Torn World;

Spunkey Shines 1271.03.05

Supporters Only!
Written By: Elizabeth Barrette (Writer)

A strange animal follows Gliver home.

Posted: 05/19/10 [No comments yet]

Characters Featured:

This story is for supporters only! Here is a short excerpt to whet your appetite:

The little critter stared up at him with its huge brown eyes. Its long fur, a rather bright shade of red-orange, ruffled in the soft breeze. Gliver had never seen anything like it, but you never knew what might creep out of the jungle and into civilized areas these days. The critter trilled at him. Plainly it had no intention of going away.

"Oh, all right," said the boy, "but don't blame me if my mother turns you into a muff." The critter chirruped and scrambled up his body, clinging to his shoulder with all eight tiny limbs. Its long tail thumped against Gliver's back.

"Turns what into a muff?" his mother asked. She was busy training her new Mayaloi slave, and not happy at the interruption.

"Can I keep him? He followed me home," said Gliver, pointing to the critter.

Author's Notes

This story came out of the April 13, 2010 Muse Fusion. It was inspired by a prompts from LJ users Marina_bonomi and Wyld_dandelyon. During the Mayaloi assimilation, most of the Mayaloi were brought into the Empire as slaves. Citizens living near the Rainbow Forest found that other creatures wandered out of that area, some of them pleasant and others far less so.

Linguistic note: In Empire usage, "bugger" refers to someone who hunts or collects bugs in a quasi-legal or illegal fashion. This can cause problems if they hunt out a popular species or transport species to new areas with invasive results. So the connotation beyond its literal meaning is "jerk" or "troublemaker" -- not a nice word. An imperial citizen would have said "insectivore" in the story's context.

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