Valentine's Day had always been a singular sort of holiday for me. The pinks and reds and hearts and fluttering cherubs didn't mean quite the same thing to me as most people, because they reminded me not of the romantic purpose of the holiday, but of my birthday, which was February 15th. I haven't been what I would call "a sparkly pink girl" ( Read more... )

It wasn't a table so much as a plank of wood on a bunch of books on drug rehabilitation. And it wasn't so much walnuts and a pea as coconuts and fountain pen, but Mason was ready. The three coconut halves lay out spread mostly evenly on the table. Mason had even had the foresight to smooth them out and pick ones that looked more or less ( Read more... )

I'm not real clear on how this came to be, but it seems I manage to stumble over a lotta people with magic. Like this redhead kid I got taggin' along behind me now, for instance-- I was just lookin' at this bike magazine the bookshelf gave me (its own little Christmas present, I guess) and there's this kid, askin' me all sorts'a questions about " ( Read more... )

The projector wasn't exactly light, but with a little effort I dragged it and it's fold-away screen upstairs and set them up in the rec room. After several false starts that nearly ruined the movie, I managed to thread the film into the thing properly and adjusted it without too much fuss. I kept trying to remember Mr. Becker's biology class, ( Read more... )

I have to admit: The snow had thrown me for a loop. Being a dead person -- Well, ex-dead person, I guess it is now -- I try to play it off like I'm all Zen and nothing surprises me, but waking up to snow on what had been a tropical island the night before was pretty far off the map. Even I couldn't act like it wasn't totally weird ( Read more... )

Complacency, Dylan had long ago decided, was a bitch. From her sixth year onwards, she'd lived without it, by choice or otherwise, because you don't have to be an adult or even mature to understand the fundamental truth of less attachments equating with less pain. For most of her lifetime Dylan had shunned complacency, hadn't allowed herself to ( Read more... )

What a way to exist.

Daisy's been laughing out of sheer terror and fear all the time lately and she's never slept really, but now is even harder because she's not scared, oh no. Not of monsters or nightmares or vampires or anything. What Daisy's scared of is that the final nail has been put into the coffin, so to speak ( Read more... )

You know, there are some nice things to be said for living on your own in a hut in the Hidden Hamlet. Aside from the cheesy as hell name, and the sometimes cheesy as hell neighbors (Anne of Avonlea and the little fucking mermaid are fucking next door? What the fuck is that shit?), it's nice. Cozy, quiet, and mercifully lacking in one George Lass ( Read more... )

Six hadn't been spending a lot of time near the compound; the press of humanity was too much for her most days.  Especially with Gaius as loud as he'd been lately...

But three days of sleeping on the ground and eating the fruit off the trees had done little for the state of her clothing, and even less to silence the spirit of her lost lover.  She ( Read more... )

There were already quite a few people milling about the Hub well before the wedding party arrived, waiting for the festivities to begin. While not everyone could be expected to know the bride and groom, they could be counted on to know that when the islanders put their mind to it, they threw one hell of a party ( Read more... )