• POINT OF VIEW: 3rd Person
• RATING: PG-13
• GENRE: Combat
• This is an excerpt. The full version can be found here.

“Well, you girls have it under control now, collect my papers once you’re done…this has cut into my planned meeting,” she heard Circe say, and she could see Chaos rolling her eyes. She struggled as the door to the little building they had used shut, hoping that maybe with Circe gone…

“Please, Chaos,” she mumbled.

“Oh, begging… Cute, that’s cute,” Chaos said, slamming her staff, blunt end this time, between Lightning’s breasts. Her voice shifted lower. “Such a stupid little thing you are,” she said, more a snarl, and flipped her staff up over her head, catching it and holding it differently. “Wonder how long it’ll take to shut you up… One swing, or two, Evangeline?”

“One,” Evangeline said, voice flat.

Lightning closed her eyes…and then she heard Chaos cry out. Opening her eyes, she saw an arrow had sprouted between the Lockette’s breasts, and she had staggered back, lifting her staff and sending a wave of fire at the trees. Evangeline got ready to swing, almost mechanically. Lightning didn’t shut her eyes this time, hoping against hope… As Evangeline’s scythe lifted, she heard the soft twang, from a new angle…and an arrow soared into Evangeline’s keyhole.

Chaos turned back as she heard Evangeline scream in agony, jaw dropping as she saw Evangeline dropping to her knees, her scythe barely holding her upright. The arrow blazed in her saura, tiny feathers dangling from the end.

• POINT OF VIEW: 3rd Person
• RATING: PG
• GENRE: romance (rivals)
• This is an excerpt. The full version can be found here.

Diana shut the door behind her, and they surveyed the apartment.

It was sparse, at least in the living room. There was a single chair, a pile of cushions, a spindly table that a key had been left on.

“Matches the outer lock,” Diana said, as Ashe moved to look at it.

She bit down her irritation again, but left it. Her next point was examining the chair’s cushions, and then the cushions themselves, moving them to check for anything hidden beneath. Diana seemed to be pacing, though her gait was bizarre.

Ashe checked the bathroom rather cursorily, ducking out as she noticed a bright blue bloodstain on the cheap metal tub and the rim of the sink, and the lack of anything else in the room.

Diana followed her into the sparse bedroom, again beginning to do that strange gait while Ashe poked around the dresser, finding it noticeably empty.

“There’s something beneath the floor,” Diana said, stopping Ashe from going to the bed. “Do me a favor, sweet tea, and go to the door and warn the guards I’m going to make a little noise, and stay there till I call you.”

It was her dead seriousness that kept Ashe from arguing, as she nodded and headed back, wondering how Diana had figured that out. She waited against the door after telling the guards, listening to crack after crack.

“…sugar, you’re going to want to see this.” Diana’s voice was worryingly flat, and Ashe hurried in.

She gasped, covering her mouth, as she stood in the doorway. Diana had shoved the bed on top of the dresser, balanced on its side, and split the floor open.

• POINT OF VIEW: 3rd Person
• RATING: PG
• GENRE: Angst
• This is an excerpt. The full version can be found here.

"I've heard you're so chatty at work, but it's like you never say a thing to us, even though we're your family," Ysaira said, after a long moment, leaning into the gazebo railing to pluck a blue flower and twirl it between her fingers. "You weren't always like that...but I haven't heard your voice in years..."

"So it took you years to notice," Galatea said drily, biting back the urge to say it was unsurprising.

"Well... I guess...we thought maybe it was grief..." She sounded hesitant.

"Does anyone care about the real reason, or just how it effects you?" Galatea asked. She felt her throat tightening, but pushed past it, taking a crystal mushroom to eat this time, the crunch helped distract her from her feelings while Ysaira stared at her.

"Of course we care about you-" she started.

"You care about me when it's convenient," Galatea said, cutting her off. "You don't care about what I actually want or need." She had years of pent up anger and resentment that had just been given an opportunity to boil over, and it was hard to keep it in. "You're not asking why I don't talk to you because you're worried about me, you're asking because you worry you did something wrong, and you did. I wasn't allowed to be with my mother as she died because of your family, I've never been allowed to even visit her grave because of your family, I get criticized at every turn for not being good enough and dragged to all kinds of things and always always told to measure up to you and I am always found wanting and you think I want to talk to any of you, when none of you have ever heard me!" She didn't know when she had started yelling or gotten to her feet, but she had. It was too much, and she had to get away- from Ysaira, from her feelings, from it all-

Ysaira watched in shock as her cousin raced away, long hair streaming behind her, and sunk into herself.

