Nicole Field > Recent Status Updates

Indulgent, philosophical short.

Gemma Amor has completely ruined me with this story of grief and The Emperor and pulling oneself back from Underland and into life once more.

Peter Fontus, last of the water gods, shows the springs will not be denied.

Starting this anthology with a Sauútiverse story.

Even understanding your mental illness and knowing rationally what to do about it didn’t mean it didn’t *suck*.

Mari sucks her teeth. "Sorry, Javi. I told my dad not to be rude. He apparently left his manners at home."

We also know that during a ceremony - probably the enthronement of a new king called Augeias - they threw a crazy feast. An entire cow, twenty-six rams, six sheep, four goats, and seven pigs. All together over two tons of meat. Not to mention the thousands of kilos of fruit and vegetables, honey and wine!

At the time, scribes used to write on unbaked clay shaped either like a leave or a page. The tablets were then classified by subject in wicker or wooden boxes, and archived. When the season ended and a new cycle of accounts, etc., began, they would take the pieces of clay - the tablets, as we call them - and use water to soften and reuse them.

My head felt like a calculator that someone had managed to download the entire Internet onto.

She’s the woman of my nightmares and dreams, my torment and my joy. My own personal demon.

I want to consume you, she said. She didn’t stay around long enough to ask whether I wanted to be consumed.

This is it. This is the moment I release all remaining loyalty to my father and give myself fully to this impossible thing between Diavola and me. I don’t know what it means, and I don’t care. She’s been my torment and obsession for ten years, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise. I want her like I’ve never wanted anything else.

Space is full of panic and boredom in random allotments.

Zee told him that having your enemy overestimate you was as useful as having them underestimate you.

We’re so terrible to each other already. Why do we need devils among us, too?

It looks less like a place people ever lived, and more like a cemetery. Stone edifices marking only absence.

“I know that expression. My aunt had it, too. She saw one, when she was young, and she never forgot it. It drove her mad, eventually.”

“Oh, Little Fox. I thought you’d read your father’s journals. I thought you understood what you were chasing.”

There’s no room for love in a heart that can’t even hold itself together.

“Your father once had a friend over, some doctor. Upsetting young British man, about to start running an asylum. There was a coldness to his gaze I didn’t care for. I was bringing drinks up to them, and I overheard your father say that he was well within his rights to divorce me and have me put away forever because I was crazy with grief. But he had resigned himself to taking care of me out of duty.”

You look so sad, pretending to be a person as you walk these streets. Your costume strains at the edges. Your friends don’t see it, but I do.

Because by the time he died, my father was consumed with madness. I thought I would find the work of a brilliant scientist, doctor, and researcher. Instead, his journals detailed occult practices, theories about supernatural creatures walking among us, and outlandish tales of his own efforts to kill them. A genius, reduced to paranoid ramblings about vampires, demons, and monsters.

We found streets and squares, entire neighbourhoods of well-built, two-storey houses with every imaginable comfort inside and decorated with incredible wall paintings. [...]These houses attested to a truly enviable standard of living, with their elegant carved furniture and beautiful vases.

Knossos, amongst the earliest and largest of the various Minoan palaces, was unparalleled in size, extravagance, and magnificence, not only for the duration of prehistory but for many subsequent centuries. It contained monumental staircases and central courtyards, enormous storage rooms, reception spaces, baths, paved roadways, a water management and sewer system, even a water-flushing latrine!

Apollo, who grabbed a golden sword, slashed through the cloth, rose on his two feet, and instantaneously grew to adulthood. Then, the entire Aegean was bathed in light. A herd of swans, come from the distant lands of the far north, circled seven times around the now sacred palm tree, and all the Olympians gathered to marvel at the new god of light.

“We get along well, and he told me he’s attracted to older men, but being attracted to older men and having sex with them isn’t the same as being in a relationship with a busted old goalie with an unreliable libido.”
“Um.”
“Sorry. That was probably too much information.”

“I am destined to be the madwoman for eternity, but I will fear no man on this earth.”

“This, where we stand here and now, is life. It’s joyous and awful and complicated, sometimes painful, but it’s real and true. Often, it doesn’t make sense - there isn’t always a move you can make to fix things, or a logical way out of a trap. But there’s always light to be found, if you would just turn halfway from the darkness.”

He was the perfect blend of distinguished and shy. Confident about who he was, but timid about what he wanted.