Working Hard, Dressing Down
“Why'd Becky go and hire a pony," Ryan growled over his coffee, thick as mud. It was five before six, and the hour of the wolf was waning. Declan had his own cup of sludge-like coffee to chew through: it would have to tide him over until lunch. ...
Axel's Exam
Coach, as tanuki wrestlers the world over invariably called their stable's manager, waved Axel over one day, after morning practice. The third-year wrestler was in his prime, a head taller and significantly wider than the old man. A brief wave of...
Shouting at the Forest - 0x00
Kurn twitched, brushing off the crest of his hip. There was nothing there, only an insect of his own imagination. He'd heard somewhere--maybe his grandmother told him once--that his scent attracted pollinators. Maybe that was true; the bug returned,...
The Drachenjaeger
The madman, caught in a contradiction, dashed the bubbling pot of soup in his general direction. Hadubrant lifted his arm, letting his vambrace take the brunt of it. When he dropped it again, the old fool had dropped his guise. His torso stretched out...
Ketos and the Leviathan
I woke swaddled in the vast grayness of the sea, hovering in the waters. Above me stilled uplit, with neither a ripple nor a wave to cast a caustic. If you have ever plunged beneath the underbelly of the ice-capped seas, dizzyingly mineral and darkly...
Pages Torn and Burned, Incompletely
**May 3, 1934** **An Island East of Yzerfontein** I have made it my habit these past five or six years to keep this journal after the style of that rascal mutt, Pepys. Not out of some grandiose delusion of fame, fortune, or an audience to...