The Defenders Pasha tugged his sister up from where they’d hidden under Bora lake and watched the bizarre scene play out. Her face was round, with a small mouth and wide set, slanted eyes. She was a child—not even thirty, yet—but she looked even younger. Tears mingled with fishy lake water, now black and grey […]
The Black Wall-Prologue
“Guilty.” The Grace’s word reverberated through the Hall. The Grace of Fom, an angular, thin woman with hair and eyes the color of unpolished iron, waited for the echo of her verdict to die before continuing. “General Albertus Mann, you are condemned to the Pit for public viewing until dead, for sedition, treason, and the […]
The Black Wall: Chapter One
The Invasion: Six Months Before the Verdict Bodies lay strewn, pale against the rich brown ground. Blood muddied the soil between the trunks of massive trees, churned until its hue matched the broad, fern-like leaves grasping the sky. Long-beaked scavenger birds, red breasted with gleaming black wings, hunched in the lower branches, silent and waiting. […]
We’re All In This Together
I heard some advice that we should keep track of our days during these plague days. Or months. Or years. For posterity, I suppose. On one hand, I can see the value in that, but on the other, life is a blank page when our days are spent behind closed doors, away from one another […]
Corona-Japan
Taiki has been home sick half the week. Normally that sort of thing doesn’t bother me, other than it means I’m not going to get much done, but these days there’s a mild sense of concern beyond that of the normal, “My five year old is sick yet again. Goddamn it, there goes my day.” […]