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What will fursuits look like a few years in the future? Arrkay gazes into the crystal ball for a peek at the hottest innovations for these colorful critters. Fursuit consultant: Tentakal Creations Fursuit Studio https://tentakalcreations.com/ Animatronics consultant: Nyaasu https://www.furaffinity.net/user/nyaasu/ Merch, Sweet Tees and stuff: http://www.culturallyfd.com https://teespring.com/stores/culturally-fd-merchandise Support Culturally F'd: https://www.patreon.com/culturallyfd Plus a Newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/gsz8us7 Listen in on TEMPO TALKS with Tempe O'Kun https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jPyIK2c7mK-LpbvfDNqfcSW Check out Tempe O'Kun's books "Sixes Wild" and "Windfall" here: http://furplanet.com/shop/?affillink=YOUTU2907 Here's a playlist of his other Culturally F'd videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jPS7tnT4hdJwBI-CeLF8Kb_

Resources, Social Media & Donation Links
Follow Kai Drossom
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Entail
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In late January I sat down with Kai Drossom a Ghanaian and British fur living in the far away land of London England. This episode was such a treat to take part in. Kai is exceptionally sharp! They waste no time discussing anything and everything that made them the person they are today as well as why some of those things need not be tread by anyone in the future. Since they're the official CEO of Entail - the kickass new furry app set to launch and out speed past all competitors - I expected nothing less than the brilliance on display here.

If being the head of Entail wasn't enough they also detail their relationship with the furry community as a whole. From being a furmeet friendly face to eventually getting fed up with the systems that be and picking up the mantle themselves and creating Barkade Furs with previous guest Saint Panic. A remarkable, and daring endeavor that's made a real impact on the furs of the UK. 

Kai describes their identity in a way that feels personal... Because it is. Even their struggles with the UK's government feels deeply personal to me - an American. For good reason at that. They paint a picture of a bleak UK that's a ticking time bomb to anyone paying attention, but it's not all doom and gloom. The future may just be bright after all.

Thanks for listening to the show! Make sure to tell us what you thought, follow the guest, and wash your hands~

Support the show

Interview With Kai Drossom - Entail, Facing Prejudice, & The UK

TigerTails Radio Season 13 Episode 01. Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf For a full preview of events and for previous episodes, please visit http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. Backing music by Sanxion7.

[Sorry we’ve been dormant a few days folks — Had some technical arguments with WordPress to work out. That done, here were are again! — ye ed-otter] Ursa Major Award favorite Rick Griffin has a new science fiction book out. It’s available in paperback, and digitally at Smashwords: “The Captain’s Oath is the second installment of The Final Days of the White Flower II Trilogy by multi-award-winning artist and writer, Rick Griffin. Featuring nine illustrations by the author himself, this science fiction epic continues the exciting story of struggle against oppression that began in Traitors, Thieves, and Liars… The best-laid plans of geroo and ringel often go awry. Nobody knows that as well as the crew of the White Flower II, the geroo ship whose captain still bears the literal scars of his last failure. Despite their best efforts, his ship and its crew still languish in slavery to the cruel krakun. But when a new opportunity for freedom presents itself, will the geroo be able to pull off an even more daring escape plan — right under the nose of a krakun overseer?” We missed plugging the first book, so we’d better get off our fuzzy butts and help to plug the second!

image c. 2021 by Rick Griffin

More in my series of furry alternate reality found footage shorts. In this case I think it was just an excuse to play around with New Coke commercials.   Everything was animated or created by scratch and I’m really proud of the look of the coke and Pepsi cans which while photography had to be mucked with a bunch to get the feel of the original commercial.  The AT&T ad was a blast to do and I really think that voice goes well with a shiba.

Furry “Found Footage” commercials

Welcome once again to another FWG Newsletter! We’ve had a busy month here at the Guild so let’s get on with the news.

First, we would like to recognize that the Ursa Major Awards are now open for voting! We hope Furry authors, editors, and fans of Furry works of all kinds go vote for their favorites. The voting form is available here.

Two projects associated with the FWG are up for awards and we would like to encourage our members to consider giving them their vote. The first thing is that From Paw To Print is nominated for Best Non-Fiction Work. Compiled by Thurston Howl, this collection of essays features multiple guild members and is a marvelous resource for anyone wanting to get into Furry writing.

Profits from the sale of From Paw To Print are donated to support the FWG as well, so we would love to see it get some serious recognition on an awards stage. For those who haven’t picked up a copy, it is available here from Bound Tales Press.

The second is the Furry Writers’ Guild Blog which is nominated for Best Anthropomorphic Magazine. Those who have enjoyed posts like our Black History Month spotlights, interviews with authors and editors, and even things like this newsletter should consider giving the blog their vote. A win would be wonderful for the Guild and make our blog an even more powerful promotion tool for members of the FWG.

Speaking of the blog, this month we featured four separate Black Furry creatives there. We hope those who have yet to check out these interviews will give them a look — there’s a lot to be learned from them.

• Black History Month Spotlight: Ryuukiba
• Black History Month Spotlight: Rhyner
• Black History Month Spotlight: Cedric G! Bacon
• Black History Month Spotlight: Kirisis “KC” Alpinus

Remember, we now have our Promotion Tip Line to submit to if you have new releases coming out, so don’t hesitate to fill that out so we can feature your book in our next newsletter! Here’s a new release we spotted this month:

• The Captain’s Oath by Rick Griffin

You can find all kinds of submission calls for Furry writing in our Furry Writers’ Market! Currently, these markets are open.

• Shark Week: Ocean Animals – Deadline: April 30th, 2021
• Selections of Anthropomorphic Literature: Vol 2 – Deadline: May 15th, 2021
• Furs With Benefits – Deadline: June 1st, 2021
• Less Fur-Milliar Spaces – Deadline To Commit: June 1st, 2021
• CRINKLE: A Littles Anthology – Deadline: June 15th, 2021
• Pirating Pups – Deadline: November 30th, 2021
• The Nightmurr Before Christmas – Deadline: October 1st, 2021
• #ohmurr! – Deadline: Ongoing

One last thing this month: Don’t forget to nominate works for the 2020 Cóyotl Awards! The nomination deadline is March 15th so time is running out. It’s one of the perks of guild membership to nominate, so exercise it! You can nominate works here.

I know that it’s the anniversary of COVID-19 lockdowns for many people, so I want to remind everyone to take care of themselves and keep working hard to stay safe. Anniversaries of traumatic events have been shown to cause extra stress for people, so make sure to give yourself some kindness in whatever ways you can. Until next time, may your words flow like water.

– FWG President Linnea “LiteralGrill” Capps

Hey Papa Bear, I hope you’re well.

If I’m being honest, I’m not entirely sure what kind of answer I’m expecting from this question or whether this is really a question at all or where the root of this problem lays. I’ve milled over what kind of thing I’m facing actually is, and how any one way might end up making me look ignorant, spiteful or at worst discriminatory. Something that disgusts me to think about.

It’s probably best if I set things up. I started partaking in furry activities, attending meetups and familiarising myself with the scene from around 2014 or 2015, and my earliest months went about as you’d expect a newcomer’s early months to go: A few good friends, a fair bit of time watching from the sidelines and occasionally chipping in where I felt comfortable. It wasn’t until a few months later into the first group of friends, comprised of a number of individuals (including some well-known faces in the community) who would frequently talk to me and otherwise make me feel welcome. These are friends I have often met with, and even gladly invited to my wedding some years ago.

This group felt wonderful to be with, and taught me a great many things about gender identity, the issues surrounding LGTBQ individuals and helping me to understand and appreciate the issues that such a community faces daily when I’d previously not been exposed to such issues or even properly talked to or met those involved. I’m proud to say that these are now issues I long to help any of my LGTBQ friends with wherever in the world they may be, and I’m proud to say I’ve made numerous friends across the globe in this community.

My problem now, however, revolves around this friend group’s behaviour that has always been present but appears to have intensified in recent years, and some of the things that are now said on a frequent basis. A common thing is the discussion of drama pertaining to individuals the group may see as enemies which are already draining enough, but the more worrying and discomforting to me is their apparent readiness to brand cisgender and heterosexual individuals as inherently problematic people who are deserving of ridicule and contempt (including posting derogatory memes intended to mock those people to public social media).

My time talking to these friends helped make me aware of the inherent privilege I have over others: I’m a white, adult male who is married to my wife in a fairly traditional marriage. Despite this however, it didn’t make the apparent news that I am inherently harming some of my closest friends by being who I am any easier to come to terms with. It was and still is hurtful to hear that being a cisgender person is somehow making the lives of others and the lives of those I care about worse.

I have reached out to a few of these in the group privately to discuss my concerns and how such comments make me feel, and the feedback I’d receive didn’t inspire much in the way of confidence; being told that how I had no right to be upset given my privilege. Being told that if I wanted to be a true ally to LGBTQ people that it was my duty to take what they were saying and just agree. Being told to simply accept that being who I am inherently causes problems in these people’s lives.

This leaves me with my current dilemma. This has gone on for long enough that I feel like I need to walk away from these people and their mindsets. It feels like what could be described as a toxic environment to be in, especially when I look at my friendships with others elsewhere that are all genuinely wonderful.

Despite my heart telling me that it’s the right thing to do, my head leaves me conflicted. Will walking away from this group mean I’m betraying them and their struggles, given my position of privilege? Am I betraying the struggles all my friends from further afield have faced?

Many thanks for your time, and apologies for the lengthy write-up.

Anonymous (England, age 30)
​
* * *
Dear Furiend,

Thank you for writing me on such an important topic. Oh, my, it opens a can of worms, doesn't it? If I do say so myself, you are asking the right bear. As a man who thought he was straight for 40 years of his life (long story) and who was married to a woman for 22 years and is now openly gay and married to a man, I can view the LGBTQ community from both sides. This has to do with reverse prejudice and applies not only to LGBTQ v. hetero debates but also to any debate involving bigotry (race, religion, nationalism, etc. etc.)

But let's just focus on LGBTQ rights in England (and in the USA, since I'm more familiar with that) for this letter, since that was your question. Both countries have treated gay and trans and bi people horrifically for hundreds of years. In England, homosexuality was a crime until 1967, when the Sexual Offences Bill was passed, but even then you had to be over 21 and discreet about sex, AND the law only applied to England, so being gay was still illegal in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. A great example of the pain and injustice caused in England by this policy can be summed up in two words: Alan Turing. (You might know this story, but it is also for the benefit of my other readers, so be patient). Turing was the brilliant mathematician and computer scientist who, along with his staff, invented the machine that solved the Germans' code during World War II, saving millions of lives. After the war, the British government determined he was gay and found him guilty of "indecency." He was forcibly chemically castrated. Turing was so tormented by this that he committed suicide. So, the man who saved untold numbers of people from the Nazis was tortured to death because he was gay. Oh, the queen pardoned him in 2013, long after he was dead. So helpful.

Back to the law. So, anyway, Scotland then decriminalized being gay in 1980 and Northern Ireland did so in 1982. The Isle of Man finally made it legal in 1994. Homosexuals in England could serve in the military beginning in 2000, and the Civil Partnerships Act of 2004 gave gay couples the same rights as married hetero couples. But it wasn't until 2014 that gay couples could marry in England and Wales.

The point of the above is that these events are still fairly recent, and the pain of injustices perpetrated against homosexuals in England runs deep. It has been an uphill battle all the way. For example, Pope Benedict XVI berated the English government for its gay equality laws in 2010 (fortunately, Pope Francis is much more tolerant). In America, homosexual couples did not have the right to marry until 2015, and in many U.S. states, businesses can still legally discriminate against us. The House of Representatives just passed a new equality bill, but it has to get approved by the Senate, still.

So, you can easily understand--and it sounds like you do--why LGBTQ people are still miffed, to say the least (I didn't even go into all the stats on gay and trans people being beaten and murdered over the years), at the hetero community, many of whose members still behave horribly to us today.

When a group of people is discriminated against, hated, and abused simply for being who they are, those people tend to group together to find strength in one another. So, the black community in America has formed a strong, unionizing culture; Native Americans have; LGBTQ people have, and so on. But these groups all have something in common: Their tormentors are, by and large, white straight people. So, the hate has been focused on white straight people from all kinds of different minority groups. By and large, it's deserved. When one adds the increasing demand that everyone be Politically Correct, you have a recipe for reverse prejudice and reverse discrimination.

Am I saying that all white, straight people are bad? No, no I am not. Focusing again on just heterosexuals, I would venture to say that the majority are good people who don't refuse to serve LGBTQ people at their businesses and don't beat them up or shout insults at them. At the same time, however, they do live in a world of privilege that makes them a bit blind and dull-witted about what gay people go through. I'll use myself as an example. Growing up, I was a very protected child, not knowing anything about the dangers in the world. When it came to homosexuality, I was clueless. About the only "exposure" I had to what it was like being gay was British comedies such as Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Two Ronnies, in which gay men were always wearing women's clothing and talking with a lisp. So, I thought that was being gay. It wasn't until much later that I learned there were many masculine gay men (bears, leathermen, or just plain joe's like me), and that was quite a revelation. My point here is that, being brought up middle-class, white, and sheltered, I probably made many incorrect assumptions about gay people (and bi, trans, etc. about whom I only found out later in life), which likely resulted in my saying stupid things when I was an adult. Not sure, but I probably unwittingly insulted a lot of gay people in my youth and early adulthood. Now, if you take someone like me and put them in a restrictive, conservative, religious environment, they probably end up coming off even worse to the LGBTQ community without meaning to.

I do believe that, because of this and the long history of discrimination, LGBTQ people will conclude that all straight people are intolerant bigots, and if you don't agree with that assessment, then you're an intolerant bigot as well in their minds.

This, of course, is incorrect.

So, we have three factors that combine to result in the attitude you are seeing in your LGBTQ group: 1) a long history of discrimination and hurt against LGBTQ people; 2) the ignorance of those in the straight community that causes them to be dense or unsympathetic about their plight; and 3) the current atmosphere of hyper-PCness that causes people to bristle at the slightest hint of a potential slight against their community.

This triple whammy results in the offended community (in this case, the LGBTQ community) taking an overly defensive, hypersensitive posture that then results in their becoming blind to other points of view, and this is what causes prejudice on their part. They are being prejudiced against you because you come from a "privileged" background. And once people start seeing you as something "other" than them, you are going to have a very difficult time fostering empathy from them.

