Adventure
The High Keeper
A sudden forgotten task leapt into my mind. I looked at the trees around me, cataloging each. Spruce, pine, elm, maple… Not the tree I needed; I had to go deeper into the forest. Alder, I needed to find an alder tree. It would be easy to spot one this time of year. Long catkins covered in tiny white-yellow flowers would be hanging from the branches. It wasn’t these I was after though. I needed an alder tree for one of the residents of its branches. High, high up in the top of the alder tree, safe from deer who munched the moss on its trunk, and too sparce to provide the cover birds desired, grew a rare flower, a type of yellow orchid called Wizard’s Tears.
By Ashley Somogyi5 years ago in Fiction
The High Keeper
My mother used to tell me stories about what things were like before. She would tell me how the world was a kinder place, that people were not so fearful of each other. Sometimes she would sing me songs she had heard in Nandorun, the capital city, before it became a place of fear to people like me, before the Rune Lords betrayed us. She said everything was spring and summer then. But that was long before I was born, when my mother was still a young girl. I don’t have any memories like she does, I can’t even really imagine a world like that.
By Ashley Somogyi5 years ago in Fiction
How to use Satan.
Having eaten from the tree of knowledge with my wonderful wife, I soon became aware I had to be careful around the owners of the trees and their fruits. We thought it wise to allow them to think they had fooled us so we could keep our lives so played along with their stories of having cultivated that area, but we would never be free to leave what we had thought was like a paradise - we are sorry if you have not understood what is written between the lines of the records we wanted to keep as a warning, but the cultivators have censored everything we tried to keep.
By Donald Joiner5 years ago in Fiction
Freedom in a Landfill
We never believed it could happen to us. No one ever does. Not until they find themselves in the middle of real world horror. It’s strange how we all saw it coming, but either chose to ignore the signs, or genuinely believed something, someone, somewhere, would stop it — It couldn’t really happen in The United States of America for fucks sake. It was a gradual dissent into a situation we often read about in history books, but in 2045? That just wasn’t possible.
By Rii Pierce5 years ago in Fiction
The Underdwellers
A decimated and desolate land of Sixth Earth is all that I remember from childhood. Years of warfare, pollution, and plague have, tragically, shaped THAT future. No one would dare walk the land of this Earth for very long; for, during the day, an intense warm or a decimating Winter could be a person's downfall; by night, we fear the hunts of the Skylanders. Seas still surround Sixth Earth where the Aquatitans may live as they have not pledged their warriors and resources to a side yet. History has already created the rift between Skylanders and Underdwellers. That is WHY we stay to our underground lairs for protection and may only venture upward for brief stints at a stretch in search of resources. To live only to our tunnels is no way to woo the Aquatitans to the side of justice. Nevertheless, the Skylanders in their constant hunts for new prey and their misuse of advanced war technology have never convinced the Aquatitans to join them either. Virgor leads us. He is a good leader; a headstrong, former military commander who will keep himself in front of danger for the family pack. Lotek is as close to a technician and weaponsmith as we are about to find in our Underearth; and, though we will never boast a technological advantage over the Skylanders, we require his technology for our PROTECTION. Fuja promises to be a good healer and spiritual guide; but her mind is lost to age. She even speaks of an ancestral race of Cat People who could not only WALK an Earth three cycles in the past of the one we know; but who were bold enough to protect it... Virgor promises that he has found something as one final opportunity to enjoin our forces with the Aquatitans. I hope that, this time, he is right...
By Kent Brindley5 years ago in Fiction
The underworld
The Underworld This is no space station, but it sure looks like one on the blueprints. The time its taking to build, the investors, the planning but now it is ready. I have been training for months with the crew of astronauts on how to manoeuvre around in big bulky suits floating. The skills learned at NASSA have been significant to the many hours of training.
By Leslie Strom5 years ago in Fiction
Claiming Mass Devotion
Sakura Kanagawa was the reason Yuzuko remained sane. She visited her husband’s grave every morning. Sakura now insisted in joining her for emotional support. Yuzuko had traumatic visions of broken robots and blood. They lingered in her nightmares and her thoughts. The guilt that she destroyed the robots her family empire had worked so hard to protect was like a tattoo.
By Chloe Gilholy5 years ago in Fiction
The Reset
Something was wrong. I had seen this street countless times, walked the same steps nearly every weekend; I remembered how I had avoided walking past the house with the chain link fence that looked moments from falling down. Something was off and it unsettled me. I struggled to ignore the anxiety that was rising in my chest, the pool of acid that had started to collect within my lungs was making every breath increasingly more difficult. The trees were taller, the street littered with piles of leaves and weeds pushing through the pavement. The world started to spin and I realised I was hyperventilating, my heaving chest making the ground beneath me rock. The chain-link fence had met its demise, some time ago judging by the garden that had now overtaken it. I wondered what had happened to the dog that used to live at the end of a chain behind that rusted wire. I started to get light headed as I realised - it was silent. Not the quiet of a casual afternoon but dead-quite. The dog was no longer there barking at all that went past, there was no movement. I stopped walking and tried to focus on my feet planted on the pavement, tried to think of the warmth of the sun on my skin and the breeze in my hair. I sucked in a deep breath and held it, willing my heart to find a slower rhythm, begging my lungs to expel the acrid effervescence with my breath. Settling into the closest I could get to calm I inhaled once more before lifting my head and opening the gate to house number 43.
By Obsidian Words5 years ago in Fiction
Neighbors
Jerome was slowly descending the side of what apparently was a mountain, or at least seemed that way. He had started this journey from his front porch about ten minutes ago. “Find something that shows the power of nature, and take a picture of it.” Mr. Smith, his science teacher, had given out the assignment as they were leaving yesterday.
By Josh Mallernee5 years ago in Fiction
