Havok Publishing

Tag - family

Earth Museum

“Don’t. Touch. Anything.”
Jerp twisted his head toward the voice and pulled his appendage away from the marble statue depicting one of the weirdest creatures he’d ever seen. Two legs and only one tiny tentacle between them? Humans were strange.
All six of his mom’s eyes stayed

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Selkie’s Sanctuary

Moira’s breath fogged the viewing window, her wide eyes staring unblinking, as though in the split second they closed, Isla would disappear once again.
She’d been searching for her sister for months, ever since the night she failed to return to their pod. A missing selkie typically

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In Sun or Snow

I slosh through a murky puddle and trudge over another mound of slushy snow, leaving my valenki darkened and damp. But chilled feet are the last of my worries. After all these hours of calling, of tramping through this stretch of Russian forest, I still haven’t found him.

“Father Frost!”

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A Preference for Haggis

“Dougal wait! Yer da said we’re not supposed to play on Ben Binn. The fairies won’t like it!” Hamish sprinted after his cousin, the evening air nipping at his face.

“Don’t tell me ya believe in all that

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Wrath and Ruin

Cristilian drew a third deep breath, willing calmness into the deepest part of his being where perpetual anger burned.
Beyond the ornately carved doors, a cacophony of conversation and music marked a feast celebrating not only harvest completion but also victory

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Reset

“Death’s Door to your right, Z.”
“Do you have to call it that?” I say into the comm of my stolen suit. Sweat dampens my forehead as I turn the corner on Dad’s spaceship. The giant metallic door I meet certainly seems like it would hide world-eating tech.

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Uncoiled

“Florence. Florence! I’m sorry. Please come back.”
The shouts ricochet between the chimney-like hoodoo rocks, making it seem like Aunt Junie is everywhere at once. I huff. If anyone could master that superpower, it’d be her.
“Leave me alone! I hate you.”

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Oh, Possum

I have nobody to blame but myself for bringing home that blasted opossum.
Last week, I gazed down at it, sprawled wounded and unmoving in a cratered building.
My conscience wouldn’t let me leave it.
So I brought it home.
Playing nursemen for the criminal cyborg started

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Made of Metal and Morality – A Dreaming Machines Story

Tin Eyeswell stood on the precipice of immortality. The only obstacle between him and a hefty cache of Caerulum crystal was a group of peddlers down in the ravine.
Collateral damage.
Tin nodded at his partner, Merek, and caught his scruffy and sunburnt reflection off Merek’s metal

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Crimson Fields

Red belongs to the Strongman. It’s the color of passion and rage, of birth and death—things he alone controls—and to wear it outside his city is to beckon the bloodwatchers’ blades.
Yet my sister and I pass through a field

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The Tiffany Touch

“Evie! Wake up!” I shake my sister, careful not to touch her skin, and grimace at the new color engulfing her favorite fluffy blanket.
“Tiff?” Evie yawns. I back away. She opens her eyes, takes one look at me, and shrieks.
“Shhh!” I wave my hands, eyes wide.
“What happened to you?” she hisses,

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Unfinished

“It isn’t finished. It isn’t finished,” the girl mumbled almost hysterically. The glow of her eyes reflected on the screen. Red irises focusing intensely on the device.
“Scarlata,” a male voice sounded behind her.
She remained fixed on her task.
“There’s nothing you

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