Archive | June 14, 2018

Teaching the Geometry (of Life) – a Patreon story

Jun14

originally posted Jun 14, 2018 on Patreon⭕

Mr. Reginato had been teaching 10th-grade advanced mathematics for a very long time.  A very, very long time, but the old paper records were long since gone and, since students enjoyed his class, he didn’t seem to be a line-item on the pension fund, and the school’s test scores in mathematics grade 10 and above had always been superb – or at least as long as people knew Mr. Reginato had been there – nobody was going to talk to him about retiring.

As a matter of fact, they were paying him, it appeared, approximately $100 a year, which absolutely couldn’t be correct, but that was the number that the accountant had in her files, and nobody really wanted to ask her any questions either. Continue reading →

Spoils of War 8: Mountains and Rats

Jun14

First: Spoils of War I: Surrender
Previous: Hostile

Aran was staring at her.  Nikol wished she had a real answer for him, but she didn’t think he’d like knowing that she’d spared his life on a whim.  

She shrugged instead and took a big bite of her own food.  “Yeah. I’d had enough. Me, alone, I’m not enough to take them down, but I might not have been the only one to run, either…. what?”

He was staring at her.  “You want to… take down… the Mountain?”

“Don’t you?”  She took another big bit of her food.  “Not like, today or anything. But yes.  I would like to destroy the Mountain eventually.”

“Is that why you-”  His gesture was unclear, but she had a pretty good idea what he was talking about.

“No.”  She shook her head and finished her bite of food.  “No. I took you because it was that or kill you, and I was sick of killing.” Continue reading →