When I finally escaped the charge of the Desert Djinn, Zhod the Unsettling he was scrutinizing the interior of his loincloth for a troublesome flea while engaged in barter with an incontinent sand lizard named Wasir the Keeper in a vault below the fabled spice city of Agrasset. As they bartered the heat from the Continue Reading
‘Summer Pins you’ll fall for,’ announced the email. She often deleted them without a thought, but impulsively clicked on this one. It revealed six images, each daring to epitomise summer. Her mouse pointer dawdled over one of a bay warmed, she supposed, by late afternoon sun. It opened at her prompt and enlarged to fill Continue Reading
The slender trail weaved steeply upwards. On all sides mountains clawed at the dusk. The village dwindled before him; earth and stone structures increasingly basic, derelict, and abandoned. Not even the black shaggy goats strayed this far. The path narrowed again so the English visitor’s warrior escort was forced to walk behind. Guttural Pashto words Continue Reading
Octopuses are hard to love. They kill almost anything you put with them in a tank, including other octopuses. They’re notorious escape artists, they’re smart and they rip lives apart. I don’t make them happy. I think of them as male, perhaps because they remind me of my time with Boy. Except that I lived Continue Reading
‘…it flew straight into the aurora; never came out the other side.’ ‘Long title?’ ‘That’s not the title; it’s the first line of dialogue spoken by the child.’ ‘Then it should say, “said the child”.’ ‘It does.’ ‘You know… if I find you are lying…’ Jólakötturinn studied a black paw. ‘That’s the cat speaking?’ ‘Yes.’ Continue Reading
