This Mine Of Mine

Instead of bringing education to his fellow kobolds, Thuk discovers the benefits of mining. Explicit.

Thuk was a rare thing: a kobold with an education. He'd been part of a scavenging clan when he was younger, and then one day it just wasn't enough for him any more. He'd spent a year away from home, learning all that he could, and now he was trying to bring that knowledge back to his fellow kobolds. It was about as easy as breaking through a dungeon wall with his head.

The latest kobold settlement Thuk had tracked down was a mine, hidden deep down behind crevasses only the wiry little lizards could slip through and worming its way throughout the depths of the mountain. They mined the ores and gems that hid in the stone, and traded them with the creatures that lived higher up for food and small trinkets.

Thuk slid down to sit beside his bag and pulled out a scuffed and scraped book--a human-made one, for teaching basic math. If he could get these kobolds to think about their mining in terms of math, they could trade more wisely, improve their quality of life, and live more easily.

Broadway Was Waiting For Me

A superpowered cat sucked back in time is introduced to the high society of the Roaring Twenties. (And also turned into a girl.) Mature.

A wave of gray slush crashed up over the curb, then hung, frozen, an inch from colliding with the young cat.

The businessmen on the corner stared from beneath their dark-brimmed hats. A fox clutched at the fur stole draped around her neck, like she had been frozen in place along with the water. Someone let out a low whistle of amazement.

This was worse than the cell phone.

Today was Celsius's bad day. Number one, it was the twenty-third of December and he'd had a final to take this morning. Come on, you couldn't schedule it any earlier?

Number two, he'd ran out of people to ask to the school's Holiday Bash. Stupid party. He didn't want to ask the cute archaeology major to the party anyway.

Number three, he'd missed his bus stop, and the next stop was all the way down in the historic district, so he'd either have to go to an ATM and get change for the bus fare back, or spend half an hour walking home.

And number four, he was stuck in a time-warp to the Roaring Twenties.

Galatea

A body-sculptor sets her eyes on improving a young coyote by way of turning him into a woman. Explicit.

While the beat rumbled away above them, Mel's hands grazed over a gazelle's clay-thick ass. Her fingers stayed in constant motion, like a potter's hands spinning a terracotta vase.

"Like a brick house, yeah?" the gazelle asked. She knew she looked great.

She thought she knew, at least. She'd been breathing in Mel's smoke for a good half hour, and Mel had been telling her she looked great, so she had to look good. If Mel told her that she knew French, she'd know for certain that she was fluent, even if the closest thing she knew to French was that 'si' meant yes.

||||||||

Null drones convert a hapless photographer poking around an abandoned hospital. Explicit.

Eight clicks echoed through the dead hospital.

Thomas raised his head. His ears rose too, stretching to hear the sound again. To him, rusted gurneys and rubble-strewn beds were photogenic, not eerie, and an odd noise was cause for investigation, not panic.

He pulled his camera off of his tripod. He thought it might be a wild animal, or some sort of scavenger. Whatever it was, he was going to get a picture of it.

He walked back across the ground floor of Bellvue Hospital, closed down and left to steep in its own formaldehyde for the last thirty years. There had been a quarantine then, a panic—but it was all before Thomas's time. The hospital had never been sealed up airtight. If there were any pathogens left, simply going inside couldn't hurt.

The Snow-Black Fortress

Instead of studying barbarians, a fantasy anthropologist winds up joining them instead. Explicit.

Footsteps dented the snow without any feet to make them. The falling snow and gusts of wind would cover them up within minutes, and then there would be no sign that anyone had been there.

Edward paused, and the footsteps stood still. He crouched down, digging two gloved fingers into the snow and putting a clump of it onto his tongue. He was loath to chill himself any more than he already was, but he'd read in a book that it kept your breath from fogging up.

Ahead of Edward loomed the fortress, built out of greying stone, perched on the side of a mountain. Behind him was the less perilous peak he'd climbed. And beneath him, beyond the thick stone bridge, were thousands of feet of nothingness down to a rocky cleft between the two peaks.. Edward's heart hammered in his chest.

The tracks began to move again, dotting the snow with dark spots where the gray-black flagstones showed through. Edward grabbed the edges of his cloak and pulled them closer together against the cold. On his chest, sitting above his traveling robe, was an unevenly round disc of lead. Stamped on it in a puffy, bulbous way was the image of a half-closed eye.

Done to Taste

An interdimensional being walks into a chocolate shop and turns an employee into a living chocolate servant. Explicit.

Daniel's bad day began with a nude tigress. He didn't have any problems with nude bodies in general, and certainly not with this nude body in specific. The problem was that she was in the middle of his chocolate shop.

In a self-conscious way, she made him even more aware of the clothes he was wearing. His jeans were thick against his legs and the worn denim hung down with room to spare. The corners of his tee shirt's sleeves tugged at his armpits; it was slightly too small, but worth it for the 'chocolatiers do it with kisses' shirt. Then on top of that was the white apron, to keep from smudging any warm chocolate on his clothes.

Daniel set down the caramels that had been cooling in the back. She must have come in when he'd gone back to get them so he could put them on display. Clearing his throat, he left the counter and found the tigress wandering down one of the aisles.