The beloved and ever-imaginative Dragon Warrior proposed a collaboration to explore our fantasy worlds together. Some of you may already be familiar with her planet Cygnet, and some of you might know Lumis from my draft "The Stars Went Out."
Category: Worldbuilding
Day 28: Mosaic Harbor
Workers hauled ashore cages of feathered game and trunks of malachite ore, lined in synchronized, silent pairs.
Day 19: Seller’s Moon
Persis had never heard a door slam in Seller’s Moon. No raised voices, and no babies’ cries—no one wanted to stir up dust from the long season.
Day 7: Purple Knot
Shardae Jacaranda’s cords were purple. Royal treason. Her chain locked her upright to the stained wall of the house who owned her. Dangerous. She spit at everyone who met her, when she had enough spit, and heat stuck her hair to her face in short black chunks. Not going to sell.
Day 6: Reading Stars
Shiori concentrated until the room began to spark with magic. One by one, the crystals and glasses began to light with an aurora of colors. A warped space swam through the room, distorting the windows.
Day 1: Atrium
Golden cages in the shapes of hourglasses hung along the shore of the river in the months of the solar spring, hooked to golden lines. Emerald parakeets with black chins chattered inside their pendulum homes, using their ruby beaks to scale the bars. It was the job of the harem’s children to carry the cages from the atrium to hang, and the job of their carers to make sure they did not drop them.
Day 28: Tangles
The horns of his mother and father were both armored in scars, where no smooth skin would grow—a texture somewhere between scale and bone. Blades couldn't break them.
Day 25: Wax Blood
“Nothing to worry about,” the Aurelius assured them, setting the candlestick back in his antique menagerie. Warmth wafted into the space again. “Happens all the time. You can get off the floor, kids, don’t be shy.”
Day 24: Koi Skeletons
Black koi skeletons swam like they were still alive inside glass walls too thin to hold them. A plain-looking, straight-cut blazer on the floor was cordoned by chains, and smoked occasionally with black magic. Disembodied whispers leaked from vents, and the number of individuals wearing sunglasses indoors was simply too high.
Day 17: Woman in Black
The further they delved into the base, the more important-looking the rooms got. The smell of wine got stronger, the cut of the suits got nicer, and the rough-looking kids started thinning out. The handguns started getting more conspicuous, too, and shinier.