On the day Kudryavka met The Universe, she had an itchy nose. It had started the moment she stepped into the capsule. Something about the pressurised air always made her bristle, and the cramped space made all the vibrations louder against her skin. Her nose itched, and she resisted the urge to fidget, staying still…
Would we have loved each other as much, if he hadn’t died? Would our living love have faltered and grown dim with time, with ennui, with despair? I’ll never know. He’ll never know. What I do know is that his ghostly love is as addictive as opium. Nothing has ever been as dazzling as that…
You want to know why we stopped playing football on Mars? Let me tell you why we started. Sequestered in our domes, in the close air of our own unwashed smell, we got hungry for the outdoors. Carefully stepping around too much equipment in too little space, we got hungry for violent impacts. There was…
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…
Weary-eyed soldiers drag the bodies from their wagons and pile them on the wharf beside my boat. They’ve traveled far from the frontlines, and though they’re too exhausted to speak, they’re careful not to let a lifeless arm or foot touch the sea’s foamy surface. “Careful, men!” the colonel calls needlessly. “Or your labor will…
For my first four years, I never heard a lie. From the day I was born, Mom and Grams swaddled me in a fuzzy blanket, then wrapped my life in cold, hard truth. “Lies can be warm,” Grams said, deep in her corduroy rocking chair. “You’ll want to nestle into them. Some lies are meant…
Rezia has said the words “I love you” to me 1,334 times. Fractional differences in decibels, frequency, and articulation shift her emotions: shy, sweet, bold trusting. I’ve discovered a trend in the last 109. My processors can diagnose her emotion easily: sad. What my processors are still analyzing is the more important factor: why. I…
To be a priest in a traveling troupe was to wear a thousand masks, Diones knew. His cradle had been a costume trunk. He’d worn his first mask before an audience as one of the Young Lovers at the age of sixteen. Now past thirty, Diones was at the height of his powers, with a…
The first time I watched a man die, I was sitting on my mother’s lap, eating the last of the season’s figs. “Swallow.” Even when condemning a man to death, Mother’s voice was like a lyre’s song, so that you considered yourself honored to be addressed, regardless of her demand. At the time, I did…
