You can call me Lisle, I am 20 and have been an avid writer since I learned to mash letters together. I've lurked on Tumblr intermittently for a little under five years.
I am constantly experiencing ear pain due to always wearing earbuds, but I view them as a necessity because music helps me focus. That, and I am not a fan of outside noise.
I mostly read contemporary or science fiction, though I do occasionally like some psychological horror.
Also: My favorite color is pink :)
About My Writing:
I mostly write science fiction, though, I also like to sometimes write contemporary fiction or horror (noticing a pattern yet?)
I try to write stories that have a heavy focus on the characters and their mentalities. I also absolutely love creating a cheery little guy and then putting them in a terribly fucked up scenario.
My Current WIP:
The novel I'm working on right now is the first book in what is planned to be a duology with the possibility of more if I deem it necessary to tell the whole story.
The novel is science fiction, specifically Cyberpunk. The novel's current theme deals with bodily autonomy, identity, and the corruption of power. I would say more about the book, but I have been told that giving away too much about a novel on the internet is not good if you want to be traditionally published like I do.
Conclusion?
I am here. I will occasionally post some of my other, smaller, WIPs that I do not plan on publishing traditionally. Those projects will mostly be writing practice projects or leisure projects.
If you stuck around to read this, thank you, I hope you stick around longer and help support my career as an author.
The end of the world was right outside their window, spinning in the void, surrounded by its glowing accretion.
Gravity held no grip on them, its chains unlocked and cast aside while the great ship waited its turn to take part in the bounty harvested from the black hole.
They drifted aimlessly, and without care across the little empty chamber near the ship’s outer hull. It was weightless, burdenless peace; perfect and beautiful. Even with their bodies wrapped in the heavy suits that would protect them from the unforgiving void, they felt no mass to hold them down.
He drifted past her, their bodies only barely missing each other in their slow travel across the room. His eyes were still fixed on the viewscreen and the hungering black dot that would be invisible against the stars if not for its massive glowing halo.
The bottoms of his boots tapped the wall, and he turned away from the viewscreen. Bending his knees, he reached out and gripped a handhold on the wall, using it to rotate himself so that his feet pointed toward the opposite wall. With a gentle shove from his hand, he began drifting across the room once more.
She met him in the middle, reaching out a gloved hand which he grabbed. Their opposite directions of momentum met with the gripping hands and neutralized each other, leaving the both of them suspended in the middle of the room.
Pulling him closer and interlocking her arm with his, her eyes travelled over his helmet, trying to find his face behind the visor.
"Do you think dreamers are real?” She asked in a small voice, one he could almost barely hear through the composite of their helmets.
“Dreamers? You mean the magic astronauts from kid’s books and conspiracy articles?” A gloved hand smacked him on the arm. “What? That’s the only place I could ever think of them existing, unless you want me to count that really bad Martian drama show; what was it called? Pond Skaters?”
She smacked his arm more, her hand tapping against his suit’s padding with every word.
“You know what I mean,” she grumbled, finally speaking at volume he could easily hear. “Real dreamers. Do you think that somewhere out there in the universe there are people who can move reality and travel the Reverse?”
“Kimi,” he started, trying not to chuckle, “I really don’t think it’s possible. Sorry to disappoint, but in my expert opinion – “
“You only have a Bachelors,” she said cutting him off.
“In my expert opinion, a person like that couldn’t exist. The antimatter from the Reverse would rip them apart, and very explosively I might add. The only way they could exist is if, I don’t know, they were somehow stuck between the layers of reality.”
Kimi sighed, her breath creating a fog cloud on her visor that was quickly swept away by a tiny mechanical arm.
“The Federation say that they’ve had dreamers fight in their military before, back when they were still in their liberation war from the Tendrid.” She unhooked her arm from his, and reached up to the ceiling, using a handhold to rotate herself so that her head floated at the same level as his feet.
“The Federation says a lot of things about their history, and a lot of it is usually propaganda.” He rotated himself as well, mirroring Kimi’s view of the black hole.
“The Shaza has reports of dreamers too, and I know just how much you love to talk about the amazing deeds of the Shaza.”
He could almost hear her eyes rolling as she spoke.
“Okay, okay, point taken. They might exist, all the records of them are from a very long time ago, longer than humanity has had the skip drive. Most of those records might just be bits of folklore.”
She didn’t respond immediately, instead choosing to grab him by his hand and push, sending the both of them drifting across the chamber once more.
When they had reached the walls, nudged away from them and met in the middle again, she spoke.
“I think they’re real,” she said in a far-off hopeful voice. “They must be. The universe is too big for it not to be a possibility.”
He sighed. She was right. She always found a loophole, some tiny detail he hadn’t considered.
“Fair enough.”
The room buzzed and the garbled sound of a synthesized voice broke through the chamber’s serene stillness.
