Because life can be interesting when you are a character in a video game…

Whatever else the Expansion had done, the beach steps were the same. And so was the fishing pier. The beach itself was unchanged too and it didn’t take her very long to realise that wherever Ruffkin had gone, he wasn’t there.
Beginning to feel concerned now, she ran back up the steps and headed for One Eye’s stall. But it was gone. For a moment she felt her throat constrict with misery and fear. Her eyes misted with tears.
“Hey up young’un!”
The familiar voice had her spinning round. There, across the way from where the stall had been was a proper shop with a sign outside that read ‘One Eye Rye Provisions’. One Eye himself stood in the door grinning like he’d just caught the biggest fish in the Silent Sea.
Milla had to resist the temptation to rush over and throw herself at him. Instead she managed to restrain herself and dodging around some barrels, followed him into the shop.
One Eye swept his arms out to show the crowded shelves and bulging baskets all around. “Seems like we had the Expansion and I have to say I think I like it. I’m no longer having to buy fish from those Visitors, now they have to come to me to buy their provisions.” He grinned again and gestured towards her. “And look at you.”
For the first time, Milla glanced down and realised she was wearing a very different outfit from before. Now she was dressed like all the adult ryeshor, the elegant shimmering robes, split to accommodate her tail and her body was longer, sleeker and smoother.
“Oh my!” It was a very odd feeling.
“See? You are all growed up now.”
But Milla barely heard him. She was too busy staring at the pendant which was now definitely glowing and maybe even pulsing slightly. Holding it up she showed One Eye.
“What do you think…?”
He wrinkled his snout. “No idea on that young’un. But I’m aguessing you’ll be finding that out before too long. That’s how things go after Expansions.”
Which was what reminded Milla of why she had come to see him. Letting the pendant fall back around her neck she spoke quickly. “Have you seen Ruffkin? He wasn’t there when I woke up. I thought he might…”
Something in One Eye’s expression sucked the last words into silence and the breath from her lungs. He reached over and patted her shoulder gently.
“Well that is the thing about Expansions. We don’t all… Well, some times some of us just… Well…”
“Well what?”
“Vanish. Some people just aren’t there anymore.”
Milla shook her head.
“No. Not Ruffkin. What did he ever do to deserve vanishing?”
“Excuse me.”
The door was filled by a robe-clad ryeshor, wearing amulets, rings and wristlets and holding a staff that glowed, runes dancing in the air around it.His red robe glimmered and shimmered around him almost as if it were a living thing.
Clearly a Visitor.
Oddly, a ryeshor Visitor.
Milla blinked.
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, good people. I’m not from around here but if I could be of any assistance? I do run to a location spell.”
Visitors had never spoken to Milla before. She had thought for a while they maybe couldn’t see her, until she found they would step around her if she was in their path. She looked instinctively towards One Eye but he just gave her a reassuring grin.
“I – I would be most grateful,” she mumbled, wondering if the Visitor could hear her now.
It seemed he could because he gave a slight grin and gestured with his staff. A spray of sparkling runes exploded around him as he released a spell.
“I hate to ask,” he said as the dazzling shimmers faded again, “but I am a little short on the essentials for my ventures. Is there anything available as recompense for locating this canine?”
Milla shuffled her feet a bit.
“He wants to know what’s the reward for helping you find Ruffkin,” One Eye said.
“Oh!” She knew her collection pouch was empty and she didn’t have anything else except… “You can have this.” She held up the pendant. She had no idea what it did but whatever that was it wasn’t going to be worth more than Ruffkin’s life.
The robed ryeshor Visitor bowed elegantly. “That is a treasure beyond price. For that I will not only locate the encaved canine, I will travel with you to ensure you redeem him safely.”
“Er… Right. Encaved?”
The Visitor nodded. “My location spell is telling me that even now your beloved companion animal is beneath the ground. Under that pyramid over there, in fact, if I am not misled by my magics.”
“Under?” Milla squeaked the word. “Poor Ruffkin! I’ve got to find him.”
“Fair lady, I shall accompany you and keep you safe from all danger.”
“I’m Milla,” she said quickly, wondering why it was whenever they spoke to locals the Visitors all began sounding like this, but amongst themselves, they seemed much less formal.
“And I am the noble Firecaster Pewpowerpwnsyou.” He bowed lavishly. “Your servant, Lady Milla.”
Behind her One Eye cleared his throat.
“You’d better take this, young’un if you going on a venture. Provisions.”
Milla took the small pack One Eye was holding out and shrugged it onto her shoulders. Yes, she supposed she was.
She was going on a venture.
With a Visitor.
Her.
Little Milla.
On a venture with a Visitor.
It was unbelievable. If she hadn’t been so worried about Ruffkin she would have been out and out excited at the thought.

