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Night Skier (part two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 29 minutes)

Open Season on Man

Micah really only needed one other person to help him attach the chair to the lift, but he knew Charlie well enough to know he could never amount to one whole unit of helpfulness. He was the kid who always veered off the trail on his sled. Threw his bowling ball into the next lane. Got the wrong order at a restaurant and ate it without a word of acknowledgment or complaint.

He’d seen the boy, at several different ages, wander in from the trails with various bloody scrapes and contusions, a smile on his face, no idea how it happened but certain that it didn’t even hurt, not one little bit. Continue reading →

Night Skier (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 7 Comments

Watermelon Peak is a unique ski resort, and fun for the whole family!  The algae in the powder dyes the whole mountain a lovely pink, and we even have an exhibit for the movie studio that used to take advantage of this unique color for many of its special effects!

Only the resort is closed for the weekend.  One group makes the trip anyway, to relive their glory days of movie making, leaving crimson trails in the disturbed snow.  Behind them comes another figure, clad in black, with sharpened skis mounted on his back.  His glory days are ahead of him.

(reading time: 56 minutes) (reading time for entire novel: 5 hours, 9 minutes)

nightskierupload

by

Blaine Arcade

The Night it Snowed Blood

The single runway at the Dutcheny private airfield and hangar would never again be as smooth as it was that night. Filled with cracks, it was never that smooth to begin with, but the weeds were determined to make it so much worse. Stubborn grasses allied with the sorts of plants that don’t look prickly until you grab one and realize fine translucent hairs have embedded in your skin. Every Colorado summer they devoured the sun drawn to the rock, clawing their way up through the cracks, continuing their vendetta against civilization so they could return it to the peaceful meadow it had once been. Continue reading →

Twenty-four Days of Ringworm and Religion: Christmas Eve Finale

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to what is likely your first advent calendar fantasy novel!  Each day is a chapter, and should be read as such, but who am I to stop you from catching up? (This way to Day One!)  What follows is the story of one Marzipan Ridner, a young trans girl aching for the fulfillment of the holiday season.  When a mysterious wooden Advent calendar shows up she opens the first door, and finds herself whisked away to a world-tree of contrasting deities and binding bureaucracy.  She has less than a month to find someone willing to be her spiritual patron, but the denizens of the tree don’t seem very hospitable…

(reading time: 18 minutes)

On the Twenty-fourth Day

Without scavenging for dead things in her backyard each day, Marzipan’s stockpile of sacrifices had run dry. She ended up picking some friend chicken bones out of the trash, the remains of Mom’s dinner the previous night. Continue reading →

Twenty-four Days of Ringworm and Religion: Day Twenty-three

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to what is likely your first advent calendar fantasy novel!  Each day is a chapter, and should be read as such, but who am I to stop you from catching up? (This way to Day One!)  What follows is the story of one Marzipan Ridner, a young trans girl aching for the fulfillment of the holiday season.  When a mysterious wooden Advent calendar shows up she opens the first door, and finds herself whisked away to a world-tree of contrasting deities and binding bureaucracy.  She has less than a month to find someone willing to be her spiritual patron, but the denizens of the tree don’t seem very hospitable…

(reading time: 16 minutes)

On the Twenty-third Day

Though they didn’t care whether or not they ruined Saint Bernardino, both Marzipan and Langcorn were fully committed to the last two legs of their journey. They wanted Christmas eve to be an emergency day in case anything went wrong, so they decided to take a risk and hopefully save nearly a day of travel on door number twenty-three. They each, during that morning in their respective eras, took up a nail and attacked the tiny door frame on their calendar. Continue reading →

Twenty-four Days of Ringworm and Religion: Day Twenty-two

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to what is likely your first advent calendar fantasy novel!  Each day is a chapter, and should be read as such, but who am I to stop you from catching up? (This way to Day One!)  What follows is the story of one Marzipan Ridner, a young trans girl aching for the fulfillment of the holiday season.  When a mysterious wooden Advent calendar shows up she opens the first door, and finds herself whisked away to a world-tree of contrasting deities and binding bureaucracy.  She has less than a month to find someone willing to be her spiritual patron, but the denizens of the tree don’t seem very hospitable…

(reading time: 10 minutes)

On the Twenty-second Day

Marzipan’s decision to wear her blue otter dress to the tree on every remaining day immediately backfired. It made her stick out so much that they caught the attention of one Saint Bernardino, who had been hunting them for a few days now. Continue reading →

