Another journal

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. With 2025’s up, now it’s time to share some faves from 2024.

Then who slayed the dragon, exactly?

Well, Neihm landed the killing arrow in the beast’s throat, but it was the work of the group to give her that opportunity.

Okay, and this is the group you were the leader of for the past five years?

Yes, a really great team, I loved ensuring that they felt supported on missions.

And how did you do that?

Well, any real team leader doesn’t lead so much as they support the growth of the team, right? I listened to their needs, helped them identify growth opportunities, managed payroll so that they didn’t have to balance money worries while also fighting monsters, that sort of thing.

Ah.

I think really there’s nothing quite like seeing that the role somebody is in doesn’t fit their needs and working with them to figure out what will. Like our rogue, right? He actually started out as a wizard, but as we worked together, I realized that he had a great memory for spells but showed active curiosity in how locks and traps worked. So, I set up an apprenticeship for him, and that great memory served him very well when it came to traps and locks, plus his wizard background gave him a real edge in perception. Probably one of my most satisfying experiences with that team.

More so than, it looks like, overthrowing a demon lord?

Well, we wouldn’t have been able to do that if he hadn’t become a rogue. And same for the rest of the team, really. As a leader it was really just beautiful to see how much they’d all grown not only in their own skills but in how they worked together.

So, you feel that, as a leader, it’s not that your adventuring party supports you—

But that you support your adventuring party, exactly! And it’s not as though I think they don’t have my back. It can be tough to be ‘the face’ of a party, the hero, whatever. It’s you who has to interface with kings and merchants and whoever is footing the bill. And that can be stressful! But being the buffer between my team and the sometimes not quite reasonable demands of our employers is satisfying. And if things ever got rocky, I know they would be there to back me up.

When running your background check we did find that you had posted some inflammatory broadsides about a local prince?

Yes, I did. On researching his quest query, we discovered some pretty nefarious stuff and after discussion with the team we decided that supporting his opponent would be the best move. They ended up becoming a regular client of ours, actually.

I see. And what are you looking for in your position with us?

Oh, just fresh opportunity. Like I said, I really like supporting a team, and I enjoy the folks I work with but it’s only a small independent adventuring party. Working with a bigger team would be a really fun challenge that I think I’d excel at.

That’s great. And do you have any questions for us?

Yes! Did you know that the average retention rate for an adventure staffing company this size is something like 65%? Which isn’t bad, really, when you think about how volatile the industry is, but what’s really interesting is that if you remove all management above “hero” it drops to 50%? And then, if you also leave out the heroes it drops to 30%? That’s like, spectacularly bad. That indicates a real problem within the very structure of your company.

I don’t—

No, you don’t. But that’s okay! Because your current employees do. And they hired us, well actually we’re working pro-bono, but they hired us to shake up the management structure some and begin union negotiations. And what is really lovely about that is you have this big group of people who maybe 30%, 40% tops were going to finish out their year here, that’s how little they cared for your company, all joining together towards one common goal. So, the possibility of real cohesive and modular teams is there, you’re just not utilizing it. But that’s okay, we’re going to help you out. That’s what I love to do, help folks who need it. That’s what being a hero is.

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. With 2025’s up, now it’s time to share some faves from 2024.

It is eclipse season once more, my heart. You remember—each year, as the season spins up, one of the planet’s satellites occludes the sun a little longer, a little more frequently. Like all children I’ve done my share of annual observatory visits, memorised the tour and peered at the orrery that explained the phenomenon.

But you know I’ve no head for these things. The orrery is beautiful, and I know each capital city has its own, made by local artisans to reflect the attributes of each place. Our orrery was composed of granite marbles and chrome, visually one with the building itself, the mosaic floor a portfolio of stone patterns and textures, walls and columns dense concrete.

Once, when travelling, I visited the observatory of a small farming town and their orrery was a series of lacquered seeds and fruit pits, combining field and orchard. It was charming and inventive and it saddened me to hear other out of town visitors imply it lacked an appropriate seriousness.

Why should an orrery be serious? Eclipse season peaks as the largest satellite matches the sun for half a day, but the slow blinking of light in the weeks leading up to it is a manic thing, a wild thing. There are dances about it, and traditional cookies. I think you’ve tried those cookies, when you were last here. I made them, even though it was simple-summer and finding the ingredients out of season felt like a quest. How can something that is accompanied by a traditional cookie be so serious it should only be represented in the least fanciful materials?