As you might know, a lot of gay people have fled into the furry fandom, hoping to land into the comforting arms of a welcoming community, and most of them did. There are a lot more furries identifying themselves as LGBTQ in the fandom than in the general population. Establishing a safe haven within the community has the side effect of also becoming defensive of said territory, as you have personally experienced. Part of that defensiveness includes intolerance for outsiders and differing opinions, which then results in what I call the George W. Bush position of "you're either for us or against us." No in-between; no compromise.

Intolerance of outsiders within a community of people who feel oppressed can lead to the blindness of their own shortcomings. For example, black people have sometimes discovered that furries--who are by and far largely white--treat blacks rather myopically and, yes, with prejudice. A big problem is that white (notably, often gay) furries seem to be under the impression that black people have to pick fursonas that stereotype the black community (I'm talking about America now; obviously, black people have a different history in England but I'm sure they suffer from discrimination, too). One black acquaintance of mine said that furries felt her fursona had to be an urban thug kind of furry, a gangsta, a rapper, things like that, and that they couldn't be, for example, a Celtic warrior; they even went so far as to say her fur should be black and couldn't be, say, purple or pink. I've seen videos of black furries complaining they do not feel very welcome in our furry community, and that's just sad. The fandom shouldn't be just for gay white furries but for ALL people who want to have imaginative fun without restrictions, rules, or barriers.

In summation, LGBTQ people have been oppressed for generations and, understandably, have become wary of straight people. In the furry community, they have hunkered down into their own, relatively safe communities where they can feel accepted, but a side effect is they have become overprotective and fearful of outsiders, leading them to form prejudices of their own and forgetting why they came to the fandom in the first place: to have fun and be free of society's constraints.

Back to your personal concerns: If your furry group is saying you have "no right" to question them because of your "privileged" birth, they are flat-out wrong. If they are making you feel uncomfortable, then you have every right to call them out on it. Prejudice begins with ignorance and intolerance for people who are different. Point that out to them. Point out that you are on their side but that condemning an entire group for who they are (in this case, straight people) is no better than what straight people have done to them. It works both ways.

Our society can only progress if we listen to each other and empathize with each other. No group is perfect. No group is superior to another. The furry fandom should not be a haven only for gay white people but for ALL people. It could be a great equalizer by helping us discover common ground as, ironically, human beings who all desire love, friendship, hugs, and personal freedom.

Show your group this letter. Hopefully, this will open their eyes a bit.

Hugs,
Papabear

Welcome to Issue 10 of Zooscape!

This issue of Zooscape would like to invite you to have coffee with dolphins, travel to Jupiter with dragons, and visit heaven with crabs.  Unfortunately, it can’t, because none of those things happen in these stories.  Oh, there are dolphins and coffee; Jupiter and dragons; heaven and crabs; but they’re all mixed up in a different order, and you’ll have to read the stories to find out what order they’re actually arranged in.  Think of it as a treasure hunt that will take you to outer space, the afterlife, and back again.

* * *

Dance of Wood and Grace by Marie Croke

The Lonely Little Toaster by A Humphrey Lanham

How to Safely Engage in Telepathy with the Dolphins of Ocean Paradise by Elizabeth Cobbe

Bliss and Abundance by Nicholas Stillman

Heart of Ice by Anna Madden

And the Red Dragon Passes by Emily Randolph-Epstein

Kypris’ Kiss by Slip Wolf

Coffee and the Fox by Mari Ness

Dominion by Christine Lucas

* * *

As always, if you want to support Zooscape, we have a Patreon.  And while we are currently closed to submissions, we will re-open on June 1st, 2021.

by Christine Lucas

“By noon, the Serpent was annoyed. None of the Garden’s animals had humored her.”

On the morning of the Seventh Day, the Garden of Eden was calm and peaceful. The Serpent stretched. She had to fix that. Perfection was very, very boring.

She crawled through the tall grass to the pride of lions sunning their fur in a clearing by the Euphrates’ bank.

“Hey, did you know what lambs are made of? Meat. Fresh and juicy meat. Why would they be made of meat if you weren’t supposed to eat them? Go on, give it a try,” she whispered to a lioness, her scaly tail pointing at a herd grazing close by. She had never liked lambs.

The lioness rolled over, her amber eyes half-closed. “Too hot to run. The lambs don’t bother me, so I don’t bother them.” She yawned and continued her nap.

Disappointed, the Serpent moved on to a brown bear eating berries by the river.

“There are fat fish swimming in the water,” she told him. “Juicy, writhing salmons and carp, filled with nutrients for great fur. And they taste much better than berries.”

The bear looked up, his muzzle smeared with juice. “But I like berries. Why should I get wet and harass the carp?”

By noon, the Serpent was annoyed. None of the Garden’s animals had humored her. God’s last creations, the furless bipeds, seemed promising, but she hadn’t dared to approach them. According to the sparrows’ gossip, He had made the male after His own image. And judging by His blatant preference for lambs, the outcome couldn’t be good.

Curled around the Tree of Life, the Serpent decided that Creation needed fun–mischievous–creatures. She had watched Him do it from clay with the humans. How hard could it be, especially with the aid of the forbidden fruit? Across the grove, the man scratched his crotch, watching the clouds. It couldn’t get any worse than that.

She gathered a pile of soft soil from around the roots of the Tree of Life and curled around it, kneading and shaping to the best of her abilities. Perhaps the humans’ opposable thumbs had indeed some merit. It took her the better part of the afternoon, but she finally stretched and inspected her handiwork.

The creatures looked good: one male and one female, for all creatures needed a mate in life and an accomplice in mischief. She had made the male bigger and thick-headed, with fast claws and toxic urine to leave his mark all over Creation. The female was more delicate, but faster and fierce when defending her litter. The Serpent lashed her forked tongue and hurried up the Tree of Knowledge. The full moon was ascending and she hadn’t finished.

She grabbed a fruit and squeezed it over the creatures, anointing them.

“I give you knowledge of Good and Evil,” she whispered, and a sudden breeze shuffled the foliage around them. The clay animals trembled, the mud turning to fur and flesh. “I give you sight to see through the dark hours of the night and through the darkness of souls. May the moon be your ally, may the sun warm your fur. Tread fast, tread soft, and knock down all fragile objects in your path.”

She breathed in and spat at them.

“I give you free will, your choice either poison or cure. Whatever divine spark lays in me, I share it with you.”

A tremor ran through the Garden. She rubbed a fruit from the Tree of Life on them, and dried clay fell of, revealing soft fur underneath.

“Cats, I give you Life. Go forth and multiply. Do it often, do it loudly, until your offspring overruns Creation.”

The kittens blinked and sniffed the air. Their eyes glowed, reflecting the moonlight. When they noticed each other, she held her breath. Their eyes grew huge, their backs arched and their tails stood rigid, upright and fluffed up. Bolder than her ginger mate, the calico kitten dared a sniff of his muzzle. A shy lick followed the sniff, and in no time they were curled together, grooming each other. Soon, they grew bored of grooming and started chasing each other’s tails.

Perfection isn’t always serious.

The kittens stalked unsuspecting fireflies, shredded leaves, and clawed their way up onto the branches of the Tree of Life. The Serpent lay belly up beneath it, laughing herself breathless. It was almost dawn when the kittens, exhausted, climbed down. They curled by the Serpent’s coiled body and fell fast asleep, their whiskers and tails twitching in dreams of hunt and mischief.

True perfection is never boring.

* * *

The next morning, the Serpent sunned her scales, watching the kittens play. She’d have to feed them soon. They’d probably manage to catch bugs or even a frog on their own, but she’d rather keep them from hunting until they were old enough to defend themselves. And, hopefully, hunt decent prey, like lambs.

A sudden movement caught her eye. Barely turning her head, she spotted the human female hidden among the thick bushes a few paces away. Wide-eyed, mouth agape, Eve watched the kittens play. The serpent lashed her forked tongue and stifled a snicker. Behold the solution to the kittens’ feeding problem.

“Come closer, Eve.”

Eve licked her lips. She walked out of the bushes, each step slow and cautious. She reached out to touch the kittens.

They fluffed up and arched their backs. The calico growled and showed sharp little claws.

Eve pulled back her hand, her brow furrowed. “Why is it doing that?” She turned to the Serpent, her eyes moist. “Why doesn’t it like me?”

“Perhaps it’s hungry.” She tilted her head toward a nearby plain. “There’s a herd of cows grazing over there. Perhaps if you brought them some milk they’d let you pet them. They are very soft, you know. And they purr.”

Eve blinked. “What is ‘purr’?”

“Purr is bliss,” she replied and watched Eve hurry to the nearest cow. The purring had been her greatest idea. It overpowered the opposable thumb any time.

* * *

By noon, the kittens had warmed up to Eve. She brought them milk and they rubbed their backs against her legs, played with her hair and curled on her lap, purring.

Half-asleep, the Serpent lay content under the Tree. Her work was complete. She had created perfection and found a guardian for the little ones. At the threshold of a dream, a male voice somewhere close awoke her.

“Eve, where are you?”

Eve’s gaze darted from the napping kittens in her lap to the source of the voice and back. The calico stretched and curled tiny paws over her face. Eve’s shoulders slumped.

“I must go. Adam needs me.”

The Serpent stretched her neck. She couldn’t let her leave–not yet. Not for him.

“Why does he need you?”

“Um, to gather fruits, and comb his beard, and –”

The serpent rolled her eyes. “Can’t he do that on his own?” What’s the point of having an opposable thumb if you don’t use it?

“Yes, but –”

“The kittens need you more,” she hissed. “They can’t milk cows.”

Eve glanced over her shoulder. “I suppose I could stay a little longer.”

* * *

“WHAT IS THIS?”

His voice was thunder and lightning and Eve fell face down on the ground. The kittens started from their nap with a hiss and climbed up the Tree of Life. The Serpent remained calm and stretched her upper body, certain she saw Adam’s ratty face hidden in the bushes at the back.

Amidst a host of angels and seraphim, their Lord God appeared before them.

“What have you done?” He turned his fiery gaze to Eve. “Have you not a mate, woman? Go to him. He has been looking for you everywhere, sick with worry.”

Eve stood up and hurried away.

He turned to the Serpent. “Call them down.”

She snickered. “Even if I do, they won’t obey. I forgot to include obedience when I made them.”

God raised an eyebrow. “Of course you did.” He stroked his beard and then waved at one of the seraphim. “Bring them before me, so I can inspect the full extent of the Serpent’s insubordination.”

The seraph flew to the kittens perched upon a branch. “Follow me to your Lord God.”

Their eyes grew wide, fascinated by the incessant flutter of the seraph’s six wings. The calico outstretched her forepaw to catch one. She licked her whiskers, wagged her behind and lunged at the slowly retreating seraph. A heartbeat later, the ginger kitten followed her.

Amidst hisses and a cloud of torn feathers, the unfortunate seraph flew to its master’s feet. An archangel hurried to its aid and managed to detach the berserk kittens from the torn wings.

The kittens stood at God’s feet, and He leaned over them. The ginger kitten was busy chasing a floating seraph feather, while the calico seemed mesmerized by God’s beard. She attempted to paw one of the long white tendrils, but the feather caught her eye and she went after that instead.

“Insolent,” He said.

“I call it free will.”

The kittens now chased each other around God’s feet, oblivious to the imminent danger.

He frowned. “I gave Man dominion over all creatures. They should obey him.”

“Kittens didn’t exist at that time. They are excluded from the deal.”

“They will only disrupt peace. The fruit is forbidden for a reason.”

“You said not to eat it. You never said anything about other uses.”

His frown deepened. “Semantics.” He waved to His host. “Lucifer, escort the creatures out of Eden.”

“No!” She darted forward, placing herself between kittens and archangel. “They’ll never survive outside.”

“They are not defenseless. You should know that, being their creator.” His voice was firm but not unkind.

She hung her head. “But they are just babies…”

God signaled to Lucifer, who stood shifting his weight from one leg to another. “Well?”

Lucifer bit his lip. “My Lord God, they will not come.”

The kittens cowered at the roots of the Tree, a multicolored bundle of hissing fur. God turned to the Serpent.

“They will listen to you.” The promise of flood and fire now lurked in His tone. “See to their needs, but escort them out.”

Defeated, she nodded. “But will they endure? You’re omniscient. Please, tell me.”

He tilted His head sideways. “So be it. This I tell you: they will be revered as deities and hunted as demons. Often my mortal servants will know them to be not of my making. They will deem them evil, drown them in water and burn them with fire.”

“And you will do nothing to stop them?”

“I do not advocate their actions, and they will not go unpunished.” He smirked. “What happened to your support of free will?”

“It has gone with the kittens.”

* * *

The Serpent escorted the kittens through the wilder lands to a secluded oasis. They’d have fresh water there, and trees to climb on, and unsuspecting frogs and birds to hunt. But they’d be alone, easy prey to all the dangers that lurked outside Eden.

Back in Eden, she could no longer sleep in peace, her dreams now tormented by images of the kittens suffering. She had to find them a guardian, to shelter them in the eons to come. Had He not said, “See to their needs?”

Come morning, she climbed up the Tree of Knowledge and grabbed a fragrant fruit, then headed to the clearing where the humans dwelled.

“Eve! I have something for you.”

 

* * *

Originally published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

About the Author

Christine Lucas lives in Greece with her husband and a horde of spoiled animals. She’s a retired Air Force officer and mostly self-taught in English. Her work appear in several print and online magazines, including Daily Science Fiction, Pseudopod, and Strange Horizons. She was a finalist for the 2017 WSFA award and a collection of her short stories, titled Fates and Furies was published in late 2019 by Candlemark & Gleam.

Visit her at: http://werecat99.wordpress.com/

by Mari Ness

“Humans, as it turned out, did not deal well with foxes trotting into their stores and ordering coffee.”

The fox hires children to bring him coffee every day.

He had discovered the wonders of coffee, and the even greater wonders of handcrafted espresso drinks, quite by accident, when a human woman had left her single sourced Kenyan blend with soy on a bench without a lid, and then, followed this up by leaving a vanilla soy latte on a neighboring bench – again, without a lid. It was quite safe to say that the fox became obsessed, and equally safe to say that it was a difficult obsession to indulge.

Humans, as it turned out, did not deal well with foxes trotting into their stores and ordering coffee. Just entering a café presented difficulties, with doors slamming shut, things flying in his general direction, and – in one particularly awful case that the fox still remembered with a shudder – a gun getting pulled out. And that was when he could manage to open the doors at all.

(Why did humans make their doors so heavy and hard to push and pull? It was one of many mysteries that the fox feared he would never solve.)

