Tag: Flash Fiction

In the Darkling Night

On By Danielle O'ShayIn Flash Fiction, Original FictionLeave a comment

Stars pricked the darkening sky in silver shimmers of light, and in the spaces between the trees a descended a gentle darkness, hushing the voices of the day to make way for the whispers of the night.  And what a night it was!  Never was there a clearer sky to walk beneath, never was there a swifter and sharper wind, never a bolder and more radiant life to the world.  The earth had fallen into a reverie, a dream of soft edges and silk corners, edged with starlight of the most glittering sort, and held in place by threads of braided gold.  It was this time, in the silent hours of the night, when the magic-workers arose to do their work, away from the staring eyes of the waking world.

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The Crowded Sky

On By A.J. ReevesIn Flash Fiction, Original Fiction, Short StoryLeave a comment

They say the castle is haunted.

That when the north wind dies, you could hear the moaning of some poor lost soul.

That in the dark halls and crevices, when you hold your breath, you can feel a ghostly touch creep up your arm, full of sadness and desperation. Her loneliness seeps into you.

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Sojourner

On By Danielle O'ShayIn Flash Fiction, Original FictionLeave a comment

A quick write of a synopsis of a possible future book.  Someday, perhaps, it will be written.   

We walked on the moon in 1969.

We walked on mars in 2025.

We discovered light-speed travel in 2052.

By 2070 we were exploring planets outside our galaxy and creating new civilizations.

By 2080 we had created the perfect artificial intelligence systems.

By 2112 we touched where no one has ever touched before.  Humanity, spread throughout the farthest reaches of the galaxies, going deeper and deeper and deeper until we began to lose sight of the horizon, until we began to lose ourselves in the dust of eternity.  It was beautiful.  It was dangerous.  It was impossible.  We had paths reaching so far into the cosmos that those who left earth did not come back, nor did we ever hear from them again.  We could only stand on our shriveling planet in the light of a dying sun and hope with all hope that the brave men and women who launched themselves into the stars for the good of mankind survived, and continued to live out there among the spiraling light of distant planets.    

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A Gallimaufry of Words

On By Danielle O'ShayIn Flash Fiction, Original FictionLeave a comment

In my nearly nineteen years of existence I have come to fall deeply in love with the intricacies, the simplicities, the depth, and the beauty of words.  I survive on them.  I collect them, I organize them, I keep lists of them in my notebooks, and often I rearrange them into patterns that create worlds and stories from the emptiness of a blank page.  My bones are crafted of words, my blood runs with rivers of them, and my tongue tastes their lilting, rolling, rumbling flavors, big words and small words and beautiful words and ugly words, mysterious words and boring words, austere words and ostentatious words, old and new words, some fresh and some slightly used, lost, or brand-new.  I find an inexplicable charm in words.         

I like archaic words that nobody uses anymore, like athenaeum, obfuscate, erstwhile and contumelious.  These words are aged, like fine wine, but forgotten behind the mask of modern terms and a changing world, ones one might find in old books like Shakespeare or Jules Verne.  But I also like normal words we use every day, like cabinet, paperclip, honey, and teapot.      Continue reading “A Gallimaufry of Words” →

Which Way Might I Turn?

On By Danielle O'ShayIn Flash Fiction, Original FictionLeave a comment

He stood at a break in the road.

The rocky, muddied path split from one to four, so that he stood in the middle of a crossroads with one stretching to the right, one to the left, and two more before and behind him.  Above hung the sky, and the sun, and the clouds, and below spread the dirt and the soil and the dry dead leaves that whispered as they tumbled over the rocks in the wake of autumn’s chilling breath.

Four roads.  

Four futures.

One past.

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Soul-Seekers

On By Danielle O'ShayIn Original Fiction, Short Story2 Comments

Short (long?) story excerpt/brief outline I’m working on.

In Sir Alistair Gavell’s Book of Told and Untold Secrets, souls are described as being, and I quote, ‘…the patterns to unique quiddities which have been left behind—lost, as it were, to the infinite and unkind hands of indomitable time.  They are pieces of existence, the unfinished pearls lacking a shell to rest in, the dark remains from fallen light.  They are, in essence, the undulating memory of someone or something which used to be, but is no more, and never shall be again.’

Souls are not so mysterious–nor enchanting–as Sir Alistair makes them out to be.  They are far more rugged, more jagged and torn along the edges.  Some are beautiful, though all have their scars; while some can be quite ugly and nasty. 

Others…others are almost terrifying.

There are light souls, as light as a feather and the color of melted gold and silver.

There are heavy souls, heavy as a millstone and the color of crimson blood and spilled ink.

There are in-between souls, which don’t know whether to be light or heavy, gold or red, silver or black.  We call them Neithers, because they are neither one nor the other, neither light nor dark.  These are the most common, the most ordinary.  

But there is also a certain breed of soul which is so white it burns your eyes and weighs nearly nothing in your palm, shimmering with all the light of eternity, and there is its opposite: a soul that is so black it consumes all light and weighs more than a handful of mountains.  These are the most rare.  They are also the most dangerous.           

I would know.  I have spent the past seven centuries searching for them.

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The Naturalist

On By Danielle O'ShayIn Flash Fiction, Original FictionLeave a comment

There is color in his eyes, echoing there; jay-bird blue and stormy-water grey, deep mossy silver and yellow like autumn leaves, sometimes brilliant green and curly white.  He sees nature as a blueprint for life, and bones as the written history of what used to be.  Brown laces the lines of his palms and fingertips, mud edges his boots, and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up past the elbows.  Sometimes there is ink on his face and a pen behind his ear.  There is always a notebook in his hand, an extension of his arm.  A leather-bound notebook filled with scribbles and sketches, bits of leaves and insect wings taped inside.

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There is a Forest

On By Danielle O'ShayIn Flash Fiction, Original Fiction2 Comments

There is a forest, lying hidden in the shadows of the world in a place where time does not exist.  It does not have a name, though it is rumored to have once been called the ‘Mist Wood’, after legends of faerie mist-gates and border regions, places where the Fair Folk could tread back and forth from one realm to another.  Some stories even say this was the meeting-place of the Courts, where all the faerie-kind gathered in the starlit clearings, and when they left, they left behind a piece of the forest much transformed from what it once had been. Continue reading “There is a Forest” →

Character Sketch: Moon-Princess

On By Danielle O'ShayIn Flash Fiction, Original Fiction3 Comments

She told me she lived on the moon.

“It is the most beautiful planet in the galaxy,” she said.  “It’s all washed in soft silver light and surrounded by darkness on all sides.  There is no sound, no voices.  It’s so quiet you can her the stars singing.  They sing to the world.  It’s empty of life, but oh is it wonderful.  I am the ruler of a beautifully desolate land.”

“All right, moon-princess.”  I would say, then laugh and tell her to lock up her imagination before it ran away.

Amaris was my neighbor.  She lived one door down at number 11, the old white house with the roof garret and two weeping willows in front.  I’m not really sure when she moved in. One day it was empty and the next she was there in her big hat, hanging colored glass bottles in her trees and feeding all the neighborhood cats.  

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