Morgan Aloia

“Love for One's Own” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #241

Love for One’s Own (I)75th of Nemulum, 313 EAPeyr MyarsaLeça stood at the lowest edge of the city of Peyr, their dutiful vigilance a bastion against the cruel and tempestuous swamp they dared not tread.They were alone in their alertness, if not in their duty, as from their periphery a figure approached on return from patrol of the docks. He was a younger man, shabby and scruffy, dressed in weathered green homespun. The only thing of any value on him was his wedding band, a single ring of solid iron. He nodded promptly to Leça, settling himse...

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“Aetherdrawn” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #239

The aether stood, a billowing wall of blur bounding the whole of the very small world.  Mepka stormed alongside it, taking miles of the swamp with spiteful steps. Where she could, she pounced from patch to patch of packed dirt using felled trees and moss-eaten boulders as stepping stones. In each of those places where the waters had been so gluttonous as to have taken any possible path beneath their murky surface, she jabbed her staff like a knife until they gave up a passable shallowness. She used the aether as a guide, following i...

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“The Path They Made” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #239

There was something no longer right about this place for Aldrich. He stood there, made still by the feeling that this world had been taken just a quarter turn off of its natural hinge.Taking his way through he had passed over grass still green and wind still blowing, and that was right. He had heard the distant lap of waves against the coast and seen the rummaging of a litter of wild boar, and that was right as well. He had watched wagons pass with nods, children peeking out with smiles, and still his nerve was not assuaged.It was not until ...

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“Where the Mundane Would Seem More Useful” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #237

“I’m a guildfellow, here,” Ferrik tried to cut through the excited din of the tavern to his date, “I work as a smith.”“Oh! An artificer, how lovely!” Orivyre was dressed too well for this dive, where the tables were all beersticky and the bartender knew next to every face. “I always thought that the process of enchanting was such a noble pursuit, the binding of magic to material.”“Oh, no,” Ferrik leaned away on his stool. “I mean, sure, I know some very talented artificers, and they’re great, but I’m not one of them. I’m a smith, I do metalw...

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“No Beds” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #237

There were no beds, outside of Peyr. Not as far as Jagos knew, at least. He and Mirdel slept on planks hoisted up into low marshland trees, for as long as the boughs would hold them. When they were intimate it was standing calf-deep in mud more often than not. They’d lean against their slobsled, the one that Mirdel had stolen and piled everything they owned onto, and they’d take each other rough.That’s what made this such a treat, rolling around in feather-filled luxury. It wasn’t even a particularly nice mattress, frayed and clumpy, bu...

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“Beyond the Veil of Drowning” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #236

“There was a god here, once.” Adysl recited, feeling out across the wallstones of the crumbling and emptied temple, the last of Myarsa, “I know this to be true.” “You have such faith, conservator.” Kadius basked in an awe that radiated disquietingly towards his precious charge. His axe was still heavy in hand from their escortment across the swamp. He had brandished it at the penitents that usually flooded the temple, picking away at its intruding roots, and had not seemed to have had compunctions about using it if they had disobeyed his c...

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“Final Retreat” by Morgan Aloia

All that Mepka had left in this world was the sound of the door coming unbarred. Leaping from her crouched position, she thrust through with a crack and a crunch. Niolette cried out in high pitch as Mepka knocked her to the side. Not waiting for the shock to wear off from her captor’s reedy features, she dashed up the ladder through the hatch and into a display room of intricate stonework and relics recovered from the ruins of Myarsa. She pushed past a dividing pillar into a hall. Her vision caught a dead-end right into a sitting room, fir...

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“Pressure-Packed” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #235

For Mepka, being alone in the cabin was not nearly the same as being alone in the wilderness. There was a disquiet to the place, like it might tell her mother of any secret thing she did sitting in its guts. Still, by herself for the first time in weeks, Mepka couldn’t help but call out her word. "Ahtr’ul" She swept hands over the course of her figure. Where they passed she faded from existence ever so slightly, ever so briefly. The call allowed her a moment of peace, to feel as though she was there and not here. She called out for that...

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“Chasing Sunlight” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #234

Claude sat in rapture on a public bench that he felt in a very deep and personal way belonged to him, because it was where he spent a brief period every day smoking his pipe just prior to his afternoon shift at the manufactury where he dumped most of his waking hours.  He had been joined there that day by the bleach-clean skeleton of a cat, moving of it’s own accord. It had sat with him for some half of an hour now, and in that time he thought of the other pitiable scavengers he had seen about the streets of Roullac. He found no resem...

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“Wherever It Drew” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #234

Irec had never shown much interest in the circumstances of his own life. He lived well, on high in Peyr, he came from a good family. He married at a young age, just as his herbalism practice was rising to the forefront on the upper decks of the city. His wife was named Estrid, and she was not anybody he had known well before pulling her up to be courted but she had an insistent way about her and he had not needed much convincing. They had a baby, and named that baby Mepka. All the while, he followed along the pull of obligation wherever...

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“Sand and Seagrass” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #233

Cano crouched completely motionless, listening the gentle slap of the waves against his wooden canoe. A tall rod hung over the side with a line trailing down into the depths of the limpid water. He squinted against the sun’s reflection, tracking the telltale shifting of his prey as they moved around his hook.Fishing in these reefs had become a waiting game, and so Cano waited. The floor below created a backdrop of polychromatic coral spotted with patches of sand and seagrass. Cano scanned the water for fish large enough to provide food, but ...

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“Spaces Between Where We Are Sure” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #232

Sylber saw the shape of a whisper, rippling out across endless disjointed space, and it drew him to fixation.He was sitting, now, days later, searching in his way staying perfectly still. The passage of time seemed suspended as he delved into the intricate patterns of the starlit tapestry adorning the ceiling above him. Erudite symbols intertwined, capturing the essence of all that had ever been seen. Each symbol was a gateway to knowledge, a testament to the countless explorations undertaken by the scholars of the Athalial League. The livin...

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“Rites of Interchange” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #231

“I grow weary of this travel, Grejyre.” These were the words which set Grejyre’s once carefully manicured life into tumult. They were spoken from the reflection of a pool of enchanted water in a private sanctum at the very highest peak of the grand library that Grejyre had devoted her life to, by a peer she respected more deeply than anyone else, and though the words themselves were not imbued with any magic of charm nor binding it made no difference for she still knew herself to be compelled by them. “Are there no more libraries to plum...

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“Maintaining a Mind Apart” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #231

Mepka reentered the cabin side-by-side with the first rays of gray light off of the horizon.  Estrid woke with a vigor, demanding to know where her daughter had been. Mepka took the tiff as it came, letting barbs glance off of her with little need to respond in kind. Estrid seemed not to know what to do with this newfound lack of spar in her daughter, and so by the end of that first day returned she fell into a fuming silence. This suited Mepka fine, for whom a period of time was necessary to reacclimate to the world. The swamp arou...

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“How to Elicit an Unreasonable Reaction” by Morgan Aloia

Submitted to Contest #230

1) Birth the subject in a suburban town in east Texas, in a community that completely and totally denigrates queerness. Let's call this place Pearland, as an example.2) Really work hard to butch them up, because something is clearly amiss on that front.3) They will realize they are trans, but will not have any context for what to do about that and so they will:3a) Internalize prevalent narratives about the pitiful and perverted nature that trans people have inherent to their being.3b) Vacuum-seal themselves in the closet.3c) Learn to disasso...

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