Short Stories
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Te Iubesc
Thrice you’ve texted in the years since you’ve passed, the same curt message: E mama. Sunt o pisica de piatră. Te rog, vino la Cimitirul Eternitatea în următoarea luna albastră. Te iubesc. Always during blue moons. Always from random Romanian numbers.
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The Last Dance
A shiver like a familiar touch spreads across Charles’ shoulder — in the place where she had always touched him. He glances right, and the space beside him on the bed is empty. Still empty. He takes a breath, slow and deep, fills his chest.
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Of Depth and Deception (Chapter 1)
Skehl trailed his sister into the Belly, a white-grey haze of glow and gloom greeting them like a watchful mourner—or an anticipatory accomplice. At this gelid, stale depth of the Aghata Trench, with all the heaviness of an ocean crushing down upon him, he could hardly breathe. Hardly think.
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Of Depth and Deception (Chapter 2)
On his own, Skehl could have hidden easily enough. His own blue glow was subtle, like the light of the Cal-moon, if watered down and muffled behind a splash of dark clouds. Thressel, however, was beyond hiding.
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Of Depth and Deception (Chapter 3)
After two long weeks riding various westerly currents through uninspiring stretches of open ocean, Rader arrived at last before the Aghata Trench — not to the usual glamor and pomp that greeted him, but to the quiet puzzlement of two mere Skaltressian Trenchguards, utterly dumbstruck by his arrival.
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When One Loves the Fae
Theodore loved faeries, and so I loved him. Not because he loved faeries—obviously, they weren’t real—but because of what loving something meant to him: devotion, adventure, borderline obsession. To the rest of the world, he was a typical college dropout: academically unmotivated, easily distracted. A never-man.
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When Gods Feel (An Elspar Story)
It was a vicious summer-storm night when he swam from home. Not alone. He carried the voices with him, prowling through his mind like an invasive species — wild and sharp of bite. Soon to overwhelm him… Had overwhelmed him…
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No More Running
Mom said we weren’t running away—that was a lie. She drove, the car devouring the winding grey river pavement stretching out before us. The surrounding mountains swelled wider and higher as we went, sheltering peaks blanketed by a vast quilt, tattered and aflame with all the colors of early autumn.
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Your Call
Your call surprised me. Your proposal to meet again after these three long years apart. A rendezvous at my old high school, a place so memory-stained from our time together that while pacing and anxious, awaiting your arrival, I trip over more ghosts of our youth than I can count.
Joshua Stavick 