I have trouble doing fiction this short. I get obsessed with back story and set-up. If I throw "I" up there first, though, all that's done for me, even if it could be the wildest fiction to the rest of you.

And I have, in my hot little hand, the Minotaur fall catalogue, and "Famous Flower" has its own page, and the cover, and it's superb. Same theme was "Weaver"'s, but instead of the page being lifted to reveal the haunted building in the lower right, this one looks like a jagged tear, to reveal the theatre in the lower left.

Sounds fantastic.

Can't wait to have it in my grubby little paws. WooooooHoooooooo!

Astarte, I just sat on the NYC subway system, holding it in my own hands and beaming like a loon.

Inspired by a post of meara's in LJ. I hope it's not too opaque:

It's simpler sleeping inside, now that she's closed. He'd always enjoyed the irony, with all the energy he could spare from being cold, poor and miserable. Irony was all he had left, and it wasn't enough to keep him going anymore.

He'd tried to make a go of it, lose his telltale paperwork, disappear into a new and better world. Better world. Everyone said so.

Ahh, sweet irony. The laugh became a cough, and then fell into shivers.

He rolled over, clutching threadbare wool against a New York winter. Huddled, wretched refuse indeed. So much for yearning to breathe free.

Wow. ita, that one stings.

I like that, ita.

Astarte, I just sat on the NYC subway system, holding it in my own hands and beaming like a loon.

Weird.

Buffista Hivemind at work.

I'm not feeling dark. I'm feeling the cheerful. Hence, new drabble:

Carla bounced as high as she could, her little body stretching towards the unreachable pinnacle of her mother's ceiling. "Wake up, Mommy, wake up! It's my birthday!"

"What?" teased her mother from below, her head miles away but her voice strong, "It can't be your birthday! I didn't get you any presents!"

"Moooommmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyy, you did so! I saw it in the back of the car and it was wrapped and it had my name on it!"

With a loving laugh, Mommy swept Carla's legs from under her, mid-bounce, capturing her daughter in a strong, affectionate embrace. "Yes, Carla. I did."

I swim into consciousness slowly. The world shivers into focus: white light. A pale yellow curtain. Brown eyes. I begin to hear voices in the background and the impersonal beeping of the machine telling me I still have a heartbeat.

I can feel the tape pulling at the fine hairs where the plastic tubing enters my arm and the stiffness of the starched, white sheets folded across my chest. They are perfectly sqaure and unrumpled, as if no one is beneath them.

Brown eyes. His hand on my cheek, tentative and gentle, is the only thing that seems real.