My clan’s village lies next to a stream. Downstream a short way is an old bridge (and an old road) but the stream is shallow and we have carved a trail that parallels the road for several miles. We ford the stream and walk the fields and forests rather than use the pale-skin road. The banks of the stream were once low and grassy, but trees have ( Read more... )

Four seasons ago several of us (members of my clan, me included) visited another sun-skin clan. I remember traveling for more than a week through patches of deep woods and across fields of high grass and long-abandoned corn and wheat, circling in a huge arc to avoid going through the nearby abandoned city. My father led us since he also knew the ( Read more... )

    I’ve never actually seen a pale-skin. The disease killed them. I have heard that some very few still live, but their numbers must be truly very small. In my life I’ve never even seen more than about two hundred people of any color together in one place at the same time. This is the devastation we have endured. One could travel for days in any ( Read more... )

By Lena Mirakedes (pronounced Meera KAY deez)

My grandmother once traced our family back more than a thousand seasons. She wrote it all down, and recounted all the great things we did and the great people who we were. When I need to be reminded, I pull out the book and read it all again. And it helps me to have hope, still.

Grandmother ( Read more... )

Freakin busy, that's what ( Read more... )

It took me more than a week to get up the nerve to call this Kerry MacDonald person who had been so rude to me, but who had laughed and smiled so delightfully when I'd made a joke. Yes, plainly I was overwhelmed. She was gorgeous.

She had reddish-blonde hair that was long and shined (or so I dreamed) and the most captivating emerald green eyes I ( Read more... )

I worked as the night waitress in the bar steadily for about a year. In that year I saved about $2,000 of the $8,500 I earned. The rest went for food, clothing, and a car. The car was by far the most expensive, but I had to have transportation. Even if I was able to save twice as much the following year, it was going to take about five years to ( Read more... )

My name is Marcus Anthony Huffman ( Read more... )

Grandma wanted me to go to college. For a while, I wanted to go, too, but we didn't have any money. That meant I had to apply for a scholarship. But my grades weren't quite good enough to make a scholarship a done deal. The scores on the college entrance test I took, also, weren't quite as good as they needed to be, so I didn't get the scholarship ( Read more... )

Don't worry. I won't be giving anything away. But LEENA'S people are called SUN-SKINS. The pale ones, like ADAM and JANE, were called (by some) MOON-SKINS, though I believe they would have considered that name a pejorative. There are other races, of course ( Read more... )