Flash Fiction, Fantasy, and Poetry
Come out from the briars / Where you hid in pain / Come back to the bowers / Where we danced and sang…
This is Lacillae’s lament for her betrothed. Though he is lost in darkness, she longs for him to return “To Light! To Life! To Love!” (“Spellbound,” line 21).
Tick-tock, tick-tock! The brass pendulum of an ancient grandfather clock swayed to the rhythm of the star that governed the passage of time in another realm. It was one of many relics Ihrassius Dafyunesh plundered before Lord Draiden cursed the vampire clan to forever dwell in darkness, far beneath the bright, warm touch of any sun. The clock’s simple, consistent tune brought the taste of Ihrassius’s favorite meal back to his tongue whenever he heard it. Once, he played a long, sadistic chess game against a lonely country mouse. Her patient sorrow so enriched the flavor of her blood that Ihrassius longed for more, even centuries after he drained her heart of both her lifeblood and her unrequited love. The stoic grandfather clock was the only witness of Ihrassius’s merciless checkmate…
Kylas rested his elbows against a steel railing, which ringed the main deck of the Larkspur and prevented tipsy or otherwise clumsy sailors from toppling over the rim of the deck to a laughable, untimely death. Officers of the Cloaked Hive—the specialized militia Kylas served—cared little if one of their worker bees drowned. Stupidity, like weakness, was best uprooted before it could sprout into full-blown incompetence. The officers of the Cloaked Hive installed the railing only to appease inspectors and to protect the company’s public image. Renowned for its ruthlessness and its effectiveness, clients hired the Cloaked Hive to sweep the most dangerous fields clean and leave not a trace of themselves behind. If worker bees met laughable deaths en route to one of those fields, they disgraced the company; tainted its public record as a one-stop solution to scheming aggressors…
In August, the clouds disappeared from the cerulean sky. The vibrant sun scorched the grass, which grew atop the cliffs that lined the riverbank. The sun’s reach dipped to the river below, evaporated the upper half of the river’s winter-accumulated depth. Tips of formerly invisible boulders peaked out from the surface of the water…