“Attention all residents of The Moxie: The Blue Cardinal has finished refueling. Please prepare for acceleration induced gravity.”
The voice repeated the message twice and then crackled out.
He and Kimi rotated themselves, so their feet faced what was considered the floor during times of gravity. The hull of the ship around them began to hum and they felt the gentle tug of acceleration start to wrap around them, pulling them down from the air and banishing the weightlessness they had enjoyed.
They hit the floor with a light thunk and braced their muscles to once again take the strain of weight. Kimi was already buckling over beside him, and he could hear her complaining through the composite of her helmet.
He bent down and removed the white dome from her head.
“Need help with the rest?” He put the helmet aside and began extricating her from the bulky suit before she could respond.
The suit was open, and she had climbed out within a few minutes.
“You’re lucky this wasn’t an actual space walk or else you’d be stuck in there for half an hour trying to take it off.”
“That would suck, but at least it would be a real spacewalk. Speaking of which, when are you going to let me come on one with you? You’ve promised me a hundred times you’d do it.”
He chuckled and removed his helmet, storing it under his arm. “When you complete the vacuum mobility certification and an apprenticeship with a vacuum engineer.”
“Never mind, I’ll just keep helping Red with all of his studies while you have fun seeing the universe.” She folded her arms and stuck out her bottom lip.
“Speaking of,” he started, motioning for her to grab her discarded space suit, “let’s get this back to the airlock before Anders finds out I let you take one. Then you can go check on Red.”
“You’re not coming?” She asked, hefting the white carapace by its legs while he held the torso on his back.
“Not right now. Anders wants me to be part of the crew looking over the outer hull while we refuel. Then he wants me doing pre and post skip checks on the hull and the drive cage.” They tromped down the deserted corridor, heading deeper into the ship and forward to the nearest service airlock.
“He’s really got you earning your keep this month. Did you piss him off?” she asked teasingly.
He grunted, “No, I think he’s just mad that I’m more qualified to take his position in a few years than he’d like. He’s mostly scared I’ll get promoted before he can finish grooming Jack to be his replacement, doesn’t want his nepotism squandered.”
“What a shame. At least the three of us can hang out after the skip. Oh! We can throw Red a going-away party before we get to Mars!” She bounced on her toes, her grip on the bulky suit slipping from her grasp.
He smiled and hefted the empty suit higher on his back, taking its full weight by himself. “Yeah, that’ll be fun. It’ll be nice to relax again.”
They reached the airlock, and he gently lowered the suit to the ground. He tapped his code into the keypad on the bulkhead and the massive hatch door slid open. Stowing the suit back in its niche where it belonged, he shut the airlock and sealed it tight.
“There – “ He patted the door with a gloved hand – “sealed up and ready to let us not die a horrific and slow death in space.”
The ship’s acceleration began to slow and the tug on their bodies eased slightly. His wrist screen beeped soon after and he sighed.
“That’s probably Anders. I need to get to airlock seven.” He swiped the notification off the screen then unclipped his helmet from his side. The helmet locked in place over his head and he lifted the polarized visor.
Kimi came forward and pulled him into a tight hug, the bulk of the spacesuit not letting her reach all the way around his torso. “Stay safe out there. I’ll see you at the party.”
She stepped back and skipped down the corridor away from him.
“I’ll see you soon, Kimi!”
Chapter One
Whoever these doctors were that were talking so loudly in the same room where he was trying to sleep, needed to be taught proper etiquette, because his head felt like it had been thrown into the recycler and his skin itched terribly all over. Sleeping was hard enough without some nasal-voiced guy talking about anomalous parasites.
“Can you please be quiet, or leave the room?” He grumbled; his throat feeling like old metal over coarse sand.
The talking stopped all at once and he felt his brain start to ease, slipping back into the sleep that his body was desperately demanding. The darkness began to seep through his vision and lull him to sleep.
“There! There’s another one,” the annoying voice shouted.
A sliver of light swam across his vision, brightening one eye and then slipping away only to come back again, glowing in the other.
He rubbed at his eye angrily, trying to make the tiny glowing thread leave, forcing it to travel further away and leave his face if possible. Other threads like it had been popping up in his vision, waking him briefly before they moved on and allowing him to continue resting. Each time he woke, the voices of the doctors would silence and then point out the glowing anomaly. They would try to keep him awake, for questioning or for testing, he didn’t know. Their voices weren’t familiar, and the hospital’s bed was too nice to be on the Moxie. But it didn’t really matter, he needed sleep.
“There it is again!” One of the doctors said too loud for his liking, followed by the sound of stools being dragged along the floor toward him.
“Mister Freechild, I know that you are desperately tired, but could you please give us just a few minutes of your time.” The nasally voiced doctor asked, his voice lowered in the closer proximity. At least he had enough etiquette to remember that.