Anyway, as I was saying, I love an orrery but they speak in a language I cannot learn. I remember when you showed me the little tide table you kept in your wallet, and explained how an ocean worked. That made sense to me, more than a device I could draw from memory. Every year we can pick up something similar from the town centre, a time table of occlusion. It’s a handy thing to have on hand when running errands, or before starting chores. I’ve been caught out in the dark walking home, my arms full of groceries (this is before you got me that little rolling basket) unable to get to the jacket I’d tied around my waist. It gets so cold during an eclipse. I don’t know if it is only in comparison to the moments before, or if there is something else about it. I had to walk home, shivering in the dark. Luckily the streetlights turn on automatically, but you know that the last stretch before my house is shaded by trees, with only one small globe at the crossing from the main road. It was quite an adventure. The tables aren’t perfectly accurate, but they’re good estimates and guides, and it pleases me to keep it in my wallet as you do your tide tables.

I’m writing this now, bundled up, as eclipse season reaches its zenith. Or is it the nadir? According to the time table, it should have ended over an hour ago, but still here I am under my warmest blanket, a lamp on and it not yet noon. Like I said, their accuracy isn’t fully guaranteed and I’m sure there is an expected range of inaccuracy. There is a word for that, isn’t there? If you were here I could just ask you, as I know you’ve said the word before, talking about your work and all those experiments you would check and recheck. Part of me wishes you were here now, so you could tell me what word I was thinking of and so we could sit under my heaviest blanket together. It’s a better warmth, the kind shared with another.

I know it’s for the best you’ve returned to your oceans and tides. You would find eclipse season fascinating. We could go on a tour of small towns and compare everyone’s orreries. Maybe there is one made with flowers, or even one that uses projected light. I think it would be fun to see what is out there, how different places interpret the same thing.

If you were here though, I think you’d worry that the time tables had been so inaccurate this year. You’d say “surely this is greater than any margin of error”. That’s it! That’s the word, or words. I imagined you well enough you answered me. Oh, my heart, maybe someday I will be able to go to you. I would like to see an ocean. Does your world have orreries? If so, what do they make them from?

Your beloved.

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. With 2025’s up, now it’s time to share some faves from 2024.

It was Tuesday. It had been Tuesday for, as well as Mel could reckon it, something like five years. This would have been fine, they thought, if it was a solo or limited affect time loop. If it was only Mel, or only Mel and like a dozen people around the world, experiencing Tuesday, that would have felt surmountable.

But the whole world had been experiencing Tuesday for something like five years and had decided, after about a year of panic and then a year of recovery from that panic, that Tuesday was fine, actually.

That first year there had been spates of bank robberies, vengeance killings, strange pranks, horrible suicides by people sacrificing themselves in an attempt to reset the day. A lot of weddings, also. Money stopped meaning anything, what one spent on Tuesday was back in the bank on Tuesday morning. Even Mel had participated in an outrageous indulgence, purchasing a ticket for a first-class international flight. They’d had to buy it a couple of Tuesdays in a row, waiting for everyone else’s choices to line up for there to be pilots who chose to spend their day at work, for the airport to be intact, for the ground crews to also decide to spend their day at work. Mel was fine waiting. The airport was like a mall and it was as good a place to spend Tuesday as any.

All the social sites and forums reset each day as well, but Mel had gleaned enough over the months to know that they wanted to cross the international date line eastbound. Going west would just pop them right back into Tuesday. Going east let them enjoy the view, the food, the very nice accommodations. When they grew tired, they let themselves fall asleep, knowing they’d wake up in their bed, Tuesday morning.

They’d played, cautiously, with what defined “Tuesday.” It was some point of sunrise, the light gaining momentum as it spilled across the hills and they’d blink and they’d be opening their eyes on a fresh morning and another Tuesday.

Despite what was happening in much of the outside world, Mel spent those first two years more or less enjoying Tuesday. It was, in the old parlance, their “Sunday,” and what was a day that once held its own special dread of the work week to come now felt like a kind of haven. They did find it frustrating that any work they did on various craft projects was undone each day, calm hours cross stitching emptied from the aida. Eventually the frustration was filled with a sort of existential peace. It was the action more than the finished work that Mel liked anyway.

