Monthly Archives: November 2022

Excerpt from “Project Promised Land”

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For #LineByLineTime : “Get Out of Bed!”

“Nita! You awake? Wake up, already!”

Nita groaned loudly, and waved her hand feebly. “Lemme alone, Chico! I feel like I been beat up again. Oh, my head! Ask Luthor for some aspirin or something. Ow!” She wrapped her arms around her head and rolled to her back, because the front of her head ached almost enough to make her cry, and she never cried.

“You weren’t beat up, but you hit your forehead. Do you remember everything?”

“Enough, already! Don’t ask me questions unless you’re holding a cup of strong coffee! Has anybody invented it yet on this timeline? Or did a miracle happen and we got back home? Please say we got back home.”

“Uh, no. Sorry.”

She groaned again and touched her forehead with a wary finger and winced. “Man, I’ve got the headache from hell!” Her head moved from side to side as she blinked. Then she sighed in deep annoyance.

“Look, Lizard Boy, you’d better have a really good excuse for waking me up before dawn. Can’t you at least turn on a flashlight or light a candle, for Pete’s sake? Are we having to hide? Where is everybody else? Is Tweetie okay? Did she have the baby?” She sat up abruptly and grabbed Harper’s shoulder. “Why are we in the dark? Are we hiding in the caves?”

Harper’s mouth moved but no sound emerged. He stared around at the others standing around Nita’s bed. They stared back, as helpless as he to find words. A breeze sighed through the open window, stirring the dust motes into dancing in the sunbeams illuminating the room.

Excerpt from “The Warlord’s Heart”

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For #LineByLineTime: Survivor

Marissa came awake slowly. She quickly wished she were still unconscious. Her body sent an urgent message and she rolled over as fast as she could to get her mouth over the edge of the bed. Strong hands caught her before she rolled off the bed and held her in place. She opened her eyes just in time to see a bucket shoved under her face.

Her stomach heaved again and again. Finally, she had nothing left to spew and rolled back again with the help of the unknown owner of the hands. A damp cloth wiped her sweating face and a strong arm went around her back to lift her to a sitting position.

“Here,” a familiar deep voice said softly in her ear. “Take a sip of this and wash your mouth out. I know that poison left a terrible taste in it.”

She forced heavy eyelids up and gasped at the sight of Benedict’s face so close to her.

“Poison?” she managed to whisper.

“Sip, then we’ll talk,” he ordered gruffly, and pressed a cup to her lips. Head whirling, she sipped automatically and obediently swished it in her mouth and spit it into the bucket. Benedict held her securely. She found herself wondering if her jumpy stomach was due to the poison he spoke of or his presence. Why was he caring for her? Where was everybody else? Where was Betsy? What had happened?

Excerpt from “Tales of the Lunatics”

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For #LineByLineTime “Rain”

Skyshaker dragged the mukat’s body into the cave and tossed it onto the pile of his other kills. “That’s the last. Think we’ll eat good tonight?”

Shadowstalker laughed. “I think we’ll be eating well for awhile! I haven’t seen that much meat at one time since the last Festival of Moons, and that was contributed by four clans!”

Striker stumped over to the outer entrance and stared out. She pointed her staff at the horizon. “Just in time, too. See the clouds? They tell of a storm that can last days. Could be we’ll need every bit of that meat, and all the plants we’ve gathered. Do we have enough of the fire rocks to last a while? Gathering more from the lower caverns will give us something to do when we can’t go outside.”

Skyshaker laughed. “Are you afraid you’ll melt in the rain?”

He blinked as all the others stared at him, their jaws dropped. “What? Did I say something?”

Loper shook his head. “If nothing else, that remark reminds us you have spent most of your life underground in the mines.”

“What do you mean?”

Moonsinger sighed. “The storm Striker speaks of is one well known to us. It does not come often, but when it does, everyone hides from it. It is not just rain, it is wind, and sometimes balls of ice bigger than rocks. Trees fall under its fury. Because our opening to the outside is large here, we must take our belongings and food down to a lower cave, where the storm’s power is muted. How long do we have, Striker?”

“Not as much as we need.” Striker spat out the opening. “We must hurry. Make sure the firestarters are safe from the wet first. Skyshaker, how weary are you? The rest of us will struggle to move that meat, but we must get it down below. Now!”

Skyshaker shrugged. “I’ll be fine. I won’t take it all the way down, just partway and then toss it. Just keep the bottom of the ramp clear.”

“Move, you laggards!” Striker shouted. Everyone in the cavern leaped into action.

Striker was correct. Just hours later, Skyshaker collapsed after tossing the last body down the ramp to the lower cavern. After catching his breath, he sat up and stretched aching muscles. The silence caught his attention. Usually the caverns were alive with the sound of the diggers chittering to each other or their claws scraping through the rock walls of the mountain. He looked around. They had all vanished. He ventured down the ramp and looked around. The other den members were huddled around a big fire. Striker had her biggest pot sitting over it, steam rising off the top. None of them were making a noise either.

His mouth opened to question the silence when the sound came from above him. As he jerked his head around, he saw the others flinch and huddle tighter. He raced back up the ramp. The wind met him with a face full of water and a rising scream in his ears. Holding his tail over his eyes, he managed to block the wind and rain enough to see the outside opening lit with a sky full of fire as lightning flashed nonstop.