Alternate universe Stories

Lena lay naked on the sand in the middle of the night, right on the tideline, where the shore met the sea. She dozed on the edge of dreams, more in the water than out of it now, though when she first lay down only her feet were submerged. The tide had risen since then. Each wave took the water incrementally closer. Her feet and ankles grew wet first, her long legs followed, a few inches at a time. Cold stars glowed in the...

The harpooner was drunk. Quinn lay passed out on the floor of his quarters, naked, stinking of sweat and cheap whiskey. The shouting of his colleagues could not rouse him, nor could their pushing and shaking. The boatswain finally left the room and returned quickly with a bucket of cold seawater, which he threw in desperation onto the motionless shape on the floor. Quinn stirred, bolted suddenly awake, and twisted around...

The ocean raged like a wounded beast miles above them, whipped up by the violent thunderstorm passing overhead, but the tempest barely registered eight hundred fathoms beneath the surface. It certainly did not register to Tess, intent as she was on the moonlight colored pearl she held lightly between her teeth, readying herself to push it with a trembling tongue into the waiting labial lips of Eperia, her secret lover and...