One of their mutuals on a fibre artist forum wrote a poem about Penelope and somebody with a better memory than Mel memorized it, adding it to the boards early Tuesday morning. Memorising the poem and sharing it became a ritual for Mel’s friends.

It was somewhere in the third or fourth year of Tuesdays that Mel’s manager called them and asked them to come into work. Mel hesitated, they’d always been very protective of their two days off in a row and the instinct wasn’t broken by years of Tuesdays. Mel’s manager then told them that “even if Tuesday forgets, I won’t,” the threat clear in her voice. Someday Tuesday would end and if Mel wanted to be employed that eventual Wednesday, then they needed to come in. And so, they did.

Mel’s manager wasn’t the only one who tried to claw back a semblance of order, playacting a normal week of days across a string of seven identical Tuesdays. Mel felt bad for her for a while, realizing how empty her Tuesday must be without the self-definition of her job. Mel’s pity lasted for a couple of months and then the habit of going into work carried them another year. They’d always been easily swayed into routine, and the pattern of going into work was a more practiced one than having a day off.

Then, one Tuesday lunch break, Mel read their mutual’s Penelope poem again. Someone had filmed themselves speaking it, over slowed video of a sweater being frogged. They’d done a great job with the sound, the popping rip of the yarn coming undone not overpowered by the words of the poem, but supporting them like a drumbeat. Mel watched the video three times in a row, then walked out of the store, leaving their apron on the hook in the break room. Tuesday morning the apron was back, folded on top of Mel’s dryer. There was also a very long text from their manager that Mel did not read before replying “Sry, day off.”

When Wednesday came, Mel wanted it to be a day shaped by their choices alone.

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. With 2025’s up, now it’s time to share some faves from 2024.

Seb held up his hand and felt Aurok gently run into it. The small bird nibbled softly at the back of his hand before turning around and patting away. Turning his attention back to the parchment, Seb dipped his pen and continued outlining the flowers framing the verse. Although he liked adding the colours as well, Seb enjoyed this step the most, feeling the sweep of his pen follow twining stems. He was not so entranced by the process to miss the tapping sound of Aurok returning.

With the deftness of practice, Seb caught the bird before it closed in on the parchment. Aurok peeped cheerfully, nodding its head to duck within the warm cage of Seb’s curled fingers. Knowing what came next, the scribe hastily cleaned his pen and set it aside before placing the bird back onto the desk, an arm’s length from his workspace.

Merrily, Aurok strode toward the parchment. Seb caught it up again, the bird giving a high flute of excitement. Back to the scarred wood of the table, the bird’s steps jauntier, eager for the next part of the game. Once more Seb scooped up the bird, adding a small swoop to the path of his hand as he returned Aurok to its starting point. They repeated this cycle several times, until Aurok nipped Seb’s finger in a clear declaration of the end of the game.

Seb returned to his work and Aurok returned to its current project of tearing apart an old rag. Without interruptions, the outlining was done quickly. Seb tidied his workspace to make room for the paints. Seeing Aurok well occupied with its rag, he turned around to fill a dish with water.

The pleasant sound of splashing covered the noise of any crimes, and Seb turned back to the desk to see Aurok halfway across the parchment, the dainty claws of its feet leaving a trail through the not fully dried ink.

There was mercy in heaven, Seb thought, for Aurok’s path had not crossed the careful script of the verse. Quietly, he set the dish of water down and closed the distance to the desk. Aurok, focused on its quest, ignored him as it rummaged between the assorted jars and containers that accumulated on any working surface. Smoothly and swiftly, Seb’s hand darted out and captured the bird. Aurok showed no distress at this, nor in Seb wiping its feet, as it was far too engrossed in prising out the meat of a walnut half. Seb could not remember when he had last eaten walnuts and resolved that in the future he would pick up and wipe under the things on his desk rather than sweeping around them.

Its prize obtained, Aurok expressed no further interest in crossing Seb’s desk. The scribe spent the rest of the daylight incorporating Aurok’s inky steps into the design. The end result, he had to admit, was quite harmonious.

