Furry Award Eligible Stories

award-ribbon4It’s award season, and so we’re doing a round-up of Mary E. Lowd’s furry short stories published in 2017.  There are a lot of them!  All but one of these stories can be read online for free; four of them can be read right here at Deep Sky Anchor!  If you love any of these stories, please consider taking a moment to nominate them for the Ursa Major Awards, or if you’re a qualified nominator, the Leo Literary Awards. Continue reading “Furry Award Eligible Stories”

The Unification of Worlds

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arcana: A Tarot Anthology, November 2017


“Diamma liked to imagine that the gold flecks in the left eye on the chimera’s fourth head, one of the fuzzy ones with bull-like crescent horns, had something to do with her own golden eyes.”

Diamma’s scaly green tail curled to one side, then the other, swaying uneasily, as she stood in the open hatch of her spaceship.  Crystals of pink snow caught in her fiery, leonine mane as the flakes drifted down from the powder blue clouds of this world.  Snomoth.  For years, it had been a number in the registry on her ship; somewhere she would eventually go.  For the last few weeks, it had been a dot of light on the main viewscreen.  Now it was a faintly pink snowball, the color of cherry blossoms in the early spring, stretched out before her, waiting to freeze her toes when she stepped down from the hatch.

The final piece of the puzzle might be here, hidden underneath the pale pink snow. Continue reading “The Unification of Worlds”

The Moon Like An Unhatched Egg

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in The Symbol of a Nation, June 2017


“Jenn tried not to think about the cardinal and the bluebird, the seagull and the peacock — all of them gossiping and judging her. She knew they all expected Kiley the bald eagle to win.”

The moon stretched out in front of Jenn like an unhatched egg.  Full of possibility.  Full of portent.  In a few moments, the four pod capsules, including hers, would be ejected from the USS Fledgling, and the final competition would begin.  The winner would secure the continuation of their genetic line and be the first live astronaut to Mars.  All of them were uplifted birds, designed especially for this purpose, but only one would win. Continue reading “The Moon Like An Unhatched Egg”