[Elements] Be meets Al, K, and V

For reference: https://imgur.com/gallery/OawUY

"Through here!" Alli called to me, her voice barely audible over the rumble of machinery.  "We're close now!"

"Close to what?" I shouted back, although I knew that it wasn't of any use.  The girl had already dashed too far ahead to hear my response, and even though she'd disappeared out of view, I saw a door fly open ahead of me.

Shaking my head, I hurried after her.  What we were even doing here, in this dangerous factory, wasn't clear to me.  But this girl was my only contact, and I had to follow her.

Writing Prompt: The futile efforts of a slutty secretary.

"So, Mr. Carlyle, is there anything else I can get you?" the young woman asked, making sure that her breasts, hanging heavy in her low-cut blouse, just barely brushed against the man's suited shoulder.

The man, however, didn't glance up from his paperwork.  "No, Missy, that will be all, I think," he said, waving one hand vaguely in the air.

Missy felt a little put out, but she straightened up carefully, making sure to accentuate the long, slender lines of her figure.  Her mini-skirt ended only a fraction of an inch below the perfect curves of her ass, and if Richard Carlyle happened to slide one hand up along the inside of her perfect bronze thigh, he'd soon find a very distinct lack of underwear beneath...

Book 38 of 52: "The Map of the Sky" by Felix J. Palma

Steampunk science fiction and fantasy has been a rising genre, in my eyes.  It's often difficult for me to immerse myself initially in the complexity of the steampunk universe, trying to remember how I know names like Algernon Swinburne and Charles Babbage.  However, I've found that, after the first 100 pages, I'm irreconcilably mired in the story, and I can't bring myself to close the book until I've reached the last page.

Of course, it's helpful when the plot is sufficiently fantastic, as well.

REWRITE: Possession Talk Around the Neighborhood Grill

Author's note: I like this story!  But I feel that it could actually use a rewrite, to give these characters some description.  I normally hate editing, but... why not give it a shot?

The sun shone brightly down from above the trees, as a thin wisp of smoke rose up from below.  Given the scent of charcoal, mingled with that of charring meat, any observer wouldn't be amiss in guessing that they were catching a sniff of neighborhood barbecue.

The street was a cul-de-sac, a little half-circle of houses wrapping around the widened end of the street.  Today, the men had dragged their grills out to the middle of the street, plopping a couple of orange traffic cones further up the street to dissuade any lost drivers from plowing into the little gathering.  The grills were a motley assortment, from Jerry's traditional round charcoal grill to Bill's monstrosity of a modern grill, covered in knobs and adjustable flaps, its aluminum shining in the sun.

Gathered around the grills, the men chatted back and forth, occasionally opening up the grills to poke at the meat and produce sharp hisses of grease and juices flashing into steam.  Meanwhile, the women gossiped in little circles as they sipped at freshly made margaritas, and the children ran around the groups, chasing each other and occasionally letting out high-pitched screams.

It was a great day for a barbecue, overall.  The sun hadn't yet reached its apex in the sky, but the day was already pleasantly warm, with just the slightest of breezes rustling the leaves on the trees.

The women gossiped, but the women always gossiped.  Most of them stayed home during the week instead of heading out to offices, and they'd raised gossip to a high art form as they ducked in and out of each other's houses.

For the men, on the other hand, 'gossip' had become a taboo term.  If asked, each man would insist that he never gossiped - he merely updated the other men of the neighborhood on current events within his sphere of influence, his household, his kingdom.  They considered the exchange of information now occurring as vital to defending their homes as the motley assortment of baseball bats and golf clubs that they guiltily kept hidden in the back of their closets.

As he lowered the cover of his round charcoal grill back over the hissing meat, Jerry shook his head back and forth in disbelief.  "Man, you cannot be serious.  On either count."

"No, I swear it's true!"  Bill reached out and adjusted some knob on his huge, gleaming aluminum monstrosity of a grill.  Most of the other men would wager - accurately - that even Bill didn't know what that knob did, but that didn't mean that the others weren't envious of the hulking machine.  Here in the suburbs, men gauged the measure of each other by the size of their grills.

Once the knob had been satisfactorily adjusted, Bill looked back up at the others.  "Summoning ritual gone wrong, the whole nine yards.  It's really the only way for me to explain it.  She's nothing like how she used to be."

The Heavy Darkness

There's a feeling, Elle considered to herself, that can come from darkness.

She clutched the slightly bent tire iron closer to herself as she tried to see further, blinking her eyes in a futile attempt to help her night vision.  All around her, the shadows grew deep and thick before congealing into a solid mass of impenetrable blankness.

Elle normally felt accustomed to darkness.  She was, after all, a creature of the half-dark, spending most of her waking hours prowling in the twilight.  It was always a delicate balancing act; she had to wait until the sun had sank down to kiss the horizon, to the point when most of the other bands of hunters would have already set up their camps and turned in for the night.

But Elle also knew that for each moment she waited, the sun grew a little dimmer, and her window shrank.  And if she waited too long, darkness would come sweeping over her like a crashing wave of surf.  That darkness brought its own terrors with it, far more ephemeral than the bands of hunters, but just as deadly.

Tonight, the darkness felt especially thick...

Book 37 of 52: "Mystery of the Blue Train" by Agatha Christie

More Agatha Christie!  Probably a quarter of all the books in my 52 Book Challenge for this year so far have been AC novels.  They're just always so engaging, while still being a great way to unwind after a long day, sitting in bed with just a night light turned on.

Like many others, "Mystery of the Blue Train" is a Hercule Poirot mystery, although, as is often the case, the eponymous detective is not truly the main character.  Instead, the story revolves around Katherine Grey, a young but level-headed heroine who, upon coming into a large sum of money, sets off to see the world.  But scarcely is she away before she finds herself involved in murder!

[The Kung War] The Diplomat at War, Part I

If he ignored the lurking sense of uselessness that sulked constantly at the back of his mind, Nils told himself, it was a great day.

To be fair, he wasn’t wrong.  The yellow sun overhead cast down its gentle warmth on civilized Ehftia, and a gentle breeze blew across the glassy walkways.  This close to one of the warm freshwater oceans, there was always a slight little hint of moisture and freshness in the air.  The thread-thin glassine supports that held up the walkways in suspension, high above the ground, vibrated tightly as the air blew through them.  Nils was slightly shy of his fortieth birthday, but he still appreciated the mildly reduced gravity of Ehftia.

It was, Nils reminded himself, the dream appointment of any diplomat.  He ought to be thrilled at this posting.

And yet, try as he might, he couldn’t shake that little sense of useless melancholy.