I’ve been busy with writing lately; the Trees story (“Can’t See the Stars for the Trees” or whatever I’m currently calling it), so posting here has been a little sporadic. Here’s a snippet from the story:

Right from the start, the boy was a godsend.

Toi and Chadow found him one evening, the sun just beginning to slide behind the night plate, in a paddy to widdershins of their hutch.

They were walking hand in hand, letting the scents of night blossoms and the damp earthy scent of the rice waft over them, when Toi stopped, let go of his wife’s hand, and said, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh,” he said, putting his finger to his lips. Chadow’s face took on a look of mixed consternation at being shushed and concentration on finding the sound Toi thought that he had heard.

“I don’t hear–” she began.

Toi’s face lit up. “That,” he said, pointing to spinwise, into the paddies. He kicked off his sandals, rolled up the cuffs of his loose cotton trousers, and waded into the muck. Chadow watched him go, thinking, My husband will drive me mad one day.
She smiled, watching him taking careful steps, mindful not to commit his weight till he was sure the mud wouldn’t swallow him to the thigh, careful to keep his light-yellow trousers clean.

Then something made him stop cold in his tracks. Behind him, the mud was closing over his footprints, settling back into a flat expanse of dull grey. He turned and looked back at her, over his shoulder. “Chadow?” he said.

“Yes?” Something in his tone made her voice catch in the back of her throat, so that her reply came out strangled and weak. She coughed. “Yes?” she said again, louder this time.

“You’re not going to believe this.” And then he plunged forward, arms flailing for balance, heedless of how much mud spattered on his clothes, of how many plants he trampled.

“What is it?” she asked, but he didn’t spare her a reply.

#

It was a child.

She stared down into the bundle that Toi held in his arms. He’d waded back out of the paddy, filthy with mud that he’d somehow managed to spatter all the way up to his neck, cradling the metal bowl like it contained the most precious, most fragile thing in the world.

It was a child, a naked baby boy. His smile broke her heart.

“How could–?” Words failed her, failed the situation. How could someone abandon a child in the paddies? How could they live with themselves after?

“He looks all right,” said Toi.

His face and hands, legs and thorax were pink with sunburn. Tiny scars criss-crossed his torso, fine white lines against the bright rash. A thin blanket, tightly woven of some dark material, was attached to the rim of the hemispherical silver bowl, but the baby had kicked it off so that it hung down, worthless for protecting him from the sun or keeping him warm in the night.

“He can’t have been here too long,” said Toi.

His words penetrated the dull fog of rage that had suffused Chadow. She realized that her face must be a rictus, a contorted mask of anger. She could feel the flush all through her body. Her ears were burning.

She forced herself to take a deep breath, a second, a third. She closed her eyes a long moment and whispered Calm calm calm to herself, repeating it like a mantra till it lost its meaning and became a simple syllable to attach her worldview to.

“What do we do now?” she said to her husband.

But he was gazing into the baby’s pale eyes, entranced, and the boy was staring back at him with the solemn face that only a baby can make. After a moment the child giggled, a sound that carried with it a perfect innocence, and Chadow felt tears streaming unbidden down her face.

One-sentence synopses for projects I’m working on.

1. Earth Fleet
   A mysteriously empty Earth serves as backdrop and catalyst to a final, apocalyptic battle between two warring human civilizations.
2. The Coldest War
   An army of ghosts, resurrected in the outer solar system, battles against incursions from the living in the inner system and a swarm of alien ghosts from interstellar space.
3. The Trees
   On a Dyson shell traveling through the intergalactic dark, a young boy may be the descendant of the godlike people who launched the shell, or merely the pawn of two factions involved in a protracted cold war.
4. Everything That Never Happened
   The captain of a ketch is forced to work for zombies, but the treasure they seek may spell the end of life as he has known it.
5. Salyx
   A young boy comes of age on a distant colony world, just as Earth is attempting to reconnect with all the worlds it has lost touch with.
6. The Parley
   The human race meets one last time on Earth to hammer out a universal truce, but a murder takes center stage.
7. Esau
   A cyborg gunslinger makes his way to the capital of the kingdom, to kill his brother, the king.
8. Heaven and Earth
   A man, enslaved by the woman that killed and resurrected him, plots vengeance, but she is more dangerous that he knows.
9. The Ash of Memory
   A woman passes through the bardo, purifying herself and preparing for her reincarnation.
10. Fimbulvetr
    The last man in a snow-covered world meets with characters out of Norse myth.
11. Yasht
    A Universe-spanning hive mind that may or may not be God makes contact with the human race.
12. Across a Wounded Land
    A man teams up with a cyborg to rescue his wife from a wizard, but the cyborg has plans of his own.
13. Heat Death
    After the stars go out, the gods gather to discuss what comes next.

Other Thursday Thirteen participants

Hey there!

• 13 things about work
• 13 soups
• 13 cute things
• Treize portmanteaux
• 13 kids in church
• 13 hideous ways to die (or wish you were dead)
• Add a comment and I’ll put a link here

Or they can be, anyways.

I’m working on expanding and completing the first draft of a story I started in June. It’s set on a slice of a Dyson shell made of trees woven into each others’ root systems, wrapped around a star and sent on its way into the intergalactic dark. No one alive knows where they’re going, or why the world’s makers (the Forgotten Gods) sent them in the first place.

I’ve been calling it “Wisdom Finds Me”, because that’s what the main character’s name means in the local forest tongue, but I want something more… something more. Tonight I came up with “Can’t See the Forest for the Stars”, and I kind of like it, but I’m not entirely sure.

Any suggestions?