Skiller's Writing Archive

[Skiller]

A place to share my writing. Feedback is appreciated!

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-Excerpts from my book "Feathers For Falling" (Prev. "Fox Wolves") Ch.15 Excerpt.

[Skiller]

Poems

One:
You don’t like me
So I changed me
And I’m sorry
I’m not somebody
You want

I’m just like you
But you don’t like me

Cut the hair, cut it short
Not enough? OK
Grow it out all the way
Not the nose? OK
Switch it up, make it small
What, what? Want it back the other way?

You don’t like me
So I changed me

Straight A’s! Who cares?
Drove there, did that.
Won’t pay? I got cash.
Need a ride? I got two.
Take you home? Where to?
Your house.
But it’s not my house, or is it?

Left eyebrow higher
Than the right.
Just like yours.
Look at you, I see me. All I see.
Can’t unsee it. Have you seen it?
Eyes must be closed.

[Skiller]

Excerpts from my book "Feathers For Falling" (Prev. "Fox Wolves")

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From Ch.2:
Zara chewed at a knot of fur under her elbow as she sat alone, waiting in the damp meeting room of the castle. Between massive stained-glass windows, a series of frayed tapestries clung to damp stone walls. Mold had taken over the tapestries’ purple fibers, turning them brown and giving them an awful stench. Zara could not smell it. She did not hear the thunder as it rattled the glass in its panes, nor did she see the lightning as it sparked outside. Her mind was elsewhere.

Through a massive wooden door, Elder Emmet crept into the room. His voice echoed like thunder when he spoke. “Queen Zara. A terrible evening to have a meeting, isn’t it?”

Zara clutched her wings to her back to hide them. “Why are you here?”

“The weather befits your mood, it seems,” Elder Emmet muttered. He slunk past the shadow cast between one of the stained-glass windows and let his iris catch the tinted light. It glowed a strange red color, reminding Zara of rotten rose petals. Lightning struck outside, but Elder Emmet kept his eye locked onto Zara. “The hunting chief,” he tightened his jaw as if the words pained him, “has fallen ill. He appointed me to attend this meeting in his place.”

“Then the meeting will be postponed,” Zara growled. Elder Emmet most certainly had other reasons for coming to see her. She sprung up from her chair, but too quickly for her age. The blood rushed from her head. Her body went sideways.

Elder Emmet dashed to Zara’s side. She fell onto him, though she would have rather hit the floor. Her wing brushed Elder Emmet’s back, and he wagged his tail like a young pup. “Be careful, Zara,” he said, smiling. “You might injure these wings.”

Zara stumbled away from Elder Emmet and tucked her wings so tight they seemed a shell on her back. “That is none of your business,” she said. She watched him admire her silver feathers and her hackles prickled. “None of this is your business! Akira is the hunting chief. He should have crawled here himself.”

“A famine is brewing, Zara. To set this meeting aside- do you want the pack to starve?” Thunder roared outside and Elder Emmet blocked Zara’s way. He held his head low. “I lost the hierarchy competition. If either of us is to be sour, it should be me.”

“Don’t pretend you came here for that,” Zara snarled, poking Elder Emmet in the ribs. “I know you, Emmet. You came here to see me- to see just how destroyed I am.”

“Did I really?” Elder Emmet asked, running his paw down one of Zara’s tattered silver feathers. Zara flinched. He whispered now, still stroking her feathers, and it seemed his words were meant for her wings. “As the alpha of the wolf pack, your priority should be the wolves below you. Those guardian angel wings of yours are there for a reason.”

“I made it clear who my priority is!” Zara hissed, throwing her wing to the beamed ceiling. Elder Emmet watched her wing go up. Feathers spread like an open hand. “If you had stayed after the hierarchy competition was over, you would have known that. But the shame of defeat got to you, didn’t it?”

Elder Emmet leaped up and snatched Zara’s wing in his teeth like a viper. She lurched away, too late, and a mouthful of feathers were plucked out. “I have not been defeated, Zara,” he slurred, crushing the plumes in his teeth. Zara’s stomach flipped. “There is no time to waste on shame.” To Zara’s horror, Elder Emmet swallowed the whole mouthful.

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From Ch.15:
Thunder came to Lunar’s ears in a series of rings. It might have been the reaper. Then Taico appeared through the trees and rushed into Lunar, throwing him off the edge of the cliff and down to the sea.
Lunar plummeted; legs grasping and twisting but finding nothing. His heart stuttered. The waves reached for him with hungry white claws. They would have him soon. He curled into a ball and shut his eyes, wishing away the fate he would soon meet. Maybe it could be summertime. He could be in his room, curled in his moss bed that had gone brown in the heat. Crickets would chirp and he would listen, wondering what sorts of things crickets talked about.

[Skiller]

Short Stories