Face The World
The raft on the canal between the rows of cow carcasses led Mano to a white door with a scale carved in, Libra-like. There was no doorknob, but one of the scale's sides was high while the other one was low. Looking closely, she saw that the high one...
Join The Dance
The room that Klein walked into was bare and white, like an empty vessel. There were two life-sized mannequins resting at its center, laying half on top of each other in a heap with strings folding down around them. As he approached them, the strings...
The Preserver
Boko's living quarters had looked like nothing else that Klein had ever seen. A concealed trapdoor in the forest floor had opened into an extremely large open underground room which served as the chameleon's home. There were stairs on the walls and...
Worship
Klein had been a weird kid. He hadn't paid enough attention in class, even though he'd done well enough overall. He'd never cared for team sports. The other kids had made fun of him for being a skunk a lot. His parents hadn't been quite as bad as...
Oasis
'_It's a good thing that I've already read this before_,' she groaned inwardly as the shaking bus rudely closed the book she was re-reading in her hands yet again, _'Or there's no way I'd be able to keep up with it otherwise.'_ The cephalopod had...
Wonderland
"Eli, is... is there anything I can do to help?" The turtle-crab had raised an eyebrow quizzically at her. "To help with what?" Mano hadn't known how to broach the topic. "Have you ever thought about seeing someone? About everything that happened, I...
Personal Space
Brazil hadn't been an easy place to live for the people who already lived there. It hadn't been going to be easy for them having moved there either. Slavery may have been gone but it had left its marks, as the street urchins roaming the favelas...
Driftwood
_'I hate this.'_ Afternoon. Skyscrapers concealed what was left of the setting sun's light with hard lines, cold stone and sharp angles. Mano missed the reassuring ocean depths and iron hull wrapped around her like a protective cocoon. The swarming...
Old Wounds
It was raining when he found him. He'd been out looking for the skunk for what felt like far too long, considering how little time he knew he had. Possibly also considering how long it had been, depending on just what he meant by that. But the longer...
Before A Fall
Things weren't going so bad for Soma - it wasn't even a tournament month. He'd been getting a few patients he'd needed to take care of here and there, but just the right amount, not so much that it was proving overwhelming for him to keep up. It's...
Milgram
The chimera moved between the spaced out bamboo poles as seamlessly as a performer would've spun on a dance floor. Any misstep would've landed him in the water below him, and he \*was\* deathly afraid of water. Thinking about how Rakim had had to...
Bellerophon
Diaz knew that the chimera, having trounced him soundly, and with there being only one fight left, wasn't going to have to leave the ring until the tournament would be over. He certainly didn't expect to see the monster get out of the ring where the...