Mild salt scent from the estuary mingled with root-sweet of damp earth, giving birth to dark green flora. Curiously, a sharp note of fragrant spice sang in the air—food being cooked, somewhere nearby. Cumin? No, much more complex, a whole...
Her final letter to him must have been her shortest, yet in so few words, it said everything: "My most treasured, I can’t wait to see you." None of her usual Highspake flair, no flourish. Of course, I’d delivered the...
It had begun as the nice day off which had every promise of going right. Ria had just settled into her favourite chair to knit a new cardigan for herself, but all that changed the moment her circular needles snapped,...
The increasing roar of small, thundering wheels signalled to me that we’d arrived. “Youth Section,” I declared, blinking sand out of my eyes. I sat upright and brushed more sand off my sleeves, automatically reaching for the feel of worn...
I’d heard it first: a reedy melody slicing through the discord that emanated from the rubble. Zeroing in, I scouted its source, ignoring the crunch of my metal feet on cracked concrete. The city’s remains seemed to sag under the...
When the last petrol-powered car drove out of our London street for the final time, we cobbled a party together for the occasion. It might have been Skinny Harper’s idea, though given the unrestrained outbreak of home-made bunting strung from...
This flash-fiction piece was selected for Flame Tree Press' special limited edition newsletter for Glasgow WorldCon 2024, to the theme of "New Mythologies in Space". It was guest-edited by Dr. Allen Stroud with gorgeous cover art by Broci. I've made...
Anger in the body: a coiled snake, a raging wildfire. Anxiety in the gut: the doom-laden twist of a strangler fig. Em – I definitely wasn’t angry at her. If anything, my anger was reserved for myself: me, and my...
I peeled off my gloves, one finger at a time, making sure nothing on the outer surface touched my skin. The plants in my garden were less lethal than their original cousins in the wild, but still, one couldn’t be...
Gerbli ob, the slow disappearance of handwriting, a dying earth tale, a snake's year. Apparently when I write out a shopping list for myself, my handwriting is so abstract that my better half struggles to read it. A few days...
Not fearing winter, different ways of practicing craft and being cautiously creative. It’s a little strange how the last months of the year tend to feel as if life has sped-up on fast forward. Despite having grown up near the...
Cruise notes, producing ideas, perfumed ink and the end of a top-level domain. On Deck Four of the Navigator of the Seas, some friends and I discovered a small miracle. In a ship capable of carrying four thousand passengers, there...