Story Available: "Unknowable," the Sequel to "Unspeakable"

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Oh yes indeed, I wrote a sequel to "Unspeakable" long ago, and it has been languishing on my computer since for want of a venue that would buy it. That it never found that venue bothered me a great deal, because there was a very special person in it, with a very special viewpoint, and I grieved that she never had the chance to speak.

But now she does.

     I had forgotten that anadi are most active after nightfall—I never had regular congress with them. Not counting my illicit affair, of course. When I arrived at the edge of the pen I could see them moving and they glimmered, precious, past the veil of night: silver gleam in their eyes, pale electrum glow over their softly scaled bodies.
     Oh, they were beautiful. I dropped my trembling head into my arms, resting it against the topmost bar of the pen.
     "You came back."
     I looked up and found an exquisite sliver of star and shadow standing in front of me, and I felt a quiver of excitement and revulsion. Bad enough to have been perverted enough to love Ekkuli, a neuter, rather than another emodo like myself or Nashada. But to feel this twinge for an anadi? Was I hopelessly corrupted?
     "You have that look," she continued in a voice clear and light, like pale tea. "I don't see it often. Why are you here, if we upset you so?"
     "Why are you talking to me?" I managed hoarsely. "What good will it do?"
     "I don't know," she said. "But no one talks to me, and I miss that."
     "You were something else before you Turned?"
     She blinked a few times, lashes glowing. "No. I have always been anadi. That doesn't mean I was born without a mind to enjoy conversation." She ran her fingers along my arm, as if checking me for warmth and life. "Sometimes I think other Jokka turn from the anadi before we lose our minds. They don't want to invest their hearts in someone who will not remember them in ten years, twenty. I suppose I understand."
     "But it upsets you," I said.
     "Of course," she replied without rancor. "Wouldn't it upset you?"
     "I never think of such things," I said, which was the absolute truth. It's why I needed Ekkuli so badly.
     "How nice to never need to," she said, withdrawing her hand.
     And I—I captured it and didn't remember deciding to do so. "Wait. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be thoughtless."
     "I'm used to it," she said with the flick of a tail that is the most tired of shrugs among the Jokka. "You too will pass through my life, like all the others."

That's right: we finally get to talk to an anadi who is no rebel like Kediil, no firebrand like Jekun, no revolutionary like Dlane. Here is an anadi with a mind... but who understands why anadi have the lot they do, and blames no one for it.

There is only one piece of art directly related to this story. And here it is.


The Jeweler's Apprentice

If you have been looking for the final perspective of females in this setting, here it is at last. And you get to see how Tañel, Ekkuli and Nashada are getting along in their new city! So if you want to return to old friends and maybe taste a little of the bittersweetness, and meet a remarkable new female, this is your story. Enjoy it. :)

You can pick up my other stories in print and in e-book form, including many free and 99-cent nibbles, at Smashwords and Amazon. And as always, if you like what you read, please drop back by and give it a few stars or a review. Your opinions help other readers make their purchasing decisions! Help an independent author out. :)


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