“Mark, I really don’t think he can. Let’s just continue observing.” The other doctor said, their voice much lower and tolerable than the nasally Doctor Mark.
He sighed and rubbed at his eyes, the squirming, glowing thread having finally migrated to another place under his skin.
“Fine,” he said, his voice still sounding like gravel. “I don’t want you watching me sleep. I’ll talk, but don’t expect me to keep my eyes open.”
“That’s perfectly fine, Mister Freechild.”
He shifted in the bed, bringing his arms beneath his back to hoist him into a sitting position. He wriggled a little, shifting until the mattress was comfortable beneath him. With as much energy as he could muster, he pried open his eyes and tried not to squint too hard at the room’s lights.
“Good lord!” The nasally doctor cried out, falling off his stool.
“Mark! He’s finally chosen to stay awake for us. Don’t be rude!”
The blurry figure to his right shifted and sat back on his stool. “Look at his eyes! That can’t be good.”
“Lower your voices,” he grumbled.
“Apologies, Mister Freechild – “
“Grant.” He said sharply.
“Apologies, Mister Grant, for my mistake, our volume and my coworker’s reaction to your condition.”
The figure on the left sharpened and he took a much better view of them. They had a very tiny stature, their white coat making their figure look boxy with how it hung loosely off their narrow shoulders. Their hair was dark and cut close to the scalp. A pair of thin glasses balance on the edge of their pointed nose. A metal, rectangular name tag pinned to their coat identified them as Doctor River Sanders.
The doctor on his right was a tall and plump man with a broad face and ginger hair. He dressed much like Doctor Sanders, with a white coat and name tag that showed his name was Doctor Markus Crafter-Tims.
“Apology accepted,” Grant muttered, trying to keep his eyes from falling closed. “Do you mind enlightening me on this condition of mine that you mentioned.”
Sanders and Crafter-Tims glanced between each other, having an unspoken discussion he could not understand. Finally, Sanders cleared their throat.
“In short, your condition is unusual. We have no record of anything like it from recent history. We checked records from conglomerate, pre-conglomerate, and pre-space faring eras – what little of them we had – and found no disease or physical condition that matches yours.” They adjusted their glasses and glanced away from Grant when he made eye contact.
Crafter-Tims continued. “From our current noninvasive observations, you seem to have some sort of parasite moving beneath your skin. It is very small and glows a bright white light but does not respond to physical stimulus.”
“You mean those bright things that keep swimming over my eyelids when I’m sleeping?”
“That is correct,” Sanders replied.
“Gross. Keep going.” He looked between the doctors until Sanders began speaking.
“We consulted with a university expert on parasites, but they could not identify the specimen inhabiting your body, leading me to believe they aren’t parasites at all.”
Doctor Crafter-Tims cut in. “However, I believe they could be parasites just not ones within human record. Could you please tell me the last time you made contact with a non-human person or creature?”
Grant shuddered with an itching down his spine and reached back to scratch it while his waking mind sorted through the drowsy fog.
“It was probably just before the Moxie skipped away from the Black Orchard’s system. I was assigned to hull checks and repairs while we refueled. After the checks were finished, I went into the fuel station to help my crew transfer the antimatter cells to the drive cage. Some of the Toxe station workers helped us out.”
Crafter-Tims pumped his arm and hissed words of success under his breath. “Toxe! That I can work with. I’ll send out data requests to the Federation’s medical department right away.”
He stood from his stool and hurried out of the room, leaving Grant baffled and Doctor Sanders rubbed their eyes beneath their glasses.
“I do apologize for him, Grant, he’s very fond of parasites. He wants to write a medical paper on the effects of alien parasites in humans, but he’s struggled to find much data to work with.”
Granted kicked the thin blanket off his legs and began scratching at the itching spot on his calf.
“Why’s that? The Alliance and Federation not letting him access their data?”
Sanders rested a hand beneath their chin and leaned on the arm of the bed. “No, not that. Alien parasites usually aren’t fond of living in human bodies. We’re not the environments that their biology is used to, and it usually ends with them dead in a matter of hours. We have data on Federation native parasites that can inhabit Toxe bodies, but those ones evolved to handle the more alkaline conditions of a Toxe’s biology. They would never survive in a human.”
“So, if it’s not a parasite, then what do you think this glowing thing is?”
“That depends. What symptoms can you describe to me?” They stopped resting and pulled a reader from their coat pocket, unfolding it and holding a stylus on its screen at the ready.
“Everything itches, my eyes feel like something is pushing on the nerves in the back, and I have a horrific headache.” As he spoke of it, the glowing threads zipped across his skin and reappeared on his other calf, the itching moving along with them.
Sanders scribbled on their reader and tutted their lips as they did. When Grant finished speaking, they continued to write a moment longer before lowering the tablet.
