New Projects
I love starting out new stuff. It’s dangerous, in that I can easily fall into building new worlds and starting new stories only to never quite get around to finishing them (an ugly, all-too-common habit of many, many writers). But in this case, it’s okay. It means I’ve got fodder.
I started building an environment for “Hounded,” which is my contribution to a Halloween anthology in Liquid Silver’s Molten line, entitled “A Witch In Time.” I’m, as you may expect, the Future. Hounded is very hotly written – I’ve tried some things in there I didn’t expect I would try, much less have fun doing. Lin, my heroine, is very much a no-nonsense, brass-balled bitch. She’s got a mission, and nothing will stop her. However, she’s not averse to detours…
Music blared from the speaker poles placed at intervals along the street, behind a voice-over of a feminine voice extolling the historic occasion of LEO independence. The citizens of Cinco City, also known as LEO-Ring 5, for Low-Earth Orbit, danced along with the music, hugged each other, and snapped flash holographs of the floats.
The lights hurt her eyes, and the bitterness squeezed her heart. Once this parade reached the Cinco City spaceport, LEOs would be one step closer to true freedom from Earth, thanks to the massive solar array known as Helios. Yay for the LEOs, she thought. Too bad Earth still needed the Moon enough not to permit the same freedoms for the He-3 miners who lived and worked there. Forty percent of her paycheck, along with the payloads of Helium-3, would still find its way down into the Earth’s treasure chests for the foreseeable future, while the LEOs suddenly found themselves with more money than they knew what to do with.
Don’t think about politics–concentrate on the task at hand, she told herself. Find him. She scanned the crowd and waited for something–anything–to tug at her midsection and let her know she’d found the man she was looking for.
Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Her pendulum, its chain dangling from the end of her toy bow, swung quiescently, pushed by nothing more than the motion of the anti-grav platform on which the float rested. So far, the only thing the little chip of diamond had done was hide her little “condition” and its associated stigmas. She was supposed to have found her target by now, but so far all she found was that she rather enjoyed the idea that the crowd could see her naked body through her sheer tunic. She liked being watched.
The downside to this meant that the little thrill of warmth that zipped through her grew as the parade float made its way past more people. She leaned back on her foam-form crescent moon and thrust her breasts out, indulging in a little harmless exhibition for the crowd. The people lining the street seemed to appreciate it. Several men clapped and tossed gold glitter at the float. She smiled back and waved again, taking special care to wink at the dour-faced Doomsayer protesters holding up their little marquee signs scrolling LED-lit messages predicting Armageddon due to mankind’s arrogance.
One of the protesters stumbled into the parade path. Flashing street lights began to rotate, and his compatriots yanked him back into the crowd just as the plexiglas barrier rose from a slot in the street surface. She scanned the crowd and saw that the protester’s forward gaffe erupted from a disturbance behind him. A crowd of people wearing white coveralls with red braid–Cinco City’s Finest–were pushing through the revelers, scanning with their little handhelds. One pointed forward and the group moved down the street, shoving at the dancing people in their way.
Rude, she thought, and turned to the crowds on the left. One of the “handmaidens” on the lower tier of the float flung a handful of Moon-cakes out into the crowd. Some people were actually stupid enough to reach for them. The Moon was famous for many things: its bright nocturnal gleam, its influence on Earth tides, its inspiration for insanity, its ore-mining. It was not known for its confectionery.
A young man with stag antlers strapped to his head waved and called out, “They’ll rot your teeth!” He flashed his loincloth at the onlookers and Lin repressed a sigh. If only he weren’t gay, she thought, eyeing the bulge underneath the scrap of synthetic doeskin. Ask him if he’s bi, her voice of reason prodded. It’s been over a week, and your little problem isn’t going to wait.
The crowd cheered, she waved again and nocked a toy arrow, pretending to aim for the young buck. Too bad it was illegal to find a compatible man that way. It would be a lot less complicated than having to explain that yes, she did have an aggressive libido and no, it didn’t make her a slut. She’d trade in the false promises to call afterwards for a little gentleness and creativity during. But she’d settle for finding someone who wouldn’t automatically put her under quarantine.
Her little problem was growing again. She needed a man, and soon. Already, her focus strayed towards finding potential mates rather than her mission. If she let the situation go, it would only get worse. Small price to pay in exchange for health, though. The float wobbled and her attention went from the crowd to the float.
My prayers have been answered, she thought, looking down at the man crouched at her feet and staring up at her with the most liquid brown eyes she’d ever seen. “Come to get a blessing from the Moon goddess?” she asked.
Where he’d come from, she didn’t know. But she knew where he’d be spending the night. She smiled and raised her leg, feeling a thrill as his eyes followed her motion, and his gaze drifted upward to what she exposed for his benefit. His hunter’s cap rested crookedly on silky auburn hair that curled over his forehead and led to an aquiline nose, whose nostrils flared as if catching her scent. The blush creeping up his neck from the collar of his white shirt surprised her.
Very deliberately, she set her foot down right over his crotch and felt heat and hardness there. An answering flush of heat coiled between her legs. Without the confinement of underwear, she felt herself swell and open, sudden and immediate. I could do him right here, she realized. On this float, and with people watching. Spacedust, but that’s a turn-on.
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