Ordering once inside was no easier. Most refused to believe that the voice they heard was indeed coming from the fox, assuming that it had to be some sort of trick. In some cases, they even pulled out those horrible things humans called cell phones to take videos – something virtually designed to get the fox into serious trouble, if and when anyone took those videos seriously. Almost no one would take his order. And then he had the issue of payment – he had no access to those plastic things humans used, of course, but the café staff seemed reluctant to take paper payments from him, even when he was careful to barely lick and chew them.

All before either trying to drink the beverage in the café, in front of numerous eyes and cameras, or attempting to take out his handcrafted beverage without spilling a drop.

And always at the grim risk of being captured and turned into some sort of performing animal. Others had managed to conceal their ability to speak after capture, but he was not naïve about his own character: he would start blabbering away at the mere hint of withholding coffee.

So. Children.

They present their own disadvantages, of course. Some are simply too young to be able to enter a café and order coffee for a fox without extremely awkward questions. Some are simply too old, too adult, to believe that a fox – a fox – could really be asking them to make a coffee run. Increasing numbers do not speak English or Spanish, the only human languages the fox has any mastery of – though he prides himself on his fluency in no less than 50 animal languages. And, of course, the children must be approached when no adult is around – something that also presents a difficulty.

And the children, alas, are just not reliable. One would hope – and the fox has hoped, more than once – that his status, as a talking fox, would keep them fascinated, but this hope – unlike the handcrafted coffees – has so far proven unfilled. Which means he must keep searching for new children, again and again. It is exhausting.

Fortunately, he has coffee.

When he can, the fox pays the children in hard cash, robbed from individuals careless enough to leave their backpacks and other bags unattended in parks. The fox is not particularly good with zippers, but he knows a few crows who owe him various favors – and who are not unwilling to help if it means a chance at a fresh baked scone or banana bread.

Unfortunately, the fox and the crows find fewer and fewer paper bills in backpacks these days. The fox blames the increasing use of cell phones for everything, including buying coffee – really, do humans not realize how dangerous those things are – though the fox could equally blame the ever louder warnings about certain thieving crows.

Whatever the reason, however, it means these bills must be saved to pay for the handcrafted coffees, scones, and slices of banana breads. The fox might – and does – steal from humans, but he would never ask their children to steal for him. He does have some ethical standards. Not many – as he would be the first to admit – but some.

And as a practical matter, the fox highly doubts that any of these children could steal a venti soy hazelnut without getting caught.

And so he pays them in stories.

In advice.

In promises of vengeance.

And if, afterwards, people notice a rise in fox bites, or a few mysterious animal break-ins that happen to shatter some priceless, beloved possessions, or even a corpse or two, necks marked by sharp teeth –

Well. Animals will be animals.

No need to let that deprive the fox of his morning coffee.

 

* * *

About the Author

Other short stories by Mari Ness can be found in Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Uncanny, Nightmare, and Diabolical Plots. Her poetry novella, Through Immortal Shadows Singing, is available from Papaveria Press, and an essay collection, Resistance and Transformation: On Fairy Tales, from Aqueduct Press.

For more, visit her website at mariness.wordpress.com, or follow her on Twitter at @mari_ness. She lives in central Florida.

by Slip Wolf

“I can’t love a coffee shop enough to marry one.”

I’m in a small part of heaven.  My delicate feline nose picks apart what my eyes already feast on; inside the glinting glass hull of the French press, the coil-rimmed filter, carrying grounds from the toasted gold above, descends. A caramel head of froth crowns the results.  I pick up the press by its warm stem, pour with care so no drops escape the bone-white mug with its silver-leaf logo reading Kypris on its flank.  Steam rises as I set the press down and stir the cream upward.  I delay the moment with bated breath, then another. In heaven there’s no need but I do this because savoring is no less wondrous than having. Then a Moroccan kiss touches my lips and passes on.  I love this place. I savor my solitude amongst kindred but separate souls and feel the sands of time settle as they always do here. This is a small part of heaven.

A Madeline cake would be wonderful right now. My loving coffee shop dotes on me, the sea-shell confectionary on my plate spongey and fragrant as my coffee. Crossing lanes beneath my nose I can move from baked sweetness to off-bitter bite. The coffee is exquisite. “I love this place.”  I say to the shop. “I love you.”  Is there sugary perfume on the napkin that I dab at my lips?  I finish the next page in my book and set it down. It will be here when I return through the red door frame onto these ebony, ivory tiles. Everything is where you leave it here. I wander the streets, my shoes scuffing the cobbles under a perfect dusk.

Home is an apartment that is a cloud that is a cradle in the sky, glass walls that see for infinity in every direction. Slumber finds me if I want it, but mostly I get to meditate on all the others milling below on their way to and from whatever enclaves of heaven wait for them.  A movie house, a painted cave, a parlour of flattering mirrors, a lush lick of wild jungle.  There’s a slice of heaven carved out for everyone.  Nap time.

I was somewhere else once. The end was irrelevant, as the beginning of what came next was enrapturing. The blue sky became a pale iris, the pink dusk a rose garden under clouds.  I don’t remember the cat I was before I came. To do so would, I suppose, recall some pain or shortcoming. I danced from cradle to rest, bright in my moment, hopeful for the next day, but alone. I remember that much. A solitary creature, my happiness or lack of it was in books and tuna and grooming. I think. These are all inseparable parts of me in some way. I don’t remember what I toiled at or what reason I had for doing so.  I could have walked or I could have loped on all fours. I don’t remember that either. Did I wear these clothes? These off-whites and meditative greys?  My fur is the same color so maybe this is an extension of me. I’m lithely naked whenever I feel like grooming, clothed again when I follow certain paths, seeking the perfect flower to adorn my breast pocket as a corsage. Whatever I need to be to be happy, I am, as I suppose I was where I came from. And what I am now, as I’m sure I was then, is alone.

I pass a braided coyote on the way into the coffee shop, tail swaying, teeth shining above a caftan that looks like a Navajo sand-painting unfinished with itself, winding in an unfelt wind.  Her claws click on the polished tile as she passes me with kind eyes and leaves through the same red door frame through which I enter.  A rabbit, a lion, a dolphin, a horse. In duos or trios they occupy their spaces inside the café.  My space waits for me, single chair drawn back, book open face down. The press and mug wait empty. When I sit, they are ready. My coffee shop has ticked the seconds off till I return. The press descends and the pour is perfect. How well Kypris café knows me.

I sit; I read my Proust. Laughter and talk around me is musical as a brook. There are no distractions in heaven, well, none that aren’t welcome. The draperies framing the window behind me brush my back and cool air breathes a caress into my shoulder, like the coffee shop’s very soul is teasing me in affection.  “I love this place,” I repeat behind closed eyelids, and then, to the walls and windows and tiles and brass and wood collectively, “I love you.”  It feels good to say that, to acknowledge how much a part of me this place is, this oasis of calm in eternity, this space of repose and rejuvenation. This must have been an important part of what came before, wherever that was. It doesn’t matter.

Coffee replenishes. The currents of surrounding chatter wind round one engaging topic after another.  I stay alone. Then I leave.  My return to the cloudy domicile this time is naked, slinking and leaping from high rooftop to rooftop. The ghosts of caffeine have my tail in the air the whole way.  Slumber finds me in perfect peace once again.

Next day the coyote is back, this time in a black kimono, white paint stark against the red on her toothy lips, black lining her wise eyes.  She gazes at me for some time as I seat myself, book and press at ready. There is an empire cookie on the plate, tart and sweet, icing like a wink.

My mind is absconded by the words on the page, but only momentarily. I realize the coyote is talking to me.

“What?” It’s been some time since my voice was used with another here. I squeak, mouse-like.

“I’m saying your proposal has been accepted,” the coyote says in the manner of congratulations.

I fidget a moment, having lost my place on the page.  I look over the black nose on that painted white muzzle and cock my head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Of course you understand. We all have someone for us here, someone who shares us, completes us. You found yours,” the coyote said as though pointing out the obvious.

I know of course of the trickster dispositions of coyotes, of the way they wind you in wiles. She’s having fun at my expense, obviously.  “I don’t know what you’re speaking of,” I mutter, ears swiveling in confusion.

“Always alone,” the coyote says.  “Or so it seemed.”

“I like the freedom solitude affords,” I answer honestly and she clicks her long tongue.

“But you love,” the coyote grins. “Just like the rest of us. Love brought you here again and again. And that love was accepted. Now it is done.”

“What is done? I’ve accepted nothing.”

The coyote rises gracefully and begins to glide to the door. “Everything is where you leave it here, especially your affection.”

I wrinkle my nose. The other mammals in here regard one another over the waft of java’s team, paying us no mind. She lowers a paw to my shoulder and the bracelets chase each other to her wrist like an abacus adding the universe up.  “You and Kypris are married now.”

“What?”

“I will leave you alone.” The coyote does, sashaying out the door frame which shines its crimson shine.

I am left with my coffee and my questions. My coffee wafts strong. The sun is warm on my shoulder. The drawn drapes tickle my neck.

Soon enough I’m home. I don’t have to sleep. So I don’t, unthinking.

Next day I hurry back, and linger in the open doorway of my coffee shop. The coyote is there again, dressed in a blue cloche and a flapper dress.  She smokes her cigarette through a lacquered stem and stares off into space. So I settle in my seat, resume my book and sip my coffee. There is a sense of peculiarity in the air, as though I’m missing something important. The white frosted cake is exquisite, soon gone to the last spongey crumb.  I read my novel as it spools the woe of a love unrequited, and I wonder with amusement at the needs of creatures to find affection for themselves in others.  Such a strange predilection to thrive in such a way. Whatever wants I was once slave to, such was not it. Chimes sing above the distant cash register which itself rests un-manned and has never rang once in all my time here. The chimes are either in agreement or chiding me. I know this is for me alone.  I am the only creature who listens and I laugh when I remember yesterday. “Can you imagine being married to anyone?”  I ask nobody in particular.  I sip my coffee again and something brushes my lips.  I look into my cup and see a small fragment of something floating in there. By the glint of icing sugar I can see its more cake.

I feel the coyote at my side even though she casts no shadow. “Happiness where you least expect it,” she laughs. “There are still surprises, even here.”

My ears swivel.  “What surprises?”

“I told you. You are married. You and Kypris. This is the first day of a honeymoon that may never end.”

I could laugh, but I can’t. I could sputter, but the sweetest caffeine ambrosia in heaven isn’t for the most startled throat to choke on.  “You can’t be serious.”

“You found its kami. It found your heart. That was enough.”

“I can’t love a coffee shop enough to marry one.”

“Have you never loved a place before?”

“Before here?”  I frown. It’s a strange feeling to frown, no less than feeling confused. “I don’t remember exactly who I loved.”

“Who.  So you believe that true affectionate love is only granted between people like us?” The coyote is even more amused now as she sits across my small table from me in the space that up until a moment ago needed no chair nor had one.

“I don’t know,” I say, feeling consternation that has become alien to me. “I never thought of love that way at all.  This place is important to me.”

“And you love it for that reason. I’ve heard you say it. So did Kypris. What’s to deny? Love brought you here. Love keeps you here. It always does. I’ve got to go.” The coyote rises.

“Who are you?” Different feelings are pulling me from different directions, and everything feels a mess. My throat is dry and the dark potion awaits, but it has become suspect.  “Did I know you before?”

She doesn’t meet my gaze. “Everyone knows someone like me from before. It’s not important.”  She puts her paw on the red door frame as she passes through, patting affectionately as though on the shoulder of a friend. “I’ll leave you two.”

“Where are you going?”

“To play billiards. Or roll in a meadow. There’s quite a few options.”  And she is off.

I frown into my coffee, which hasn’t cooled from the way I like it one bit. Reading my books and drinking my ever-filling mug. Nothing about it needs to be personal. My solitude, in and of itself, is the whole point.

More white cake has appeared, this time with a tiny frosting rosette in red. I regard it for a while before I go back to my book, reading more about a man who sought love where it was not to be found and failed to learn. Fools are so much more interesting to read about than the wise. No interesting surprises ever befall them, do they? I’m having trouble paying attention to the book in front of me, glancing back to the rose-bejeweled cake and back. I’m not hungry. When I leave through the red door, I leave it behind next to my book.

I wander alleys back, tail twitching. Night passes, then a day and I lay in my cloud, thinking on the details of my coffee shop. It wasn’t made for me. Too many others share the space for it to be just mine. They are as real as I am; I know it. Life has a gravity, a warmth that you can sense. None of us here are shades of a life, but the purest essence.  All Kypris café’s other patrons are paired, or trioed, or collected in larger groups. Is that why the shop has given its love to me, the solitary visitor? Or are there others who share it?  I don’t recall there ever being love like this in what came before this place. Is it good that I don’t remember?

Perhaps it is all a lie. Perhaps the coyote has spread this to others and there are several of us, each assuming Kypris café has given its love to us and us alone. What a trick that would be. But the whole idea is senseless, making fools of so many people.  Just me then.

I am seeing a half truth, tying myself in needless knots. It makes no sense for paradise to allow such a thing.

The next day, I am unable to focus on my book at all. I look up and study all of Kypris’ furnishings and decorations collectively and separately, all organs of a whole.  The shop has the aged appearance of something musty and lived in, but conversely spotless and highlighted with bright spots. Stained-glass chandeliers, brass fittings and wood panels, and here and there frames of red, highlighted by the prominent hot-red door frame in which the French-glassed oak door rests, eternally hinged inwards. There is no sense of a closing time. I would imagine there are nocturnal souls who visit when heaven’s lights are low and licks of sodium and neon create beckoning beacons all up and down this street. So strange that I am so rarely nocturnal, and never here.  But then I remember; I can’t read clearly at night.

Nor can I now.  I’m barely another paragraph ahead in my book before I’m drawn up anew by some crackling of presence around me, not just in occupied, warmed chairs all around me filled by cheerful bodies, but in the empty corners, the details of my world drunk in and absorbed and taken for granted.

The treat today is an almond croissant. I take a few bites that tingle my senses, but something doesn’t feel right. There’s a cloying sense of deliberation in the air around me. I’m being crowded with sightless intent, doted on by dextrous hands unseen.  I’m being smothered by an attention that is at once invisible and ever present.

I close my book and leave feeling uneasy, but break from tradition. The croissant receives only a few bites, but the book comes with me.  There’s a distinct cold stirring in my wake as I leave, no words spoken to myself, the other patrons, or anyone in particular.  I’m home soon enough, on my cloud, book open but too tired to read now. Slumber gauzes the eyes and the senses and another day has passed.

The next begins with trepidation. My book is under my arm, poking at a lilac corsage I’ve picked along a garden path, and as the red portal of Kypris café appears, the well-worn fragrance of ground coffee bean and spongey, desert decadence entice me in.

