Martha.net

1. “Before you leave,” he asked, dismissing them before they had time to object, “would you mind turning out the lights?”

2. Even the best of them can’t do more than blink while piloting, laid back in military couches designed to cradle them for hours. Tess is an aberration, a fluke, and carries out aerial battles over lunch and casual conversation.

3. Children only go bad when you aren’t watching, her mother said time and time again– so when her own children were born she carpeted the house with eyes and they grew up good, but terrified.

4. Artists cannot exist without patrons and there’s an frantic war for attention each time the spring subsidies roll around.

5. She doesn’t need the scanner to know they’re gone; the flames are too high, too bright, and the shadows have long since stopped moving.

1. Someone is dying, but he can’t tell who– they’ve woven themselves together so tightly in the overmind that they’ve lost track.

2. There are more important things, and less important things, but it’s a small brown kitten with eyes the color of snow that catches his attention.

3. Life has never been linear, it’s a chaotic mix of past and present and future jumbled together to create a sense of ‘now’ that only lasts a heartbeat.

4. Could-have-beens taste like sand and he aches for something to drink as she drags him across a desert of regret.

5. “‘Why’ is never a good question,” the dragon said. “You’ll never get the answer you want to hear.”

1. A lamp hangs off-kilter on the tavern’s post, the glass stained white and green and its fire elemental singing the menu into the night.

2. People love you best when you lie to them, it’s truth in marketing or marketing in truth—either way all they want to hear is that you’ll solve all their problems for $19.95, even if you’re solving problems they didn’t know they had.

3. Somewhere, if you go far enough and fast enough, you’ll find a planet on the edge of space whose sky only has stars on one side…

4. Twins are rarely both born alive; the stronger cubs consume their shadow selves and emerge complete or not at all.

5. In the end, it’s everyday magic that’s more powerful: the sparks that light the fires, the barriers against the rain. By luck or by wits the First Child made the right choice, eons ago, when the peace between men and gods was written into stone.

1. There are no windows on spaceships, not even the landing craft. They are far too complex for humans to fly and the AIs have found that windows just encourage them to try.

2. Before he could stop her she stepped off the ledge, arms spread wide and laughing. He watched her fall, her manic confidence crumbling to fear when he didn’t follow.

3. They’ve drawn lines in the sands for generations– this time they build them out of stone.

4. “It was supposed to be a surprise.” She was grumpy in the way all pre-teens react when the universe doesn’t quite bend to their whims.
He smiled and didn’t ruffle her hair, “When you’ve lived here long enough you can tell by the pitch of the winds when someone’s coming through the canyons.”

5. Soil is rare in the Midnight Mountains, the hills and cliffs are a jumble of night black obsidian and smokey quartz.

1. Cartoons had it all backwards: half of the battle was not knowing, because once you knew you certainly weren’t going to keep fighting!

2. “There are no sunrises here, no sunsets,” she looked up from the luggage and gave him a measuring look. “You don’t notice it at first, but it’s an annoying itch that chews at the back of your lizard-brain—you’ll know something’s wrong, but you won’t know what. Makes everyone a little nuts after a while.”

“But you just told me what’s wrong,” he pointed out.

“What makes you think that’ll make a difference?”

3. Cavalry was never quiet, even when you mounted it on cats.

4. Work was work and after the excitement wore off, they were pushing the same paper across the same desks—they were just doing it on another planet.

5. “Almost time to leave.” He watched the clock with the same slow pessimism he’d applied to everything else, and she was a heartbeat away from reducing things to a three-way split.

1. There were ghosts in the caves, shadows of creatures who had wandered the long-dead sea.

2. Weather was such a wonderful thing. Rain turned the roads to mud, snow hid gopher holes, ice sliced pawpads to ribbons, even sunny days turned rough stone into a hotfoot race. No matter what happened, they just couldn’t win.

3. The first thing every colony made was alcohol, a grand tradition dating back to when ships crossed seas instead of vacuum.

4. “I don’t suppose you could be a tad quieter? Some of us are trying to kill things before they hear us coming.”

5. There is no antidote to human curiosity, save death. It’s one of the few things I like about my new coworkers.

1. Life is seldom prone to tipping points, where you can say ‘yes, this spot here, this was when it all went wrong.’

2. “Very nice, now next time if you could manage to just destroy the building we were aiming at, that would be peachy.”

3. She’d quickly discovered that ‘Under the Mountain’ was a very bad place to hide, since almost all storytellers everywhere (and everywhen) made reference to it at least once.

4. If gas giants are water planets, then the Earth is a shallow pond indeed.

5. “Give me the crown.” He paused in front of the throne where the child-king wept, head in his hands.

