Originally published in The Lorelei Signal, January 2023
“…am I truly a human dreaming of being a bizarre alien giraffe, shopping for groceries in an asteroid belt? Or am I the giraffe, dreaming of being a human?”
Franzi swung her long, giraffe-like neck from side to side, surveying the tightly filled shelves of the grocery aisles on this asteroid shop-mart. There were too many brands of jangleberries to pick from — she didn’t know which kind she’d like best, and somehow, the existence of so many brands made her feel like she shouldn’t have to settle for anything less than her absolute favorite type of jangleberry. Continue reading “Too Many Jangleberries”
Originally published in Beyond Wespirtech, November 2023
“If the stars had chosen her — somehow — to be their scribe, then it was not for her to turn the role down.”
It was so beautiful that the weight of it made her feel weak inside. She cried, and no one knew why. No one else could hear the music. But Brianna could hear it inside.
Brianna’s parents didn’t understand. They thought their child simply had an artistic sensitive soul, and perhaps, she was unusually susceptible to sunstroke. They tried to keep her inside on sunny days, especially in the middle of the summer. But Brianna craved the sun. It made her cry, but it also made her giggly and manic. Sunlight could make her happier than anything else — that voice whispering in her heart, rising and falling, raising expectations, holding out a moment longer than she thought she could stand, and then resolving. The music Brianna heard was the fabric of her life. Continue reading “The Girl Who Could Hear the Stars Sing”
Originally published in Beyond Wespirtech, November 2023
“She’d grown up on a normal planet with actual cities full of people, not some weird backwater world where literally every sentient creature had been created by one mad scientist, drunk with his own abilities, high on his own power.”
The ship shifting into orbit woke Tara up, but she kept her eyes closed, listening to her parents talk.
“It always scares me coming here,” Tara’s mother said. “Your dad makes such beautiful illusions for Tara. I’m afraid some day that she’ll choose not to come home.”
Tara was curled up on the ratty old couch on the back of their starhopper’s bridge. It was a loveseat and not meant to be slept on; she barely fit on it anymore. Her parents were sitting in the pilot and co-pilot seats, right in front of the viewscreen that must have shown the emerald and azure sphere of Grandpa Brent’s planet, Sylverra. Continue reading “Summers on Sylverra”
Originally published in Welcome to Wespirtech, October 2023
“Doesn’t it bother you that we live in a galaxy filled with all kinds of different aliens, but almost everyone here is human?”
The girl was science; chemistry personified, manifested in a physical form. This is not to say that the other scientists of Wespirtech were lining up in a snaky queue through the Daedalus Complex halls to see her, study her, consult with her like she was some sort of oracle. At least, Keida didn’t think so. Her new roommate, Rhiannon, was too quiet, and serious, to draw that kind of attention.
No, it meant Keida could see chemistry thoughts as they formed in Rhiannon’s brain. The evidence was perfectly clear on her face; a look that bespoke particles and molecules moving, joining, breaking apart and reforming in an abstract space she saw, approximately five inches above her own head. Keida was afraid to interrupt. A single word from her might break the spell. All those invisible molecules would dissipate and undo hours of silent work. Continue reading “Breathing the Air at Wespirtech”
“…once you find a hidden stash of honey, you simply must eat it. No other option. None at all.”
The bear’s paws were covered with honey. It dripped from her claws in sticky, amber droplets. It clumped her thick brown fur together between her paw pads. Everything she touched, her paw came away leaving a ghostly paw print behind, a gleaming sheen of sugar where it had been. She could touch nothing without giving herself away.
“Over time, the sister cats learned to cast their portals farther and farther away from themselves, no longer needing to touch the air with their claws to rip reality open.”
Emerald and Amber were each named for the rich, gemstone color of their eyes. Other than that, the sister cats looked the same — each with fur as black as the night sky and elegantly curving whiskers as bright white as shooting stars.
Other cats in the neighborhood shared whispered rumors that those bright white whiskers could grant a wish to a cat brave enough to fight the pair and yank one out. No cat had ever tried. The other neighborhood cats knew better than to challenge Emerald and Amber. It was too important to stay in their good favor. Continue reading “Their Eyes Like Portals”
“She didn’t find it fun when the chickens killed her best friend with their laser eyes, and her entire universe reset, meaning she’d failed in her life’s one goal.”
Holly’s bedroom looked like a scene out of Roger Rabbit or one of those other movies that mix animation and traditional film styles to make it look like cartoon characters and normal human beings live in the same world. Holly knew there were a bunch more recent movies like that, but her parents mostly only let her watch movies that had come out years before she was even born. They weren’t subscribed to any streaming services, so everything they watched came from a huge wall of bookshelves filled with actual DVDs. Continue reading “Cosmic and Miley”
“There were strict rules about harvesting the plants in the arboretum, and no matter how much she’d always wanted to curl her trunk around the stems of the flowers and snap off pretty buds, she had never dared break the rules.”
Jeko lifted her trunk and trumpeted along with the latest Star-Shaker song which she’d turned up to completely fill her small room aboard Crossroads Station. Her trunk swayed along with the beat, and the reptilian pop-star’s lilting, raspy voice was loud enough that Jeko didn’t have to feel embarrassed about her own brassy tones. The elephantine alien never sang in front of other people, but she loved to sing when she was alone. Especially when she was happy. Continue reading “The Elephant Bride’s Bouquet”
“Am-lei’s mother had, at least, enjoyed the benefit of having beautiful, colorful, butterfly wings that distracted humans from the Kafkaesque qualities of her actual body.”
The Seamstress Robot’s shop was a little hole in the wall in the Merchant’s Quarter of Crossroads Station. The seamstress robot herself looked a lot like a giant mechanical spider — all spindly silver legs, overly jointed and coming to extremely delicate points, capable of grabbing, manipulating, and piercing fabric. Also, generating fabric. The seamstress robot, like an actual spider, could generate silk. And synthetic cotton. And synth wool. And velvet, taffeta, patterned prints, fake leather… just about any material you could imagine could be generated, strand by strand, from the tip of her 3D printer leg. Continue reading “The Seamstress Robot and the Insect Bride”
