Where Lies Adventure!

OF GODS AND MEN Chapter 17: Pathways               Tarsus awoke suddenly.  He was lying facedown in arid dirt.  He turned his head, resting one side of his face on the earth as he took in the scene.  It was only, some seconds after waking, that he realized he was breathing.             “How?” he thought.   Only a moment ago he was losing consciousness, stranded in some unknowable depth of the Crystal Sea.   Now, he was on dry land; a desert, from the looks of things.               He took short breaths, not wanting to take the luxury of air for granted.   He waited some moments, contemplating whether or not this was real; whether or not he was real anymore.   He shifted his body slowly, bringing up his hands and arms to push himself up.   He slid them along the earth - felt the rocks, pebb...

HIGHER POWER       “Sonny.”      The small man didn’t move.  His ass was firmly set on his bar stool, and his face was firmly planted on the bar.  His skin was pale, and his clothes hung off his rail-thin frame.  Even hunched over like he was,  it was easy to see that he was swimming in an ocean of cotton and polyester.      Sonny Larson, barely breathing and fast asleep at the bar, looked like a skeleton dressed up for an appearance in a house of horrors attraction: a literal bag of bones.      “Sonny, wake up!”      Sonny did this time, but it wasn’t from being yelled at.  It was from the shock of a hard slap that came down on his right cheek.  The sting of it burned.  He cursed under his breath as he sat up on his stool rubbing his face.      Then he realized; he felt it.  That meant he was sober.      Sonny swung his heavy he...

OF GODS AND MEN Chapter 16: The UnderIsle             Tarsus, Cecily and Finnian walked out onto the deck of the ship Defiance.  The moon shone brightly, illuminating the whole of the deck.  But it seemed in vain; the pale light trying to reveal what the thick fog tried to keep hidden.  In stark contrast to the bright moon, tendrils of ghostly fog reached over the railing and onto the deck, like the wispy fingers of ghostly, giant hands.             They all paused.   The deck unnerved them.   It had grown so familiar over the past weeks, and yet now it was anything but.   Now it was specter of its former self; a black and grey imitation of a place they had only ever seen lit with the reds, browns and golds of day.   And through the ill-defined haze and shrouds of fog, propped up on the railing under a clear night sky, were two shadows.     ...