“Itchy skin, headache, and stressed eyes.” They tapped the end of their stylus on their cheek, eyes flicking away from Grant again as he tried to make contact. “From the sounds of it, you might just be dehydrated, but we have you on fluids and the symptoms have nothing to do with what’s happening under your skin. And it couldn’t be a migraine either…”
“So, what you mean is that you still have no idea?” He closed his eyes and began shifting back down into his bed. The itching faded only slightly as thin lines raced around his arms.
Sanders sighed. “Yes. It looks like we’ll need to get more opinions on you if we want to figure this out.”
“Please make sure their less eccentric than the parasite guy.” Grant mumbled, feeling the tug of sleep pull him deeper into the bed.
“I’ll try, but I’m only a junior.”
Grant shrugged.
Sanders stood from their stool and thanked Grant for his time, leaving him alone in the tiny hospital room.
Blood tests told them nothing, other than the fact that Grant still possessed blood suitable for the human body’s needs. Crafter-Tims did not wait for an answer to his data request before running a slew of tests on Grant that gave up as many answers as the blood tests.
It couldn’t be parasites; they had concluded as much, disappointing Crafter-Tims and his still answered requests to the Federation and Alliance for records of all known Toxe parasites.
On the third day of his continued wakefulness, they brought in an ophthalmologist who seemed just as frightened of Grant when making eye contact as Sanders did, with their ever-evasive eye contact. The doctor tested his eyesight, his pupils’ ability to dilate. Nothing was wrong, frustratingly so, and the lack of results was beginning to disappoint the doctors and confuse Grant. Why were they spending so much time trying to figure out what was wrong with him when the only off things he noticed were weird headaches and the glowing, itchy patches of skin? And what was so interesting about his eyes? Why had Sander and Crafter-Tims reacted so negatively that first day when he managed to finally stay awake?
“If nothing’s wrong with my eyes, why do you and those two keeping looking at me weird?” Grant indicated to the two younger doctors behind the ophthalmologist.
“I believe it would be easier to show you rather than try to explain.” The doctor tapped the screen of his reader, making the paper-like display turn reflective. He spun the reader around and handed it to Grant.
He investigated the reflection that stared at him from the reader. It was his face; there was no doubt there. Still the same tanned, freckled skin and raisin-colored curls of hair curtaining his face. But the eyes, his eyes, those he did not remember. They should have been the same deep brown they’d been since he’d first seen his reflection as a tiny child. But these eyes weren’t that. They were dark, but not in any of the correct spots. What had been the whites of his eyes had become a deep black, tiny flecks of white light glowing against the darkness like distant stars. His corneas were a blazing white, glowing like the patches and threads that lived in some unreachable layer under his skin.
It was horrific. Weird. Uncanny.
It was not his face. Not the same one he’d had the week before when the Moxie delved beneath the liquid fabric of the universe and skipped across its surface.
His skin grew colder, mist curling off the exposed spots where his clothing did not cover. The itch was growing, strengthening and coalescing in solid lines that ran with the strings of his muscle. His teeth began to chatter, ringing against one another like the rocks banged together by his long-gone earth dwelling ancestors.
The reader snapped shut and he handed it back to the doctor, his eyes closed, and his breathing tempered, focusing entirely and purging the cold from his limbs. When he opened his eyes again, he avoided looking at any of the doctors who sat with him in the tiny room.
“I see.” His voice came out short, cold, and sharp. They had looked at him with fearful wonder, and he now knew why.
———————————
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!
Here they are! The first to chapters of the extended version of OtPS. Of course, since this is only the first draft and still the early version, these scenes are subject to later change but enjoy them as they are now.
After the worst slump in my writing career so far, I have finally managed to sit down and crack out 2 chapters of On the Pond’s Surface. Now all I need is to not lose the momentum!!!
Grant drummed his fingers on the armrest, the glowing threads beneath his skin pulsing with each tap of a finger on the cold composite surface. His other hand played idly with his new reader that sat on his lap. He folded and unfolded the device, watching the digital pages of the textbook he had been reading as they morphed from a two-page layout to one page with the unfolding of the screen. Then he folded it again, and the single page shrunk and moved aside, making room for the other that would continue the text.
He’d gotten bored of the book in the two hours they’d left him alone in the room, not that the book itself was lacking, it really was quite interesting, but he’d read the same one multiple times before and the content of it had practically encoded itself in his head.
It was a history textbook, one that was essential reading for every Martian, Yggdrasilin, Elysian, and Flotilla child like him. It told of times that were centuries long gone when Earth was still humanity’s home and almost all common people lived in misery, save for the elite few that had made that misery. It would tell of the laboring and the suffering of regular people, how they were beaten down, worked to death, and no better than slaves. It was that misery that his teachers had wanted every child to remember, and to understand that it was a terrible life that had been brought about by the greed of the Conglomerate.
