He woke with a start and fought the disorientation. Where was the bright light? Omar’s distorted voice?
He felt the arm over his chest. The fur, the nose against his neck, and he relaxed. He was home. It had been part of his training. A horrible part, but a needed one. Thur and his packma...
2025-10-04 13:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostConvincing Heather they couldn’t use the transportation platform proved difficult and, ultimately, something Tibs couldn’t manage, but which an Attendant took care of for him. Or rather, Heather’s letter, once the Attendant read it.
The letter granted her passage, but ended when she u...
2025-10-03 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostGralgiran watched the pack exit the chamber, a broken Jer between them. He wanted to go to him. Take him from them. Bring him home and comfort him, nurse him to sanity. But he couldn’t.
Jer needed to believe his pack still loved him before he’d trust anyone else. They were who he depend...
2025-10-02 13:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostTibs watched Heather move from stall to stall as if it was her first day in the market, instead of the fourth. She bought little; small ornaments for her armor, food occasionally. She glared at Tibs for doing the same, or for the candies he bought and shared with Ruppert so the squirrel would sto...
2025-10-01 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe music blared, and Jeremy’s eyes snapped open. “I’m awake.” He looked around, eyelids already drooping, as the orchestra quieted. He hadn’t planned on nodding off. But keeping his eyes open was difficult. He never seemed to wake up refreshed anymore.
He stood and the freezing f...
2025-09-30 13:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostTibs watched the thugs as he followed Heather through the market. They’d yet to harass anyone, but he figured it would happen. Then, he would figure out how to deal with them.
He stayed outside the shops, observing. On the shop streets, the thugs were of a higher class. Less thugs outrigh...
2025-09-29 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostThe knock was gentle. “Claudia?” her mother called softly from the other side of the bedroom door. “Honey? Dinner’s ready.”
“I’m not hungry,” she replied from the corner of the dark room, knees to herself, arms wrapped around them.
She was famished, but she wouldn’t ...
2025-09-28 13:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostThere was only one car by the curb this morning, and it wasn’t the one that kept getting the bomb. Well, he now knew it wasn’t the owner of the coffee shop, or the dressmaker who were the target. That still left ten other stores on this block. Maybe he needed to put a camera somewhere? He’d...
2025-09-28 13:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostThis one is a bit different, because something different happened, and it’s going to have an impact.
This week, for, I think, the first time ever, I was hit by what I’m thinking of a case of the NOPE.
I’ve times before when I haven’t felt like writing. Usually a sense of “bl...
2025-09-27 13:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostGralgiran punched and used Brel’s block to step into her space and slam his shoulder into her chest, then stepped back to catch his breath.
“I’m worried.”
She gave him a dismissive flick of the ear. “You always worry.”
“I’m the Alpha, it’s unbecoming of me to w...
2025-09-27 13:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe next day, Heather headed for the markets, and Tibs didn’t argue when she demanded he stay with her.
She spent the morning buying fabrics and getting clothes made. Tibs didn’t bother. Without a role to play, he considered his hide clothing to be good enough. As the sun reached its ze...
2025-09-26 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post“And don’t ask me how they work,” Jeremy said, highlighting a section of the projection made from the compiled scans of the bridge pared down to only the circuits. “But that controls maneuvering thrust.”
“How can you be certain?” the maintenance technician asked after she made...
2025-09-25 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post“For this exercise,” Tibs said, unsheathing his sword, “you need to focus on sensing how Force changes around my sword while we fight.”
Heather grumbled something, unsheathing hers.
“I can’t answer your questions if I can’t understand them.”
“I didn’t say any...
2025-09-24 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post“How are you feeling?” the Psychologist asked once Gralgiran was seated.
“Better.”
The tilted ear told him she’d want more.
“Jer’s mostly back to his old self, and he resolved things with his friend.”
“The beta?”
He nodded.
“You said mostl...
2025-09-23 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post“Can’t you make a sled with your water?” Heather asked as Tibs threw a third bag of flour over his shoulder.
“Yes, but I won’t. Those are off limits,” he told Ruppert as the squirrel climbed on top of them.
“Can we get one just for me?”
