DoorTraveler

I. Prayer I glanced out the back of the plane, triple checking the parachute in my hands. Gregor laughed at me as he watched. The man would follow me to the Fire Cavern even if I fell to the Madness, but with him and the rest of the men respect on the battle field and respect in private were about as different as night and day. On the battle field I was queen, a harsh ruler that saw fairness as what she decreed it, but in private I was their best friend’s sister—his younger sister who wasn’t allowed to flirt with anyone they didn’t approve of (which was pretty much anyone who wasn’t a Breaker). I didn’t m

1: Grackle’s Diner It was a small little diner on the outskirts of town by a road very few people used. Over the years it had been given a homier feel with a few vases here and there, mirrors and pastel paintings on the walls and an old grandfather clock on the far wall by the bathroom hall. Still, it couldn’t escape the diner-charm with its cheap faux-leather cushioned booths and wooden chairs around old linoleum-topped tables, or its arcade nook. Most of the staff described it as a diner masquerading as a bed and breakfast, and poorly at that. On a rainy day like today it wasn’t uncommon for it to be completely empty, but

The White King’s army collided with that of the Dark Prince during the in the last year of the Age of the Two Kingdoms. The Plague, as the Prince’s army was then known, swept down the north side of the Fire Nest Mountains three hundred men against five thousand. The Northern Army, the last stand for free men, was destroyed, and in honor of their struggle against the darkness, the land grew white blossoms over the dead. It was a war to be known as Whitefall, but time and memory forgot this battlefield—legend placing it nearer to coast. The land however, did not. Earth always remembers. The Age of the Dark Prince came and pass

Our souls are stretched beneath our skin. The best of us held in our palms, the worst of us held in our fingers. The rest is electricity. It’s supposed to glow through the eyes, but they are as opaque as skin. There is no true window there, just a reflected image of the world, twisted upside down only to be twisted right side up again. What then does the soul see? Does it see truth? Does it recognize the souls of others, or does it perceive only a spiraled image of compiled information? If so, then we should tear out the false window, shatter the fogged glass for the soul to see clear! Let our fingers reach in and pluck the organ away,

The night was dark the stars and moon taking refuge behind the clouds to shield themselves from the atrocities below. Torchlight moved through the trees, the crunch and swish of the brush awaking the parents in their small cabin. The father threw off the covers, the mother running for the small child sleeping in the next room. She shushed the child, the father draping a heavy coat around them, looking anxiously toward the noise. The mother and child were hurried through the door into the night, the father staying behind to answer the rude knock on their front door. The mother hurried through the trees, pausing only to stare in horror at the

The 7 o’clock news told me a Stain had appeared on my street. They had yet to catch the vandal, but I wasn’t so concerned about that. It was the Stain that had me interested. It being Saturday and I being otherwise unoccupied, I strolled out my front door and took a walk to see what I could see. Police had quartered off the area with the usual yellow and black “CAUTION STAIN” plastic tape, but I don’t see why. It didn’t help with the Chicago Incident, let alone Florida! Looking down at the oily black goo splattered across the pavement, I could only give a sigh of submission. “Well, it’s as good

Reality is a cruel Mistress, and she crushes dreams with the tip of a 4 inch stiletto while she cracks her whip on the back of the world to make it roll over. And with a personality like mine, I’ll be nothing but a poor old sad librarian telling the volunteers my imagination was a wild fire that didn’t quite make it off the match. I’ll go home to an empty house to a hard-drive full of punctured false starts, finished unexplored worlds, and cracked wonders, because I am no one. No one but the poor soul Reality crushed with a stiletto heel and didn’t notice had clung too hard to that idea and got stuck halfway up, lookin

The Story of the High Powers and the Creation of Aerixom Before anything could exist, there was naught but Blackness. Then light. Its brilliance cut through the Blackness, carving out the Lit Path. At that moment those now called the Higher Powers, the Royals of the Plains of Strigox, stepped onto the path. First arrived Mother Space, her long black hair hung like mist around her curved form of ink black naked skin, a shadow in the light of the Lit Path but barely recognized against the Blackness of Before so that her white eyes were the only indication of her regal presence. As those celestial eyes looked on into the Blackness, she saw what

The drop of water collided with the opaque glass lid sealing away the world. The sound it produced was nothing but a small DAP, and yet the occupant below the sky looked up as the noise dripped down to him to rest in the dirt he laid on as it should have—if the sky had not prevented it. His pale face was darkened by crisscrossed shadows of the bars protecting the foggy sky. DAP. DAP-DAP-DAP. DAPDAPDAPDAPDAPDAPDAPDAP. The noise grew into a roar of a thousand tiny fingers tapping the sky for attention it would not give. His blue eyes held a memory of what the sky used to be, but they dropped it into the dirt where the water couldn’

Time was taken from the day to be wrapped in warmth in Elysian Fields-- That way-- And there sat I. I between trees, between silence till, bewildered, Pure Raven broke in. And there sat I listening and thought: "Are we not alike?" An answer then-- a call-- agreement? dis'proval? Again the call that rocked Pure Raven up and down. No answer given to please me. Watched, there sitting, I thought once more: "Does your battle legacy hold?" An answer then-- perhaps the one sought after-- Pure Raven gave call and flew away. Time broken, stood I in that place leaving to wind the warmth trapped there.