“I can’t, I tried, I really did.” He looked up, face and hands streaked with dust and tears and blood, beseaching, “It won’t come off, they won’t let me go. I tried, please– I don’t want to die.”

1. They’re quickly approaching zero, but any probability, no matter how small, is still a chance.

2. Kindness was the most insidious of weapons and he wielded it with the grace of long practice. He made sure they owed him, each and every one, but they were such small favors that no one realizes how far his web had grown.

3. Appearances were everything when it came to making and keeping clients. No one cared how good you were if you didn’t match up to their visual expectations.

4. Archers were few and far between, wood was too precious to waste on arrows. Rocks, on the other hand, were plentiful and the army had no few slingers whose aim made kestrels weep with envy.

5. She could read auras, not as well as her mother or her sisters, but well enough to tell their latest customer was not their average clientele.

1. For a few desperate heartbeats canvas and rope were the only thing holding them aloft. Then with a coughing roar the engine finally caught fire and flung them forward into the winds.

2. Magic is only as powerful as the people who wield it and nothing stops a cat for long.

3. It’s the basic concepts, the ones they thought would be the easiest, that the translators stumble over. Eating is breathing and hunger is sunset– they’ve got so little common ground that neither side can find the words that fit.

4. Paying someone to kill you is a lot easier said than done and Tal was getting tired of trying. The only time he’d managed to find someone to pull the trigger the man had missed his heart, then fled before firing a second shot.

5. No one goes out in the afternoon, at least not if they can help it. There are no trees here, the sparse vegetation come up just above her knees and trends more toward cacti then bush.

1. Snow covered the forest in a darkening blanket, for the moment held aloft by leaves grown massive in the tiny gravity.

2. Ambushes are actually relatively easy to predict when your opponent is reduced to medieval warfare– but sometimes you have to take the route you know is dangerous and hope your luck is good enough to make it through.

3. It doesn’t matter how in fashion a style is, zebra stripes only look good on zebras.

4. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!” Ric dashed towards the hot springs with gleeful whoop. Ty was only a half-step behind and gaining ground.

Yuma made no move to follow. “Aren’t those sulfur springs?”

“Yeah?” Rill frowned, confused. “So?”

“Then wouldn’t it be the first one in the pool…?”

5. Someday they would look back on these few terrifying hours and he wondered if their choices would seem as rational then. The world was so much simpler when you were about to die.

1. Years went by without the expected contact, but he wasn’t programmed to care. Stuck in a simple if/then loop, he waited for the signal that would trigger the shift from terraforming to colonization– but it never came.

2. What, why, who, where– all valid questions when it came to murders, but it was how that drove everything in these sorts of cases.

3. “Pardon me, but were you going to eat that sheep?”

4. Every line he’d ever stood in had started with A and ended with Z. His whole life was alphabetized and Zach Zuckerman was used to coming last… this time it saved his life.

5. Anna stood silent, a small quite pool of calm amid the riot. No one else seemed to notice her, but William could feel her gaze even across the square.

1. “Faith, Charity, Temperance– the Madison’s really need to stop naming their girls after virtues, it doesn’t work.”

2. Other people might have passed him by, but she was feeling charitable. And that was how her Wednesday went from ‘good’ to ‘@!#%@#!’ in roughly forty seconds.

3. This would be the deciding moment of her career, unless, of course, it wasn’t… and then she really wasn’t sure what to do next. There were no second tries at masterworks.

4. “Can’t we work this out?” He dodged as a larger chunk of what-ever-it-had-been fell off with a wet thud. “You’re being unreasonable!”

5. Quests, as a rule, rarely ended peacefully, but she was determined to make this one an exception.

1. The problem with running for your life is that at some point you have to stop and it’s very very hard to get moving again.

2. Nicknames were the price you paid for being young, so said her Uncle Buck, but Abby didn’t mind. Even when they teased that Abby was short for Gabby, it suited her just fine– Abagail didn’t have the nice same roundness to it and besides, she hated drawing L’s.

3. “Greatness comes with time.”

“And talent,” she objected.

“Well yes, it helps, but most of it’s just patience and dumb luck.”

4. For each man that fell, two wardens rose in it’s place– thin, unnatural creatures built from scavenged bone and steel, infused with the burning hatred of the dead.

5. Somewhere in the darkness death was waiting for them… Thankfully, death snored.

1. The years had been kinder to the city that he would have thought, the twisted masses of concrete and steel still kept rough council against the skies.

2. The difference between a school and an academy depends on who’s holding the checkbook and Sir Vincent James had a very firm grip indeed. Which meant our classes, while in general were the same as any other, had a very different bent when it came to specifics. It didn’t take long before we were known as Apocalypse U.

