Chapter Two: The Wish

James was up at six forty-five.

Not a decision — just what happened when you stopped setting an alarm and let four years of early calls do what they’d been trained to do. He lay still for a moment in the grey morning light of the front bedroom, listening to the house. Window open. Curtain moving. Gull somewhere busy already.

“You look nice,” said Cyndy. “All crisp and spiffy.”

Another Country -25-
by Erin Halfelven

Chapter 1
The front door clicked shut, the latch catching with a soft, final thud.
Jane stood by the kitchen island, her hand still resting on the counter where Robbie had left his damp gym towel. She let out a long, slow breath—not a sigh of annoyance, just the sound of a lungful of air giving up after holding steady all morning.

The rain had stopped sometime after midnight, but by late afternoon the city was still wet. Water clung to the black iron railings along the sidewalk and gathered in the shallow cracks between the paving stones, while cars moved slowly through the intersection, their tires whispering over the pavement and sending thin fans of dirty water toward the curb. Inside the coffee shop, the smell of fresh coffee hung beneath the warm air from the heating vents, and the hiss of steamed milk came and went behind the counter as people moved through the late afternoon rush.

Another one brought to mind by comments on a story, this time prompted by the Home Office man in In the Green chapter 34.

Chapter Nine: Dressing the Part

The River and the Stone
Chapter 1: Session One — The Gathering of Currents
The waiting room of Dr. Vance’s office was quiet, save for the low, continuous hum of a white-noise machine near the baseboards. On the deep leather couch, eighteen-year-old Leo sat with his ankles locked in a wide, rigid figure-four stance—his right ankle resting square over his left knee. His right thumb came up automatically, the edge of his thumbnail digging into the dry cuticle as his left heel tapped a rapid, impatient beat against the carpet.

This story is set in Ireland during the War of Independence, 1919-1921.

The Players.

An Cailleach, approximately Old Hag in English, is a term found in both Irish and and Scots Gaelic. It carries connotations of divinity or magic.

Volunteers, the name used by Irish national insurrectionists engaged in the War of Independence. After independence, these formed part of the basis for the new National Army which still has the letters IV (Irish Volunteers) on formal uniform buttons.

RIC, Royal Irish Constabulary, an armed police force responsible for crime and internal security. Recruited locally, it was heavily infiltrated by the Volunteers and many members left the organization during the war.

Black & Tans and Auxiliaries. These were paramilitary police recruited in England to support the RIC, notorious for indiscipline, terrorism and extra-judicial killings.