Stories

Stories

By Francis RosenfeldFiction
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Stories episodes

  • Letters to Lelia - Chapter 6 - Status and Rhetoric

    “Places, please!" Lily spoke, a little

    sharper than she wished. She had shouted directions to staff,
    friends and caterers all day, and her voice was giving out a
    little.
    "Sister Joseph, you will lead the
    procession, followed by sister Novis and Sarah, then Seth will
    bring the rest of the group from the left side of the podium. Sys,
    queue music," she instructed.
    A soothing melody poured on the beach,
    making Purple hum, delighted.
    "Stop!" Lily interrupted the immortal bliss.
    "Where is Humon? He is supposed to stand right behind Lelia,
    according to tradition."
    "And the approved list," Seth couldn't help
    herself.”

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    14 min
  • Letters to Lelia - Chapter 5 - Out There

    "We are going to wear our ceremonial robes,

    I assume?" Seth entered Sarah's apothecary.
    Sarah was mixing perfumes, she and Sys had
    come up with the idea of creating a scent to match the lavender
    gauze and flower arrangements, even though the plant decorations
    were still in question on account of the dragons' appetite. The
    small shed was saturated with a clamor of floral scents, which
    shouted at each other so loudly one could no longer tell them
    apart. They all ended up in a overpowering blend, screeching in
    sharp tunes of lavender and hyacinth. Lilac tried too assert itself
    as a top note too, but it was trounced by the other two scents, and
    whimpered helplessly at the end of the lab table where its open
    vial resided.
    "Good Heavens! Open the louvers, you can cut
    the smell with a knife. Whatever it is you are working on right
    now, throw it away it and never consider it again!" Seth protested,
    stifled by the heavy fragrance. "How can you even breathe in here?
    I'll never get this smell out of my clothes!"
    "It is a process," Sarah defended the
    obnoxious perfume.

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    14 min
  • Letters to Lelia - Chapter 4 - Living in Context

    “Who is waiting for Jimmy and Jenna?" sister

    Novis poked her head through the door that sister Roberta had left
    ajar. The sister was revising a last minute idea for the
    festivities, secretly offended that Lily was so adamant about not
    having anything happen that wasn't already approved. What a
    bore!
    "I thought you were," she stopped from her
    work to look intently at sister Novis.
    "Nobody told me anything, you worked with
    Jimmy a lot during the last three months, I thought you already
    arranged something, we all assumed..." the sister defended
    herself.
    "All of you always assume, what a punishment
    for the scientific mind!" sister Roberta philosophized. "When are
    they supposed to arrive?"
    "They already have, if you'd check the
    solenoid room..." sister Novis gently suggested.
    "Oh, dear, they're locked in. How long have
    they been there?" sister Roberta started panicking.”

     

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    14 min
  • Letters to Lelia - Chapter 3 - Who Are You?

    “Did you see my notes?" Humon asked,

    shuffling the pads on Lily's desk. Lily lifted her eyes from the
    mound of packages, reminders, and party decorations that had been
    slowly accumulating around her ever since they got the blessed news
    the Bonding Ceremony was going to be celebrated on Terra Two.
    Her maternal desire to be of assistance to
    her eldest daughter was fighting an older, more personality
    specific urge to dump everything at once and take a trip to a
    region of space she hadn't visited before. She realized, while
    thinking this, that there were no regions she'd never seen, and
    strained her overwhelmed mind to figure out if and where she saw
    Humon's work. She jerked, aggravated.”

    📖  Found yourself in the middle of a story? Visit STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld.

    13 min
  • Letters to Lelia - Chapter 2 - The Gates of Perception

    “Who is in charge of the hors d'oeuvres?" Seth

    asked.
    "Sister Abigail," Roberta replied, focused
    on a delicate piece of machinery that needed soldering under the
    microscope.
    "You're not serious!" Seth yelled, making
    Roberta's hand shake for a second.
    The pen slid over the board, covering it
    with a slobber of molten metal. "Thanks!" Roberta snapped, snatched
    the slide from the microscope and threw it on the growing pile of
    similar slides in the trash can, proof that the sister had kept
    very busy the whole morning.
    "Who in their right mind would put sister
    Abigail in charge of cooking anything?" Seth continued, like a slow
    growing storm, ready to strike at any moment.
    "Do you realize that I've been working on
    that board for the last six hours and I finally got it right?"
    sister Roberta growled at Seth.
    "That means your next one will be even
    better. Who put sister Abigail in charge of the hors d'oeuvres?"
    Seth asked, deadly calm.”

