0 Comments
0 Shares
0 Views
0 Reviews
Directory
Discover new ideas, create new connections and make new friends
-
Please log in to like, share and comment!
-
The Pale ProtocolAct I "Sign here, Xiu Song. The ink is drying." I looked up from the ledger, my hand still hovering over the page, the tip of the brush trembling against the paper. The office was dim, the only light coming from the oil lamp on the desk, which cast a long, wavering shadow across the floor. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, fast by six minutes, a rhythm I had kept for twenty years without...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden Song"Put the pen down, Vane." The voice came from the doorway, dry and papery, belonging to Dr. Aris, a man who smelled of stale tobacco and antiseptic and who had the habit of checking his watch every forty seconds as if time were a debt he was trying to collect. Elias Vane did not put the pen down; his hand was trembling, not from fear but from the cold that seemed to radiate off the stone walls...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Wistful MountainThe ice on the Kyzyl-Kum does not reflect; it delays. I Nasrin Kazemi stood at the border checkpoint, her hands raw from the cold, the wind cutting through her wool coat like a blade through wet cloth. She was thirty-two, a border officer of the Silk Road garrison, and she wanted the promotion that would secure her post before the winter freeze sealed the passes. What stood against him was not...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden MythAct I I was scrubbing the blood from the floorboards when the fog rolled in, thick as wet wool and smelling of the orange groves in quarantine, a scent that did not belong to the border station but clung to the air with the persistence of a debt. My name, Suzanne Noel, was stamped in black ink on the roster pinned to the wall, a stark declaration of thirty-two years of service that meant...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant JokeChapter One "Is the pressure holding, or are we just waiting for the pipe to burst?" I looked up from the console, my fingers still resting on the cold metal of the keyboard, and watched the needle on the gauge tremble against the red line. It was a subtle movement, a micro-vibration that most of the men on the shift would have dismissed as a faulty sensor, but I knew the weight of the fluid in...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded ApartmentThe letter from the county clerk was yellowed at the edges, the ink faded to a brownish gray that matched the dust on Elias Thorne’s desk. He read it twice, his thumb tracing the line that designated him the sole executor of the Miller estate, a task assigned not out of kindness but out of a bureaucratic vacuum that left no other constable willing to touch the property. Oakhaven was a place...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded FrontierMy boots crunched on the salt crust, the sound sharp as a breaking tooth. I was halfway across the dry bed of the Rio Grande when the horizon began to warp. It wasn't heat. The air was still, heavy with the smell of sulfur and old rust. The white expanse stretched out, a blank page waiting for a stain. I held the letter in my left hand, the paper damp with sweat. My mother’s voice was gone, but...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded RiverThe molten gather on the blowpipe was a bright, screaming eye, and I was blowing into it with all the air in my lungs, trying to keep the shape from collapsing under its own weight, while the smell of sulfur and hot iron hung in the workshop like a heavy, wet blanket that I could not shake off. It was the year of our Lord 1240, and the city of Aethelgard was dying by degrees, though the High...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant ThresholdChapter One Did you know that a man can forget his own name before he forgets his debt? I asked this to the night bus driver, Mikel, as I hauled my airlock wrench across the threshold of the maintenance bay. He didn’t look up from his steering wheel, only the gears shifted with a heavy, metallic groan that echoed off the hydroponic walls. The dusting had stopped the city three hours ago, a...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
Arabic
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Deutsch
Turkish
Dutch
Italiano
Russian
Romaian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Greek