The Medium - Bit 24 by QuiEstInLiteris, literature
Literature
The Medium - Bit 24
Sebastian was frighteningly enthusiastic about the idea. He counted it as a victory, and he said as much. Rhona nodded, but Lenny knew it was a calculated retreat. He prayed Sebastian did not find out, for everyone’s sake.
“Let’s go,” Sebastian commanded as soon as he had heard the plan. Lenny hauled himself to his feet. “The sooner we get this done, the better. I want to get underground.”
Suddenly, Rhona was between them and the door, her hands on her hips. “Not even,” she snapped. “First, we lay done some ground rules. I don’t want you” – she thrust her finger into S
The Medium - Bit 23 by QuiEstInLiteris, literature
Literature
The Medium - Bit 23
The place where Lenny woke was stained, and the feeling was one he knew. He became aware of it gradually, bits at a time, even before he could recognize how awful he felt, shaky and exhausted, washed out. The air around him was tight and heavy with death, ticking like a cooling engine, and that was part of him. The feel of death broke in on his ghost sense before his own pain could hit him. He quickly catalogued what he knew. The death was recent, violent, two or more people. There were shades nearby, rapidly fading, but no real spirits, and even the echoes would be gone by the time the bodies had cooled. No unfinished business, then. No conf
The Medium - Bit 22 by QuiEstInLiteris, literature
Literature
The Medium - Bit 22
Kim hung up and looked at Coyote.
“No one’s free to go with you,” he growled. “Have to keep looking for bits to use. If the chindi son of a bitch hadn’t burned out his apartment…”
“You keep saying that,” Bernice cut in. “Chindi. What the hell is that?”
“Dead,” Coyote snarled. “Dead and evil. No offense.”
Bernice rolled her eye. The patch covered the socket where her glowing glass prosthetic sat.
“Go alone,” Bernice suggested. “Duran can’t track you, or I strongly doubt he can, so you’re safe until you’ve got your
The Saga of Thunder Shore - Penpals by cassander42, literature
Literature
The Saga of Thunder Shore - Penpals
Ázeth sits at an old wooden table covered in papers, parchments, and vials of ink. The surrounding stone room flickers with dozens of candles arranged on various shelves hewn from the limestone walls. The large grey guardian dragon wears a colorful blue hood and neatly writes lines of verse with a dark red quill. He alternates between careful strokes and staring off into the shadows, lost in thought.
Two nagas accompany him. Both have the torsos of human women but with long snake tails instead of legs. Through some trick of anatomy, they stand without trouble. Citraka, clad in red scales and with a freckled face, sits with Ázeth at t
Those who can hear the chanting of the sun need no further explanation; those who only hear light, or occasional moans, don’t either.
If one fact about the Community Radio is universally acknowledged — and the government, aided by the Secret Police, vouches for it — it is that, in Night Vale, the weather forecast is always in tune and never wrong.
More than just once, in everyone’s physical life, words turn out to be dull and unnecessary. With the weather, the lack of words bears more meaning than their presence; a long string of hot, hot and hot would never be able to describe the shades of indigo in its sound.
The
She walked with bare feet, her cloak’s hem sliding across marble made a pleasing sound.
Her breath came out in a laugh, in reflecting on how walking in near silence (which was normally duller to her perception than dashing with music plainly audible) had become so enjoyable. Lighting and temperature honed to perfect comfort, bright enough for clear visibility and warm enough for a painless barefoot tread.
Her gait halted at the centre of the room and, in a manner that was always as a lotus bloom in her mind, an array of screens rose up to rest against the walls. Lighting up, some showing listed data arranged from observations compiled
The Medium - Bit 21 by QuiEstInLiteris, literature
Literature
The Medium - Bit 21
Lenny occasionally made an effort to confirm or clarify something, but he let Kim do most of the talking. She was just better at it than he was. The few times he spoke up, he only seemed to make the confusion worse. They talked for over an hour, and in the end, Mara agreed to let Lenny stay – reluctantly.
“If it’s such a non-issue, why didn’t you ever tell me?” she demanded.
“Habit,” he mumbled around the thumbnail between his teeth. “And I was g-going to. I spent the whole t-t-time on the bus planning…”
But there was no way to prove that statement, and Mara did not seem to believe
Untoward Games of the Drag by Serensa-Stanza-scale, literature
Literature
Untoward Games of the Drag
Bulg had managed to skirt around the hunting grounds of most of the proudest clans in the province, and so he’d been avoiding any discernible trouble for a few days. However, the pride with which he’d trodden for the last few hours had evaporated; as it was, after all, rather difficult to maintain such when wading through bogs.
During a period of rest he snapped up a few clumped eel remains, waste not, want not.
After a few vain efforts to rid himself of at least some of the accumulated filth, he suddenly realised he was having difficulty counting his toes. The Earth Snapper lowered his browridges and snorted discontentedly. Fog.
Interesting Conversations 28 by ryu-ren, literature
Literature
Interesting Conversations 28
) Me and Animals (
Me: Today I discovered that the dog likes to curl up under my desk and nap when I'm not using it. This is why nothing ever works on/near my desk, because she gets tangled up in the cords under the desk and unplugs everything.
Katie: I had a dream last night that all of the raptors at Nature's Ed were speaking Japanese and were basically like, character stereotypes. The red-tailed hawk was the stalwart serious one, the Harris' hawk was the mischievous prankster and the kestrel was the adorable high-pitched sweet one. XD. The best part was when Zephyr said, "Katie-san...ano...daisuke!" >////<
Sean: And the newest hit anime.
The phone rang. Beside her, she was aware of Lenny holding his breath as he listened, the tension in his body, the pressure in his lungs.
There was a click.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Ms. Demarco?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“My name is Kim Reed. I understand you know someone called Leonard Hugo?”
There was a brief pause, then, “I knew him, yeah. What is this about?”
Kim felt the tension go out of the man beside her. He slumped forward over his knees, letting out a whistling breath, and dug his knuckles into his eyes. Kim could feel the lump rising in his throat and fought to keep an identical o