    📖  Found yourself in the middle of a story? Visit STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld.

    16 min
  • Letters to Lelia - Chapter 1 - Love.Purple.

    "What exactly are you doing?" sister Roberta asked Sarah, who was fumbling with a knotted bunch of ribbons, growing more frustrated by the minute.

    "I can't believe I'm wasting my time with this! Where is Sys? Why can't we just remake this?" the redhead abandoned the struggle, her cheeks flushed and her eyes gleaming furiously. "Can you take this to your lab and bring me back a fresh spool of non-knotted ribbon? You have no idea how many things I have to do right now, all at the same time!"

    "I think I beat you in that department, my dear. I haven't even started the staging for the light show, so if you'll excuse me..." Roberta left before Sarah had a chance to pass on to her the ribbon unknotting challenge.

    "What. For. Use. Ribbon." Purple inserted their unavoidable wisdom. "Wisp. Think. Matter. Worthless. Anyway."

    📖  Found yourself in the middle of a story? Visit STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld.

    18 min
  • Letters to Lelia - One Thousand Years Later

    Vlor Consular Mission in Airydew, Terra Two, July 2nd, 3245

    Beloved Lelia,

    My eyes well up with joy seeing you all grown up and ready to set out on your own path. Many centuries passed me by, they brought me challenges and successes, knowledge, wisdom and occasional silliness, and they opened my eyes to the universe, this strange and wonderfully complex, multi-layered reality I could never have dreamed existed.

    Of all the precious gifts this unbelievable dream ever gave me, you are the greatest, my child, for I can’t even fathom what you are, or how you fit into our limited understanding of existence, half real, half thought and gifted with the perception of a lot more dimensions than us humans can grasp.

    📖  Found yourself in the middle of a story? Visit STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld.

    5 min
  • Letters to Lelia - Foreword

    "My Principal Progenitors have always had a flair for the dramatic," Humon reflected out loud after reading Tagas Cloud's letter, in the same even tone of voice Lily had become accustomed to.

    "What do they mean, Humon? What does all of this mean?" Lily started tentatively, her voice overcome by an instinctive indescribable panic. Humon didn't answer, he just waved, annoyed, trying to chase away the aggravation with the brusque gesture one would use to shoo away a fly.

    "Procedure," he uttered eventually. "I swear, if our world really ran according to procedure we'd all be long gone by now. It took them seven planetary rotations to answer my request, seven! And now they expect me to rush to attention in less than ten gyrations! Good grief, my progenitors really know how to dish administrative bulk three layers thick! Do your parents push your buttons too?"

    📖  Found yourself in the middle of a story? Visit STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld.

    29 min
  • A Year and A Day - The Ceremony

    The day after the Night of the Mothers, for the second time, grandmother asked Aifa.

    “Did you enjoy the ceremony, granddaughter?”

    And again, Aifa responded.

    “It was beautiful, Doyenne, I just thought I’d feel different after that, is all.”

    📖  Found yourself in the middle of a story? Visit STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld.

    3 min
  • A Year and A Day - November - The Manifestation of God

    Atthe end of November, nature had finally settled into its cold season slumber. There was a chill in the air, a chill whose fingers got colder every morning, and which was embroidering lacy frost on the ground and on the windows, the icy breath of the earth made manifest.

    The Twins seemed unsettled. Aifa could see them look out to the horizon, towards the sea, as if waiting for somebody, or seeing something that was revealed only to them in the frigid mist.

    📖  Found yourself in the middle of a story? Visit STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld.

    11 min

About Stories

From the publisher's feed

Somewhere between the familiar and the impossible, a story is waiting for you. Listen to short fiction and unfolding novels by Francis Rosenfeld: strange worlds, intimate encounters.