We will return to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook next Sunday.

Wrathburnt Sands was first published in Rise and Rescue: A GameLit Anthology.

I have no faith, the woman said
I’ve no religion, no belief
You live your life until you’re dead
And time creeps quickly as a thief
I will not see my love again
Nor stroke a certain silky head
This life is it, for all its pain
We need to live it without dread

Illusions none, the woman said
Though death may come a-creeping
There are no angels round my bed
To guard me while I’m sleeping
I have my own voice, truth or lie
And I stand strong, not easy led
Thus will I live until I die
I have myself, the woman said

©jj 2021

He heard the whispers as he strode the echoing corridors of that grey, weed-choked castle perched on the very edge of the sea
“A hero,” the sibilant voices declared. “A hero.”
The young man preened himself and puffed out his chest. It was always nice to be recognised, even if it was only by the ghosts in a backwater like this. His steel-clad feet rung on the stone floors and rattled on the worn and slippery steps of a spiral staircase. As he walked, he wondered what the assignment would be. Perhaps there would be a sleeping maiden, or a crone at her spinning wheel, or a queen labouring under a geas, or a dragon. He enjoyed dragons. One killed dragons and moved on. Women tended to be needier. If one kissed a maiden she rather expected one to stick around, and the tears and tantrums when it became apparent that wasn’t happening wore on the nerves more than somewhat. Then he became aware that he had reached the apex of the staircase and pulled his awareness back to the work in hand.
Loosening his sword in its scabbard, he laid his hand on the huge wrought iron latch.
The room at the top of the tower was a fantastical octagon, with pointed stained glass windows in every wall, and delicate flying buttresses made of carved white marble. For a moment the hero thought himself alone in that place, then his ears caught the sound of slow breathing. He lifted his eyes and saw her, seated on a plain wooden chair on a mezzanine high above him, wrapped in velvet so black it seemed to leach the light from the room and with burnished auburn hair falling to the floor. She might have been beautiful but it was impossible to see as her eyes and the top half of her face were wrapped in gauzy bandages.
‘Aha,’ he thought, ‘a geas’.
“Who comes?” The voice was low, musical and pleasing.
“One who will break whatever enchantment holds you lady.”
She laughed, a sound like the chimes of silver bells and rose from her chair. “Come hither. And we shall speak of this…”
He all but ran up the intricately carved and smoothly polished wood drawn by the excitement of the quest, and by somewhat else. By an undefinable pull to the very centre of his being. By the elusive perfume that he somehow knew came from her velvet skirts. And by a furtive fantasy involving a rope of red-gold hair.
When he reached the head of the final staircase, he was surprised and a little embarrassed to find himself breathless and flushed of cheek. He felt anger that a mere female should so disturb the composure of on so far above her and he frowned direfully. The lady appeared not to notice, moving to a side table on whose mirror bright surface reposed a silver wine jug and a tray of long-stemmed glasses so finely blown as to look like bubbles on twisted stalks.
“Wine, good sir?” The lady’s voice was mild and he felt himself relax in the face of such politeness.
The lady poured wine the colour of blood and brought glasses for herself and her visitor.
“Will you not sit?”
He sunk into the cushioned comfort of a chair that the cold analytical side of his brain insisted hadn’t been there a moment before. For a brief scintilla of time he stayed his hand regarding the glass in his hand with deep suspicion. The lady raised her own glass and drank and he watched the movements in the white column of her throat with an emotion any other man might have recognised as lust. She laughed, low and intimate, and he raised his eyes to the gauzy veil that enwrapped the top half of her face. To his surprise he found it was dissolving as he looked; he was enraptured and forgot his misgivings as his blood rushes unbidden to his loins. He raised his glass and drank, noticing as he did so that the lady’s eyes were the colour of rain-washed violets. The wine flowed down his throat as sensuously as a caress and he wondered what rare and fine vintage it might be. When it’s syrupy sweetness hit his stomach he dropped the glass from suddenly nerveless fingers. The sound of it shattering into a million shards was the last thing he was to hear for some time.
When the hero awoke, his first thought was that he was naked and cold, and then it came to him that he could not move. For the first time in his life he knew the meaning of fear. He opened his mouth to cry for aid but no sound would come.
“He is with us.”
The voice was familiar and he managed to swivel his eyes to where the lady stood regarding him with a peculiar expression in her eyes.
“He is,” she said musingly, “passing fair. Perhaps it would amuse me to keep him for a while.”
Someone laughed and it wasn’t a pleasant sound.
“Domina. Do not be so cruel.”
The lady came over and leaned down into the hero’s face. She moved suddenly and he thought she might have been going to kiss him. But she did not. Instead she bit the fullness of his lower lip, licking the blood away in a manner that made him think of a kitten lapping milk. He closed his eyes, unaccountably distressed and unable to understand what was happening to him. He was a hero. Invulnerable. Undefeatable. Fearless. And yet…
While his befuddled mind was struggling to process this strangeness the sound of sliding silk alerted him to who knew what and he opened his eyes to see the now naked lady climbing onto the bier where he lay. She straddled him and he thought there was mocking laughter in the back of the eyes that studied him.
She leaned forwards until her breasts all but touched his face.
“I’ve never had a pretty hero before.”
Then she leaned back and he saw the dark glimmer of the obsidian blade she held in her hands. He saw it and knew it for what it was only a second before it slashed his throat from ear to ear and his eyes grew dark. He never felt the priests rip his still beating heart from his chest, nor did he smell the disconcertingly edible aroma as they threw it onto a fiercely hot brazier…
A hero died. A lady laughed. And somewhere a dark god smiled.

