Fading

by Simon Williams

Sunlight – real, blue, sunlight – slanted through the sealed crylic. As he inhaled, slowly, painfully, the map became visible to her fourth-level receptors. As breath left him, the shapes disappeared. All his life from pre-seed had led to this, the discovery of the map. Timing was everything. The closer to fading his life came, the clearer the map showed in his spirit shape. His eyelids slid open again. Find them, he implored her. The door shook. I will. Her eyes flashed and with a silenced sigh he faded, his soul-motes drifting downward, returning to the greenheart as the hunters burst in.



Author bio: Simon Williams lives in Edinburgh, writes short fiction and posts it at www.simonsalento.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @simonsalento.

Fading is part of 101 Fiction issue 22.

Dried

by Simon Williams

Every day Rudy and Blanco rode the gravity tunnels at dizzying speeds, dipping, swerving, missing each other and a million others by margins too small to imagine, reaching out and picking up their loads, leaning back, feet first, eyes closed, silent screaming in the heady pounding rush until they could drop what they carried. Then that day there was a tunnelsplit, a spurting leak, the worst of all they had heard of and feared for, spitting them up aboveground. Outside. Beyond the already healing split their clone comrades stepped forward to replace them. Life went on. They dried and died.



Author bio: Simon lives in Edinburgh and writes very short stories, many of which can be found on simonsalento.com. He tweets at @simonsalento.

Dried is part of 101 Fiction issue 9.

Secret

by Simon Williams

Green was the colour of the angels as they swept down, swords trailing sparks which tumbled like falling stars and settled in our upturned eyes. I do not know why they left the children alive; we did not deserve it.

Many years later, when the red sky had returned to morning, my grandmother, just before dying, whispered to me the secret of the family.

With my sister I went to the forge on the bank of the shining river and in the ashes found my sword. I shook off my cloak and unfurled my green wings. The sky closed forever.



Author bio: Simon lives in Edinburgh, works, reads and writes very short stories. Some can be seen at www.simonsalento.com. Simon tweets at @simonsalento.

Secret is part of 101 Fiction issue 7.