He didn’t understand the point of it all in the early years of his schooling, when the history lessons were dumbed down and carefully scrubbed of any horrors that may hurt the developing mind of a child. All he knew was that the Conglomerate were bullies, and everyone else would eventually get tired of being bullied. Then life moved on, and both his body and mind grew. His teens were when he finally understood it.
The bullied fought back.
The Conglomerate was too greedy to back down.
And when they were close to dead, they tried to take everything else with them.
They failed, of course, because if they had succeeded, he doubted that the Shaza would have made first contact, and humanity would have never learned just how big the universe was outside of their tiny solar system.
And if the revolution hadn’t won, then he seriously doubted he would be alive, and waiting to meet some professor of reversal physics who seemed to be taking their sweet time coming to the meeting they had organized.
Grant drummed his fingers on the armrest, the glowing threads beneath his skin pulsing with each tap of a finger on the cold composite surface. His other hand played idly with his new reader that sat on his lap. He folded and unfolded the device, watching the digital pages of the textbook he had been reading as they morphed from a two-page layout to one page with the unfolding of the screen. Then he folded it again, and the single page shrunk and moved aside, making room for the other that would continue the text.
He’d gotten bored of the book in the two hours they’d left him alone in the room, not that the book itself was lacking, it really was quite interesting, but he’d read the same one multiple times before and the content of it had practically encoded itself in his head.
It was a history textbook, one that was essential reading for every Martian, Yggdrasilin, Elysian, and Flotilla child like him. It told of times that were centuries long gone when Earth was still humanity’s home and almost all common people lived in misery, save for the elite few that had made that misery. It would tell of the laboring and the suffering of regular people, how they were beaten down, worked to death, and no better than slaves. It was that misery that his teachers had wanted every child to remember, and to understand that it was a terrible life that had been brought about by the greed of the Conglomerate.
He didn’t understand the point of it all in the early years of his schooling, when the history lessons were dumbed down and carefully scrubbed of any horrors that may hurt the developing mind of a child. All he knew was that the Conglomerate were bullies, and everyone else would eventually get tired of being bullied. Then life moved on, and both his body and mind grew. His teens were when he finally understood it.
The bullied fought back.
The Conglomerate was too greedy to back down.
And when they were close to dead, they tried to take everything else with them.
They failed, of course, because if they had succeeded, he doubted that the Shaza would have made first contact, and humanity would have never learned just how big the universe was outside of their tiny solar system.
And if the revolution hadn’t won, then he seriously doubted he would be alive, and waiting to meet some professor of reversal physics who seemed to be taking their sweet time coming to the meeting they had organized.
I know that I haven't not been posting any snippets or anything in a while and that is because I have been very busy with college and finishing up my Associate's Degree.
But! I am now done with finals, so my free time has increased enough to allow me to begin putting a lot more work on OtPS!
I plan on releasing a new snippet tomorrow. It won't be much but it is something.
The bright star before him was getting closer, bathing him in two white glowing beams, taking up his vision and blotting out the far-off stars in the black background.
The white glow of the stars had been growing large for a while now, he couldn’t recall how long, but he’d been watching them approach ever since he woke up.
It was weird, he didn’t remember falling asleep during his spacewalk. He couldn’t remember ever starting the spacewalk in the first place. He’d been on the ship, putting the suit on and getting ready to be let out through the air lock. He’d put his helmet on, hugged Kimi, saluted Red, and then…
The star was a lot closer now. Or was it two stars? It had to be two stars. One star can’t hit you with two beams of light side by side. Yeah, two stars were getting closer.
He hugged Kimi and saluted Red, then he counted down with the monitor, the moments before the ship stopped skipping and broke through the pond’s surface. Once they were through, he’d wait for the all clear signal from engineering and then leave the air lock to inspect the outer hull. It would be dangerous, the vacuum always is, but he couldn’t get too far from the ship with his tether hooked on its body.
Where was his tether? If he was on a spacewalk, then where was his tether? It was dangerous to fall asleep on a walk, especially without his tether, he could float away and that would be bad.
He twisted his body, flailing his arms, trying to make himself turn with zero success.
Did he have his SAFER on?
He reached down to his sides where the vacuum jet pack’s controls would be. There was nothing.
Right, it was supposed to be a routine spacewalk. Checking for reversal damage. He didn’t need the pack, just a tether.
Where was his tether?
He’d watched the countdown, the seconds ticking by and he felt the ship lurching, turbulence from the bubble and the rapid deceleration. The timer ticked a little more, one number turning over to the next and then…
The white stars were close now, but they’d stopped advancing toward him. The two beams of white light stared at him and lit his body with their glow. They left a good distance between themselves and him, about 8 meters if he had to guess but it was hard to really tell without the ship as a scale reference.
