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The Repair Team

Nov15

Originally posted on Patreon in November 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

 There was generally nothing Cara was afraid of.  She had lived through sentient roses and non-sentient grape-girls; she had lived through Smart Bombs and dumb scientists and pretty much everything in between.  She could look someone who was going to turn out to be a mad scientist in the eye and smile, because when it all went down, Cara would still be here and the scientist – whether in many pieces or still just the one – would probably not.

Cara wasn’t scared of much of anything.  Except the Repair Team.

They came striding through the Facility, their outfits smooth and black and altogether too tidy.  The Repair Team never had anything out of place.  Cara would hate them.  She would hate them *later*; right now she and Alex were hurrying towards Liam while trying to look like nothing was out of place at all.

“Boss-”  Alex asked.  It was his turn to ask this week.

Liam didn’t take his eyes off the Repair Team.  “Not us this time.” Continue reading →

Swale Lake

Oct31

Originally posted on Patreon in October 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

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This story brought to you by someone introducing me to the Disappearance of Bobby Dunbar – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Bobby_Dunbar~*~

“The boy was confused.”

In the years to come, that would be said more than any other phrase in relation to the Bobby Dagmar case.

It was also both the most accurate and, considering how it was used, the least correct.

They would also say that he had hit his head, temporarily suffering thus from severe nearsightedness and hearing loss.  They had the symptoms correct in this case, but not the cause.

But what nobody ever quite could answer was why neither potential mother — Mrs. Dagmar nor the woman who claimed the boy was Jules Whittier — recognized the boy until they bathed him.

~~ Continue reading →

Room and Board

Oct18

Originally posted on Patreon in October 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

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Set in my ‘verse Reiassan, at an unknown time or series of times. 👻

The hotel had been there since the city had been there, and the city had been there since people started landing on this coast.  It had been a small inn, three stories tall, made of solid stone carved out of the cliffs.

When the family – Arrans through and through –  had needed more room, they had added on another wing.  As time went on, more wings were added, until the original building was surrounded – except for a narrow courtyard on front and back – and until the original additions were also, save for more narrow courtyards, surrounded.

But in the core of the hotel, there was one room that they would never rent out.  Even in a holiday, when every single room in every inn in all three of the Arran cities was booked, when anyone who claimed any blood of the Arrans came home to see the sea (such as “home” was to these refugees without a nation), they would not book the last room on the right on the second floor of the original inn. Continue reading →

Turn, Turn, Turn

Oct2

Originally posted on Patreon in October 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

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Something about Autumn tends to lean towards long stories, I suppose.  

Here’s Autumn in autumn.

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By the nature of her travels, Autumn tended to see places, if she saw them repeatedly, during the same season every year.

So she might have been forgiven for missing this particular place, since for five years, she saw it only in the stage when spring slides into summer.

She thought it a particularly bright place then, cheerful and full of excitement and a little bit too chaotic for her tastes, even when she was feeling a little excited and a little eager.  She would stay a night, dance in their party – there always seemed to be a party – and move on with a smile, leaving behind one more drawing in their bustling bar.

It was autumn now, coming into the time when she would have to go further south or find a warmer place to settle for a few months, and a broken part in her van had pointed her in a direction she would not normally have taken. Continue reading →