©️jane jago

You held my hand and touched my heart
Through fields of wheat we ran
Our hearts were filled with happiness
As our true love began

We wed and raised a family
Through fields of beans and kale
They grew and flourished merrily
As our true love was hale

We welcomed all the grandchildren
Through fields of sprouting corn
And counted our lives many joys
As our true love was strong

We left to make a long journey
Through fields of lavender
Hand in hand and happily
‘Cos true love is forever

E.M. Swift-Hook

Goggling The Box

A television programme – no a series, sorry several series of television programmes – dedicated to watching people watching television programmes.
What the actual?
Me and Gyp looked on in disbelief as the ‘stars’ did random things like cutting their toenails, trying to train a puppy, attempting the splits, eating face cream by mistake because it was in the fridge, all while allegedly watching a selection of the ‘best’ tv.
There was screaming, crying, sarcastic comment, political pontification, and a goodly amount of deeply disingenuous thickness.
As entertainment I suppose it has its moments, albeit usually provided unintentionally – when the ‘stars’ misinformed opinions are so funny as to make one weep, or when domestic friction rears its ugly head in front of the tv screen.
Otherwise it has all the allure of watching paint dry.
It is not a ‘social experiment’ any more than Big Brother was, although this has got to have been a lot cheaper to make. No sets to construct, no audience to be bussed about the landscape, no shouty presenter to pay. The only common denominator is a single voice over – just in case we can’t work out what the feck is going on.
One can see the appeal to its creators cheap programming offering the allure of the knowledge that something will go wrong every time.
This is Schadenfreude tv at its most opportunistic.
But Gyp likes it. He rather fancies a punch up with the Rottweilers….

It doesn’t matter what you think – this is Granny’s opinion and it’s not up for discussion!

King Raynar chose for his wife the daughter of the king next door, the beautiful Princess Raina.

Her sister, Princess Sunna, was jealous and went to a sorcerer, who put a curse on Raina that if she did not ride straight across the stream between the two kingdoms, it would rain there for the rest of her life.

When Raina reached the stream she was determined to cross but a bird flew up, startling her horse so she reined it in.

It started to rain right away.

So, you see, it rained in the reign of Raynar when Raina reined.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Elron and his sister-wife Elanda dallied in the dappled shade of the forest. They walked hand in hand, stopping every few steps to kiss and caress. Elanda slipped away and ran a few steps, for the sheer joy of him catching her in his strong arms and bearing her down into the sweet loam to ravish her with tender savagery.
They strayed closer to the homes of the human creatures than was their habit, standing for a while to watch as the white-clad and silent women of the sanctuary bore a wrapped bundle to the flat rock of sacrifice, leaving it there before scuttling away on silent feet.
“I wonder what gift they spare to the old ones,” Elanda spoke idly, even as her beloved’s clever hands worked their magic. He bent her over a convenient tree branch and they began their unending game yet again.
This time the little mewing cries did not come only from Elanda’s throat as they continued even after she drooped like a spent lily.
“It’s a child. The old one will dine on child tonight.”
Elanda walked on soft feet to where the babe lay and pulled back the blanket from his fair features. She gazed enraptured.
“Look Elron. Is he not beautiful?”
Elron looked, without too much interest, but found to his surprise that the child was indeed of surpassing beauty. Gold of hair, blue of eye, and possessed of skin so thin and white that the blue veins could clearly be discerned beneath their fragile coverlet.
“He is indeed beautiful. Shall we keep him?”
“We could. But what of the old one?”
“I will call him up a fat boar. He will like that better anyway.”
Elanda’s smile was a thing of witchery, so the deed was done. They retraced their steps, only this time The beautiful fae had a beautiful child in her arms. Once away from the grove of the old ones, she stopped and seated herself on a sweetly scented bank of wild flowers.
“The child must feed,” she declared opening her garment.
Elron expected to feel jealousy at the sight of another mouth at his beloved’s breast, and he was surprised to find that all he felt was excitement as the child’s perfect lips encircled Elanda’s long pink nipple.
He watched for some while, until, impelled by some appetite he didn’t know he possessed, he bent his handsome head to suckle the other breast.
As quickly as a bolt of summer lightning, the child stirred in Elanda’s arms and struck like a viper sinking sharp and yellowish teeth into the pulse that beat in the big male’s neck.
Elron was paralysed and could only groan in agony as the creature drunk his life force. The eyes that had looked so blue in the sacred grove now glowed red as the succubus fed.
Seemingly unknowing, Elanda crooned a lullaby and stroked the baby’s milk-white skin…