Why weren’t the glowing twins coming closer? Were they scared? No, stars don’t get scared, they don’t have brains. Maybe he could close the gap.
He waved a greeting at the stars and put his arms behind him, ready to pulse his jets and make the approach.
Nothing happened.
Strange. Why wasn’t his SAFER working?
He tried again, twitching his fingers and compelling himself to move forward. A moment passed and he felt a tiny force push on the bottoms of his boots and the palms of his gloves.
He moved forward with a tiny puff of jetted air. It wasn’t a lot, but he was slowly drifting toward the twin stars.
The distance closed little by little and the stars started to turn. They faced away from him, pointing to his left. Then he saw it, the metal body connected to the stars.
How stupid. Of course they weren’t stars, he’d be burning up if they were that close. And stars couldn’t be that small, not without being far beyond his reach.
The hatch on the vacuum boat’s side opened and a dim glow lit the inside. The silhouette of a human stood in the opening; their body clad in a large cumbersome spacesuit like his own.
The figure gently pushed from the ship, and began drifting toward him, a tether keeping them connected as they floated closer, a hand reaching out for him.
He reached out his own hand toward the figure and felt his eyes starting to burn a little, itching in the back of the sockets.
I’m tired, he thought and blinked slowly, trying to alleviate the burn.
He felt his gloved hand touch the other astronaut and then their hand grab hold of his.
His eyes remained closed, everything slowly beginning to slip away.
The shadows of the flotilla’s ships floated high above the spaceport; the bodies of the gargantuan Arks were only visible at their height because of their sheer size. Clouded all around the larger ships were the dim outlines and barely seen shadows of the flotilla’s smaller member ships, all of them holding members of the human race, vital equipment and supplies for the flotilla’s longevity, or thousands of sensors and surveying equipment barely tacked together in a way that would keep the inhabited parts of the great fleet safe from anything in the pond that may harm them. They were buoys, placed far from the rest of the fleet, always on the outer edges and always the first and last ships to skip across the pond.
Flashes of white blinked through the Martian atmosphere and through the transparent, filtered composite of the city dome. Once each flash faded, the shadow of another ship was seen waiting where the light had been. The last strays of the flotilla coming into orbit above humanity’s home world.
Each flash of an arriving ship squeezed her heart and her lungs a little more, the hope trickling in her chest. But it would die in her chest too, because none of those ships would be carrying what she wanted.
Then, far above the world and far from the flotilla, another flash and in its wake, the shadow of an unnaturally smooth ship. Its body was a smooth outline from the beak-like tip to the long, finger-like splayed engines at its back. It would be another few hours before the ship could send down a landing boat and another half hour for the boat to land and dock at the port. After that? Too much stalling, halting, and checking, and then too much of her waving her credentials around accompanied by the unnecessary number of letters of approval from her superiors.
Hardly anyone was still alive who remembered the war, and yet the people who would receive her guests at the port would still act as though Mars was at gunpoint and her guests were there to plant a flag.
Still, that was for later, she had time to kill that could be better spent answering messages, drinking coffee, reading or taking a tram to the port.
Snapping out of her thoughts, she started moving again, realizing the awkwardness of her sudden stop in the middle of the University’s quad.
Students were moving all around her, most in small groups that chatted as they walked or sat on benches under stubby trees. Others were alone, some reading on a bench, or leisurely walking along the brick paved quad, others were hustling across the communal space, racing to the other end of campus to reach a class for which they were most likely late.
The activity of the students was simple, but it was nice, reminding her of her days doing the same on that very quad as all the younger people around her. And it reminded her to keep walking and to stop losing her train of though in such an open space. She had papers to grade, a lecture to prepare, books to read, coffee to drink, and a meeting with foreign academics to mentally prepare for.
Who was this angry little boy standing between her and the other boys? This little angry boy with messy curls, beige olive skin, and a bleeding nose? Why had he jumped in between her and the gruff boys that had pushed her around? He was so small compared to them, a little twig in baggy patched clothing. Why had he fought them on her part, punching one in the face and another in the stomach? It didn’t do him any good. His nose was bleeding and broken, his knees were scraped, and his knuckles were raw.
The two larger boys were just staring at him, their faces beginning to bruise and on one of them, a bloodied lip that was beginning to scab. They didn’t raise their hands again or try to move closer to the little boy, they just kept staring.
The young boy sniffed and wiped a hand across his bloody mouth. Then, with little warning, he let out what sounded like a small dog’s growl.
“Leave her alone,” he snarled, clenching his fists and shifting his feet.
“Don’t tell me what to do, leech.” One of the boys responded, his position amongst the two clearly was one of power.
“Yeah!” The boy with the busted lip jeered. “Don’t tell us what to–“
His continued sniveling was halted as the young boy threw himself at the other boy, tackling him by his legs and slamming him into the composite flooring. His clenched fists rained down on the other boy with little thought or grace.