Another year down! This is the fourth year I’ve completed Flash Fiction February and the fourth year I’ve put my favourite pieces into a wee collection and stuck it on Itch. And you can get it right here I’ve always likened the challenge to using a sketchbook, it’s an exercise, more often than not, to learn you can make some words come out at will. “Write 500 words from this prompt” feels very similar to my brain as “look at all these hairstyles and practise drawing them.” But, just like some pages of a sketchbook, sometimes you get something tangible from the practise.

Since writing flash tends to be a more contained practise than a sketchbook page, I am lucky enough to find ten stories every year to bring together, edit, illustrate, and share. My favourite part though, is that once I’ve got a new collection up, I take four favorites (of the ten favorites) from the previous year and share them on my blog. I really just like sharing stuff I’ve made. I like to think people read what I write. And after a year, picking four favourites really does bring the focus in on the most interesting or fun stuff.

Anyway! This year the illustrations were in the vibe of headpieces, with central images. Always a fun challenge to keep it: photocopy black and white AND somehow visually illustrate what isn’t often a visual set of words. In theory I could print any of these out into proper zines. Maybe someday I will.

Until then, here’s the pitch snagged from the collection’s page on Itch, where you can get it for a dollar:

Ten flash fiction pieces collected together with illustrations for each. There’s time loops,

There were probably better ways to spend a time loop than a job interview. Luz had done them. Made a lot of memories. Great stuff.

a smidgen of softness,

The cookbook was one of Cara’s most prized possessions. She’d found it at a junk sale, which seemed to be how it had entered every previous owner’s home. It fell open to the most-used recipes, some pages spice-stained, others clearly the victim of spills… On any of the most-used looking recipes, there was commentary from a half-dozen ghosts scrawled in any empty space.

and also time loops.

Check who is in front of you, is it the same group as every morning? Are they wearing the same clothes as every morning? No! How wonderful! The auntie two people in front of you is wearing a shawl not a sweater today, that’s great! That’s two things different this morning already!

This 7.7k+ word flash fiction collection is available as epub, mobi, and pdf files.

Content warnings: unreality, time loop death.

Based on The Pink, collected by the Grimm brothers. The original is an Aarne-Thompson type 652, The Boy Whose Wishes Always Come True.

One moment, I existed.

The moment before that I wasn’t even a thought. It’s a different thing, to not exist. It’s not all nothingness, that’s for sure. Nothing is something, if it’s the absence of it. It wasn’t all that jarring to suddenly be, but my mind was full with being around finite things, with just being. I wasn’t, then I was. I wondered if, from then on I couldn’t ever not have been.

The first words I heard were that I was so beautiful a painter couldn’t do my face justice. I didn’t know how to respond to that, for various reasons. Then the man who’d spoken patted a boy on the head and wandered off. The boy and I stared at each other. I wiggled my fingers and toes, not ready to look at them yet. I think we stood there a while, regarding each other. Something friendly broke through the boy and he took my hand and showed me around.

I learned we were children, of about the same age. He chattered at me about how he’d been stolen, his mother framed for negligence and locked away. The castle and grounds we walked had been asked for by the captor and wished into existence by the boy. It turned out I’d been wished for as well, to be a friend and playmate.

“I’m glad you turned out pretty,” he told me.

So we bided time, living a lazy existence not really worthy of itself. We rode horses, I gathered flowers while we walked the gardens, I took up needlework. I liked needlework, because I could pretend to create things, when I was really just transmuting thread into designs, flat fabric into dimensional, purposeful shapes. My work scattered around the house, marking the passing of time as a runner laid itself across the table, a cloth appeared over a basket of bread, doilies insinuated themselves under vases and knick-knacks.

I realised early on that my own position in the castle was on par with the aprons I made—we both were fancy things created to ease the wear of daily life on more valuable things. I listened to the prince talk and did not ask aloud why we lived here with his abductor when he knew his mother lived in punishment for the supposed death of her child. Sometimes the prince said he missed his father, but I don’t know if he meant it.

There were no servants. Meals appeared, rooms became clean when you looked away, dust never collected and the gardens tended to themselves. We didn’t see much of the man; he was always out hunting, or studying maps, or flowers, or something.

