Cats of a Different Color, Chapter 2: The Outsider
Tala Lokni Silver Lake Abbey Litla Deirfiúr, aka KOI-172.02 Tala never tired of looking at the sky. The night was late and moving onward. The sun had set behind the mountains and Big Sister was casting her blue-sliver glow across the lake for which...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 13
Part 3 - Mother Chapter 13 One week had passed, and Meriah was already sick of the inside of the hospital room. They'd made a great deal of progress on programming the software that controlled her new leg, and she was up and able to walk around with...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 12
Chapter 12 Time didn't seem to matter where Meriah was, and flashes of awareness blended with dreams and nightmares. There were images of times long past, playing in the forest with Lyria as she was taught the rudiments of keeping game. More recent...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 11
Chapter 11 It took a while to find a way to get Meriah free of the conduit, and in the end they decided that there was no way for her to make it through the woods with a piece of metal in her leg. Despite Stargazer's misgivings, they decided to remove...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 10
Chapter 10 "And that's when the guy said, 'I don't know how those bottles got there.' Like fifteen hundred bottles of bootleg Franzian ale just magically appeared on his ship." Jason laughed along with Steve while Meriah tried to find some frame of...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 9
Chapter 9 There was something that Meriah had never thought about when it came to space travel. Here she was, off the planet for the first time, and all she could think about was how close in everything was. There was no way around it, it was boring....
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 7
Chapter 7 Meriah swam slowly back to the surface of consciousness, gradually feeling the world around her resolve into something solid, and she found herself laying on a comfortable bed with the scent of her forest all around her. For a moment, with...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 6
Part 2 - Traveler Chapter 6 Meriah heard the door hissing shut behind her and she looked in wonder at the room beyond. She'd seen parts of the Master's house that had electronics and other human inventions, but for the most part, Marcus had shunned a...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 5
Chapter 5 "Here's your certification," the Master said, sitting across from her at the table. They sat together in the busy lounge of the Callahan Spaceport, the thing that connected the Master's world to all the others that the humans had found and...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 4
Chapter 4 The afternoon sun was full against the side of Meriah's cottage when she woke, little beams of light making their way through the thick curtains, even with them drawn tight over the windows. She'd been awake for a while, though, and when the...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 3
Chapter 3 The sun was setting over the horizon when Meriah finished sealing the top on the bucket of meat she had just finished seasoning and salting. She stood up, wiped her brow and then carried the bucket with her to the small, inconspicuous...
A Servant's Heart, Chapter 2
Chapter 2 The sun was further down the horizon by the time Meriah woke again. There were no other dreams to haunt her sleep and when she woke, she felt as refreshed as ever. Her bed was in the far corner of the cabin right under one of the many...