“Why not?” Heather ask...
2025-09-22 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post“Colby!” the woman yelled from the porch. “Dinner’s ready!”
He lobbed the bale of hay to the loft with a hand.
“Hey,” the girl there exclaimed. “Watch where you throw those things. You almost floored me with this one.”
He smirked as his sister grabbed the bale ...
2025-09-21 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post“So?” a woman said. “You’re the guy who stole my job?”
Eric looked up from the radio he was fixing. She was a couple of years younger than he was, twenty-two, mfaybe twenty-three, had long brown hair with shimmering red highlights. She had on blue jeans and a white t-shirt with ...
2025-09-21 13:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostJeremy removed the visor to look at the welds. Even with it blocking most of the arc welder’s intense brightness he had trouble seeing his work through the spots in his vision. He knew why Atarikna was forcing him to do this instead of printing the armature for whatever this would end up being....
2025-09-20 13:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostRuppert complained about being left alone when Tibs retrieved it. Not that it couldn’t sense anything, but that it couldn’t reach all the things it smelled. He gave it chunks of meat to quiet it, but all it did was stop the chittering, not the complaining Tibs only could hear.
It took m...
2025-09-19 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostGralgiran stood in his office, the Leadership projected before him. Unlike his usual interactions, this warranted a full table, so the projection reduced their size to that of the toys they sold to promote military life. Five of them, seated at a crescent shape table, with him in the center of it...
2025-09-18 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostHardly anyone moved about within the walled village, was what Tibs sensed. They were in the building, and when someone exited one, they hurried to another. The sense he had was that being outside was enough to put them in danger. The fields were worked, by the partially cut wheat, which meant the...
2025-09-17 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post“How are you feeling?” the Psychologist asked.
Jeremy couldn’t stop the shrug. The desire not to think about what had happened. Not to acknowledge it had happened. The hunt was done. He should move on. Get on with his life.
“Do you understand why you need to do this?”
...
2025-09-16 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post“I don’t get it,” Heather said, lobbing the stone back to him. “Why does the Force essence change as we throw it?”
Tibs lobbed it back. “That’s because the essence is sticky.”
She caught it and rolled her eyes. “Really?”
“It’s how it’s described in most...
2025-09-15 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostThe address was a narrow blue brick building that had seen better days. The large display window had television sets in it, old, new, and some he only guessed were televisions because they were surrounded by them. Those had no switches, no dials and were extremely thin.
The prickling brough...
2025-09-14 14:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostDiane Parker rushed through the freshly painted corridors, tablet in one hand, briefcase in the other, listening to the meeting’s transcript. The Faculty—as she’d started thinking of the six silent backers of the academy—always sent her a copy even when what they talked about didn’t rel...
2025-09-14 13:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post“Energy spike at the station,” sensor stated.
“On screen,” Gralgiran instructed, and the image of the dreadnought with the occasional flash of explosion making it to the outer hull was replaced with the small form of the station. “Weapons?”
“Negative, too low output for ...
2025-09-13 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostChapters written
This week was a normal week. So there were 3 chapters for Mind Your Steps, 3 chapters for The Technician’s Fight, one for Harker, and one for The Daughter.
Chapters edited
On the editing front, it was the 2 chapters of The Tec...
2025-09-13 12:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post“Let me out of this thing!”
The branch over Tibs’s shoulder slid off as the squirrel ran against the bars of its cage, making it swing. He’d attached it there because carrying it in his hand had grown tiresome, even after making a handle for it.
“I don’t think it likes bei...
2025-09-12 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostThe Earther before him was thinner than Jeremy remembered and seemed tired, but he smiled.
“I knew this would work. I knew that if I provided the right bait, you and your cat wouldn’t be able to stay away.” Omar Seywan looked around Jeremy. “I had given instructions to be sure you c...
2025-09-11 13:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post“Why isn’t it doing anything?” she grumbled, and Tibs opened an eye. He’d been sensing her move her essence around, send it at the fire, at a bush, a tree.
“What are you trying to do?”
“Something, anything!” she said in exasperation.
“You aren’t at the point ...
2025-09-10 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post