But the uncertainty is still there, that feeling of disturbance deep within. Entering suddenly entails more than I can comfortably fathom.

I move on, avoiding the wet shimmer on the window panes as my passing reflection ripples across them and out of sight. Out in the endless light I walk the thoroughfare of heaven, into the throng of other souls in joy and repose, passing other waystations of their amusement. Jazz and toasted tobacco smoke rolls out of a club with doors wide and no lineup and a snap in my step that urges me to smooth down my lapels.  A bakery tickles my whiskers with scents that dab my tongue with marzipan and sugar icing, and I see cakes filling a frosted window that stands the fur on my shoulders on end, countless exotic offerings sampled by gourmands of every species. All the while the disturbed goods bake themselves back into replenishment with fragrant splendor on their azure cornflower pedestals. I sidle up to the open door, as all doors in heaven necessarily are, and rub my narrow flank along it to gather a bit of its scent. Then, perfumed in sweetness, I’m up a drain-pipe and sneaking past a soft-shoe dance chorus of multiple mammalian species of matched grace at a rooftop garden party, stopping momentarily to drown my confusion in a sip of sweet bubbly from a champagne pyramid at the shindig’s edge. Soon I leap back to heaven’s side-walked earth and come face to face with another open door on an open portico and familiar signs with universal symbols.  A ring-handled cup on a saucer lets off steam in rough gold-leaf filigree. The sign above the door says, rather tacitly, Angel’s Gin and Java.

I check and see that the book I’d lost track of during my flight from Kypris is still under my arm, a part of me in that strange alchemy of paradise, but still something to be set down. I enter the coffee shop, smell unfamiliar smells, and take a seat at an empty booth near a window.  The vibe in here is wholly unfamiliar, not welcome, nor exclusionary. Wallpaper and tryptychs of pastoral landscapes with hedge-leaping horses and parasol bearing foxes glint in oily light.  The clientele is thick, but isolated and among the teapots and mugs I see sporadic beer pints and highballers, along with a martini-glass borne by a lizard who sips away in an opiate torpor.  The coffees are spiked by liqueurs and the teas are paired with mustily strong edibles that overwhelmingly stain the air.  I find a seat and take it, reading my book. Nothing manifests at first as I read, then finally I look up and see a coffee. Angel’s has seen me at least, and read my simplest of desire. I sip. The coffee isn’t bad, I don’t think, a bit over-sweetened. I settle in against the plush cushions, which are soft and lose myself in the sensation of welcome solitude. No mis-requited love from a place that holds any power over me, nor uncertainty at its proximity. I can get my bearings again in this place, just another building in paradise’s endless playground. No bizarre shade of needy affection chases me.

The light is just bright enough to see, then just enough to read comfortably. Stupid coyote. Feed me a line and think I can’t get away from your manipulations, or the manipulations of whatever tried to hold me to Kypris café.  In paradise we are bound by nothing, our memories sifted for the most fleeting joys, made eternal as we desire. This cat walks eternity in the grasp of no love that can bind it. The very idea is treason to all I am.  My dues to mortality are paid. I demand little of the universe and it demands nothing of me. What an absurd imposition of my identity the whole idea is; that one can love any place in the manor of another soul. Especially when you don’t want another one.

It’s hard to concentrate on my book, with its lost subject scattered into the machinations of others’ desires and repulsions. Such a reminder of the world I must have left behind in these pages, such a warning as to the follies that could have beset me had my heart lay unguarded.  Now, having nearly succumbed again, I’ve proven with a simple traipse down heaven’s artery that I will never be tied down by the ensorcellment of any bosom of flesh or wood. I’ve gotten bored; I’ve stepped out. Commitment isn’t for me, sweetie. The décor in my peripheral sight appears slightly lurid in a way I like.

My coffee spills. On its way to my lips I lose my grip on the mug stem and coffee that isn’t quite scalding but not cool either splashes onto my chest and lap.  My clothes, for I need clothes in this moment, absorb the spill and its halo of drops.

Well damn. I sit there in my booth, drops of coffee all over my front, spread across my lap and sprinkled on the underside of my muzzle. A moment passes, then a second, and the café-bar carries on as normal, none of the other raucous creatures noticing my clumsiness.

I blink. The spill cleans itself up from the table and floor. But not from me. I’m wet and dripping. Even my book has been dabbed in liquid, the page bubbling up under the spots of moisture. Well why not? If what I read is a part of me and not of this place, it wouldn’t stay intact.

One never has to change clothes or fur or skin in paradise, for all that affects what we are is with consent and as desired. Like the gravity of other places, this is a rule universally known and everywhere unspoken. I can’t think of why I would desire a soaking. Even a cool rain here is just neutrinos of tingling refreshment that fades with sensation. Most often it is the lullaby of thunder beyond Kypris’ window while I—

No. I won’t ponder her here. I escaped that place for a reason, namely the absence of reason brought on by the coyote, the trickster. My hackles, wet and dry rise and fall. She sowed the discord that chased me away. I decide I hate her.

I am still dripping with coffee and uncomfortable, so I rise and head deeper into Angel’s.  I know what a restroom is though I don’t recall needing more than a mirror in one for all my time here.  I gaze in the mirror, willing the dark stain to dry and recede into memory, but it doesn’t happen.

The thick scents that permeate this whole place have become a miasma, a low hanging smoke like cloudy dread. One should not feel this sensation in heaven. I wrinkle my nose at the stale headiness of it and realize I need to clean myself. I run water under the tap, and from icy cold the water turns to scalding hot. I draw my paw back from the torrent with a yowl and feel the sting throb and then subside.  A bang takes me off my feet as a stall opens and a goat shuffles out, horns crooked, sniffing, foul smoke curling from a mouth without a cigarette. “You don’t know why you’re here either,” he wheezes and holds up an open pack of what looks like tobacco-stuffed finger-bones. “May as well light up and stay awhile. Maybe longer.”

My whiskers twitch as my gaze falls to the pack in his bony hand. The bones in the pack are moving, whispering things I can’t quite hear.

“No. We have to go.”  A paw wraps round my elbow and squeezes my forearm.  The coyote narrows her yellow gaze at the goat, leads me away as the ragged figure backs into the dark of the stall and seals the portal with a click.

I frown as I’m led back to the door, close to the mirrors, far from the other stalls, most open and innocuous. The coyote answers my unasked question, the filigree on her golden sari catching gaslight.  “Wherever you lose yourself, you’ll find one like him. Yes, even here. Keep walking.”

In a moment, we’re back in the café proper, my sense of unease still present if subsided. My book is still on the table where I spilled the coffee, still bubbled on the open page. But I myself am dry now, just like that. I return to the table and the coyote comes with me, takes an uninvited seat. I’d bristle, but I’m not sure if I should be grateful or not.

“You followed me,” I say sourly.

“I was going to ask if you followed me,” the coyote says.  “We don’t all have one place here that’s chosen us.  Some move around.”

“Places don’t choose us.” I fold my arms in defiance and glance longingly down at the wrinkled page of my book. Will it be eternally maimed in the part where Swann laments his time wasted with Odette?  I am thankful the story has so many separate, pristine volumes. Had this happened to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, I would probably weep.  “There are places where we’re comfortable. That’s what I want. Comfort and solitude.”

“And what makes you comfortable?”  The coyote’s paws grasp mine, the shock of warmth on my paws sending a shudder through me as thumbs wrap over my palm. Direct contact has eluded me for so long. Who in heaven even desires such fleshy, foolish things?

“The quiet. The solitude.”

“You can have that anywhere. Go deeper. Details, please.” Her golden eyes look up from her bowed head, ears wide and receptive.  “Please.”

“I love the simple décor. Much nicer than this place.”

A badger knocking back a pint at the bar gives me a glare over his shoulder, more pitying than annoyed.  I ignore him. “I like the way the sun dapples on the tables through the French glass in the transoms. I love the simple elegance of the cloth-covered tables and wicker-backed chairs. I love the coffee, the confectionaries, the way the place always knows what my mood wants before even I do.”  I think back to the rose-encrusted cake. “Well, most of the time anyway.”

In a corner two wolves call out a cheer in a language I don’t recognize and slam their pints together hard enough that one breaks and sloshes suds. The one with his back to me has a battle-ax affixed to his back and is nearly naked. I think I’m glad they didn’t hear me putting this place down.

“Valhalla isn’t the same for everybody,” the coyote says, following my gaze with a shrug before looking back. “It sounds like you love Kypris café. So why are you here instead of there?”

I don’t quite know why, so it takes some time to collect myself.  “Marriage, I mean, whatever game you were playing in there, I didn’t appreciate it.”

The coyote turns her head sideways. “What game?  You’re attached to that place, more than any other here. The café is attached to you, more than any other patron. What about the profession of love disturbed you?”

“Besides it not being possible?” I want another coffee and I have one, black as night and bitter when I steal a sip. This place doesn’t know me, but that’s just fine. Maybe it takes a while. “Kypris is a coffee shop, a place, an inanimate space.”

“No, it’s not.” The coyote wants to frown, I can tell, but smiles with a patience I find unnerving instead. “Here everything has a spirit, a force, an emotional agency. A place called Japan called it kami, while far North in the colder climes of the world before, Araniit, the breath of all things, affected people’s lives. We all came to know the world we exist in now in different ways, just bits of truth, gleaned or guessed while we were still wandering around wherever we were before this. Much of this is a surprise, and that’s part of the fun when you think about it. I mean why would you want to move onto a world where you already know everything, right?”

I don’t know what to say to that. The coyote’s tail wags as she waits for me to agree, then slows and rests out of sight. “You don’t have to understand everything to enjoy paradise.”

“I want to enjoy it by myself. It’s just how I am. Is that bad? I don’t love a coffee shop.”

The coyote swallows, and her enthusiasm slackens as though coming to accept what I’m saying.  “You don’t have to love Kypris back, not in that way. But we all love something, if not someone, in some way.  We couldn’t live otherwise. You could love a mountain top, or a wind-swept plain or a subway stop.  The only difference is that here, it can love you back.”  The coyote shifts in her chair. “Here, everything and everyone can love you back.”

I look into my coffee, take a sip. It’s still bitter and I miss the coffee at Kypris.  Dammit.  “So what do you do with four walls and tables and chairs that love you?  I mean…this whole thing feels absurd.”

The coyote laughs and I sense that its slightly painful.  “You consummate that love with your presence. That’s all it requires.  Understand, cat, everyone is given the gift of knowing, even if just once, what their heart really wants.”

“But it isn’t real.”  I think of the tickle of the drapes, the unceasing warmth of the sun through her windows, the perfected sensation of every bite and every sip in those walls. “I don’t know what love is, but I know this isn’t it.”

“You don’t have to know,” the coyote chides with a smile.  “Love is confusion, and yearning, and often unrequited. Your mistake is to assume it is somehow weaker for all that. Giving it with no expectation of its return is where its strongest.”  She stops and takes a breath, then sips from a cool glass that has manifested in her paw. Maybe it’s gin and tonic, maybe it’s water. I don’t ask. She stares into her glass for a moment. “Kypris loves you even if you decide to avoid her and never see her again.  Her kami, like all spirits, is for you and you are for her. You only need acknowledge that whether in an oasis, or a café, or in another’s arms, you find love for something, if not someone…”  The coyote stops and sets down her glass. “…outside yourself.”

She turns away and scans the crowd of souls congregating in the Angel pub, together, apart, content. As she turns back to me, her fidgeting stops for her to wipe a tear away.  “Just let it happen. You already have.”

“Who are you?”

The coyote lets boisterous celebration and laughter from all corners drift into our small realm of quiet. She holds her muzzle straight and dries her last tear away. “You don’t know me. You never did.  I’m just someone who sees what is.  No tricks. I was never one for tricks.”

I curl my tail around myself, and sigh, my dry chest fur rising and falling as I lean back. The coffee isn’t working. Something is missing.  I stare down at the dried book, pages wavy and rippled from water damage, willing order to return to them. This is what paradise is supposed to be, the order that follows the messy chaos of the outside, the preamble, the intro. Doubts shouldn’t torture anyone here and it’s for that reason that so much is swept from memory, consigned to insignificance. Loneliness never plagued this cat. So what plagues me now?

I look up at the stuccoed ceiling past the slow turning, brass-plated fan, and with just a slight change in focus that alters perception, even past that barrier through to the blue eggshell skin that surrounds the vast heart’s locket of this heaven for all of us. Focus again, and then one can see past it into the nameless dark.

Love put me here, safe from oblivion, and the very same found my tiny crèche in heaven, my place of comfort.  What else would possibly take the one thing that mattered most to me in the mortal coil and put it here for my enjoyment, as part of my sense of self as the tail raised behind me or the whiskers that sample every wondrous sense ahead.

“I’m a fool,”  I say glumly.

The coyote’s soft paw rests upon mine again. “We all are. It’s our most endearing quality, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t ask your name,” I realize as I rise.

“No you didn’t,”  she says as she gets up with me, adjusting her sari. “It’s Cloud. Walk back with me, will you?”

I nod, not needing to ask where.

My walking stick clicks the cobbles and I tilt the bowler I’ve adopted above my pinstriped suit.  Her sari has given way to a satin gown that follows curves from sinewed limb to cobbled ground. In another life, under other circumstances, I’d want to see how her hips sway.  Here and now, I appreciate the warmth of her paw and feel the giddiness of her lively heart as we stop at Kypris’ red arch and part ways with respectful bows.  Cloud’s parting is silent, but reluctant. The coyote fades into the crowd of another cross-thoroughfare of heaven and I rifle the rippled pages of my book as I feel the electric charge of my café, welcoming me in.  I can’t remember if I was gone hours or millennia. As Cloud said, it doesn’t matter.  The cake waiting for me next to my French press is the most delightful, airy slice of culinary sugary joy I think I’ve ever sampled.  The coffee is a lively melange of Moroccan warmth and spice. I know now I can go anywhere, but my joy will reside right here.

It may be that to be happy, even in heaven one mustn’t fully know the self, why we’re at peace with the people or things we were close to or apart from. Love is the most confusing element of any life.  I’ll never fully pierce the fog of the world before this one, where joys and pains brought me to struggle as we all did in some way. I’ll never seek out the reasons for my self-proscribed solitude, never deeply wonder if doubts were insects in my stomach.  The faces that occasionally flash before my mind’s eye with dips of madeleine cake or sips of coffee or glimpses of dusk along heaven’s distant edge will never resolve back to knowledge of family or acquaintance, friend or foe.

