Posts Tagged ‘connection’

two geese in a space station corridor

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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 520: Shrine to the Ink Goddess (Staff Picks 2022)

Originally broadcast as Cast of Wonders 504, 20th September 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:34 — 46.2MB)

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Shrine to the Ink Goddess

by Monte Lin

Dana Liu took her weekly ten-minute walk to what she called the Shrine to the Ink Goddess. Stepping through the copse of trees that separated the apartment complex and the storm channel, she arrived at a large, hollowed-out eucalyptus tree, split into three parts ages ago from a lightning bolt. She ducked down and sat in the middle, placing an empty inkstone next to her, and took out a beat-up metal food container with a warm zòngzi, the twine still tightly wrapped around the bamboo leaves. With her multi-tool, she snapped the knife through the twine, unfurling the leaves. She grimaced at the soggy bottom (microwaving never seemed to heat them right).

“Ahem. You know you shouldn’t be here, Dana.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 504: Shrine to the Ink Goddess

Cast of Wonders 504: Shrine to the Ink Goddess is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:03 — 52.9MB)

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Shrine to the Ink Goddess

by Monte Lin

Dana Liu took her weekly ten-minute walk to what she called the Shrine to the Ink Goddess. Stepping through the copse of trees that separated the apartment complex and the storm channel, she arrived at a large, hollowed-out eucalyptus tree, split into three parts ages ago from a lightning bolt. She ducked down and sat in the middle, placing an empty inkstone next to her, and took out a beat-up metal food container with a warm zòngzi, the twine still tightly wrapped around the bamboo leaves. With her multi-tool, she snapped the knife through the twine, unfurling the leaves. She grimaced at the soggy bottom (microwaving never seemed to heat them right).

“Ahem. You know you shouldn’t be here, Dana.”

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Cast of Wonders 502: Little Wonders 34 – Separation & Connection

Cast of Wonders 502: Little Wonders 34 – Separation & Connection is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:05 — 49.6MB)

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Show Notes

Of Bugs, Debts and Distant Planets was originally published in Fifth Di… Magazine in June 2021

Of Bugs, Debts, and Distant Planets

by Vera Brook

The blue-green farming fields of Kenor surround me like a waist-deep sea as I sweep another fern, the bugs rattling like pebbles down the clear tube of my vacuum. One cold, alien sun hangs to my right, another to my left.

There’s nothing I’ll miss about this world when I leave tonight.

Except Jace. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 470: Matches

This story originally appeared in The Philippines Graphic Magazine in February 2019 and won First Prize in the Nick Joaquin Literary Awards for fiction.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:13 — 29.9MB)

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Matches

by Sydney Paige Guerrero

Madge used to make wishes on raindrops. Lev always said that you could see more raindrops on windows than stars in the night sky and while airplanes and city lights may try to trick you, raindrops were never anything except exactly what they were. Back when they were nine years old and his house was a sanctuary from the emptiness of her own home, they would spend hours wishing for impossible things–ice cream cones that tasted like any flavor they could think of, unicorns and giant robots whisking them away from their math homework, Madge’s father coming home from Singapore to celebrate her birthday. Their fingers would draw new constellations, follow raindrops as they slid across the glass like shooting stars, and let themselves believe that anything was possible even just for a while.

It would be easy, she thinks, to make such a wish now as she watches raindrops quiver on the taxi window. Madge could wish the past year and a half away, go back to a time before she and Lev broke up, before he told her he was getting married, before she ran away to an entirely different universe to escape him. Easy, yes, but certainly not true. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 454: The Fairy Queen

Cast of Wonders 454: The Fairy Queen is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:02 — 23.4MB)

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The Fairy Queen

by Lynn Buchanan

She made the first fairy by accident, with a twig she found under a hawthorn tree. It was a stick possessing the general shape of a human, with offshoots that resembled arms and legs, and a knot she called a head. Sitting in the shade of the tree, she wrapped a bit of twine around the twig’s torso, tearing off a piece of thread from the cuff of her sleeve and decorating the “arms” in tight white lines. With a ribbon pulled from her hair she clothed the stick, folding the silk into a tunic tied at the back with a bow. For hair she picked up a strand of leaves from the grass beside her, fastening the stem down the slope of the wooden face with three pieces of her own hair, pulled with a jerk and grimace from her skull and braided into a cord the color of sunsets. Last of all she attached to the twig’s back a set of butterfly wings, collected earlier that day from a trip to the garden. (Continue Reading…)