Stories
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To Swim Among Stars
Originally published in Mundelein Writes: Nature, by the Mundelein Arts Commission, Mundelein, Illinois, 2018 Astrid Ventas sat in the jungle and looked out the window into the sea. She hated it here. Not just the jungle, though that was bad enough. It was humid, smelled of decay, and was full of insects with an alarming degree of self-awareness. She hated the whole dome system though; the desert and the arctic and the beautiful meadow. All of it. She hated being trapped in a web of glass bubbles meters deep in the ocean. But the jungle served as a refuge. All the others, the ones who believed in their purpose, felt…
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The Flight
I wrote this short one all in one sitting. I sometimes start writing with a line and see where it takes me. I rarely make it a whole story with no planning, but this is one of those. I am planning two more to make a kind of a series. More of a triptych for flash fiction. Get some different perspectives on the story. I hope you enjoy it! Let me know in the comments what you thought. The blue glow of her hands told me she knew she’d found me at last. The others dining at the inn had all stopped eating and drinking and laughing to look at…
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Legacy
I’d like to apologize for my absence the last couple of weeks. As they say, life happens. This is a short story I wrote based on the first prompt in my Irish Mythology list. I couldn’t get that scene out of my head and it turned into this flash piece. I hope you enjoy it! Gann looked out over the battlements. The cold fog clung to his beard and beaded on his skin. The watchmen had called for him as soon as the ship was spotted. The initial sighting had caused quite a stir. No ships should be coming from the northern sea at this stormy time of year. High winds…
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Bequest
This story is long overdue. The inspiration for this one came from the article on the discovery of the Ottoman tomb. My original plan proved …inadequate and I had to start over. Not completely, I still used the elements I set out in that article, but the plot I had in mind needed some major tweaking. So here is the story I promised all those weeks ago. Hopefully, my next one won’t be so long in coming. Enjoy! Bequest Silvaria flew into the tent, her amethyst and gold robes fluttering around her. The room was tinted by the sun filtering though the orange fabric. The table full of gleaming instruments…
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The Mysterious Fate of the Metus
They hadn’t seen the cairn the night before. Captain Williams pulled up the collar of her wool coat as the wind buffeted her and whipped up tiny cyclones of powdery snow and ice that stung her face. The lookout had roused her as soon as there was enough light to distinguish shapes. Perhaps on a normal mission suspicion wouldn’t have arisen so soon. But here in this barren, frozen heath, any anomaly on the horizon warranted investigation. The sun was high enough now, attempting to inject some color into the monotone world of ice and snow, that they could see it was a stone cairn, simple pile of large gray-brown…
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Spirit of Discovery
The darkness was part of him. Akhilleus could barely remember a time before the darkness. He knew in his bones, now all that remained of him, that there was something before the darkness, but now that life was but a pebble in the river of time that designated his existence. So now, as the darkness began slowly to lift, he was forced to wonder if he faced the end of that river. Some unknown end to existence itself. But he did not fear. The darkness had erased any ability to fear from him. While he might not fear he did feel a certain…apprehension. He did not know if this new…
