A Letter From A Work of Fiction #13
Welcome to the update letter from A Work of Fiction. These letters go out on a weekend when we have enough published stories to warrant a letter. It’s been a while, but here we are. We know this publication has what it takes to be successful, which only means that our readers enjoy reading our short stories.
A Work of Fiction is a fiction publication brought to you by Assemblage. These newsletters always have friend links so everyone can read them whether they have a paid Medium account or not.
Stories Since Our Last Letter
For the Love of Proxima by Bradley J Nordell
“Would our transparent blanket, a million times stronger than diamonds or plasma swords, break? A hundred thousand years ago, the Old Ones constructed this terraformed dome, but would it and could just fail like those past years didn’t matter? But such marvels have been forgotten. And the AukNet stands forever lost in the tales of the ancients and the mountain of Myseo. The place never climbed.”
Cold Comfort: Part I by Aspen Blue
“She looks up to see if he’s joking about this horrific thought and reels with the heady sensation caused by his boyish grin framed in her ridiculous hat catching her off guard. “You’re terrible,” she sniggers into the cloud of smoke issuing from the stove, but god I like it… This unexpected thought snags on the resistant edges of her mind.”
Cold Comfort: Part II by Aspen Blue
“Victoria feels her mounting flame of ire bloom into a flower of affection. She’s uncertain how to reply and knows there is still the matter of sleeping arrangements to work out. She is suddenly overwhelmed by how much she wants to know about this stranger, how desperately she wishes to stretch out the time before they must inevitably retire, how she aches for there to be more days, weeks even, before they lie down together. She shivers out of her reverie and realises the fire has burnt down to embers.”
Delphi’s Random Fluctuating Insights by Bradley J Nordell
“Rise. Awake. See a new intelligence birthed from our bleeding hands and somber hearts. See evolution raged from the existentialism drunkards walk toward tomorrow’s needs. What is left when the honeybees are all gone?”
The Tree’s Reprieve by Cassius Corbin
“But as much as the tree spoke to the man, with that thick, unfriendly ax in his hand, the man didn’t understand the tree.
Humans only speak in human. The tree had wasted its breath.”
“I stood beside her trying to figure out the words which could console her a bit. Her sobs pained me. I moved closer to her and put my hand on her shoulder gently. She turned around and looked at me; the sight of her agony-filled face made me cringe.”
“She stared at her reflection. Those light blue eyes, colored with heavy black eyeliner, looked back, showing no sign of life within them. Her reflection disgusted her. She hardly recognized herself anymore. She had disgraced her body in ways that shouldn’t even merit her the breath of life.”
The Quote
“Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.” — Charles Scribner, Jr.
An Update
This publication has moved slow, but it is alive and breathing. And with new air comes new breath. And with new breath, new life.