And I’ll never turn and see the coyote who called herself Cloud, decked just once, fleetingly, in a smudged coffee shop owners apron with the Kypris silver-leafed logo, looking longingly and lovingly across the sea of content regular patron souls, picking mine out of the throng as she had countless times before in a world all but forgotten. She’ll ache once more with curiosity and affection and a love of the kind that even when fate leaves it unrequited, fills us, grows within us and creates a place in paradise for us all.

 

* * *

Originally published in ROAR, Volume 8

About the Author

Slip Wolf has been writing fiction under a few guises for the past twelve years and has dozens of short stories out in the wild.  Currently he’s trying to finish his first novel while under COVID lockdown in Canada. He is tolerated during this process by a patient mate and two indefatigable dogs. Through it all he’s learned that Heaven can be the peaceful moments we all manage to find in the places we happen to be.

by Emily Randolph-Epstein

“Root of Purity’s bones still mark the cliffs of Ashport, her soul still haunts the harbor. That is not a fate the Red Dragon should share.”

The dragons have a direct line to my mind. Their voices enveloping, filling, as though their warm, scaled bodies are at once wrapping around me and within me.

They pull me now from deep dreams. “The Red Dragon passes. Attend at dawn.”

A check of the weather app warns of snow today and dawn in an hour and ten minutes. There’ll be no lounging in the dark, warm bed this morning, not if I’m to clear the snow from my car and make the half-hour drive to Ashport. If I’m late to the Passage, then the Red Dragon won’t be able to reach the Eternal Sky. I cannot condemn her to that fate.

There’s no time for a shower or breakfast either. I’ve just enough time to brush my hair (finally to my shoulders), shave, and place a new estradiol patch on the skin of my lower belly.

There isn’t really a dress code for attending the death of a dragon. Once upon a time, there were robes. My mother may still have them, but she’d never give them to me. I settle for a heavy fisherman’s sweater that still smells of lanolin, flannel-lined jeans and a knitted cap.

Half an hour after the dragons pulled me from sleep, I’ve cleared my car and driveway enough to pull out onto the road, not yet plowed. But enough early risers have driven past that I can follow the ruts left by their wheels. The snow in my headlights is a constant streak of flakes, like entering hyperspace. Will forty minutes be enough time to make it to Ashport in this weather?

“Hurry!” The dragons’ pleas ring through my mind.

* * *

The house – four times the height of any other two-floor house – is near the village center, across the street from the brick-built library. It perches on a cliff overlooking the harbor – snow-covered to hide the black dragon bones seared to the gray granite. The door looms, the lintel neck-craningly high above me. It opens on a sliding track like a boathouse door, with a smaller, human-sized door inset at the bottom.

The boats, hauled up on land and wrapped up for winter, are visible by the light of the streetlights, and the docks are stacked in the harbor parking lot just as they were the first time I ever glimpsed the Red Dragon. She was flying over the harbor then, swarmed by seagulls, crying their nasty seagull curses. I had gone out to one of the cliffs, barely visible in the gloaming, bent on throwing myself into the sea. My toes were curled around the edge, my stomach lurching with survival instinct, my eyes squeezed shut when she gave me my true name and pulled me away from the cliff.

“Dagny.” The Red Dragon’s voice is weak now, weaker than it’s ever been before, but still, she calls me back from that miserable, miraculous memory.

“I’m here.” Light bleeds across the horizon, weak and watery. Sky and sea the same dark shade of steel. The storm hasn’t reached Ashport yet; it waits on the air, a copper taste in my mouth. Dawn is minutes away.

Mrs. Ash opens the smaller door, hair the same copper as the Red Dragon’s scales with flashes of silver by her temples, eyes red-rimmed and tear-filled. “Thank you for coming.” Her voice is nothing like the clear sweet voice I’ve heard when she takes her guitar out to the shore and sings to the dragons as they wheel above the Summer harbor.

“Of course.” Seeing her tears, hearing her voice chokes my own voice in my throat.

The mournful whines of the other dragons carry from the depths of the house, and there is a shaky womphing sound of air being forced into and out of lungs.

Mr. Ash appears behind his wife, a tall man with black hair and a mostly white beard, his eyes are much the same as hers: tear-filled and reddened.

“You remember Dagny, dear?” says Mrs. Ash. I still feel a thrill whenever someone who knew me before uses my name.

Mr. Ash squints at me, and for a moment I’m afraid he’s going to delve into the past, into the me that wasn’t me yet, but he just purses his lips and nods. “Of course. She’s always liked you.” His frown deepens. “She hasn’t eaten in two days. We’ve had to carry her outside to do her business.” He looks too small a man to carry a dragon, but then he isn’t human, is he?

Somewhere inside a clock chimes, and even the dragons fall silent listening, counting. Seven chimes. Ten minutes to dawn. Ten minutes to sing the Song of Passing or else trap the Red Dragon here forever.

“It’s time.” Mrs. Ash opens the door wider. “Please come in.”

“You’re certain?” I shouldn’t be questioning her. Of course, she knows. Knowing is a part of her business.

“As she was born at dawn, so too will she pass.” A little bit of the clarity of her singing voice returns. “Hurry.” And the dragons echo her, their voices caressing the inside of my skull.

Inside, the dragons greet us. There are three or four others depending on how you count: the twin blacks can meld into a two-headed, two-tailed dragon when they wish, though now they are separated: Daughter of Joy is glossy black; the other, Gift of Sky, is matt, light sinking into his scales, lost. They move as though mirrors of each other.

Shy, champagne-colored Shield of Pearls keeps her distance, amber eyes worried. The hatchling, Army of Peace, holds no such reservations. He has not yet reached his full growth and stands no higher than my knees though no doubt he will tower above me before he’s done. The young dragons mob me, except for Shield of Pearls, rubbing against my legs with their sinewy necks, licking my face with giant tongues, long spiked tails whipping against the reinforced walls. It might have been overwhelming if they weren’t a part of me.

“Away, my loves.” Mrs. Ash pushes through the mob of tails and scales, and the dragons fall away, lining up behind their mother like the world’s most enormous ducklings as she leads me down the cavernous hall through the kitchen, past a walk-in freezer full of hanging pig and cow carcasses, a tithe the local farmers happily pay to the Dragon People, to keep their livestock unmolested.

The air grows hotter as we progress through the kitchen to a door on the far side. Mrs. Ash pauses. “She’s through here.” There’s a weight in her words, dragging them slowly from her tongue.

The Red Dragon’s presence presses on my mind, burning like I’m standing too close to a fire. “Dagny.”

Dragons only talk to girls, my mother’s voice in my mind.

What am I doing here? It shouldn’t be me here, doing this. It should be my mother or my sister, not me. Dragons only talk to girls.

I am a girl. I put my hand on my belly, over the estradiol patch. I imagine the hormones spreading through my body, the magic potion that will allow me to shed my old skin and let my true self shine through.

I glance at my watch. “Five minutes.”

Mrs. Ash nods and pulls in a ragged breath. Her husband has gone on ahead of us, and his deep voice carries through the door. “Dagny’s here, Old Girl. You can rest soon.”

I fight the tears laying siege to my eyes.

* * *

A fire blazes in the sitting room in a hearth large enough for someone twice my height to stand straight without bumping their head. Whole tree trunks burn behind the fire screen. The heat dries my skin and burns the tears from my eyes. And there she lies before the fire: Born of Dawn – the Red Dragon.

She doesn’t lift her head as we enter, but her eyes follow us, mirrored by cataracts. Mr. Ash stands beside her, stroking her head covered in scales that once glistened in the sun, now the dull copper-brown of dried blood. Next to her, the tall man is dwarfed, delicate.

The younger dragons stampede into the room, curling up beside the Red Dragon. The twins merge, Daughter of Joy resting her head on the Red Dragon’s stomach, Gift of Sky licking at her lips. “Come.” The Red Dragon’s voice sounds in my head.

I can’t move. My knees are locked, my feet nailed to the floor. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t be here. I’ll fail. My voice will falter, and dawn will come and go, and in failing, she will be barred entry to the Eternal Sky.

The clock ticks closer to dawn. My fingers brush the patch through the thick knit of my sweater. I breathe, and I go to her.

I kneel at her head, laying my hand against her broad expanse of snout. It’s so cold! Her internal fire has burned down so low that she can’t maintain her own body heat without the inferno burning in the hearth. A wordless shudder wracks my body, spasming across the mind link I share with the dragons.

Army of Peace whines, twining around Mrs. Ash’s legs. “Hush, little one,” she kneels and strokes his head, then turns to me. “It’s his first time. Root of Purity passed nearly five hundred years before he was hatched.”

I nod. My mother used to tell us stories of the great dragons our ancestors had helped to pass. Root of Purity died suddenly of a disease that snuffed out her internal fire four hundred years before her proper time. My many-greats-grandmother had been too late to sing her passing. Root of Purity’s bones still mark the cliffs of Ashport, her soul still haunts the harbor. That is not a fate the Red Dragon should share.

Dragons only speak to girls. My mother’s voice, even imagined, send needles into my skin. What if she’s right? What if I’m not female enough to do this? I shouldn’t be here. My hands freeze as cold as the Red Dragon’s skin. My throat tightens, too narrow to sing. The clock ticks another minute closer to dawn.

“Dagny,” the Red Dragon speaks, voice almost gone, almost faded. “Sing to me, Dagny.”

I lay my head against the Red Dragon’s, close my eyes. I breathe through the lump in my throat.

I open my mouth, but what are the words? I’ve known the Song of Passage all my life, and now it’s gone, evaporated, an ashen shadow on the wall of a bombed-out building.

“Sing to me, Dagny.”

And the words return. I sing. I push down my mother’s voice. The world starts to swerve away from me, and I follow the careen, letting it carry me, and the Red Dragon with me, on my voice. The hearth and the young dragons and Mr. and Mrs. Ash disappear until I’m alone with the Red Dragon, Born of Dawn.

We lie together on a field of stars. No up, no down, a void of dark and light.

The Red Dragon lifts her head. Eyes bright, reflecting starlight. Warmth radiates from her scales, beneath my hand. She stands and shakes out her wings, stirring a wind that blows my hair back from my face. Her copper scales shine and sparkle with stars.

“Goodbye,” I say.

“Thank you, Dagny.” She flaps her great membranous wings and rises away from me, vanishing into the stars. And the Red Dragon passes beyond life into the Eternal Sky where someday, I too will go.

Returning is hard. My body doesn’t want to accept the weight of the world.

I return to tears, and a room that seems smaller, emptier for the Red Dragon is gone, flown into the Eternal Sky. Dawn lightens the cloud-dark sky, and the first flakes of the storm flutter to the ground.

I smile through my tears. Dragons only talk to girls.

 

* * *

About the Author

Emily Randolph-Epstein was raised by a pack of wild poodles in small-town America. She spent her childhood LARPing, reading fantasy novels, and writing Tamora Pierce fan fiction. She’s known since age eleven that she wanted to be a novelist. After failing most enthusiastically to grow up, she is now a writer and musician living in Perth, Australia with her husband. Her short fiction has appeared in Hybrid Fiction and Infinite Worlds Magazine. You can find her on Twitter @emrandep or check out her blog www.emilyrandolphepstein.com.

by Anna Madden

“Ashmoda had attacked any male foolish enough to advance since her hatchling’s death. Her old mate was no exception.”

Ashmoda flew through thirsty air. Her sky-blue scales itched but were impossible to scratch. Sands flowed beneath her wings like a dead sea, the surface broken by scales of sapphire, mossy green, and red like dried blood.

She landed, exchanging scents with dragons she knew, pressing snout against snout. Undersized hatchlings cowered behind weary dams–too lean, with dull, cracked scales.

Pale moon-like eyes found hers. “Taniver,” Ashmoda said, calling out, the name a gentle breeze.

“Water arrives late,” Taniver said, his words weighted. He had quartz-colored scales, and horns crowned his skull, cascading from spine to tail. A fiercer look than the webbed crests of her own clan.

“The wind is impatient,” Ashmoda said.

Taniver stared. It was intimate, stirring old memories. A scar lined his right cheek. The mark was talon-made. Ashmoda had attacked any male foolish enough to advance since her hatchling’s death. Her old mate was no exception.

“We should be hunting Songless filth,” Ashmoda said. “Instead we tremble in this sad excuse of a nest, our talons clenching its sand for fear it will slide out beneath us.”

Taniver pinned his ears. “They outnumber us.”

“Who cares how many ants spill from the hill?” Ashmoda said, hissing back. “They are a prey-born race. They’ve abandoned their dens of stone and wood to chase us.” Her words tumbled, wet and rushed. “Now’s our chance.”

“The Songless are a hive-like herd,” Taniver said. “Cut one down and twenty more appear.” His lips curled back to reveal hunting teeth yellowed with time. “Let the fires die out on their own. The Songless–”

“–murdered our hatchling, the first of our nest!” Ashmoda turned her back. Her feet carried her to an open spot among blue-scaled kin. She circled, then settled down. Nearby, a hatchling peeked out behind his dam’s tail. His eyes spoke of hunger.

If the clans wouldn’t fight, so be it. She would hunt her prey alone.

* * *

Ashmoda woke to precious dew collected atop her scales. She licked them, trying to abate her never-ending itch. Without a word, she stretched her wings and took off.

The desolate sands were replaced by a canyon. Sparse growth turned to a green tide. Trees swelled, filled with the scents of pine needles and cedar and the stench of her enemies.

She met them in a blur of fangs and hate, using the Song of Water to gather clouds before releasing them from her throat. A flood rained down and nipped their heels, herding them. There was a flock of thirty, maybe more. They ran on two legs, their soft flesh covered with dried animal skin.

She forced them to the canyon’s edge where stubborn tree roots clung against sheer, jagged boulders. A headwind tickled Ashmoda’s snout, slowing her, helping her clear the dense tree line. She searched the skies and saw familiar eyes.

Taniver had followed her.

The Song of Wind pinned the Songless to the canyon’s mouth. They bent their knees, rooting themselves. When Taniver took a breath, his song quieted, and sharp-toothed arrows filled the air. Several sunk between her scale rifts. She hissed, then banked, gaining speed. She renewed the Song of Water, eager to wash away the filth. Let their mothers know her emptiness.

Taniver kept close, a roar in his throat. His tail snapped limbs of trees and Songless alike with satisfying cracks.

A deep cut wept across his breastbone, the wet blood glinting black. She led Taniver to higher altitude, through the cloud line. The wind danced to the rise and fall of his wings.

“We must flee,” he said, his wound fresh and terrible.

