Category: Book Chapter

You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 7

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.

“That’s where we’re going to go cloud-surfing?”
“That’s where we’re going to go cloud-surfing?”

The space freighter’s recreation room was packed with passengers as the ship approached the solar system containing Crossroads Station.  Anno had managed to claim one of the tables and three chairs for her family.  She had Darso on her lap; Mei was on Drathur’s lap; and Loi was treating their third chair like a climbing structure, getting on Anno’s last nerve.  Anno just hoped the rambunctious kit’s antics weren’t bothering any of the other passengers packed around the broad viewing windows.

Continue reading “You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 7”

You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 6

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.

“Anno appreciated that Drathur didn’t fill her pointed ears with empty promises about how everything would be okay.”

Every night on the space freighter, it was a struggle to get the kits to go to bed.  Well, no, it was a struggle to get them to quiet down and go to sleep.  Not only did the idea of dividing the day up into separate portions of ‘day’ and ‘night’ feel very artificial to the suddenly savvy little children, but the thin walls meant they could hear other passengers moving through the hallways and talking in neighboring rooms, all very much awake.

Mei argued that without a sun anywhere near the ship, clearly she didn’t need sleep anymore.  Obviously, the sun setting was the cause of the Heffen need to sleep, and without a sun to set, she would never need to sleep again.  Loi and Darso weren’t sure that sounded right, but they liked the idea of never sleeping again.

Continue reading “You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 6”

You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 5

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.

“It was good the kits were getting to experience zero gee. Anno wouldn’t have wanted them to miss out on such a fundamental experience from her own early life.”

After a day and a half of hiding in their tiny double room while Drathur brought her snacks, Anno allowed herself to be lured out to the recreation area by her overly enthusiastic five-year-olds.  To hear them chatter about it, you’d have thought it was a whole amusement park.  There’s simply something very special about novel toys and games when you’re that young.

Anno wasn’t surprised to find the holo-board games antiquated and kind of shabby.  She recognized some of the games from her own school days.  They weren’t so much classics as cheaply produced commodities that seemed to congregate in the backs of classrooms or lobbies and waiting rooms.  Anywhere that adults are hoping to keep kids quiet and out of the way for a while.  There was even one game Anno had used to play with Am-lei and Jeko a fair amount.  Perhaps she’d give it a whirl with her kids sometime during the coming days.

Continue reading “You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 5”

You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 4

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.

“It wasn’t your job to take care of them,” Drathur said. He’d said it many times before. It helped. A little.

The space freighter was mostly a cargo ship, but it also had one long hallway of rooms for passengers with common areas on either end.  One of the common areas was a galley, open at all times with all the food paid for as part of their tickets onboard, and the other common area had a few rickety old holo-board games, a very small exercise area, and a wide window for watching the stars.  Anno’s family explored every inch of the common areas, immediately after dropping their luggage off in their own rooms.  Once she’d seen all there was to see aboard the space freighter, Anno went back to her own room to sit on the bed that would be hers for the next week, leaving the kits to play, under Drathur’s watchful eye in the exercise area.

Continue reading “You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 4”

You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 3

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.

“Rationally, Anno knew the gravity jumper was one of the safest forms of travel.”

The next few days were a bizarre blur of shopping, packing, planning, and answering questions from kits who really didn’t understand what it would mean to leave their planet and fly across the vastness of space to an entirely different solar system.

Mei wanted to know if they’d be put in a cryo-sleep and wake up in an entirely different century, because one of her favorite holo-vids featured a fictional, cartoony family of humans from the distant past who had slept away the years in that way and woken up to the modern world, all wide-eyed and amazed by everything they saw.  Anno suspected Mei loved the vid so much because the cartoon characters’ amazement and wonder were relatable to a five-year-old for whom the whole universe was still new and remarkable.

Continue reading “You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 3”

You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 2

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1 , return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.

“It had been strange losing her friend for a month, only to have her friend return in an entirely different form.”

Drathur researched the price of space freighter tickets to Crossroads Station, the price of lodging in quarters on the station, and all the other incidentals one would need to research for such a trip.  He was better at that kind of research than Anno, and besides, she couldn’t seem to concentrate with thoughts of her childhood friends and the possibility of seeing her family again whisking through her head like a tornado.  Instead, she put her work aside and played with the three kits for the rest of the afternoon, talking to them about what Crossroads Station was like when she was growing up and gently feeling out if they’d even be manageable on such a trip.

Continue reading “You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 2”

You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station — Chapter 1

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station.  If you’d prefer to read in e-book or paperback form, learn more here.  Or if you want, skip ahead to the next chapter.

“…they went straight to the printer and poked their long, red-furred muzzles into it, trying to spy the object before it was done forming.”

The grasses swayed, blue and green, like an ocean rippling in the wind, right outside Anno’s window.  She leaned her narrow muzzle against a paw and stared at the natural wonder that was simply plants growing on the surface of a planet.  So simple and yet, where she had grown up, so rare.  Every day here, living on New Heffe, she reveled in it.  She was surrounded by it.  Fields that stretched outward, seemingly endlessly, like the night sky that had enfolded her childhood home of Crossroads Station.
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Otters In Space 4 – Epilogue

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1 or return to the previous chapter.

“The dog’s tears had dried up. She had found a way to cope with learning that her gods… were only human.”

The Lucky Boomerang stayed docked at the interstellar space station for more than a month before it was time to head home to Earth, bearing a treasure trove of new knowledge, strange goods, and even one of the translator parrots who wanted to come along.

Trugger and the mice had become regular customers at several of the food carts during their month-long visit, and Kipper learned about interstellar law.  Most importantly, she learned that the humans running the space station — Crossroads Space Station — wouldn’t trade or deal with societies that didn’t afford equal rights to all their members.  This meant, if dogs wanted to oppress cats and ban them from traveling to space, then these humans wouldn’t want to have anything to do with them. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Epilogue”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 28: Kipper

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“Despite all the strange things that had happened to Kipper in her life, none of them had prepared her for visiting a human space station and having a parrot laugh at her.”

Kipper watched Amelia walk away, back toward their spaceship.  It shouldn’t bother her to have the government dog who she’d never wanted on her ship leave her side.  But it felt wrong.

Kipper was just one cat.  A tabby who’d grown up in a cattery, poor and undereducated, without a real support system.  She had her siblings, and she’d made friends over the years.  But deep inside, she still felt like a lone cat who had to fight for herself. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 28: Kipper”

Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 27: Amelia

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Otters In Space 4: First Moustronaut.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“The world was going to be out of order, everything discordant and confusing, and infinitely lonely for the rest of eternity. Because the humans here didn’t care that she’d come so far to see them.”

As all the rest of the crew absorbed the chaotic view of alien lifeforms on this interstellar space station, Amelia only had eyes for the humans among the crowd.  She wanted to rush toward the first one she saw — a human with pinkish skin and long black hair — and fall at the woman’s feet.  She wanted to forget everything about adulthood and civility and kiss the woman’s boots, touching the fabric that clothed her, rubbing her tongue along a surface that touched a human’s skin.  She wanted to roll on her back and laugh and bark and beg the human to tell her she’d been a Good Dog. Continue reading “Otters In Space 4 – Chapter 27: Amelia”