The sneering boy was crying out, shouting for his friend and at the young boy to stop. But the boy didn’t listen, and his hands continued to hail down for a few seconds more before he was yanked away, the other older boy having grabbed him by the arm and thrown him to the floor.
The young boy was quick to get up again, his fists raised in front of his face.
The older boy hoisted his friend from the ground and spun around, glaring at their small assailant. His face was red and she could see his jaw moving back and forth, his teeth griding against one another as he clenched his fists and slowly stepped forward.
“Grant! What are you doing!” A voice came from down the corridor, and Kimi turned to face its owner.
Stalking down the corridor with his shoulders pulled back and his face set in a hard glare was Mister Burke, an older man whom she recognized from the community ward. His eyes were stern behind a pair of thick square glasses. His forehead was wrinkled, his brows stiffly stuck at a hard diagonal that didn’t seem to go away even when he wasn’t glaring.
The young boy didn’t turn his gaze from her assailants, but his voice came out as a high-pitched growl, failingly deepened to sound more serious than his age would have implied.
“They started it! They were picking on Kimiko!”
Burke stopped before Grant, slapping a hand on his shoulder and wheeling the young boy around to face him, not even bothering to stoop down to properly look the boy in the eye.
“I don’t care what they did! Their parents are responsible for reprimanding and controlling them, not me!”
“But they were–“ Grant started/
“Don’t give a shit, Grant. They are not my responsibility, but you are! And you continuously test the limits of my patience!”
Grabbing grant by the arm, Burke pulled him along, forcefully leading the young boy down the corridor as the older boys snickered and whispered to each other.
“Mister Burke,” Kimi started, gathering the older man’s attention, “Please don’t punish him! He was only trying to do the right thing.”
Burke scoffed. “Violence isn’t ever the right thing; have you not been paying attention in your history classes?”
“But–“
“I don’t care what naïve ideas you have. I am the adult here and you will listen to me. Now go back to the community ward and don’t even think about trying to protect this – this little shit! Or I will have your luxuries seized for an entire month!”
Kimi clenched her fist and grit her teeth. “I don’t care about my luxuries! He didn’t do anything wrong! They did!” She swung her hand around and pointed at the other boys, their faces and snickering going still, awaiting Burke’s reaction.
Mister Burker glowered at her and reached into his pocket. Pulling out a communicator he spoken into it, his voice barely edging on a neutral tone.
“Missus Huang, please come collect Kimiko from the education ward. I will brief you later on her grievances.”
______________________________
WOAH! Would you look at that! More OtPS stuff! And even better than that, this is the first snippet of the first chapter from Kimi's POV.
“Well, what if my preferred form of bodily self-expression involves climbing hooks and a grip force capable of crushing steel like it’s paper?”
Teller let out an electric sigh and adjusted their cloak, turning back toward the workbench and the incomplete arm.
“You’re missing the point, my friend.”
Kodi squinted at the Sozon, ignoring the ache in the stump of her right arm.
“I want a grappling hook,” she finally grumbled, leaning to rest her back against the wall.
WOAH! Lisle? What's This?
Thank you for asking. This is a snippet from the little bits of scenes I've pieced together for the next book in the Pond's Surface Series/Loosely connected universe of books.
Why are you working on the next book when you still haven't finished OtPS?
Because inspiration is a mistress that only comes to me when it's most inconvenient.
It was disturbingly pleasing to fantasize about how they would all react if he simply chose to end the pain and disappear. Was that wrong? Was it wrong to take pleasure in imagining the anger Wakako would feel knowing that her test subject was dead, or to wonder in what ways Bon’s alien brain would handle the knowledge that the only dreamer It had ever met was now a corpse. They surely would not miss him beyond the lamenting of losing the chance to use him for something greater. Forever hating him for ending the pain simply because they could not wield it and refine it into the next rung on the ladder that would bring them renown.
Tom, Sam, and Huck may mourn him briefly, saddened by the loss of a familiar face. But they would forget to be sad in due time; there were many more important things in life that needed attention that weren’t the passing of a human being - someone not even born of their species or their blood - whose life was steeped in suffering and wallowing. They’d already done their grieving after all; what more could they do if he were to truly disappear? They may even be thankful for the loss, glad that they no longer had to feel obligated to give up a corner of their home for a quarter of the year so that a single human could experience the comforts of a home and family that were not his. Thankful that they no longer have to pretend that they had not moved on from his initial loss so quickly.
The three of them had expressed and lamented already, telling him how glad they were to know he was safe, to know he was alive. They made it a performance, a grand act of playing their moral parts to let him know that he was a person who had been mourned. It was a loud, after-the-fact mourning.