3. “Just smile once in a while, I think– okay, don’t smile, definitely don’t smile. Are those fangs??”

4. Even the oldest members swore that the names of the founders of The 5 o’clock Society had been lost to the ravages of time, but Brian thought it the alcohol haze might be more to blame. Either way, the grand traditions those founders had passed down were treated just as venerably as if they’d come from Washington himself. Only George probably didn’t play quarters after work…

5. Falling and flying were almost the same, and she took to both as easily as she had to water.

1. Rebuilding the world didn’t take nearly as long as they’d thought it would– at least as long as you defined ‘world’ by the five mile radius around their house. The electricity might be gone, but the local hardware store had plenty of tools and they had nothing but time.

2. Magic didn’t flow from the hills like water, it stretched like old rubber, stubborn until it hit the snapping point. The rest of the party quickly learned to stay out of Heather’s way– she was used to the effortless rush of the mountains, hill magic left her frustrated and cranky. Cranky mages, even if they weren’t as powerful, were still bad news.

3. “Kindness is only ever repaid in traffic tickets and spilled coffees.”

“Well that’s a great attitude,” Keri rolled her eyes as she helped Gerry sop up the mess. “I bet you’d blame the rain on him if you could.”

“He broke my umbrella, does that count?”

4. Rabbits made much better companion animals than cats, they knew all the nooks and crannies of the forest and never led you wrong when the hounds were on your tail. They might not be good at hunting, but she’d left that side of the chase behind in Elm River.

5. Money was worthless, scraps of paper that fed fires and padded shoes. The inherent flaw of printed currency was that it was only worth something if both parties agreed.

1. “‘More or less’ is not an acceptable answer to ‘Is this going to explode?’”

2. “Now we shall see the truth of things!” She raised the staff into the shaft of sunlight and the prism coated k’Vlish with fractured magic.

3. “Very well,” he dismissed the charges without ever looking up from his book, “Next case.”

4. Quests were for heroes, this was more of an errand– an errand that involved dragons and knights and princesses, but not in true fairy tale fashion.

5. “Understanding comes in time,” Uulan bent to help him restack the stones, “no one expects you to be perfect.”

“I do,” Ris muttered.

“You don’t count.”

1. Making the best of a bad situation was ingrained, defiant hope ground down through flesh and bone until it underlay everything they did.

2. These were no false birds or fairy tale dragons, but true heirs to the Pteranodon line. He managed not to scream as they dove headfirst off the mountain, but he might possibly have made a sound during the spiraling decent as the winds skipped them back and forth across the ash-filled sky.

3. Death and taxes couldn’t hold a candle to the tide.

4. Go ask the Siren, she’d said, as if it was as simple as fetching water from the well. As if the journey wouldn’t take her across the seas and the price of the answer wouldn’t be her soul.

5. Universal translators worked with ideas, not words, and it took them a while to filter it out enough to learn each others names. She still thought of him as Bright Spice that Blooms in Winter and it amused her to think he did the same.

1. Other than the lack of air, the planet was actually quite pleasant.

2. Ice flashed its way along the blue-metal railings, tiny lightning strikes carved out in frost.

3. Open doors aren’t always invitations.

4. Killing him wasn’t the hard part, it was keeping him dead that was starting to get annoying.

5. Looking back across time was no easier than looking forward. No two minds saw history the same way and he fought down the trails of communal memory in search of her.

1. It was a faint sound, a wavering cry all the more disturbing for it’s tenor.

2. The light was creeping across the ground inch by inch, consuming everything that could not flee.

3. A world without magic was– different. Transforming them from Gods to tinkerers, but having lost nothing in the process.

4. This was the last of it, three shimmering grains of sand and then the life he’d horded so carefully would be spent. He wasted them all on one last night with her… and spent eternity without regret.

5. Something, something– it was there just on the edge of hearing, and it was driving her mad.

1. There are no seasons here, nothing but the migration patterns of the local wildlife even hint that there is any solar orbit at all.

2. Push does finally come to shove, but everyone’s disturbingly polite and diplomatic about things while people are dying to prove a point.
3. It never rains, per se, the fog just gets thicker and thicker until water condenses on every available surface.

4. Angels don’t sing, not where we can hear them at least. You only know they’re coming into range when your bones begin to hum and your ears pop under the pressure.

5. “If you could have anything what would it be?”

“That’s a stupid question and I plead the fifth.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Incriminating me very damned well is the point, and what I want is none of your bleeping business anyway.”

“… Did you just get bleeped?”

“Yes, now bleep off and let me out of this bleeping room.”