May 2010
24 posts
5 tags
Genetics
“You realize, the probability of this happening is astronomically small.”
Kyu turned to face his daughter, squinting against the bright summer sun. They had come to this isolated beach for solitude and, in Jessamine’s case, safety - when one had just come back from the dead, one did not want to draw attention to one’s self. Waves crashed against a steep, rocky shore,...
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Book of Mirrors.
“That’s right. Any mirror - as long as you can hold it in your mind, you’re there.”
Kyu laid the leather-bound book out on the shoddy plastic tabletop and tapped its cracked cover knowingly. Culain looked less than impressed.
“Think about that. -Any- mirror. You find yourself thinking about that gorgeous babe you went home with last night. You think about the...
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The Tanuki
Tan was so little like his irasciblefather that few people believed his parentage. The half-tanuki, half-fox leaned towards his mother’s side of the family and preferred staying home to roaming and avoided conflict whenever possible. Perhaps he’d gotten the wanderlust out of his system as a child - he’d spent his first decade travelling with his father and getting into trouble...
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The Nightingale
Here our story deviates from Things Past. Early in the twenty-first century, the Fox met another bird who stole his heart, though it took nearly a century for him to admit it.
It began with a hotel bar and a wounded boy.
If the Fox could tell the story now, he would embellish it and make it out to be a heroic rescue. It was, instead, a set of random chances both taken and lost - if not for...
“It begins, as most things begin, with a song. In the beginning, after all, were...”
– Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman (via scottiswhatsup) (via neilgaiman)
“I think Hell’s something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go....”
– The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman (via neilgaiman)
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A Demon's Wrath
Trecius had been beaten so many times in his long life that he could no longer count his individual failures. For him, the past blended into a string of indignities, each one undeserved. After all, was he not responsible for the shadow by which God’s light shone the brightest? Had he not crafted the very thing used by the Heavenly Host to beat back their enemies and punish the sinful? ...
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A Long Winter
Culain stood in the snow outside the bar, in a patch of slush half-melted by the flickering light above. The bar was the only building still lit at this hour, but Culain could see down the street in either direction clear as day, the scene lit a pale orange by street lights reflecting off the snow. The blacktop was patchy with ice, a mottled dark strip between high banks of brown, soiled snow.
...
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“Listen. Fox was here first, and his brother was the wolf. Fox said, people...”
– Neil Gaiman, American Gods
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About the Crane
I suppose if I am to write a blog entitled ‘The Fox and the Crane’ I ought to tell you about the Crane. Trouble is, I don’t know much about her.
No one does, really.
They say, Those Who Know, that it was the Crane who formed the world, shedding water from her breast to form oceans and feathers from her flesh to form the land. But this is only one story.
They say she met the...
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A Wolf, A Crow, A Fox
Once upon a time there was a Wolf, and the Wolf walked first. When the Wolf grew hungry, felt the First Empty Belly, the Wolf howled a song of fleet feet and fat flanks, and breathed Life into the Caribou and the Elk and the Hare. Wolf ran his prey down in the cold, cold snow and washed his muzzle to the eyes in hot, hot blood, and all was well in the world.
Once upon a time there was a Crow,...
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The Fox and the Crow
They had known one another for many years. Crow had a weakness for things that sparkled and Kyuubi was quite adept at acquiring such objects. They met at a bazaar in the Early Days, when ancient things were new and Gods were still at large in the world, and Crow still had her sight. For you see, the pair of them were very old, though they didn’t look it. Legends say Kyuubi stole a pearl from the...
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Whitecoat
Here is the Fox:
He goes by the name of Kyu, pronounced like the letter, and when necessary uses the surname ‘Whitecoat’. He is a remarkable-looking man, but you are not likely to see him or notice him unless he allows you to.
He is not tall, and fine-boned, and his features are sharp an vulpine as one might expect. If he was assigned a nationality it might be Japanese, but...
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In the Beginning
Once Upon a Time, all the Animals were people, too. They did not always walk on two legs or four, or six, or none at all, for in those days no one paid much heed to such things. The Animals (who were people) chose their shape, and went about according to the seasons with little regard for the passage of years. Their lives went thus: spring, summer, fall, winter, governed by the good things they...