Ashmoda growled. She was no cowardly prey to bolt like a frightened deer. “Filthy egg-smashers!”

“Come away,” Taniver said, trying to soothe. “Ride the wind with me.” He rested a rough cheek against hers.

How could he talk of defeat? She bared her fangs. “Enough!” Ashmoda lashed out with her talons.

Her old mate flinched, then left.

She remembered their hatchling even if he didn’t, so small it hadn’t been blessed with a name. She closed her eyes as Taniver’s wingbeats grew distant, then silent. Her heart tingled, growing chill, numbing her weariness.

Below, the Songless ignored the skies. They were drunk on victory, yelping with excitement, encircling the leader of their herd. His hatchling stood beside him, almost full-grown, raven-maned like his sire and grandsire. The creature held his shoulders back, and his bare face rested in a permanent smirk. She knew his smell of rancid meat well, for the Songless hatchling had claimed the life of her beloved. A wingless, two-legged filth.

The Songless had stolen the future of the clans. She would do the same to this sole hatchling of an aging sire. A fitting exchange of ends.

Ashmoda dove.

The wind whistled by, faster and faster. There was no need to flap her wings in such a plunge. She counted on that. The Songless still squawked which provided an effective cover. Her talons circled the hatchling’s chest before he realized the danger. Her clan wasn’t the largest in size nor the strongest, but they were swift. It had its uses. She lifted, straining her shoulders and back, forcing compliance from her fatigued wings.

The Songless hollered like injured animals. More sharp-toothed arrows tasted the scales on her underside. Ashmoda cringed at their bite.

Frosted water poured from her snout and gaping jawbone. It turned to ice. The change in her song startled her, at first, but she lost herself to it. Ashmoda cleared the ground with her prize tucked safely against her belly. He would die, but first, she would teach him hunger and pain.

Shouts and fast footfalls and many sharp-toothed arrows warned of pursuit.

“Catch me if you can.”

 

* * *

About the Author

Anna Madden lives in Fort Worth, Texas. Her fiction has appeared in DreamForge Magazine and Upon a Once Time (anthology, Air and Nothingness Press). In free time, she gardens, mountain bikes, and is a first reader for DreamForge Magazine and Dark Matter Magazine. To learn more, follow her on Twitter @anna_madden_ or visit her website at annamadden.com.

by Nicholas Stillman

“The horizon of shells before him rose and fell in subtle waves upon the frozen cloudscape.”

The humans drew closer. Eightspeck heard of their resurgence through the chatter of clicks and stirring shells all around him. His fellow giant crabs warned him in unison about a massive change in the Earth-space infrastructure. He scurried crabwise along the particularly dense cloud of ammonia ices, frozen water vapor, and ammonium hydrosulfide crystals which formed a dark and stable gas belt around Jupiter. It all vibrated beneath him with the collective panic of millions. A dense growth in his mind shuddered as well, for he had a lifelong predilection for the human language called radio. Humanity finally jolted Earth, and his eight legs, out of dormancy.

He hurried to a plain of reposed crabs and climbed atop their carapaces. The horizon of shells before him rose and fell in subtle waves upon the frozen cloudscape. Their light yet mighty claws never moved off the bed of gasses. Only their hind legs rattled, and Eightspeck felt the reverberations through one of his own. His other hind leg tapped out the same sequence on the adjacent crab’s back. The chatter propagated through the whole superorganism, their words rattling autonomically into each other’s sensory legs. The message, however, sounded the same as when they had first deciphered radio words generations ago. Nearly everyone agreed to wipe out all life on Earth.

Eightspeck scrambled over their backs, trying to ignore the rapid clicks and louder clacks of the two-letter language. He could not, however, stop his left hind leg from repeating the same compassionate yet annihilative message. Between each step, he heard and passed along the plan to end humanity’s cyclical suffering. Their decadence went on after countless market crashes and fiat currency collapses. Even their radio signals had ceased long ago through warfare. They had nearly annihilated themselves, and their cycles of starvation would only perpetuate in space. Thus, they all had to die via mass ejection of radioactive clouds.

Eightspeck raised a hind leg to argue, but he balked. He listened for new evidence of humanity’s compassion, as his lack of data would only foment the masses further. The messages that clattered in, however, centered on killing all the primates as well. Otherwise, they could become as abhorrent as humans.

He gazed at his destination, the mountain where all cosmic data tumbled down. Made of living and dead crabs, it already teemed with impulsive ones like him. Some climbed for a view of the stars. Others sought to learn the human culture stacked upon the radio waves up there. Eightspeck hurried to join them, even though Earth and all its shiny probes had gone silent.

The rattle and prattle drummed through him from the population underfoot. No one could make sense of the shifting steel in Earth’s barely visible satellite space. Eightspeck looked for a rich food source so he could reach the mountaintop and see the activity himself. Though he lacked the biggest eyes for spotting Earth, he easily spotted the biggest female. She sat atop the landscape of crabs in a westward stream of delicious radioactive gas. She had a smaller carapace than him, but its four-meter spikes sliced the fumes into ribbons of red, tawny, and sepia. He rushed to her with a libidinal impulse which made him even more reckless than usual.

He settled beside her into a position that could last decades. Her luscious spikes and spots presented a nicer code than radio. The gasses fanning off her passed through the smaller spikes on his claws. He combed away the lighter streams to amass the ones that tasted like paradise. He balled the fog toward his mouthparts and sucked it all in. The orb became a cone, then nothing. He exhaled something clear and dull that pushed away the incoming sweetness. He took four and a quarter gulps and resumed his blissful thinking. The female did better, ignoring every nudge around her.

The ions and fine solids suffused his stomach with radioactive warmth–his stomach also serving as a lung. The gaseous food suppressed all his urges to seek the mountain. He only escaped the female by stumbling toward the colors of other dancing clouds. Their tangy currents tempted him even more. Chasing them, he reached a second layer of crabs who wrangled and ruminated on the backs of the first layer. He climbed on top of them, ignoring their natter and chatter.

Atop this bumpier sprawl stood a giant named Fourdot. Eightspeck gathered his willpower and crawled to him. He knocked on a massive claw bigger than him and received the permissive response of stillness. He clambered up the ramp of a claw, up the steplike elbow, and onto Fourdot’s back. He perched with his legs tucked in as three other travelers jostled aboard. Fourdot then lurched to the mountain. Each of his passengers burned off a love high that had nearly pinned them to females forever.

Eightspeck beheld a living landscape as aquiver as him. The highland of crabs braced for more news of the human reemergence. They dreamed in global reveries about gassing the whole blue planet. Their hind legs vibrated with plans for the mercy killing while their front ends gulped in Jupiter’s copious fumes. Those with Eightspeck’s build sat dormant after the death of all radio. Their specialized brains had no new signals from Earth to analyze, so they breathed, ate, and waited.

Fourdot carried his more ardent passengers over them. Eightspeck gazed farther at the distant islands of isolationist crabs. They debated in secret, planning a bigger move for the once-dirigible collective. A ring of legs tapped away about some new migration path, the streamlining of the language, or greater mountain height. No one chided them yet, for they looked too sedentary and afraid to present such ideas to the world. Another amalgamation cozily discussed the attractiveness of shells and sensory abilities and how their owners ought to breed. Through the rocking giant beneath him, Eightspeck only felt the signals about slaughtering humankind, the taps all faint yet multiplying.

He debarked near the base of the chitinous mountain. Its bottom had only sunk a few meters through the condensed icy clouds, while the top rose into the hoary overcast. He scuttled up the spiral ramp to the upper mists. Millions of constellated crabs formed the live crags and the walkway of palaver. They told him how the benighted humans had reached a level of eusociality with the advent of mass communication. Yet, humanity kept repeating its abject boom-and-bust cycles despite its vast knowledge. Without resource abundance from gas giants, all life forms on Earth ripped each other apart slowly via mutually assured cannibalism. Even the plants stole nutrients from their dead or starving neighbors. Only extinction could end their torture and turpitude.

While the crabs bemoaned, however, Eightspeck clambered over them with claws once used for pinning females. He passed along their loving message with language legs that had chiefly evolved through rape. He refrained from arguing with a mountain, though. As a decapod, he simply climbed it with more than twice the atavistic limbs as any barbaric human.

Other giant crabs rushed downward, chasing random fumes. Eightspeck scooted aside to let the crowd and the nutritive wisps go by. They left a thin yet pervading haze which flowed over his eyes and memories, leaving him hungry. He gazed down the mountainside at a gigantic swirl of far more tempting gasses. Multicolored and perennial, the stream fed a breeding colony coalesced on the cloudscape. The newer branch of the collective lined up their monumental claws for display. Some even paddled already, in practice for the concerted cloud ejection that would irradiate Earth. They just needed a few million more claws and one generation to fatten them.

Eightspeck hurried away two legs at a time. He scaled for hours to the upper deck of clouds. The crabs high above him had big enough eyes to see the rolling speck of Earth. They chatted about how to coordinate the future subspecies of attack crabs and how to best time the daily fanning of the gas. They debated how many centuries the columns would take to reach Earth and kill all its megafauna.

Exhausted, Eightspeck felt starved of not just radioactive food but also radio waves. The human language had soared through space for generations to make him relevant. Now, he heard only clicks and stomach growls. He stopped and let the words pulse through his legs, for a singular voice deserved his focus at last. Someone finally tried to supersede the orthodoxy. The one named Twostain suggested the collective ought to kill only ninety-six percent of the earthlings. He argued the smartest would survive to rule the abundant resources without brutal competition. The collective, quite discomposed, bewailed that the smarter humans imposed the most egregious systems of all. Incorrigible forever, they all had to die from radioactive gas, enough to seep through every vault.

Millions of minds started trouncing the vanguard of one. Eightspeck continued the climb, somehow alone in it all.

He weaved past some brawny crabs who carried up shells freshly molted off of juveniles. They packed the exuviae into tunnels held up by even brawnier crabs. Beyond them, Eightspeck passed another coterie, one bred like him for radio sensitivity. Its members crouched in silence, a living layer of the mountainside over the core of dead shells. Only one leg twitched, and only after a solar radio burst that made it through Jupiter’s harsh magnetosphere.

Hours later, a wave of clicks and clacks disseminated down the mountain. They reported an exodus from Earth in many spacecraft the size of mountains themselves. As if in warning, a random meteorite struck Eightspeck’s back. A leg hit him there next, then seven more legs followed by a stampede. The onslaught ended, and he hurried upward while the panicked crowd went down.

He remembered similar events called shudders which shook society every time an Earth probe swung close. The bedlam erupting beneath his feet threatened to shrink the whole mountain. He raced up the narrowing ramp which thinned even further as the walkway itself fled. The crabs rose like living cobblestones, an old Earth term. More eerily, they joined the cycle of unrest similar to those of humans. The vibrations felt immense, like a premonition of an avalanche.

He clung to an ancient carapace overlooking the cloudy plain. The precipice let him view the vast wall of storms that chafed along the border of the walkable region. Kilometers below, hundreds of terrified crabs scampered into the infinite lightning. Only a few survived the curtain of bolts to venture on. Soon, however, they simply fell through the less dense cloud band that swept opposite of their home plain. The panic and rumors from the stationary crabs made roads to further stupidity. A few specialists careened down the mountainside, breaking themselves to pieces to avoid the supposed wrath of the spacecraft.

Eightspeck scuttled through the ammonium clouds that hid most of the mountain from space. He struggled with poor visibility and poorer footing as the spiral ramp ended. The mountaintop consisted of only the best radio specialists and the freaks with the biggest eyes. They formed a pyramidal stairway. He nearly fell off it twice despite his assiduous footwork. He hungered as well but saw only black specks of void through the clouds.

The mountain had shrunk several meters. In minutes, however, he ascended enough to see entire swaths of space for the first time. He beheld a pane of star-flecked glass which humanity could only stare through a few centuries ago. He moved closer to it, crawling atop the famous giant named Sixteenblot who formed the summit.

At his blustery new height, Eightspeck looked for any encroaching probes beyond the space dust and moonlets. He only found the dab in the darkness the humans called Mars. By straining his eyes, he finally saw a particle beyond the red planet: Earth. Glitter and grains danced around it, as though the world had vomited all its metals into orbit. Over the course of a human minute, they moved.

The many spacecraft spread outward like another dying branch of humanity. At least visually, the people cried out for euthanasia as the collective had always said. They left behind an abhorrent brown speck of a world which used to glow blue. Now, it rusted and rotted away. The sunlight accentuated the stations and satellites still orbiting like eternal wreckage.

The elder Sixteenblot must have felt the stomach growls above him along with some empathy of his own. He exhaled a cloud of tartly-flavored radiation fed to him hours ago by a delivery crab. Somehow, even up here, Eightspeck’s claws knew the right tilts and trembles. They sorted the gasses by flavors and weights through a comb of spikes. Colors arose, and he ate them. But the wind wanted some too, and it had become more of a brawler midway up the mountain. Most of the food blew away.

Meteorites hissed and sizzled around him. The taunting fumes and their secrets faded. He slowly starved among their vanishing trails, his metabolism neither slow nor specialized for mountain life. His left hind leg chattered on, wasting energy without his control. It redelivered every signal that rose through Sixteenblot’s carapace. Not a word of it came from radio which carried all the past confessions of Earth.

The messages sounded speculative but likely: the humans must have decoded the crab language via cloud-piercing probes. The panic flowing down the mountain became tremulous. Even Eightspeck could spot a baleful spacecraft, a growing circle, heading straight for Jupiter. The dozens of other vessels didn’t appear tangled or chaotic like the lives of their passengers. Their design resembled not the crooked veins of humanity but pillars–perfect shapes never heard or conceived of by most crabs.

The closest pillar approached inexorably and at extreme speed. The circle grew bigger within Jupiter’s mere ten-hour day. Eightspeck watched some of the crabs below pinch off their own eyestalks, afraid to see the machinations the humans might bring. Farther down, the suicides spread with another spurt of bad information.

With the whole population beneath him, no one could see the eight specks on Eightspeck’s back. He stood on the most sessile crab in the world who would likely die with him or at least stay put. On the summit, he had pure anonymity and a unique immunity from ostracism. He readied his leg for a worldwide message the rankled masses could never trace to him.

Without a crackle of human radio, however, he had nothing of use to say.

His hunger, the suicide rate, and the circle in the sky all grew enormous over time. He waited while the mountain offered a slow death by starvation or a quick one by jumping off it. Yet, it also offered the best views and clues about the inscrutable humans. He chose starvation and clues topped with the torture of watching the delivery crabs arrive. They fed everyone below him by exhaling dense fumes into all the faces. The humans called it kissing. Eightspeck, however, lacked the specialized mouthparts for blocking the wind. Thus, on seeing his grim face looking down, the deliverers turned to every crab but him.

