Two months before she went to Florida—actually a tad longer than that, or possibly more than a tad, closer to three months than two—Holli broke up with her boyfriend, a guy named Neal.  A guy she’d been with for over two years.  It had been her longest relationship, and by a good margin.  Closest to […]

Read more "The Chance — 7.6"

[Sometimes when a segment gets heavy-going, best thing to try is to jump ahead and come back to the dangly part later.  So that’s what’s happened here today.  I know what I want to have happen next in the last section, but I haven’t got it to work in my gut just yet.  Don’t wanna […]

Read more "The Chance — first part of chap 8"

The breakfast the Shond provided was spicy sausages coiled inside rolls of pastry.  Stuff had the same consistency and flavor of a glazed donut.  They looked like flattened and blackened cinnamon rolls from the outside; when you bit into them they didn’t give you any cinnamon, nor did they taste as burnt as they appeared—you […]

Read more "The Chance 7.3-7.5, and some of 7.6 …"

2. Somebody whispered to her—she couldn’t make out what they said or where they were at.  They kept doing it; she kept turning around looking for them.  No good.  The record store was full of people only nobody was close, nobody was looking at her.  Why did they all have raincoats and tophats on?  Why […]

Read more "The Chance — 7.2"

>> steam   1. Holli shared a room with Prayad.  It was oddly shaped, not very large or luxurious.  So much for fabled decadence.  The ceiling was quite high; that was as excessive as the accommodations got.  For Shond themselves, you wouldn’t count that.  The room had no door for its doorway, and no windows.  […]

Read more "The Chance — 7.1"

4. Now Prayad stood at Sheyhar’s shoulder, if the turtle had shoulders.  Which he didn’t, or if he did you couldn’t see them; they were under the shell.  How about we call it the two o’clock position on the rim?  That was Prayad’s spot.  Rabulan had gone to the opposite edge, diagonally, eight o’clock.  Jakaya […]

Read more "The Chance — 6.4"

3. What she meant was the ship’s combined kitchen and eating room, which on an earthly craft would have been dubbed the galley or the mess.  Calling it the throat was a not very good anatomy joke.  It was positioned in the front rim of the shell under Sheyhar’s head, with its slanted windows looking […]

Read more "The Chance — 6.3"

Two decks below the common and at the rear of the shell was a bare rectangular room that looked to Holli like the dance studio she went to as a little girl for ballet.  It had mirrors across the longer walls and pads on the floor.  Against the shorter walls stood tall cabinets with their […]

Read more "The Chance — 6.2"

>> a stink and a song   1. Turned out Chax had a sun after all.  They called it Joyoro.  It looked larger than Earth’s.  Holli doubted it was.  Probably it was closer.  It was clearly artificial.  It had a face.  An actual sculpted face, a woman with her eyes closed and a slight half-smile, […]

Read more "The Chance — 6.1 (chap title don’t make sense yet, don’t worry about it)"

In the middle of the shell and at the top level, inside its highest part, was a circular meeting room.  The common, they called it.  The top could split and fold aside, letting in the sky.  This was done, and Jakaya and Holli entered through that opening down a ladder as the rest of the […]

Read more "The Chance — second half of chapter five"