and the dark endured. Phantom rays, ripples of green and violet, poured through the… Continue reading

Sparks drift from our outer hull to die in the dark. It’s a damn miracle that we didn’t breach, but it might have been kinder if we had. We’re not going anywhere, which means our only options are to die… Continue reading

“Just get them out,” he pleaded again, rattling desperately at the cuffs that held him to the bed. “It’s just surgery, right? Just rip them out, I don’t care, just get rid of them.” The tears welling from the corners… Continue reading

They shackled her wrists in the same cold, magickless iron as mine, to the opposite wall of a room so small that our feet almost touch anyways. It would have been kinder if they’d covered her mouth, would have served… Continue reading

Nothing marks you as more of an outsider in these parts than being excited when spring comes. Grin and bubble over about birds and flowers and sunny summer days to come, and everyone who’s lived more than a winter here… Continue reading

Of course he’d known a forest on an alien planet wouldn’t look anything like the labyrinth of birch and deer tracks, rose thorns and skittish pheasants hidden in the undergrowth, where he had roamed as a boy. But with only… Continue reading

Dying the first time was easy – just as much so as most mistakes. Obvious only in hindsight, only without the hindsight, just one blurring, obliterating second to know it had all gone wrong somehow. Dying the second time was… Continue reading

There hadn’t been any warning sign, turn back or quarantine, outside the city limits. Of course not – they wanted hapless people like her to wander in. The only signs were neon, buzzing blue and magenta signal fires for motels… Continue reading

I must have looked just the same as her once. Just as dazzled by the silver glory of the knife being held out to me, the destiny illuminated by its shining blade. A life of heroism, power fettered by noble… Continue reading