Beneath Ceaseless Skies - The Light of Setting Suns by Samuel Chapman
"Grandpa, you don't have to." Dovan's little hand rests inside his. Cyfris closes his fingers around it. "I know I said before that I wanted you to tell everything, but I changed my mind. You don't need to tell this part."
Beneath Ceaseless Skies - Valis Seeker Fierefiz by Michael Echeverri Rivera
27. Parsifal confessed to me that she has never dreamed of Valis. Not once. In her youth, she learned of the city in a book: a philosophical dialogue where a poet, a knight, a musician, and a madman argue about the nature of reality while awaiting the arrival of a fifth person. Near the end, the madman recounts the story of Valis, which the others think is nonsense. Parsifal disagreed, and the city quickly became an obsession (she herself used the word 'obsession'). She said all this while pacing back and forth, refusing to look me in the face until the end.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies - Bruised-Eye Dusk by Jonathan Louis Duckworth
Rugg was ready to turn back and try to make Ganvill when a bright dot of light appeared through the churning murk of the storm: a campfire. Never trust a light too bright in a dark hole, the speaking goes, but then he smelled roasting meat. And then he heard the flute. A sweet, sad little song, a flutter of music. Bone flutes had a tone distinct from those carved of wood or reed; lonelier, somehow. A sweet breath of music sighing out to the wild.
Bloodsoaked and grinning, the Soldier climbs to the summit of the ruins. The wind is mountain-top fast. It grabs the strands of her hair that have escaped her ponytail and sticks them to her ecstatic mouth: the slick surface of teeth, the gloss-wet of lipstain. She stands up straight and the wind lights her up. [鈥
Strange Horizons - A Recipe for Life, A Tonic for Grief By Christopher Blake, Art by Arina Konstantinova
This variation on the elixir of life pairs the flavour of roasted roc with the medicinal potency of the philosopher鈥檚 stone. But buyer beware: this dish isn鈥檛 for everyone.