The festival passed by absent either girl's presence, as neither felt particularly festive. When the time came for Taka to return to her studies, she did so eagerly, searching for any distraction from the painful fissure in her heart.

When her own gempuk…

Story is marked as mature

We talked every night. We wrote letters. The distance never diminished our love for each other. We had it all figured out.

I flew out to see you on Valentine's day. You baked me a cake for my birthday. We had Thanksgiving dinner with your family. …

Veron Gerrick scrolled through the palace alerts looking for anything that demanded his personal attention. Much of his staff had been inherited from his mother and their loyalty had transferred to him when he had assumed the position of High Lord. They w…

Provoking dreams, you’re welcome at my door

To enter, and to make yourself at home

The myriad uses of this ballroom floor

Can serve each purpose, rather like a tome

Of tales and poems, redolent of dreams.

Oh, we can dance there, never doubt it’s true!

Bu…

I stare at the picture a few seconds longer. Anyone else would just think it's another ghetto teen couple in cheap Hawaiin garb in the middle of a dirty city.

A grin spreads across my face. She's hideous in her coconut bra and grass skirt.

He's lost all…

As the finely honed edge of his opponent's weapon sliced the air where his head had been a mere fraction of a second previously, he would have sworn to the gods that the blade sang, not with anger but joy. Stinging above his left eye told him that the bla…

The hallway wasn't long enough to break into a full run and Lenn barely registered the pictures of strangers that lined both walls as he went by. Guided by the only light coming out of one of the three doorways at the end of the hall, he felt like the cap…

She mourned him. Not even the real him. She mourned the loss of the fantasy she'd made of him.

In her dreams he said all the right things, had all the right moves, shared the same jokes, had the cutest smile and softest touch. She happily stayed in bed …

A spark of green faelight flitted through the nursery window as the last rays of day faded from the sky. At its a center a faerie, no bigger than a single mote of dust. It flew around the room once, twice, three times, before finally settling on the edge …

Liz' thoughts were interrupted by a flash of fire and a dragon's roar.

Across the small park, a winged beast, its crimson scales glittering in the midmorning sunlight, loomed over a trio of fantastical figures standing knee-deep in the sea of swirling gr…

My face must have said more than my silence because she added quickly, “It's not a church or anything crazy like that. I might be a little old fashioned but I know right from right. It's more of a social. We meet at the Autumn Garden Theatre. You know the…

The Growth has covered the entire coastline for as long as we could tell, and it grew out onto the ocean in some places. Some kind of toxic organism, killed five of ours. No safe landing anywhere.

It had been too long. Rations were dwindling, the crew sta…

Bundled up against the autumn chill, Liz wandered the city streets, alone with her thoughts.

Stopping to let a train of delivery-bots cross the sidewalk, she glanced around, noticing again just how empty the streets and walkways were on a Saturday mornin…

"The average human being is about 40 percent mitochondria by biomass," you said. "Mitochondria are wicked tiny, but their job is to produce energy, right. Like, tons of it. Well, it's tiny in our perspective, but if you were their size, it's like a ligh…

She came home and began to write by the light of a candle:

When it started, my forced adulthood, I chose solitude after a childhood of endless interruptions of privacy; we were abandoned by Father and death took Mother away. As soon as I could find a way,…

Inspiration sought

but just for a thought

a snippet of something to say

Longs' been the time

when my heart penned a rhyme

emotions inspiring some prose

A muse just to bring

to light a small thing

that awakens creativities flow

when quite so suddenly

I …

There was a big thunderstorm in the night, starting at around 00.00. I thought the lightning was the brightest I'd ever seen - like it was day for a second.

I turned off all the lights, pulled up the blinds, opened the window and just watched for a whil…

Tonia saw the tiny robotic bug skitter underneath the sealed metal door and into the Writing Room. Xe knew that there remained less than a minute before the fuse it carried would reach the bomb and tear the room to flinders, and Grace along with it. Tonia…

Several years later, I was sixteen. Life had continued much the same, although Verux was now hesitant to send more people. We'd been pretty successful in beating them back, especially with Nochra on our side. She was an incredibly skilled fighter, with a …

In the middle of the night the world ended. It was actually quite mediocre. Unfortunately I was too drugged up to notice much, except one second I was lying on my hospital bed and the next I was under the wreckage of the hospital.

Its face was playing tricks on me.

It has been 7 years floating inside this heap. Sometimes I forget that it isn't really a face. It's a control panel. The dials, however... & the read outs? They are definitely face like. It's not just some goofy "space …

Malika barked a derisive laugh. "If by 'grounded' you mean, did it feel more real than the lesser deathless we cut down? Then yes. Yes, it did." She reached up and pointedly rubbed at her shoulder again, even though the ache was barely there. "I don't kno…

Winters here are not bitterly cold, just barren. The acid rainy season drives everyone underground as the leaves melt off the trees. Harvest was good, we will survive until the leaves sprout again, but the council meets every day to craft more rules.

The…

A grisly, grating moan spread across the warrior tribe as they discovered their kin at the shrine.

They heard still the beyond's war drum beating across their hearts, and they thrashed like raging bulls in grief.

Michael's spell ceased stasis; the red…