• POINT OF VIEW: 3rd Person
• RATING: G
• GENRE: Angst?
• This is an excerpt. The full version can be found here.

She knew the taste of her cereal. Every morning, for all her life since she had been able to eat solid food, she had only ever eaten a dark chocolate cookie cereal. Even now, when she would not eat breakfast because she did not know what else to eat, she knew the texture between her lips, the slight bitterness on her tongue. The way her spoon at home was slightly dented, the machine that had cast it had slightly warped it from how it was supposed to be.

The local news anchor had been discussing the weather, and talking cheerfully about the kickoff of the festival in Zeta that evening. She had worn a purple blouse, and her hair swept off her neck to accent the neckline.

Hero had made a note to remember it. Sarah would like it. Sarah was busy in Zeta, enjoying the winter break with her parents, but they were going to video chat that night, and she would be happy that Hero had thought of her. She always was, even though Hero didn’t understand why.

She tapped her foot slightly to the song in her head, a karpos pop band Sarah loved. She wondered what she was doing right now, and if she might have time to text… She sent a quick message - ‘morning, are you up? I have that liv lav luv song you sent last night stuck in my head today ^^ <3’

She didn’t notice when someone else came on camera, when the news anchor leaped up. She noticed when her parents’ heads swiveled to give the screen full attention, and she did too.

Sometimes she heard this part in her sleep. “Please remain in your homes, please leave phone lines open. Wait to leave until Alpha military tells you it is safe.”

She remembers the way her hand jerked, the feeling of her cereal splashed on her fur. She remembers texting Sarah. ‘are you okay??? what’s happening???’

She remembers the next texts too.

‘please answer’ ‘please be safe’ ‘I love you’

She remembers the weeks after. Sending that every day. Desperate hunger.

Eyes on the screen, only her father would leave their home. Groceries. Tessa sobbing in white-hot fury over the phone. Cordelia, quarantined.

Her bed.

Why couldn’t she get to her bed?

Kandy’s arms squeezed tighter around Hero’s waist.

“Hero, you’re having a flashback,” she said, calm, though she wasn’t letting her sister move another centimeter. “Talk to me. What are you seeing?”

• POINT OF VIEW: 3rd Person
• RATING: PG-13
• GENRE: Disaster Scenario
• This is an excerpt. The full version can be found here.

The chill was going to reach her heart soon enough, she thought, curling up into her chair.

F began to scream too, and she closed her eyes. Would she scream too?

They did their best to eat the jellybeans, to look at the news… The news said nothing could be done, that the Zeta were working to find a cure.

“Remember how well that worked for the rotten floss…” Ahab muttered, mostly for himself.

J caught it, anyways, even as she shivered and wrapped her blanket around herself. She hadn’t been alive for the Great Rot, not like him. He’d been infected as a newborn kitten, and didn’t remember much himself. It was still public knowledge that the Great Rot had only been cured once it infected royalty.

“Think getting Queen Clover infected could make this get cured?” she muttered to him.

He wheezed a laugh, painful though it sounded. “You and me ain’t got the strength for that anymore, J,” he said. “’sides we’d die, and folk like us don’t die for others.”

“We’re gonna die anyways,” she said, into a sudden silence as F’s screams stopped. Ahab didn’t respond.

Glancing over, she could see Ahab shaking, and see the eyes that had now covered F’s face and limbs, and she glanced away again. Where would the eyes emerge on her…

Time trailed by. She knew when F passed, but by then, she thought she was the only one aware of it anymore. Eventually, she ate again, using the cookie butter and spoon, not even bothering with the chips now. The chill felt like it had reached her blood, so it was only a matter of time. She didn’t know what it would take to survive, but the more calories the better, probably…

J knew it, when it reached her heart. She swallowed, hitching the blanket she had wrapped back around her tighter around herself, even though the touch of its warmth hurt. It was almost like being held, and it was the only comfort she had.