Twenty-four Days of Ringworm and Religion: Day Twenty-one

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to what is likely your first advent calendar fantasy novel!  Each day is a chapter, and should be read as such, but who am I to stop you from catching up? (This way to Day One!)  What follows is the story of one Marzipan Ridner, a young trans girl aching for the fulfillment of the holiday season.  When a mysterious wooden Advent calendar shows up she opens the first door, and finds herself whisked away to a world-tree of contrasting deities and binding bureaucracy.  She has less than a month to find someone willing to be her spiritual patron, but the denizens of the tree don’t seem very hospitable…

(reading time: 9 minutes)

On the Twenty-first Day

Virdihorn had done just as he said. Upon opening their scratched doors, despite small splinters falling away, they both emerged back onto the snowy boughs of the upper tree. Moonlight ruled the day of the solstice, and there wasn’t another soul to be found anywhere. It seemed this was a year where no men made it that far, that the goddess would spend alone if not for the two visiting calendars. Continue reading →

Twenty-four Days of Ringworm and Religion: Day Twenty

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to what is likely your first advent calendar fantasy novel!  Each day is a chapter, and should be read as such, but who am I to stop you from catching up? (This way to Day One!)  What follows is the story of one Marzipan Ridner, a young trans girl aching for the fulfillment of the holiday season.  When a mysterious wooden Advent calendar shows up she opens the first door, and finds herself whisked away to a world-tree of contrasting deities and binding bureaucracy.  She has less than a month to find someone willing to be her spiritual patron, but the denizens of the tree don’t seem very hospitable…

(reading time: 13 minutes)

On the Twentieth Day

The next day the snow fell even heavier, but only in patches. It wasn’t fresh, merely banks from the day before being disturbed and tumbling to branches below. Marzipan and Langcorn dodged the clumps as they fell, running through battened down saint streets winding through the boughs. Continue reading →

Twenty-four Days of Ringworm and Religion: Day Nineteen

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to what is likely your first advent calendar fantasy novel!  Each day is a chapter, and should be read as such, but who am I to stop you from catching up? (This way to Day One!)  What follows is the story of one Marzipan Ridner, a young trans girl aching for the fulfillment of the holiday season.  When a mysterious wooden Advent calendar shows up she opens the first door, and finds herself whisked away to a world-tree of contrasting deities and binding bureaucracy.  She has less than a month to find someone willing to be her spiritual patron, but the denizens of the tree don’t seem very hospitable…

(reading time: 10 minutes)

On the Nineteenth Day

The tree had been mostly green during their visits. They thought the blizzard they’d trudged through with Saint Defendens’s wolves was localized, either magically summoned and kept there or a storm that roamed between branches the way a hurricane might alligator crawl across a coast before dying. Continue reading →

Twenty-four Days of Ringworm and Religion: Day Eighteen

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to what is likely your first advent calendar fantasy novel!  Each day is a chapter, and should be read as such, but who am I to stop you from catching up? (This way to Day One!)  What follows is the story of one Marzipan Ridner, a young trans girl aching for the fulfillment of the holiday season.  When a mysterious wooden Advent calendar shows up she opens the first door, and finds herself whisked away to a world-tree of contrasting deities and binding bureaucracy.  She has less than a month to find someone willing to be her spiritual patron, but the denizens of the tree don’t seem very hospitable…

(reading time: 13 minutes)

On the Eighteenth Day

The saints and pagans alike breathed easy that day. Several of the more paranoid were poised to trick, assault, or threaten the visitors if they had to, but Marzipan and Langcorn never made it past the hall of Saint Perpetuus. Instead they simply stood in the middle of it, having some sort of argument, until they both left, but, curiously, it was through the same door this time. Continue reading →

Twenty-four Days of Ringworm and Religion: Day Seventeen

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Welcome to what is likely your first advent calendar fantasy novel!  Each day is a chapter, and should be read as such, but who am I to stop you from catching up? (This way to Day One!)  What follows is the story of one Marzipan Ridner, a young trans girl aching for the fulfillment of the holiday season.  When a mysterious wooden Advent calendar shows up she opens the first door, and finds herself whisked away to a world-tree of contrasting deities and binding bureaucracy.  She has less than a month to find someone willing to be her spiritual patron, but the denizens of the tree don’t seem very hospitable…

(reading time: 13 minutes)

On the Seventeenth Day

They were hoping to see some giant birds, as that was what one would assume lived inside a giant bird’s nest, but it had fallen out of use. The closest thing they could find were shards of speckled eggshell. It looked as if it should have been filled with cobwebs, but the pagan spiders of the tree probably had cozy little homes of their own, perhaps palm-sized cottages hanging from single threads like ornaments. Continue reading →