It strikes him most frequently at parties or at church, when he's tired and feels it's time to go. He'll turn to ask if she's ready to leave, and she won't be there. When that happens, he stays longer, because no matter how lonely he feels, how lost in the crowd, he knows it will be worse at home.

Home's not really home anymore.

I think I've been watching too many superhero cartoons.

( Er. )

There is a rib cage rising out of the grass like some plant, dead and worn white. I should look away, should set about trying to find a way out of this mess, but I can't bring myself to turn my head. A little ways beyond the rib cage, there's what might be a a smooth bit of whitish rock--or a skull, mostly buried. Other white bits are scattered ( Read more... )

I said there might be fic. And there is fic--of a sort. This was written in about 15 minutes, and lacks proper capitalization and punctuation because I was supposed to be doing something else. There will probably be an edited copy up sometime tomorrow, possibly with notes, because I think it's fun to analyze the way my brain works. More and more ( Read more... )

Once, for four months, she lived entirely on peaches and peanut butter cookies, with milk and occasionally broccoli. It wasn't something she'd recommend to anyone, but it had worked for her at the time. Now she looked back and wondered how she'd managed without bread and butter, apples and pears and bananas, the Jamaican ginger beer Edward ( Read more... )

The scars itch, always, regular as breathing, but she isn’t ever able to become inured to it. Sometimes she manages to spend all her awareness elsewhere, as when she’s carving a piece: then there’s nothing but the wood shavings and the dull flash of the age-worn knife. The rest of the time, though, it’s other blades that occupy her thoughts.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you," the fox told her. "They don't work the way you think they do ( Read more... )

Few people realize this, but mushrooms can move. They look like they're rooted in the ground, but in fact they simply have very stubby feet which they dig into the soil during daylight. At night time they creep along, like a penguin with more than two legs, tasting their way across the ground. Fairy rings are nothing more than a group of mushrooms ( Read more... )

Once there was a stage magician named Chuckles. However, he was allergic to rabbits and pretty much anything else with fur. Or feathers. Or pollen. Or peanuts. His big act would have been with a pair of goldfish, but the hat kept leaking, the fish kept almost drowning, and eventually he gave up and switched to working with cacti.

That didn't go so

a reaction to too many "chosen one" stories.

( please to see the king )