“Most medicines can be as harmful as they are healing. It’s all to do with the affliction, the dosage, and the patient.” Nadira knew it was important to remember the two-sided nature of the cures they created, but did Healer Mentor Fong have to start every single lesson with it? And usually finish with it …
An exercise from Ursula Le Guin's Steering the Craft book - write a piece of narrative with no punctuation... People were all around her shouting dancing singing hugging kissing laughing and all she could see was the sky with its low grey clouds that wanted to rain but were being kept off by the blast …
Georgina looked at the diagram on the table. Leonard was clearly very proud of it, pity it looked like nothing so much as a square plate of spaghetti and meatballs. “So this is the layout for the ball.” Leonard puffed his chest out. “Yes. The door is there.” He pointed to one side of the …
I had the most delightfully strange conversation with the Queen Bee this morning. For those who don’t know, the queen of my sentient bees will occasionally decide to wander my garden, and the woods beyond, in something vaguely approaching humanoid form. Tall and thin, with a pale, pointed face, eyes of pure black, and small …
“You have to, you’re doing your Leaver’s presentation this week.” “Which is why I’m not going. What am I going to tell them? That I’m going to spend my future career pushing a broom around my Mum’s coffee shop?” Janet rolled her eyes, then propped one hip on the desk in front of mine, arms …
She found a low-backed wooden chair and set it by the hearth. “Take off your tunic and sit down. I want to see how bad your cuts are and get them clean.” He unbelted his tunic, then pulled it, and his undershirt, off draping them over the edge of a table to help them dry. …
Leanne winced as she heard the voice outside her studio, loud enough that probably didn’t need the phone she was speaking into. Geraldine was coming to keep her company while she worked, again. What that actually meant was that Geraldine would harass her with questions and opinions from the moment she opened the door to …
Alex breathed in and centred himself, if Grandma could chop wood, a hale and healthy man in his twenties would have no problem. The axe felt strange in his hands, warm, heavy in a way that spoke more of possibility than actual heft. The wooden handle worn smooth from years of use, the steel head, …
Grandad was a hoarder. He picked up the oddest things at second-hand shops, and charity places, and car boot sales, always saying. “You never know when something like this will come in handy.” Everything was then taken down to the old shed at the back of the garden, where no one but Grandad ever went. …
Cadan sat up. “There’s a place closer where we can dry off and rest.” Eleanor looked around, at the dense cover of trees and thick undergrowth. “Someone lives near here?” As they began picking their way through the undergrowth, Cadan said. “Not exactly. Lily Smith’s father liked building things, tinkering about, experimenting. Sometimes the results …
The DNA of Stories 