i Arahal
“I, too, killed someone once.”
Ashmael searched in vain for some nuance, some inflection of emotion, to tell him if Arahal was proud or ashamed of his admission. That he could find none did not surprise him – Arahal was a har who spurned the excesses of emotional incontinence; aloof and ascetic, he embodied the very essence of Gelaming philosophy.
To hear him announce that he was a murderer was almost like discovering that that world really was flat, after all, or that water flowed uphill, or the Tigrina was a modest, self-effacing individual who enjoyed a purely casual and offhand relationship with his looking-glass.
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Fan fiction of Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu series. All characters belong to Storm Constantine. Caeru, Cal and Pellaz. Spoilers for “Shades of Time and Memory”, and much jerking of tears.
Even The Longest Day
Some days were so beautiful, so perfect, they could only be Almagabran days. Cal lay on his back staring up at a sky which stretched from one side of eternity to another in an arc of glorious blue. Not even the faintest wisp of cloud sullied those pristine heavens. The sun was golden and warm on his body and all around him the bearded stalks of grain whispered and rustled in the warm breeze. Poppy flowers trembled delicately, the paper-thin scarlet blooms scattered throughout the field like unexpected drops of blood
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Fan Fiction of Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu Series. All characters belong to Storm Constantine. Cal and Velaxis. Possible spoilers for “Ghosts of Time And Memory” if you know what you’re looking for. Hermaphrodite porn, yay!
In A Dark Place
In the heat, he finds it impossible to sleep.
Inside the cabin it is claustrophobically dark. There is a window – a porthole, to be accurate – but no light enters though it. Outside the full moon is hidden behind cloud.
He swings his legs carefully over the edge of the narrow bunk, hearing it creak with his movement, and sits on the edge. He is naked, but the still, dead air within the cabin does not cool his skin. He can feel the slight but ever-present motion of the ship traveling through the wooden structure, like the vessel’s own heartbeat, up through his feet, his groin, his abdomen, his chest, his head, making him feel slightly giddy and off-balance.
He would open the window if he could, but it doesn’t open. A practical measure designed to keep the ship from being swamped by a high wave if some careless passenger were to leave it open, but tonight, on this calm ocean, on this airless night, it seems pointless and vindictive.
You’re an idiot, Cal. he tells himself, and his self does not disagree. You didn’t have to be here in the first place.
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In the beginning was the pencil, and the pencil begat The Stuff. And The Pencil climbed out out of the primeval ooze and evolved into the typewriter. Evolution proceeded apace, and one day The Computer was invented, and lo, we had 5″ floppy discs and Wordstar and other incredibly modern and spiffy things.
Some time later, being rather wiser in the ways of electronic obsolescence, I entrusted The Stuff to the care of an imaginary network of invisible machines, rather as one sticks a message in a bottle and throws it into the briney.
After a while, the imaginary network settled down a bit, so I decided to tidy up all The Stuff and keep it in one place. I used to use a cardboard box for this purpose. Isn’t the future marvellous? It’s everything I was hoping it would be, really!
