Strange. Surreal. Shocking. Beautiful.
Strange. Surreal. Shocking. Beautiful.
Saskia leaned into the darkness above the stage, only vaguely aware of the wood rail against her hips as she retied the left headstring on her marionette. On the stage below, the Snow Queen’s head eased into balance.
Eva tossed her backpack on the picnic bench and hollered to Giancarlo. “I’m heading to the creek to cut some willow branches for the summoning spell.”The historian strode up the hill from their car with his gear slung over one shoulder and somehow managed to look like a runway model straight from Milan.
The moment Tuyet walked into the Dagenais’s compartment, she knew something was different. The usual pack of dogs swarmed around her, distracting her, before she figured out that the compartment smelled different.
Maxwell Sanders pressed the phone closer to his ear as if that would somehow bring comprehension. “Did you say trolls?”
“Yes, Max.” With her words, he could picture Amalia’s rigid posture.
He ran a hand over his scalp. “I can’t redo the aluminum plant blueprints because your foreman believes in fairytales.”
Lifting the stopper from the vial to his nose, Penn inhaled slowly. Against the neutral backdrop of his ship’s cleanroom, he picked out aromas of quince, elderberry, and bright Martian soil that hinted of blood, with undercurrents of cinnamon and Zeta Epsilon’s fragrantly sweet longgrass.
Lena rocked back and forth, feet aching from standing so long, as if the metal floors were harder in the auditorium than anywhere else in the ship. The paper bib she wore rustled as she shifted. The waiting that the high-holy put the prospectives through made Lena nervous.
When the matriarch announced that she was sending the sixteen members of Pimi’s small-family across the ocean to settle in Repp-Virja, Pimi thought it the end of her life. For though she had seen only seventeen full years, Pimi considered herself ready to fill her crop and begin the social rounds, seeking a mate.
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