Irene: Prologue

Crying child, like a lamb on the altar. A single bright light, flicker of a flame. A seedling that sprouted forth in the wrong season, soon to retreat beneath the earth. Newborn yet dying.

Doctor says "There's nothing we can do." Sometimes a little spark doesn't catch fire to the tinder. So sitting with the fawn in her arms, shallow breathing, Mother looks down. Such small hands wrapped around her finger, the last umbilical of life hanging on. Father's grip on her shoulder feels like some far away comfort of familiarity to the homesick. He stares into tiny blue eyes, barely open, fading fast. Father starts to speak, "I am so sorry. Little one.."

Bradbury Heights: V - Father, Mother!

Father Fleischer padded softly afoot the slate stone stairwell of Saint Andrew’s Cathedral, smoothly stepping straightway towards the upper sanctum where Mother Superior Judith Von Engle would surely be sweeping through her morning studies. The bite of the dawn’s gentle patters of rain had swiftly given way to the lustrous sun now bleeding through the slotted windows of the Cathedral stairway, but Father Fleischer did not require the meager light to guide his feet.

Bradbury Heights: IV – Unseen Persons

Sheer white sunlight finally pierced through the cluster of crusty clouds as Mike took his seat in the blustery classroom awaiting the chime that would indicate the initiation of the day’s didactic activities. Sketching aside the papers littering his desk, the stripling student tediously balanced a pen on his forefinger, pondering upon the inner intrinsic complexities of the lead black chalkboard.

Bradbury Heights: III – Mayoral Assertions

Sheriff Humboldt, meandering afoot a stairy slope, pondering the quirking scenes of earlier this morn, could not quite keep down the strange sensation of a lurking discontinuity that accompanied him wherewithever he walked. Entering the doorway atop the stairs and depositing his satchel alongst a stiff wooden chair, the Sheriff grimaced at the sight of his turbulent troop, depleted of the sentiment of sanctuary proffered by the formerly uneventful duties that squired doldrum Bradbury Heights.

The Memoirs of Colonel Octavian Van Haslinger

GTI 43:89 – 832.3 Sector Alpha 435B; Skirmish with the Faun

‘Twas Brillig alright. When a sun-star ignites like a firepop set off by a twelve year old guinea at the Freedom Parade and you’re standing on the doorstep of a fiery inferno that will spontaneously cook eggs from over 30 parsec away then there’s not much you can do but duck and cover.  As for the Faun, they were expecting this. Their trap sprung, and all of their twelve Satyr Class battlecruisers with full power on their shields such that Zeus’ own lightning couldn’t get through. As for us, well, we weren’t so prepared.