Jane Jago

It was one of those winter evenings when your own fireside is the best place to be when Nanny’s dream of bee-loud summer was interrupted by a quiet tap on the door. It was the vicar’s housekeeper. She dropped a small curtesy and Nanny wondered why her prickles didn’t tear holes in her flowered gown.
“The vicar asks if you could spare him a few moments ma’am.”
“What? Right now?”
“If you please.”
Nanny shoved her feet into her bright red rubber boots and wrapped herself in a cloak of fine combed wool.
“Lead the way, Tiggywinkle.”
In the vicar’s study, the formidable bosom of the village’s premier gossip was accompanied by her daughter – who didn’t look too happy to be there.
“Ah. Bee. I’m being asked to call out Farmer Greengrass in church as an adulterer and the father of the baby Amelia here is carrying.”
“I’m not asking Reverend, I demand that you put my daughter in place of that man’s barren wife.”
Nanny sniffed. “Adulterer he may well be. But the child ain’t his.”
“Are you calling my daughter a liar?”
“Egg it how you please. The babe ain’t his.”
The bosom loomed.
“How dare you?”
Nanny grinned. “It ent his wife what’s barren.”
Then she went home.

©janejago

The body had been found washed up on a beach near Segontium and would normally have attracted little, if any, attention as no one had been reported missing. But this corpse had been found to have a ring of Citizenship still attached to a finger, but lodged in the corpse’s throat. To Dai’s impotent fury, Rome reserved the full benefits and privileges of justice for her own children—and it seemed this might be one such case.
Despite the body being partially decomposed, dental records had enabled them to trace its identity. Zirri Yedder had been a freelance journalist with a history of producing cutting investigative pieces that highlighted local issues—local to Mauretania Tingitana that is, the province, where he had lived in the capital, Tingist. Although the pathologist report that Dai read was not entirely sure of the cause of death, it was also very clear that the body had been tortured beforehand.
But the finger was not the finger of Zirri Yedder and he had never been a Roman Citizen. He had, however, been registered at a cupona in the village of Caerhun and the landlady there said he had been there awaiting an invitation to the temple. She had last seen him as he set off to answer his eventual summons and no one had seen him alive since then.
Which was why Dai and Bryn now stood on the edge of the crowd watching as the service began. A security guard hovered nervously near by, trying not to make it too obvious that he was watching them as they observed proceedings.
“Who’d have thought a man who died nearly two thousand years ago having self-labelled as a deity, would still be honoured as a worker of miracles in the modern age?” Bryn’s voice was pitched so it was lost in the chanting from the crowd. Even so Dai looked at him sharply.
“You should be careful saying those kinds of things, SI Cartvel. Especially here.”
Bryn lifted his wrist and tapped the screen on his wristphone.
“Not me, Bard, I’m just reading what our friend Yedder put up on his social media. It was meant as a teaser for his next piece.”
“And I missed that, how?”
“You are a busy man, Submagistratus and these little details…”
“I checked his social media feed, right back for the last three years.”
“Ah, that would explain it then.” Bryn was looking almost smug. “It only posted today—less than an hour ago in fact. It must have been one he scheduled before he died.”
“Spado!” Dai said, but without real rancour. “Was there more?”
The other man shook his head. “No. That was it. Just says: ‘My current investigation is going to make a lot of people sit up and think’, then what I told you. Seems to be his style. Putting up a teaser a couple of days before the main article comes out. This time though, I think he hit the wrong kind of deadline first.”

From Dying to be Cured a Dai and Julia Mystery by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules and one of the stories in the SciFi Roundtable’s anthology Gods of Clay .

Patience was sure that having been given such a name meant inevitably her rebellious spirit would rise against it. If she had to wait for something she would pass it by.

Swiping right was a quick way to a boyfriend.

Until she met Marcus.

Marcus insisted on not dating anyone until after his exams. Four whole months. Patience managed somehow.

Then Patience wanted him to move in, but he said they needed to save for a bigger place.

It took six months.

Then Patience wanted to get married.

Marcus purchased a special licence and they were wed the next day.

E.M. Swift-Hook