I met him on the road to everywhere. Windows down, the summer kissed air tumbled around me. Cat's eyes stretched away ahead into the unseen distance - an invitation of infinite possibility. He stood half in shadow at the edge of the empty tarmac. Solitary in the twilight. I stopped and asked him where he [...]
The old gods are not dead. You might see them, strolling amongst us. No longer robed in power but clad in fraying knitwear and scuffed shoes. They make their homes in unlikely places - the wreck at the end of the pier, the lean-to behind the power substation on a run down estate. Nothing grand [...]
It has been a whole year today since I first sent my little book out into the world. When I published, Thrive, I did it for myself, with very few expectations in the way of sales, reviews or reach. It is a small book with a small readership written with the simple hope that it [...]
It only took a handful of years after the fall for the wild to reclaim the land. It crept and wrapped itself around the hostile world. Mother Nature embracing her unruly child, turning rebellion into submission. All we had built with such disregard crumbed to dust, subsumed by the earth. What is the work of [...]
She looked at me with earnest, curious eyes. "Where did you get them, Grandmother?" "Oh, they came from all over. From different times and places, different moments and feelings. I carved them from tears and laughter, joy and worry, time and remembering. Each is as precious to me as the last because they show I [...]
Your fairy tales have it all wrong. I am the Master of the Spindle and I spin not from straw but from magic. My silks are not of gold but of stardust. I spin nets to catch dreams from the night and jewels from the morning air. I spin swathes of silken lace fine enough [...]
Dawn mist creeps up the valley, diffusing the gentle warmth of early day across the ochre earth. The Adhan dances from mountain to mountain, carrying softly, coaxingly through the still, sleepy air. I am a stranger in this land but it calls me still. A tender hand on my brow, my shoulder, welcoming me home. [...]
Frost clings to the ground. The cold still holding the world in its grip. Breath plumes in clouds from the mouths of passersby and tears freeze on cheeks. These are the days of deepest sorrow. But look - there - a glimmer in the blackness. A gleam of starlight reflected in ice, the twinkle of [...]
The record had played itself out hours ago but it spun tunelessly on. The rhythmic scratch and bump of the needle a counter point to their slow and steady breathing, whispering through the quiet dark. No words passed their lips, no flitting shadow broke their gaze. Gentle fingers on warm skin was all the language [...]
He passes, unseen, through the early morning market. Cloaked in shadow, slipping between the stalls, none mark him for what he is. Only the dead eyes of the morning's catch notice that he is more than shade - but their time for talking is long gone, and so it doesn't matter. Even he doesn't know [...]
Thrive In Chaos 