They mourned Kimiko silently, but he knew they earnestly cared to mourn and feel that loss, as they rightly should. They loved Kimiko. Everyone loved Kimiko. She was the oxygen in his lungs and the fresh air so many others needed. She was someone worth mourning, someone who deserved the tears her loss had shed. She cared and she loved. She was like a perfect star that held the orbiting spheres of a life-given world. And he was just the barren rock that always tagged along.
If she was Sol, then he was Mars. If she was Odin’s Eye, then he was Baldur. If she was the universe, he was the Reverse.
If she was a tender grin…
…then he was a dripping snarl.
They all loved her because she could love and they accepted him simply because they had no choice. Where she went, he went. Where she shined, he orbited.
Is that why? Is that why it was so thrilling to think about the effect his death might have? Because it was relief? A savior from his throbbing hurt and a weight lifted from the shoulders of every person around him? An easing of the burden. He could never make the others who mourned her feel better, he couldn’t give them the words they needed to hear and the shoulder upon which they needed to cry. He was hurting too. More than the others, he could even say. They all loved her, they all knew her, but she was his to truly mourn! She was his friend! His companion! His only earthly bond! She was his to mourn! This was his grief! And if he went the same way as her. If he dropped the idea of continuing for the sake of continuing, he could let go of that pain! He could let them have it! He wouldn’t care if they remembered her the way he did! One little slash, or trigger squeeze, or rattle of pills. That’s all he needed to stop caring. That’s all he needed to inflict the misery he so desperately wanted Wakako to feel.
Cause the pain and annoyance that he knew would be the last thing she would ever remember of him. He could be the one to get the final hit, swing the final fist!
His mind snapped forward and he could not feel his hands. They were cold and shaking, that was obvious, and damp patches stained his sleeves where his aching fingers gripped.
What was he doing? What was he thinking?
What sadistic tendency was allowing this train of thought to meander onward, pushing new ideas to the forefront of his mind and delivering to him the chemicals that bring the body pleasure? Why couldn’t his glands save those precious, joy-catalyzing, chemicals for the times and the thoughts that did not make him squirm and writhe at the shame of his own sadistic desire to cause pain while ending his own?
His hands felt sweaty, and his nails dug into his palms, stabbing at the slickened skin.
The bleeding mass writhed, pulsing and moaning as it lay on the floor, crimson ichor leaking from its pores, the fetid air of rot cloaking it from fresh breath.
Something churned beneath its surface, rolling, roiling, boiling under the skin. The movement came with crunching, ripping, and spraying all muffled by the flesh that blocked its view.
He inched closer to the mass, vomit lingering like an unwelcome guest on the precipice of his throat. The air passing into and from his nostrils shook and shivered, quaking with each tiny step towards the boiling flesh in the darkness.
The rotting, roiling, writhing hunk of animate flesh jolted toward him, his approach seen by a sense unknown. A bubble of flesh expanded and popped on the mass’s surface and a tendril of blood and bone snaked from the opening as the churning beneath the surface lessened.
The tendril snaked toward him across the littered floor, jerking this way and that, its movements startling, erratic.
He stuttered backward, his arms thrown wide to catch his body should it faulter and fall.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, slithering down his temples and over his cheeks.
“What are you,” he stuttered, his voice coming as nothing more than a frightened squeak.
“Are you the witch who turned eleven princes into swans?”
The old woman stared at the figure on the front step of her cottage and considered her options. It was the kind of question usually backed up by a mob with meaningful torches, and the kind of question she tried to avoid.
Coming from a single dusty, tired housewife, it should’ve held no terrors.
“You a cop?”
The housewife twisted the hem of her apron. “No,” she muttered. “I’m a swan.”
A raven croaked somewhere in the woods. Wind whispered in the autumn leaves.
Then: “I think I can guess,” the old woman said slowly. “Husband stole your swan skin and forced you to marry him?”
A nod.
“And you can’t turn back into a swan until you find your skin again.”
A nod.
“But I reckon he’s hidden it, or burned it, or keeps it locked up so you can’t touch it.”
A tiny, miserable nod.
“And then you hear that old Granny Rothbart who lives out in the woods is really a batty old witch whose father taught her how to turn princes into swans,” the old woman sighed. “And you think, ‘Hey, stuff the old skin, I can just turn into a swan again this way.’
“But even if that was true – which I haven’t said if it is or if it isn’t – I’d say that I can only do it to make people miserable. I’m an awful person. I can’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness. I can’t use magic to make you feel better. I only wish I could.”
Another pause. “If I was a witch,” she added.
The housewife chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she drew herself up and, for the first time, looked the old woman in the eyes.
“Can you do it to make my husband miserable?”
The old woman considered her options. Then she pulled the wand out from the umbrella stand by the door. It was long, and silver, and a tiny glass swan with open wings stood perched on the tip.
“I can work with that,” said the witch.
I Might Be Lisle @possiblylisle - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