There were originally no books in the castle, because the prince didn’t care for them. The library had false shelves lined with sheets of pretty-coloured spines. The man had the prince wish him books, once, but their insides were blank. Perhaps the prince was being petty. Perhaps if the man had wanted specific books, the boy could have wished them. His wishes seemed to take care of themselves. I had a heart that beat, I ate and eliminated. My anatomy was a female’s, though the prince when wishing me, had been fully ignorant of what that might consist of. I was like the books though, empty. I never bled with the moon. The man asked once about it, I wouldn’t have known it was a missing function otherwise.

So we lived and existed. The prince told me he loved me and I told him I loved him. I doubt he meant it more than I did, but he seemed to believe what was said. The prince mentioned his father more regularly and the man became more anxious, spending more time hunting.

One day the man found me alone and told me to kill the prince. I told him I could not, that I saw no reason for it, as the prince had never harmed anyone. The man threatened my life and left. When he next returned from hunting and saw the prince and I playing dice, the man held my gaze, mouthing again his threat to my life.

He repeated his command the next day before riding out. When he’d gone into the woods I asked the prince to wish me a deer. He did it without question. I butchered the animal, cutting out its tongue and heart, setting them on a plate.

“You could have just asked for those,” the prince commented, turning the plate so a ray of sun lit the blood like jewels.

I shrugged and we went about our day until the man was due home. The prince hid and I held out the plate to the man as he entered, removing his gloves.

“You’ve killed the prince as I asked, then?” He did not take the plate. We regarded each other a moment before the prince emerged from his hiding place and swore at the man, whose face turned white.

The prince wished the man into a dog and fed it coals, but it did not die. Looking at the beast sobbing on the tile, the prince told me he was going to return to his father, the king. I hesitated joining him, for I’d never been off the grounds of our wished-for home.

But the prince wanted me, so he wished me into a flower, put me in his pocket and went on his way. I didn’t know of his adventures in travelling, or what kind of flower I was, or if the castle continued to exist after we left it. I found out most things later, but not what happened to the castle.

Being a flower was not like being a human and it was also unlike not existing. There was still an “I.” I was a flower. As flowers measure it, I was a flower for a very long time.

When the prince wished me human again I was standing on a table and the first words I heard were that I was so beautiful a painter couldn’t do my face justice. I looked at those seated along the table and lining the walls. At my feet sat a tired old man with a crown. The prince stood next to him. The dog who had been a man was not there. All the rest totalled more faces than I’d seen in my existence.

Four more strangers led in a woman whose eyes held nothing behind them. From the prince and king’s conversation with her, she was the falsely accused queen. The little family talked there at the head of the table while all the court looked on, straining their ears. I remained standing on the table, but no one seemed to notice.

The queen died some days later and the king soon followed. The prince became king and married me, I accompanied him on walks through the gardens, or stood by his side in court. I went back to my needlework.

I wonder what will happen to me after he dies. Will I keep existing? I have asked, but nobody knows if the castle we once lived in still exists even though it stands empty and the prince has forgotten it. If I stop existing, with the things I make with my hands still exist? Will the little cloths that cover the chair arms still protect them from dirt, the lace still keep the sharp legs of vases from scratching the woodwork? I worry that if the king dies, the things I have done will come undone.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

So, what’s the status right now?

• The outline of the second book is where it was last week, that’s fine, because:
• I’m about a third into the first write of the chapter that has to be inserted into the first book—which I’m not going to let Chase (my beloved first reader and editor) read until he is further along in going over the edits of the first book. Incentive, folks.

And!

As I may have mentioned before, once he’s gone over the edits and the new scenes are plugged in, I’m getting a couple copies of The Audacity Gambit printed POD, for another read-through. It’ll need a cover though, right? How about this:

This was fun to do and a great image test as well. I’ll probably revisit the visual theme.

So, progress continues.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

I have like two thirds of the book outlined! This is a hella beefier outline that what I used for the first book, but I have a lot more characters and tropes to keep track of and fulfil.

I still want to write a flash or two to fill out what gets done this month, but since I’m also revising/editing The Audacity Gambit, we’ll see. I want to print out the revised draft through a POD, for one more read through, but it will need a cover.  Which is why I made this.

You’ll find out why.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

• “Immortality or power breeds immaturity.”
• “Needs are what dominate and shape human existence.”
• “In the end, it’s just you versus Sauron.”

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Oop, wrote a quick story.

