The Worm and the Fish
As the worm dangled on the end of his line, the fisherman became frustrated that none of the fish were biting, and began to curse the worm for being lousy bait. "Stupid worm", he said, "wriggling around like that and warning all the fish away. I swear...
Boko
"One enters a nation according to its customs just as one enters a river according to its flow." - Viet-Namese saying Boris Chrome is a self-styled hero, reviled villain, refined aesthete, world traveller, obsessive packrat, brilliant linguist,...
Surface (Chapter 12)
"People are at their most authentic when they're wearing masks." - Oscar Wilde Soon after they'd reached the village of the tribe of the Sahuagin itself, Klein had heard Boko greeting them in their native tongue and telling him the gist of what...
Myri
Their vaguely humanoid-shaped bodies' surfaces are porous, peppered with large holes, to the extent that there's about 1/4 to 1/3 of their outsides that isn't technically 'surface' but empty space leading in. The cavities interconnect inside in a...
Surface (Chapter 4)
TRIGGER WARNING for character suicide Elizabeth had envied Mano her capacity to feel at home anywhere but hadn't regretted it when it'd meant she could get out of where she'd badly needed to get out of. It was in Brazil that Mano had first met...
Surface (Chapter 7)
As much as she'd learned from discovering the merits of solitude, a year of isolation hadn't done much to improve her social networking capabilities by that point. She hadn't known anyone she could use as a focus group to get a second opinion from (or...
Surface (Chapter 6)
Mano hadn't noticed at which time she'd begun to talk to herself and hear voices in her head talking back to her all the time, but it must have been sometime around the middle of the fall. It had happened so seamlessly and she'd had enough time to get...
Surface (Chapter 11)
"Clothes do make the man. Naked people have almost no influence on society." - Mark Twain Boko's living quarters had looked like no other living quarters Klein had ever seen before in his life. A trapdoor concealed by sticks, moss, dirt and dead...
Surface (Chapter 5)
TRIGGER WARNING for character suicide Mano had found her lying on her back in a perfect corpse asana, perfect right down to every last detail. Her own body's reaction had been in stark contrast with that kind of stillness until she'd worn...
Grim Forge
People who die and who go to heaven realize that some of the people who they cared about in life were sent to hell and that they're no longer allowed to interact with each other. The split shifts, from being simply between demons on one side and angels...
Surface (Chapter 3)
If one black liquid had been part of the problem, then let another be part of its solution. - You know, thinking about how what a large part of the problem clashes between Muslims, Jews and Christians are makes me sick to my stomach, Eli. I can't...
Tandem
"I have to speculate that God himself did make us into corresponding shapes like puzzle pieces from the clay..." (Such Great Heights, The Postal Service) "I sometimes think that I'm too many people, too many people, too many people..." (Too Many...