The clink of gold against diamonds woke Artrullaxi the Magnificent from her slumber, and she held statue-still, listening. Someone had intruded on her lair. Another knight with more ambition than sense? Or a thief with a death wish? A shame that her belly was still full from the last one, her limbs heavy with satiety….
The KAI-800 unit detected the micro-tremors in Harue’s hand as she reached for her cup of lukewarm sencha. Silent on its magnetic casters, Kai glided across the tatami flooring and intercepted the yunomi teacup. “Allow me, Harue-san.” Its voice was a synthesized baritone, calibrated to the resonant frequency of Buddhist temple bells and found to…
You are big and I am small and it’s time for my first dose. It’s a time before memory, on the babbling cusp of speech, or before, even, and I can only guess later at whether it went down bitter or syrup sweet. Did I struggle? Did I cry? Did I scream at the scorching…
Even if no bells had clanged in alarm, even if there’d been no screams from the shore, I would have known what catastrophe was falling upon us by the dirgeful swoop of whale song. This should not yet have been our sky whale’s time to die. She’d calved not so long ago, hardly a year….
