The Bluestocking Firefly

Grayson leant back in his chair and slowly rotated back and forth, a grin on his face as he watched the woman on the vidscreen. "You think of a name yet?" Sophia sat back on her heels. "I thought that was supposed to be your job," she teased, pushing hair back from her face and leaving a streak of dirt across her cheek. "What are you planting?" "A vegetable garden," she replied, holding up a tiny plant. "By the time the baby's born in spring I'll be able to send you out to pick cucumbers from the garden to put in the salad." Grayson's smile faded from his face. "Soph - " She put down the plant. "Morgan, you promised." "It's not that easy, Soph - " Sophia pushed herself to her feet and bent awkwardly to retrieve the vidscreen, giving Grayson a momentarily disorienting view of her legs and stomach. "How hard can it be, Morgan?" she asked, walking inside. She set the vi

Annieka lugged the chair from her mother's vanity over to the closet and clambered up onto the seat. Standing on tiptoe, her eyes were just level with the edge of the shelf; she wasn't tall enough to tell if the toy ships confiscated earlier that day had been secreted towards the back where she couldn't see them, or if she was looking in the wrong place entirely. The manor had hundreds of hiding places. About to climb down and return the chair to its original position, she heard voices in the hallway and froze. She wasn't allowed in her parents' bedroom; it was one of the few places in the manor that was completely off-limits. Panicking, she pushed the chair into the closet and dove in behind it. With the addition of the chair as well as herself, Annieka had trouble angling the closet doors closed, and as the bedroom door opened she sank to the floor and tried not to breathe. Seamus Brenner swept into the room, bringing with him the familiar smells of engine oi

The summer sun beat down on Meridani, making metal burn to the touch and drying sweat as soon as it formed on the skin. A momentary breeze swept across the road, tossing up dust in the faces of the team of horses toiling up the incline. The driver glanced down at the uniformed man walking beside the team, his lips pinching together. "I can't take them much further," he said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Not hauling that." The man squinted up at him, shading his eyes with his hand. "How much farther is it to this mechanic of yours?" "Not far," the driver said, pointing with his chin. "Just over the rise." "Can they take it that far?" The driver settled back in his seat. "You gonna pay me if the horses drop dead?" The man shrugged, stepping over a pothole. "Suppose so." The team continued its laborious way up the incline, pulling behind it a space-to-dirt hopper pod on rollers. The

The Natterby Close Home for Unwanted Girls and Boys was a less than inspiring place for a child to grow up. Originally housed solely in a tall, narrow pre-Empire-era building of crumbling grey brick, overcrowding had over the years forced expansion into the once-empty lot next door, leading to an ugly and incongruous two-story extension built out of cheap pre-fab material that had (unheeded) been recalled for structural flaws. The matron of the Home, Beatrice Fitzpatrick, had looked after the building and its inhabitants for forty-seven years, since the former matron had unexpectedly died and Beatrice had felt called, at the age of eighteen, to step forward from her position as an inhabitant of the Home to take on the mantle of protector to the children she called her ducklings. The fact that she neither liked children nor knew anything whatsoever about running a children’s home had not troubled her in the slightest; from the time she was small, Beatrice had been a disagreeable child