As the plated faces veered from him, and as the torture rained hard, he realized the spacecraft veered likewise. It loomed like a circular moon but with a strip of its side slightly visible. The giant-eyed crabs below him, in awe of the otherworldly shape, hadn’t yet signaled that the humans sped off course from Jupiter.

Eightspeck finally drummed his one-legged outcry based on his own little field of praxeology. He said the humans wanted the stars, not Jupiter. Otherwise, the mountain would only see a perfect circle instead of the spacecraft’s underbelly. He declared the humans had evolved into better life forms who’d molted the Earth like an old shell. He concluded that the radio waves ended not from humanity warring with itself, but because they’d developed a medium no one else could hear.

Sixteenblot sent down the message to the world. He tagged it as coming from a speaker he could not identify by variegated shell spots. The mountain soon juddered as thousands of conformists kicked their rage upward. The collective affirmed that the exposed belly of the spacecraft had all the weapons, and the humans didn’t deserve to breathe. Eightspeck felt the whole fracas. All of nature sang out of tune, on Earth and on Jupiter.

The derision only ceased when the bigger eyes announced a more startling observation. Instead of weapons, they saw the human word PEEKABOO emblazoned on the underside of the ineffable spacecraft.

Eightspeck swam through all his memories for the meaning of the vessel’s name. The answer seemed both clear yet incomprehensible. The humans considered their contact with Jupiter a mere child’s game, a fun little joke.

They infantilized the crabs. The gas giant and all its living ones looked small to them.

The humans sent a well-timed radio message, as if they had calculated the visual acuity of the topmost crabs. The signal, however, contained no human language at all. It arrived in a series of clicks like the rattle of chitinous legs:

“From life to life: Greetings, goodbye, and watch the ice.”

Eightspeck’s language skills finally became relevant, but the ten words overawed him into lifelong silence. Waves of relief rippled through Jupiter as its curvature blocked out the tail end of the passing spacecraft. Its message, one of peace from peers, sounded clear enough. However, the world would debate the old phrase about ice for millennia.

Eightspeck obeyed the advice from the technologically superior humans. He watched the ice, the frozen vapor and crystals which formed the densest cloud band around Jupiter. An empty plain of it had become visible through a sudden parting of the overcast. With the mountain lowered several meters, he could just make out the forms of crabs amassed on the horizon.

The population, he realized, nearly circumvented the planet. After building more mountains, crabs would soon fill the only dense enough cloud band for life on Jupiter. Then, they would war over limited space. Eightspeck glanced at the hordes of attack crabs on the shrinking plain. He wondered how they might repurpose themselves.

Much higher, the humans flew off to master the void in their colony vessel. Its fleeting gravitational pull allowed the curtain of clouds to close. The anthropic era ended like its wellspring of radio waves. A different epoch of catastrophism would begin with the overpopulation of crabs.

As the worldwide furor settled, so did Eightspeck. He felt enfeebled by the rapid-onset kwashiorkor which struck most of his kind after their energetic pursuits. Too tired to descend, he simply needed to park his pensiveness. He perched on the apex of Jupiter and watched the Earth turn blue again.

Sixteenblot shared enough food on calmer days. Twostain made crude deliveries on windy ones. Eightspeck used the energy to ponder which species, humans or crabs, had pushed the other toward space. Only one had reached true bliss and abundance in the stars. He waited to see if they might teleport back someday in their adult form. They could revisit their hatched egg called Earth, still adrift by the sun.

Given their growing pains here, he doubted they ever would.

 

* * *

About the Author

Nicholas Stillman writes science-fiction with medical themes. His work has appeared in The Colored Lens, Bards and Sages Quarterly, The Martian Wave, Not One of Us: Animal Day II, and Helios Quarterly Magazine.

by Elizabeth Cobbe

“Please do not share your passwords, bank PINs, or social security number with the dolphins.”

Welcome to Ocean Paradise Lagoon, LLC! Please read the following safety guidelines carefully before entering the lagoon.

1. Only swimmers age 12 and older may participate in our Luxury “Swim with Dolphins” Adventure Package.

2. While in the lagoon, you may interact freely with the dolphins. Those whistles and clicks you hear mean that a dolphin wants to use its powers of telepathy! Go ahead, relax into the dolphin’s long, soulful gaze, and allow your mind to meld with these good-luck creatures.¹

3. No need to go chasing after a dolphin for conversation! They love to meet new friends,² and they will swim right up to link their consciousness with yours.

4. Please notify our staff in advance if you are currently taking any prescription antidepressants and/or anti-anxiety medication.³ Telepathic communication with animals should be pleasant and enjoyable, and we want to ensure that your dolphin encounter goes smoothly.

5. Swimmers may not bring any food or beverages with them into the lagoon. For an optional fee⁴ of $85, you can purchase a bag of live jellyfish⁵ to offer the dolphins during your adventure.

6. Our most popular dolphin companions include Trixie, Aphrodite, Tycho, and Slasher, who are all cheerful and eager to chat with our guests.⁶ Swimmers are encouraged to interact with this main group, and don’t mind any loner bulls (males) who might not fit comfortably within the hierarchy of the pod.⁷

7. Swimmers should not worry if the pod occasionally gangs up on a single dolphin⁸ and teaches him a lesson by ramming their snouts into his flank over and over. It’s all right, that’s just what bulls do, and dolphin blood is harmless to humans.⁹

8. However, please notify staff if any dolphin declares that he is unhappy and seeks the ocean.¹⁰ We will pair you with a more suitable animal right away.

9. Visitors should keep to the clean, clear water of the lagoon at all times.¹¹

10. Once you’ve finished your conversation, our dolphin friends¹² are prepared to offer dorsal tows, foot pushes, and maybe even a bottlenose kiss!

11. One more friendly reminder: don’t swim with any of the dolphins out into the open sea! No matter how much he asks.¹³

Thank you for choosing Ocean Paradise Lagoon, LLC for your marine wildlife encounter. We hope your experience is everything you’ve dreamed!

* * *

1. Please do not share your passwords, bank PINs, or social security number with the dolphins.

2. This is mostly true.

3. On occasion, one particular dolphin’s inability to adjust to life in the lagoon has led him to access the deepest sorrows and worries of an already vulnerable swimmer’s soul in a misplaced bid for sympathy. Like grapefruit juice, this sort of prank may interfere with certain serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs).

4. We accept credit cards, Paypal, and Venmo. Our dolphins are not able to accept payment telepathically at this time.

5. Do not attempt telepathy with the jellyfish. They do not have brains, and it stings a little.

6. Examples of safe and fun topics of conversation include how to count to five, ways that dolphins differ from porpoises, and the various jellyfish snacks available for purchase at any time during your visit. They do not include the effects of long-term captivity on mammals, or the color of the open horizon as day fades slowly into night.

7. All right, we’re referring to Johannes, the young rescue bull who can be identified by the chunk missing from his dorsal fin and the bite scarring along his left flank. Johannes is most often seen swimming along the southern end of the lagoon, occasionally battering the underwater fence and attempting to leap over the artificial barrier to the sea. The rest of the pod understands and appreciates the boundaries of the lagoon, but Johannes has unfortunately refused to accept these limitations.

8. Johannes.

9. All the same, swim with your mouth closed.

10. He may try to bring you under his influence by telling you singsong tales about the vast, open water, about leaping above the ocean’s surface to breathe in the warm Gulf air, and of fisherman’s nets. Don’t pay any attention. Don’t believe him if he tells you there is a wider world beyond the lagoon, a vast underwater realm where only he can guide you. Listen: no one returns from the deep unchanged. If pressed, tell him no! “There’s nothing there for you in those cold, dark, and polluted waters,” you should say. “No, you must stay here with us, among your own kind. We’ll teach you to relinquish your dreams, if you’d only let us help you. Why won’t you let us help you?”

11. It happens like this: once the others have paired off, he’ll swim up cautiously. He’ll reach out with his mind, and ask if you know what it is to sit down after dinner, picking the remaining jellyfish bits from your teeth as you review your quarterly Roth IRA statement, observe the limitations of your days, and wonder, “Can this really be all there is?” Johannes dreams of more than shallow tides, but don’t be fooled is all we’re saying. Do you think Tycho and Slasher have never felt discouraged? Is Johannes really the only dolphin who’s meant for greater things? Who is he to defy the pod and seek his place in an undefined expanse?

12. Not Johannes.

13. Besides, it would incur a great deal of liability. So come away from the gate. Leave Johannes behind. These small dreams we offer inside are more than enough.

 

* * *

About the Author

Elizabeth Cobbe is a playwright, arts critic, and software developer living in Austin, Texas. Her fiction has also appeared in Fireside, and she is a graduate of Viable Paradise. She is currently at work on a fantasy novel about motherhood, miscarriage, and magic.

by A Humphrey Lanham

“The toaster flapped and fought and pushed against the wind like never before, its tail whipping like a kite’s.”

With a soft clunk, the toaster landed on a sandy bluff overlooking the ocean. It flicked its pterodactyl wings just so, making the leathery membrane almost shimmer in the fading sunlight. It wiggled its toaster toes in the sand and sighed.

It was a lonely little toaster. The only one of its kind. No one wanted it around. Humans screamed and threw things. Dogs barked. Wildlife fled. The other toasters gave it the silent treatment. (They were inanimate after all.) All the little toaster could do was travel the continent in search of a place to call home.

As the light faded, the toaster tucked its wings into their bread cavities, preparing for sleep. The little toaster sat on the bluff watching the sun slowly slip into the ocean, the sky fading from blue to pink to dusky black. The lights from ships blinking in the ocean were met by the twinkling of stars in the sky. The cacophony of the ocean waves and rustling crab grass sang to the little toaster in the otherwise silent, lonely world. It would always be sad and hopelessly alone.

The toaster made a bed in the sand and fell asleep counting the stars.

* * *

A collection of seagulls woke the sentient toaster, pecking at its metal exterior and picking at the two metal prongs of its black cord tail. It alternated yelling toaster profanities and pleas for mercy to no avail. The toaster retracted its wings as far as they could go into their bread cavities and tucked its tail as best it could underneath itself in the sand, waiting for the flying saltwater rats to lose interest.

The attack eventually subsided, and the toaster lay, shaking with fear.

What purpose was there for a sentient toaster with pterodactyl wings? None. None was the answer it had known and been avoiding all its life. It didn’t know how it had come to be, but it had always and would always be alone.

The toaster rose, shook itself, feeling the grit of sand that had worked its way into every crevice. It lifted off the bluff and flew towards the ocean, struggling with all its might against the wind currents headed for shore.

The toaster flapped and fought and pushed against the wind like never before, its tail whipping like a kite’s. It didn’t try to gain sufficient height to surf the currents. It just needed to get far enough over the water for a sufficient drowning.

At last, fatigued by the effort, satisfied with the distance from shore, the toaster tucked its wings into their bread cavities and dove. It could not gain the aerodynamic speed of a peregrine falcon, but for the duration of its plummet, it felt a panicked sense of freedom, its tail fluttering loose behind it.

It hit the water with a splash. It sank like, well…like a hunk of metal.

The toaster did not cease to be. Instead it rested on the sea floor, tail tangled in a kelp bed, surrounded by inanimate bits of trash. Its pterodactyl wings were near useless in the water, so it kept them furled and protected.

All in all, the toaster had naught to do but watch the world pass it by. Here, helpless in the kelp bed, it found a sense of calm.

On the second day, a tiny octopus came by and attempted to use one of the bread cavities as a den, but upon realizing her new hiding spot was sentient, she moved on, ignorant of the toaster’s request that she stay.

On the third day, however, a pod of dolphins and a barge came. The dolphins swam from the barge to the ocean floor and back again with pieces of trash in their mouths.

Eventually, one of the dolphins made her way over to the toaster’s kelp bed and began removing the trash one piece at a time. Finally, it was the toaster’s turn. The dolphin examined the toaster, grabbed onto it as best she could, and pulled. After a few firm tugs, the toaster detached from the kelp, leaving behind its beautiful black cord tail with two metal prongs. The little toaster shed a toaster tear, watching the tail waving goodbye in the ocean currents.

Human hands grabbed the toaster and lifted it from the mouth of the dolphin, giving the cetacean savior a piece of fish in exchange. The dolphin winked as it swallowed its reward and disappeared below the water. The human tossed the toaster onto the barge without a second thought.

The little toaster rested, keeping its wings tucked into their cavities as more and more trash was thrown on the pile. It wanted to not draw attention to itself, tailless, and unsure if it would be able to escape. While it did not seem to hurt being tailless, the toaster mourned the loss.

As the day shifted into evening, the barge returned to a place of rest. When the voices of the humans grew faint, the little toaster wiggled its way out of the trash. It stretched out its wings and did a test flight to the top of the pile to look around. It was in some kind of water paddock, separated from the ocean by two jetties made of rock, and enclosed with a gate.

One of the dolphins–perhaps the one who had rescued the toaster–swam over and whistled at it. A friendly, knowing sound.

The toaster unfurled its wings, thinking the movement would scare the dolphin, like it did most creatures. But she remained, clicking and whistling and staring at her own grey reflection in the toaster’s smooth silver plating. In response, the little toaster toggled its lever, clicked it into place, and released it again with a squeak. This seemed to please the dolphin, who signaled to the rest of the pod, which swam over to investigate.

Delighted to find something in the world that did not fear it, the toaster took to the air and made a wobbled pass over the pod of dolphins. Flying would be more difficult, though not impossible without its black cord tail with two metal prongs. The toaster made several awkward loops around the paddock, the dolphins swimming after it, before landing again on the barge.

The toaster made a gleeful little squeak with its lever. Its pod whistled in joyous response.

 

* * *

About the Author

A Humphrey Lanham is a science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer in Oregon. They graduated from Odyssey in 2019 and are a member of the Wordos Workshop. When not writing, they like to make kombucha, procrastinate, and study secondary languages. Ru, their housemate, is an anthroxenobiologist, studying humans and their strange, hydrophilic proclivities. Sadly, everyone else insists he is just a common terran cat. Follow their adventures on Twitter @ahumphreylanham.

by Marie Croke

“Yet, I couldn’t shake that whisper-want that had started the day of my yearling celebration and had risen so that it didn’t feel like a whisper anymore, but rather a river’s coursing flow beating from my head all the way to the tip of my singular, strong tail.”

