A dark, fantastical tale that is intended to unfold a paragraph, or thereabouts, at a time.
12 Apr 2021 3 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.03
There is a fleeting tooth-rasp of particulate as the panel slips at last, shut. A sift of tumbling dust. A precarious creak as weight settles against the straining frame of the ladder. Umin hangs from a mouldy rung. Like a blind spider against the i...
7 Apr 2021 3 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.07
The man, in profile to Umin, blinks and scratches at a scruff of unshaven morning-beard. Rubbing sleep glumly from his eyes. Senic stares flatley at Pyna for a breath before acquiescing with a bob of his thinning top-knot. He ushers the pair into a...
5 Apr 2021 1 minute read 3 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.07
Pyna bends and sniffs like a hunting-beast at the tenderly-painted receptacles, balanced reverently. She is careful not to touch the immaculate shrine-plate, though her finger drifts towards the creamy contents of the curving bowl. There to hang fo...
3 Apr 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.02
The pair move out of the constrictive alley. Two shades drifting from the well guarded square abutting the Inn that are then fast swallowed by the tangle of masonry and meander. The air here tastes of perpetual petrichor. Where the cool fog from the...
31 Mar 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.03
Umin clears the board, leaving a clatter of soiled plates. He then bathes. The warm, lemon-sweet water blackening in the basin as he assiduously scrapes days of chalky filth from his skin. Moving on to rifle through a pungent red cedar wardrobe. Eme...
28 Mar 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.01
Umin returns his attention to the task of filling his belly, as she settles the tub at the foot of his bed with a crisp, fleeting cacophony. “Such a feast.” He murmurs between mouthfuls of honeyed bread crust and fruity fungus. Though no gourmand b...
25 Mar 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.02
The room is still and cool. Downy linens having slipped from bare and wiry limbs. His eyes wandering and still sleepy, light upon a shallow bowl bedside, piled high with minikin blood-hued oranges, bright like candle-shine against a heap of the scal...
24 Mar 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.31
Umin has little recollection of their return journey. The arduousness of his travails at last overcrowing, he remembers being suddenly embraced by slim and supple limbs with the inevitable strength of marble. Then being charily borne aloft, like a wi...
22 Mar 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.05
The feculent ragman flinches, as though its name were an uttered curse or admonition. Umin moves gingerly closer, his boots soiled and squelching above the unspeakably succulent softness beneath his feet. In the near muck lies a plate of partially-co...
19 Mar 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Jay Lonnquist $0.08
Here the stink is sour and mycelial, a fungal ferment of rotten metalcraft and creamy dripstone. Umin recoils, recalling his not altogether distant captivity in a similar, if dustier oubliette. There is but the faintest light in this ghastly place. ...
