It was all they knew...

ICE

The mud was never-ending. The only thing that was more boundless than the mud, and the desperation, was the cold. It got into everything—the ground, the homes, the people There was a brief period in the summer when you could use the mud (still chilled in winter’s wake) to patch holes in the sides of your house, and to use it to insulate just a touch from the oncoming cold. Winter came quickly, then. It rode in on the first westerly breeze and lasted for months upon months. And the people… they froze. Or died of malnutrition. Then froze.

And they would be set free...

VOWS 

She’d cast a hundred  and fifty tiny castles in lead, and painted each one the color of a different kingdom. When the set was complete, she wrapped each in the deepest violet silk, hand-woven by elves and sealed in a box carved from the wood of a Spirit tree. Each castle was given to a different child, to take back to his or her village. She handed a box to each one, down the line, bowing and showing proper respect. “And when the time of strife returns to you, melt it down,” she told them. “Its power shall be released.”

The circus was in town...

CHASE

Clowns. Why did it always have to be clowns? One white-faced and maudlin, an air of Italian high drama about him. Another scruffy-faced and doe-eyed, a flower drooping off of his cap, playing the tramp with a broken suspender strap and patches in the knees of his oversized trousers, and the last one bald and red-nosed, with big flopping shoes and huge white gloves. And of course, just to make things just a touch more miserable, they were axe-wielding. And chasing me. I tore through the tall summer grasses, nearly tripping over abandoned tires and dumped refuse as I fled.

It was for your own good, really...

Family reunions were killer...

SUMMER

It was one of those hot and humid summers, the type where mosquitoes congregate around every bit of wet or dampness they can find, ruining anything vaguely resembling outdoor fun with their constant biting and blood-sucking. Not that there was much fun to be had when your blood was boiling in your veins and your skin was ready to peal off like old paint even under the park’s huge umbrella canopies. Even the huge, bug-like Vartin were hiding under the trees, heat sizzling off their shining green exoskeletons, wondering what they’d done for shade before humanity had terriformed their planet.

Too bad the caretaker was already dead...

MYSTERY SOLVED

In a shocking turn of events, it turned out that the monster on the old Beckman farm wasn’t a monster at all, but Mr. Lerner, the caretaker. No one had seen it coming, really. What with the creepy sounds, and the mist that rolled in every time the loping, bulbous monster crossed the fallow fields. They’d fully expected the misshapen creature to be some sort of mutant, mythical animal, or something misbegotten at the least. But just a cranky old caretaker tired of snooping teenagers, who wanted nothing more than to dig up the treasure purported to be buried there?

Sharks aren't as stupid as they look...

The past wasn't to be trusted...

LONELY PLANET

The legend had it that the Earth had once held people. Living people, that is. At some point in the distant past, living humans walked its rocky, dry surface, doing the very things that humans did every day. Showering, eating, going to work, entertaining themselves, and meeting and falling in love. They did all of that on the scorched surface. They’d even thrived on Earth, at some point in the distant past. Now they were gone, and Earth remained but a burial ground for the First Families of Earth, as it had been promised so long ago to them all.

We all lie to ourselves...

REVISIONIST HISTORY

Time distances us from our past. We no longer remember the burning anger, the joy, the stabbing pain of stupidity, nor the heartbreak. We’re so far removed, we can only have the memory of those feelings, and the surrounding events cease having their tactile nature, and they become just stories we tell ourselves. Stories open to reinterpretation and revision with each new telling. We make them dramatic. There’s no point in telling a story if it isn’t good. And that point, at which the past becomes tale, was the very threshold at which the WX2000 was secure in its sentience.

Just a quick nap before class...