Whitehall in London has many anonymous buildings that are the face of Government. In one such building, and in a large well appointed Committee Room, a group of about 20 senior naval and army officers were seated, drinking coffee and talking quietly before the meeting started formally. None were in uniform but they all knew each other. The amount of gold braid they wore on formal occasions would have stretched round the large oak table several times had they been in uniform.

Becoming Emily

Becoming Emily

Chapter Two: Learning to Stay (Part 1)

The first morning Emily signed her name instead of Aaron’s, she expected the pen to hesitate.

It didn’t.

The ink flowed across the page with quiet confidence, forming six familiar letters that had long since ceased to feel borrowed.

Emily.

She looked at the signature for several moments after the form had been handed back across the counter.

Nothing extraordinary happened.

The clerk smiled politely and moved to the next customer.

Torn from his own world and stuffed into the body of a villainess, facing the end of a doomed route he himself wrote, "Amelia" must navigate a world she really should know - too bad she was never great at worldbuilding.

Stuck in a world she (maybe) created, Amelia quickly finds that reality has filled in the details she failed to describe. The characters who were so flat when she wrote them now have nuance, and motives. The kingdom she wrote into existence is experiencing internal strife she never even thought about. And let's not even get into the complexities of the magic system, or the demon that forced her into this situation to begin with...

Oh, and then there's the fact that she's about to be arrested and executed... but surely she can come up with a way to write herself out of that, right?

...Right?

I imagined that I could feel each thread passing over the sensitive flesh.

Another Country -19-
by Erin Halfelven

Thursday, New Year’s Day, was a holiday in Portugal. I had almost expected that they would all just go back to work given the paucity of their Christmas arrangements. Maybe it is wise that it is a day off as the party went on well into the night. As was getting to be a bit of a habit, we got up late, exercised, breakfasted and wandered out around midday into a city that was still buzzing with a variety of acts performing in every square that we passed. Now I knew why they don’t do Christmas well; they keep all the fun for New Year.

The brochure was following me.

We were having a whole conversation without moving our mouths.

Not This Guy
-6-7-8-
by Suzan Donamas

Acidalia XXVIII

By Amanda D

Sunday Oct 11 2:55 pm

Pacific Coast Highway:

They turned into the coffee shop parking lot, circled behind the building, and backed the Honda Civic into a space beside the tree line. As it had been just two days prior, the lot was mostly empty save a moving van parked taking up three spots near the lot’s exit and a couple of cars parked by the kitchen entrance that looked like they might belong to the shop’s employees.

Chapter 3 The Date
Marie

Warm golden light spilled through the green plaid curtains as Marie slowly opened her eyes. She tried to turn but was tangled up in sheets. She felt James bite her toes before jumping off the bed and scampering down the stairs. The woman next to her stirred and images from the preceding night carouseled through Marie's mind.

"Good morning, June," she whispered. The body next to her stirred and then rolled over a bit.

In the dream, within her dreamworld, I tried to see how far into Victoria’s past I see. And it was what wasn’t there that stood out. There were memories, and more memories of Victoria’s than I could ever remember exploring before. I could actually follow my Victoria back a bit further now in her mind, before I could remember ever having dreamed of being Victoria, though not all the way back to when I first invented Nancy before we had even started school. But this Victoria, the one who I grew up being in dreams, was not, no way, no how, the same as alt-Victoria that I brought into the world the other day. Even if she had some of the same personality traits, it was clear that she followed a different path.

Torn from his own world and stuffed into the body of a villainess, facing the end of a doomed route he himself wrote, "Amelia" must navigate a world she really should know - too bad she was never great at worldbuilding.

Stuck in a world she (maybe) created, Amelia quickly finds that reality has filled in the details she failed to describe. The characters who were so flat when she wrote them now have nuance, and motives. The kingdom she wrote into existence is experiencing internal strife she never even thought about. And let's not even get into the complexities of the magic system, or the demon that forced her into this situation to begin with...

Oh, and then there's the fact that she's about to be arrested and executed... but surely she can come up with a way to write herself out of that, right?

...Right?

Winter had not been pleasant. I had expected the hot Summer, then the warm Autumn, not the miserable, wet, stormy, Winter. The Azores High had decided to move South dragging down the Jet Stream and giving us the succession of winds and weather fronts from the West that is normally experienced in the climatically challenged islands anchored off the Northwest corner of Europe. Up there we know how to deal with it; our houses are better, roads are designed to carry water away quickly from the surface, our shops even carry a better range of Winter clothing.

"I want you to wear a skirt," he said.

Not This Guy -5-
by Suzan Donamas

Chapter Six — Together

The room was exactly as they'd left it, and entirely different.

Torn from his own world and stuffed into the body of a villainess, facing the end of a doomed route he himself wrote, "Amelia" must navigate a world she really should know - too bad she was never great at worldbuilding.

Stuck in a world she (maybe) created, Amelia quickly finds that reality has filled in the details she failed to describe. The characters who were so flat when she wrote them now have nuance, and motives. The kingdom she wrote into existence is experiencing internal strife she never even thought about. And let's not even get into the complexities of the magic system, or the demon that forced her into this situation to begin with...

Oh, and then there's the fact that she's about to be arrested and executed... but surely she can come up with a way to write herself out of that, right?

...Right?