Of all the things I thought I’d have to deal with on this interplanetary aid mission, the stink of salted fish was not one of them. Turbulence? Epic boredom? Hostile alien invasion? Sure. It’s a two-year journey on a lightweight space craft ferrying precious medicines to a remote asteroid mining colony. Anything can happen. But…
Ten thousand years ago, before our great-mothers left the Summerlands and bore us out into the greater world, Biyatqio, goddess of Life and great-mother of all, sent her two green and golden daughters out into the mortal-walked world. Instruct them, Biyatqio ordered her daughters, impart unto them a fraction of the Divine Wit, such as…
It was soon after Julie began nursing when she realized she could travel through time. When Nathan was a week old, and her breasts ached with regularity ten times a day, she read about common nursing issues online. She’d been thinking her blinks into the past were dreams from sleep deprivation, or maybe even something…
The dreams begin with Dixie’s first menstrual cycle: Thick trees with spidery limbs overhanging an almost-rotted boardwalk; moss-like fog giving everything a bluish-grey complexion; a muddy bed on both sides, sizable enough to serve as a reptilian’s den; a lullaby of chorusing crickets… And then: The planks dissolving into a body of water; air hot…
Baleful red light crackled across the sky, outlining a mushroom cap atop tentacles, stretching down into the clouds. Conditions were perfect for the abominably misnamed “sprite” to discharge the shards that powered the airship Jubilee on long-range journeys. “You saw where it struck?” Tali asked. Her pilot, Rowan, rolled their eyes. “Yes, Captain.” Tali nodded….
I meet you in the rain, the fat drops slicking our cheeks. We splash in puddles like children. You kiss like thunder: deep enough to shake the earth, even if only a little. The sun reemerges and sparkles on the wet tar. I turn to see your face sparkle, too, but you’re gone. I look…
The doll doesn’t make it to my front door. I find her limp against my woodpile out back a few days after the first cold snap. She’s been rained on, her cloth skin a sodden gray, button eyes damp. “Oh, hello,” she says, with trained brightness. “I do beg your pardon. I seem to be…
In two and half minutes, I’d either become the twelfth certified wormhole pilot or the seventieth-odd loser ripped apart by Jupiter’s storm shear. The decisive moment was speeding up to me. I’d ghost my electricals, coast through the eye of the storm, and slide through the tiny aperture halfway to another world. Even after all…
I’d always watched the whaling boats going out to sea in the morning; big, asbestos-lined vessels churning through the lava, leaving a black wake behind them. My parents’ house was close enough to the beach that the shingles warped and blistered in the heat, and if you stood at the kitchen window you could see…
I ride into the clearing with my lance pointed skyward. My horse is already skittish. The dragon slaying business is always rough on horses, and I replace mine the way other riders do horseshoes. I didn’t even bother to name this one. But losing a horse always gives the story a little something. I circle…