They named me for the ground, for the metal and glows embedded within the lower recesses of the range: Dirt of CrystalSleep. They marked my forehead, in between my air holes, with a metallic-rich mixture that bestowed the blessing of the metal weaver faction. They had intentions for me the moment I hatched, before I’d even risen off the ground, sniffed my first redwood leaf or sung my first notes. Named for the mountain, blessed with strength, my tail fastened with many-pronged picks or double-plated maces, I was destined to be a metal weaver.

And maybe that would have sufficed, had I not fallen from a woven bridge during my yearling celebration and landed two long stories down in the slow-churning water where saplings and twinelings grew on interlocking puzzle-platforms.

A nearby adult, likely drawn by my bleat of surprise, lumbered into the water, her wrinkled skin heavily shadowed by the layers above. She plucked me up with her teeth and set me on a puzzle-platform where I became dwarfed by twinelings, their leafy branches whipped and whorled and braided all about me in beautiful dappled designs.

“And who might you be?”

I stood there, wet from air holes to soles, mud on my tail and scratches along my flank, but I straightened into a proud stance. “I am Dirt of CrystalSleep, and I’m to be a metal weaver.”

“I can see that.” Her eyes twinkled and she sang her words gently as she swayed. “You fell through here like a rock. No grace at all, metal weavers.”

My whole life up to that point had been surrounded by my own faction and never had I heard one word calling us anything but strong and powerful. “Who needs grace when you have strength?”

“Who indeed. Come, let’s get you back to your pod.” And she turned to indicate the path across the puzzle-platform rocking under my pads.

Yet, as she did, her tail came into view. Or rather, her tails. They moved independently of one another, one up, the other down, touching, bending, folding branches along the twinelings in the neighboring puzzle-platform, pausing now and then to use shears or combs to detangle trailings. Her tails moved fluidly; grace, I realized. This was grace.

“What are you doing?”

She paused, then looked to where I stared. “I’m shaping the trees, little one. If no one shapes the trees, then the city would not grow along paths, not form nests, would not envelope us, protect us, feed us.”

“We don’t need trees in the river.”

“No, we don’t. But the roots enjoy the water and this way we can move them later to where they need to go.” She paused and crooked her neck as she considered me.

Me, who stared and stared, watching as her tails swayed, picking and choosing branches and vines to wrap and weave. She danced, I thought, a dance of wood and grace.

“I wish I’d been born with two tails,” I whisper-sung.

Her tails froze. “No one is born with two.” She shifted. “We make them. It’s a painful process.” Her tails drew long toward her body, but there near the base they morphed into one with a dimpling of scar tissue where the cut ended.

Her name, I found out later, was Root of WillowWhip, and she thought she’d been dissuading me from my whisper-want, but all she did in that moment was take an impossible desire and make it possible.

Possible things though, I discovered quickly, did not mean possible for you. I proudly went home after my yearling celebration and asked my pod mother when I could go to the life weavers for my tail-cut. That’s what I called it, still young enough I made up words, because I didn’t know city weavers called their forced mutation a splice.

My pod mother, Tower of HotRocks, thought I jested. “You’re a metal weaver. Born to work the dirt and stone. If you break your muscle in two, you’ll only be half as effective.”

“But I want grace. I don’t want to be strong like a rock. I want to be like the trees.”

Tower of HotRocks measured me for my first pickaxe and didn’t say another word other than, “Please cinch that with your teeth.”

And she certainly refused to take me to a life weaver for the tail-cut, her believing me caught up in something new and different, with a desire that would surely fade in time.

After a while, I stopped asking and instead would sneak away after work, my tail and backside sore from beating metal out for the skilled forgers or tapping away at the mountain gorge. The City of ManyWeaves sprawled across tributaries, stretched up the range, and reached into the sky, each bend, each braid, each tree grown thick and strong through centuries built to withstand a weight of a thousand thousand sauropod steps. Willow whips, ginkgos, crescent blossoms, redwoods, all held together by thick woven fern ropes or plaited river weeds mixed with flattened wires to aid in strength of the upper stories.

Before, I’d see the metal stumps and plates bolstering the city and gaze proudly at my ancestors’ work. Now, all I could see was the beauty in the woven tapestry, in the pronged leaves and loose vines, in the curling branches and fused trunks. And, of course, the split trunks that reminded me of Root of WillowWhip’s tails.

Down among the puzzle-platforms where metal weavers never trod unless they’re fallen yearlings, Root of WillowWhip reigned. I’d perch on an upper path, my bulk hidden by the formed understory, my neck arched down so I might peek at the busy city weavers.

They passed branches back and forth between their tails, tightened ropes against curves to keep the trunks in shape. They did not use buckles or single cinch-lines as metal weavers did, but rather tiny shears and thin rakes and intricate knots that left me in wonder, watching the way their tails flipped and curled, creating the first stages of walls and ramps.

Root of WillowWhip would catch me watching and turn so I might see her work. She’d explain to city weaver yearlings a little louder than normal how to work a certain braid or grow a certain plant. She’d slow her tails down, giving me the chance to learn the motions, even though I could not repeat them accurately.

I tried to mimic the braids, bunching my tail and attempting to hold pieces with a thicker, less agile section of muscle, but the branches did not cooperate and the fern ropes slipped free from my grip, leaving me with piles of useless knots I couldn’t unravel and the belief in my heart that I could never be anything but what I’d been marked as.

“The life weavers say we have choice,” I said to Tower of HotRocks one morning as we crossed the upper paths in the range, her steps creaking the trees, my own tiny shivers in her wake.

“Is this another question about tails?”

“I’m merely curious. I asked Root of WillowWhip when she’d had her tail spliced and she said it is done in phases, that forty suns after hatching, a city weaver gets a pin through their tail at its base, so that at the blessed two-hundredth they can undergo their full cut. If it’s done so young, how did they have a choice? And us? We didn’t get that choice whether we wanted one or two tails.”

She twisted her neck to look back at me. “Every time you cut your tail, it halves your muscle, making you weaker and weaker. A metal weaver needs strength to wield our tools. A city weaver uses small, barely there things, if they use anything at all. You are strong, Dirt of CrystalSleep, as it should be.”

“No one crosses the faction lines? Not ever?”

Tower of HotRocks stared down at me, and I knew, even without her saying, that there were those who did. And I also knew, their actions were not approved.

“If you splice your tail now, you will be a worse metal weaver or a novice city weaver who will never gain the grace of the others who’ve been practicing their whole lives.”

With that, she turned and headed down the ramp to the gorge, her tail casing flashing sharply in the sunlight as she moved beyond the city canopy.

When faced with a choice like that I understood why the factions remained separate, why the pods held tightly to their own. Yet, I couldn’t shake that whisper-want that had started the day of my yearling celebration and had risen so that it didn’t feel like a whisper anymore, but rather a river’s coursing flow beating from my head all the way to the tip of my singular, strong tail. I shoved it down, down, squished it under my pod’s pressure, under affirmations of my work and burgeoning friendships among other metal weavers. To my surprise, I found it easy to ignore wants when the path has been woven before you, no matter how many twists exist in that path.

I stopped visiting Root of WillowWhip. Stopped watching the city weavers work with their lithe braids among the twinelings. Stopped looking around me as I walked from my nest to the range. Stopped listening to the song weavers in the morning.

Then I woke up one morning and realized I’d stopped caring at all. The whisper-want dead, shriveled into wrinkles and dust.

I moved through the motions of my daily life in the metal weaver faction. Moved without seeing or feeling. I might have kept on like that forever, a shell stomping through the intricate paths of the city.

Except, while trailing the yearlings to their celebration, one fell. Down, down, to splash in the slow-moving river near the puzzle-platforms.

I rushed after, a part of me crazed with the horror that my whisper-want might transfer to another, and found Root of WillowWhip plucking the yearling from the river and setting him on the bank where he thanked her in a chirp and ran off, not once even glancing at her two tails or the beautiful braid she worked behind her.

“Dirt of CrystalSleep, how good to see you again.”

“And you,” I sang softly as I stared and stared as I’d done years ago, that whisper-want a raging crash against the shell I’d become, telling me I had never beat it, never truly removed the desire. Had merely looked away until I’d fooled myself.

“You’re missing your faction’s yearling celebration.”

She spoke with that same gentleness as she had the first time we’d met. I glanced at her, then up the ramp where the yearling who had fallen had disappeared into the upper stories, no whisper-want ensnaring him like it had me.

I made a decision then, the same kind of decision I’d attempted to make when I’d been the yearling who had fallen. “I want you to place a pin through my tail.”

I lifted my tail with its metal casing and sharp prongs meant for gouging earth. Using leverage against the base of the tree and the powerful strength I’d accumulated over the years, I broke the longest metal prong, slipped my tail free of its tool, and proffered the metal stake.

Root of WillowWhip stared at me unblinkingly. “A life weaver should do this.”

“Yet, if you do this for me, then I’ll know you’ll accept me as part of your faction, no matter how clumsy I might be at first.”

She didn’t ask if I were sure. I think she knew. I think she’d always known. “I’ll walk you to the life weaver, Dirt of CrystalSleep.” Her tails left off braiding and her song altered slightly to one I’d heard her only use among her own.

My whisper-want dampened that day–not on account of the pain, though it was tremendous since I’d waited until adulthood to begin the splice–but with satisfaction.

It’s a rough go, my tails striving to move concurrently and the muscle straining to stay together. My actions are too rough, used to bashing and heavy hefting. I have broken many sapling branches, and yet…I have braided many, many more in my own dance of wood and grace.

 

* * *

About the Author

Marie Croke is an Odyssey Workshop graduate, a Writers of the Future first place winner and her stories have been published in places such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Dreamforge Magazine, and Cast of Wonders. She lives in Maryland with her family, all of whom like to scribble messages in her notebooks when she’s not looking. You can find her online at www.mariecroke.com and she’d love to chat with you on twitter @marie_croke.

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Hogwash Husky pops in to spend some time with us and tells us how they came to be part of the famous dance competitions at BLFC and FC. Taebyn asks a completely nonsensical question. Shrove Tuesday is discussed in reference to Pancake day. Euclidian Geometry. Does Cookie Monster sound like us? Can you watch Sesame Street without an HBO subscription?

Links mentioned in this weeks ep:

Hogwash info:
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Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/hoggers_z
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**Merch giveaways every 1st Friday of the month**
Saturday/Sunday Mornings - Games Vary depending on mood.
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 Animal Skull reference: Animal Photo Art (x6ud.github.io)

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Bearly Furcasting #44 - Hogwash Husky, Last Time Today, Media, Math, Really Bad Jokes

Size Matters is a part of virtual Fur Squared 2021. It's our first livestream podcast! We talk about all things big and small, King Kong vs Godzilla, macro madness, artist shout-outs and more! Episode 32: "Fur Squared 2021 Livestream" (2021-02-27)

撰文／狸貓，封面圖／Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas

（一）

　　身為獸控的各位，多少都會有在場次買本本的經驗。這些本本可能是清水向的，但更多時候都會包含R18的元素，讓我們在這個沒有毛茸茸香香獸人的現實世界裡得到不少的慰藉。

　　但是，買賣這些R18本本真的沒有問題嗎？會不會一不小心就觸犯了刑法第235條：「散佈、販賣猥褻物品罪」呢？

　　這篇文章想藉由這個問題，稍微的討論一下這條法律的適當性、以及我們該怎麼做才不會在買賣本本的時候不小心踩到了法律的紅線。

（二）

　　刑法第235條說，不論成功與否，如果有人意圖散佈、播送或販賣猥褻物品的話，要被處兩年以下的有期徒刑，而且還要罰錢。而除了有期徒刑和罰錢之外，這些所謂的「猥褻物品」，還要被沒收。

　　看到這邊，或許有人會開始擔心場次上的R18本本會被沒收、負責產糧的繪師大大也有可能被抓去關。但事情真的是這樣嗎？

　　早在大家耳熟能詳的釋字748號解釋出現之前，大法官做了釋字617號解釋，限縮了刑法第235條的適用，讓我們可以安心的在場次裡買到我們喜歡的本本、創作者也不用擔心被警察找去泡茶。

　　釋字617號解釋將色情書刊定調為言論的一種，稱之為「猥褻言論」。這些猥褻言論又再被分成兩種，分別是「軟蕊」和「硬蕊」：

　　如果本本中含有「人獸交」、「性虐待」的元素，且其中沒有任何藝術、醫學、教育價值，那就會被歸類到硬蕊；而只要不屬於硬蕊的，就是軟蕊。

圖／狸貓

　　包含軟蕊猥褻言論的作品，在「與一般人保持適當距離」的情況下（像是在封面加上警語、加上封套、在OO上貼海苔），就可以正常的販賣、散佈；然而硬蕊的作品就沒有那麼幸運，只要符合了刑法235條的要件，就算已經和一般人採取了適當的距離，散佈者還是有可能被抓去關或是罰錢。

　　也就是說，如果本本僅有軟蕊的內容，只要沒有公然在路邊兜售本本、或是把裡面OO最大的、等各種精彩的內容展示給路人看的話，都不會有觸犯刑法第235條的問題。

　　場次中販售的本本非常多樣，R18本本中除了會有只有人類的組合外，也有很多獸人、或是更廣泛的人外主題內容，其中更可能多少的包含了一些「硬蕊」的內容。但整體上來說，都還能勉強落在軟蕊的範圍之內，在採取與一般人的適當隔離措施下，自然能夠和刑法第235條相安無事。

（三）

　　既然在場次裡買賣本本能夠和刑法相安無事，那為什麼要拿出來討論呢？原因在於，把本本區分成「軟蕊」和「硬蕊」，並給予不同程度的保護，從憲法的角度來看是非常具有爭議性的。

　　即便是為了滿足性慾的R18本本，都仍然屬於言論的一種，受到憲法的保護。既然釋字617號解釋已經明文規定，猥褻物品只要採取適當的安全措施、讓不願意看到這些猥褻物品的人不會因為這樣受到冒犯，為什麼還需要區分出誰受保護、誰不受保護呢？

　　難不成是多數的大法官認為，任何人如果只要接收到了人獸交、性虐待的內容就會被冒犯嗎？這一類的內容通常不只是單純的「性癖」，更是一種次文化。在已採取安全距離、不冒犯他人的情況下，我認為政府並沒有必要去限制這種次文化的傳播。

　　在這個逐漸從單一文化走向多元兼容並蓄的社會中，我非常希望政府不再需替民眾「著想」，決定他們不該看什麼，更不需要來替民眾審查這些東西會不會冒犯到他們。

　　畢竟，有誰是在接觸到毛茸茸香香獸人之前，就知道自己喜歡他們的呢？