From his balcony carved out of living rock, Teags watched the Great Burn eat its way across the world. Huddled around his coffee in the crisp mountain air, he saw flames licking at the borders of Second Hope. His sister, along with the rest of the township, had been evacuated on schedule according to the proctor’s evaluation of the fire’s path through their sector. It hadn’t been a panicked evac, a full month’s notice gave the people of Second Hope plenty of time to close up and clear out. Teag’s sister had told him before they left that the mayorship predicted an 80% property recovery on return.

“It’s not like the bad old days before we understood the mirrors, Johhan,” her face flickering warmly on the screen. “We’re well-prepared and have plenty of warning.” She smiled and Teags smiled back at her, even though it was a recorded message. “Besides, all thirty-five towns before us in the path have evacuated safely.” Teags sing-songed the familiar joke along with his sister, “fifty years since the last Great Burn death!”

Up in his cliff wall eyrie, Teags had a different evac date than the forest below. He’d built the house into the rock, on the edge of the cut sliced into the mountain by untold cycles of the sun’s fire. The contractors had given him a 98% property recovery rate. His own calculations placed him closer to 90%, but most of the damage would be from dust and extreme radiant heat, rather than forest fire and direct flame. He touched the leaves of a bush growing from a sculpted hollow in the rock. His plants would die, but the things inside the house would stay relatively cool and protected in their man-made cave.

Inside, the phone chimed insistently. Teags stayed on the balcony, watching the fire and finishing his coffee. He listened to the familiar automated message. It reminded him of each individual person’s value to the community, the importance of prudence and safety and gave him the evacuation route for his sector. There was a human-like pause as the program checked its calendar against his position. “The Great Burn will reach your location in one day.”

Teags went inside to make himself a meal, but brought it back out to eat. The air was growing slowly warmer, the first flakes of ash landing on his arms. At night, trails of smoke occluded the stars, reflecting back the light of the flames, pierced by the colourless ray of sunfire chewing its way towards the mountain.

In the morning, Teags ran another systems check. Everything that could be damaged by heat had already been moved deeper into the rock. Satisfied, Teags went back to the balcony, watching from behind dark glasses as the light edged its way into the ravine burned over millennia. Chiming sounded again from inside, the message calm but insistent. Teags had grown to admire the automated system. It had just enough AI to send out notifications and warnings independent of the proctor’s calculations.

With a last look at the fire, Teags closed up his home and followed the winding stairs down to the sub-basements. At the bottom he stumbled in the dark and panicked, worrying about the security’s power grid. His glasses slid down as he shook his head, the soft backup lights shining around the lenses like dawn. Grimacing, he took them off.

Bundled in a heavy coat against the chill, he ran a final check of the air system, already yawning in anticipation of sleep. He never could get used to sleeping under the fire-lit clouds. Finally assured that if he died, it wouldn’t be through suffocation, Teags fell onto a cot under a pile of blankets and slept.

He’d set the lights to dim at night, in an attempt to fend off the timelessness of evenly reflected, constant illumination. They were dialling back up as he woke, sweating, the calendar telling him he’d slept a full day, but no more. Slurping an emergency ration, Teags settled in at the rickety camp table, reviewing charts. He didn’t need them to see that the mirror cycles were speeding up at a geometric rate, the last Great Burn had come through only a month before, the one before just a half year before that. He didn’t want to project when the next one would be.

He gazed blankly at the stack of papers. The sector map was now useless, the last few towns he’d caught radio signals from had gone quiet over the last week. His home-made weather station data gave him nothing helpful. If the world was spinning faster or if only the mirrors had gone insane he didn’t know.

When the lights dimmed again he was still at the table, twirling a dried twig in his fingers. No matter how quickly the new growth was burned off, the native plants on the mountain burst back into fruitful bloom as soon as the temperature dropped below oven-hot. Teags wished he was a botanist, or that a botanist was still around to appreciate what the plants were doing.

He’d stripped to his underwear and slippers, wishing for a shower to take the edge off the pervasive heat. With deliberate movements, he set out the last of the emergency rations and tried to make a banquet out of them, mixing elements the best he could without a kitchen. He decided against watching his sister’s message again and put on a pair of pants and the dark glasses. With a shrug, he started up the stairs.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.