Hugh J. O'Donnell

First they built a bonfire, as big and as hot as they could make. The cauldron was rolled out of its sacred spot in the temple. It took a team of a dozen men to bring it to the spot. An army of farmwives spent a whole day carrying the water from the spring to fill it.
The work was grueling, but the villagers were jubilant. The fisherman had sent a message back on their fastest boat. The hunt was successful. They had caught a kraken. The famine was over. They just had to figure out how to cook it.

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She receives correspondence from the dead. The letter arrive in bone-white envelopes with no stamp and no return address. She sees them delivered, and her mail carrier is baffled.
The letters arrive in her mailbox every day, and she dutifully opens them. She quickly discoverd that bad things happen when she lets them pile up.
The letters inside are last messages and other unfinished business. She does what she can to resolve them. Sometimes they include strange objects like dried flowers or mysterious coins.
The letters aren’t so bad, but things took a turn when the ghosts found her email.

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The figure came to her at night, a luminous being that hovered above her bed and held out a hand.
“I can teach you to astral travel,” they whispered. “Come fly the etherial spaces between worlds with me.”
Thinking it a dream, she took the offered hand. She felt an unpleasant but not painful pulling sensation, and found herself hovering above her body. Without breath or heartbeat, she was overcome by the sense of her own stillness.
“But how do I get back?”
“Back to what?” The being asked.
“My body.”
“I don’t understand,” they said. “What is a body?”

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It was the morning after the first real snowfall, when it covers the forest in white and turns the world into a silver mirror. The one day of the year She might appear.
We tethered a horse by a still pond and waited. After a long wait, the beast screamed, and there she was, presiding over her kill. Schnee-Eule, a snow-white owl twice the size of a man. I snapped a picture, and she turned and looked right at us.
I hunkered down, and tried not to breathe. My partner made a run for it. He didn’t get three yards.

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“I told you this would happen.”
I grumbled a roar and tried not to make eye contact with my mother. I hated it when she was right.
“Mom—“ I started, but she cut me off.
“But no, all the other hatchlings got piercings, so you just had to get them too.”
“It’s fine,” I insisted. The adventurer was still tangled in the chain that threaded the piercings on my brow-ridge scales. I shook my head to try and dislodge her.
“Here, let me.” My mother flew over and breathed a thin stream of fire breath, finally knocking the human loose.

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The study was filled with trophies from a lifetime of adventures. There was an intact suit of armor from one of Professor Medieval’s Ape Knights, models of the zeppelin fleet of Baron Boreas, and a collection of monstrous taxidermies.
There was also a shelf full of journals detailing the master of the houses’s travels, including death rays he dismantled, the lost cities he rediscovered and the doomsdays he averted.
Shelly was often scolded for lallygagging in the study when she should’ve been cleaning, but she couldn’t resist the treasure trove of knowledge. She didn’t want to be a maid forever.

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The Stargazer orbited a rogue planet. The world circled no star, and thus the station served as a handy way station in the big dark between systems. The fact that it was outside of most jurisdictions and lightless made it a haven for pirates and smugglers. It was also home to many astronomers, with the darkest stable night sky in established space.
At least, it was until the station’s government started building casinos and attractions to bring in tourists. Soon, the sky was blotted out by bright lights and holo-ads.
The ensuing revolution was an alliance based on common interests.

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They kept the golem hidden in their barn, and worked to repair them by lamplight. They weren’t artificers, but they did what they could.
They kept the damaged construct as comfortable as they could, and hid them from Inquisition forces. The Inquisition had declared all ‘thinking constructs’ to be abominations, and anathema to all ‘true life.’ They were to be destroyed on sight, and the penalty for harboring one was death.
The golem sat in the dark and waited. They knew the farmers were risking everything to protect them, and one day, they would need to be protected in turn.

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