“Life asked Death, ‘Why do people love me, but hate you?’
Death responded, ‘Because you are a beautiful lie, and I am a painful truth.'”
~Anonymous
My short fantasy / horror story “The Unchosen” is featured in the Beautiful Lies, Painful Truths II anthology from Left Hand Publishers, under my other writing name of Trece Angulo.
You can buy it here from Amazon.com.
“The Unchosen” was a story I had been planning to write for ages. Like many writers of my generation, I’d been entranced by Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series (until I saw through the obvious sexism, that is) but I had always wondered about the Pernese boys and girls who weren’t chosen by one of the dragon hatchlings. What happened to their lives? Did they forever resent the ones who were? And what if being chosen wasn’t all it was cracked up to be?
These were the ideas I played with in my story.
It also follows one of my favorite themes, the gulf between illusion and reality, and how human beings reconcile the two.
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The Mother Draephlix was dying.
They heard her clear across town, broadcasting her agony in a series of strained ululations and drawn-out, unlovely screeches. They knew it would continue for days. None of them were old enough to remember the last time a Mother Draephlix had passed, but they had heard stories from their parents and the elders of the town. They all knew what it meant. Death, fire, then dozens of pearl-like eggs left to incubate in the warm soft sand … mounts for a new generation of warriors to keep Eliira safe. |
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