Posts Tagged ‘birds’

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Cast of Wonders 688: Forestborn

First published in Gamut in February 2017.

Image by Jerzy from Pixabay

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Forestborn

by Sylvia Heike

“I am forestborn,” the girl with a wild bird’s nest for hair said to me. “I can’t live in houses.”

I thought she meant some houses, large houses, and not all of them. Houses with a room for shoes, houses with keepers in aprons looking after said houses, houses with wings. I didn’t want that kind of home either. That’s the kind of house that ends up owning you, not the other way around.

I found us the perfect cabin built out of weathered logs, hugged by the forest on all sides. The carpenter who built it had quiet, loving hands—I could tell from the craftsmanship alone. The back garden was but a hare’s leap of grass, a humble doorstep between my world and hers.

Though we weren’t wed, I carried her over the threshold. “We are in the forest. I would never try to take you away.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 529: Little Wonders 37 – Seeking Connections

Cast of Wonders 529: Little Wonders 37 – Seeking Connections is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:33 — 40.8MB)

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Show Notes

Birding With My Human was originally published in Nature Futures on July 7th, 2021.

Haunting the Docks

by Marie Vibbert

No one comes to my dock anymore. It’s so empty I can hear the ping of metal struts relaxing. The sounds of life elsewhere on the station, transmitted through multiple bulkheads, are muted, inchoate moans. I cycle through checks on systems unperturbed by human hands. I tidy what is already tidy.

I’m so bored. I power on a tug-drone.

“Aft Supplemental Dock Petty Tug Drone 2 reporting for duty. You can call me Pettie!” Her voice abruptly loses its chipper tone. “Oh, it’s you.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 458: Little Wonders 31 – Acceptance

Cast of Wonders 458: Little Wonders 31 – Acceptance is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:37 — 22.1MB)

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Rosie’s Ghosts

by Srikripa Krishna Prasad

They sway in front of the bay window, sunlight tinting their translucent bodies gold. Rosie watches from under her eyelashes, her book lying uselessly on her lap despite her attempt to focus. Don’t look, she thinks, shame burning her throat, but they are magnetic as they dance together, the short woman’s head fitting perfectly into the crook of her partner’s neck. Their laughter rings in the air; Rosie knows it intimately. She hears it often when they reminisce about their time in this house, when they touch each other, when they waltz impromptu around the room. The creature in her chest cries out for this joy, this bright love that has transcended even death, despite how much she tries to suppress it.

The short woman leans up, and the tall woman leans down, and their lips meet, their arms bracketing each other tenderly, like they hold something precious. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 145: Tell Them Of The Sky

Originally published in Daily Science Fiction (July 2013).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:23 — 15.0MB)

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Tell Them of the Sky

by A. T. Greenblatt

She is too small, Kitkun thinks, the first time she enters his tiny workshop tucked between the market’s stalls. Too young to have left the nest alone. Yet, despite the years of waiting, he still feels a prick of hope as she steps out of the city’s unrelenting smog and over the threshold, thinking, perhaps she will be the one. Perhaps she will ask.

“Are you lost, child?” says Kitkun, setting down his tools. She is dressed in cream colored silk – a foolish color to wear in this city – but her shoes are covered in grime.

She nods. “I thought I saw a raven,” she says.

“And did you?”

Her face crumples with disappointment. “Nanny couldn’t keep up. She doesn’t believe birds exists.”

Kitkun smiles. Customers do not randomly wander into his shop. “Well, I do,” he says, pointing at the display next to her, “See?”
(Continue Reading…)