Science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy,
speculative fiction and a touch of horror, this collection plays with just
about every genre it can lay its hands on. C.M. Simpson explores new worlds,
new settings and lets loose some ideas that just needed to be gotten out of her
head.
If short stories are your thing—and the
shorter the better—you can find tiny tales from a wide variety of genres in 365
Days of Flash Fiction.
Some of them are tales of fantasy mixed
with science fiction and a touched by speculative, like this one:
Bellberries and Chime Beetles
I was thinking of my young adult science fiction
novel, in which a little girl is the first to eat a very blue berry. It wasn’t
complete at the time, and it’s set in a universe without this kind of dragon,
but it built on the idea of a small, blue dragon very nicely. This piece was
written on November 16, 2013 for the November 8 entry of 365 Days of Flash Fiction. It is exactly 210 words long.
The little dragon shimmered like sapphire,
tucking its wings neatly against its sides and cocking its head as it
approached the child seated on the grass. She was eating bellberries, shaking
each one so that the seed rattled, and giggling at the different notes ringing
from each. Her fingers were stained blue and rivulets of juice were painting
azure streaks down her wrists, chin and neck. Her brown eyes widened as she
noticed the creature before her. It made a trilling chirp, asking for what it
needed. The little girl smiled and held out her half-eaten berry, but the
dragon turned its face away. Hesitantly, it laid a claw on one of the seeds
carefully arranged on the grass in front of her. Frowning, the girl picked it
up and held it out. The dragon churred, carefully taking the hard-shelled seed
from the child’s tiny hand—and then it bit down hard, causing the beetle within
to jangle with fear. The little girl laughed, clapping her hands, as the dragon
crunched the sweet-sounding delicacy between its teeth. It could see a long and
happy friendship ahead, one remarkably free of hunger. Usually it had to wait
until the chime beetles emerged. In sufficient amounts, bellberry flesh was
poisonous to dragons.
365
Days of Flash Fiction is scheduled for release on
October 4, 2014, and pre-ordering should be available soon.
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