Author
Caroline M Yoachim
Just Coffee, Every Morning
I come home from work to find you still in your pajamas, sitting up in bed and staring at the side table. "You were so excited to finish that cityscape you were painting, what are you doing in bed? Are you feeling okay?" "First coffee, then breakfast," you mumble, "but there…
A Wedding Gown of Autumn Leaves
The day before my wedding, my dress is a pile of birch leaves. I sort through them and pluck out all the worms and bugs. The leaves are vibrant yellow and orange, fresh from the tree and still pliable enough to sew. Birch is a symbol of beginnings, a good choice for weddings. I…
A Voice the Color of Blood
My senses are overwhelmed by the navy blue rumble of a distant explosion. A hush falls over the barracks as we listen for alien missiles outside. I close my eyes and wait in colorless silence. A coyote howls--a sunny yellow sound--and it breaks the tension in the room. My fellow…
Midnight at the Fountains of Bellagio
It's nearly midnight, and the evening is blistering hot with desert air so dry it makes me wish I was doing a third show with Cirque de Soleil tonight, sore muscles be damned. At least that way I'd be in the pool. But I promised Dad I'd meet him after work, and it's only a short…
Building a Bridge Too Vast to Cross
My family's bridge is four generations old. The outer surfaces are bleached white from the suns, but our nesting caverns are still the same warm gold I remember from my youth. It takes half a day to crawl from end to end, and the apex boasts a view of the southern sea. My…
The Ivory Hummingbird
My mother stored her magic in expensive trinkets, and she brought them out to flaunt her power whenever I came to visit. Her newest acquisition was a hummingbird, carved out of ivory, with a red ruby embedded in its throat. It was a beautiful work of art, but all I could think…
A Letter to My Best Friend on the Most Important Day of Her Life, Undelivered, No Known Forwarding Address
Dear Melanie, I should tell you this in words or at least hand-deliver this letter, but I'm so afraid of your reaction that I'm hiding behind the inter-arcology postal service. Once the envelope is in the drop-box, it will be out of my hands, I'll have no way to lose my nerve…
Exquisite Corpse
Have you ever played that game--exquisite corpse--where someone draws a head, a second person adds a torso, and the last person draws the legs? Well, I took an art class at the community college and one of our assignments was like that. We were supposed to draw half a…
The First Snow of Winter
Morana bundled Leo up in two pairs of colony-issued pants and three shirts. She found a waterproof windbreaker that was a couple sizes too big for him, which was perfect for layering over all the extra clothes. Most of the winter supplies had been destroyed last year when the…
You Are Not the Hero of This Story
This is a story everyone has heard many times before. It begins with a dragon. You are not the dragon. Dragons are scaly creatures that breathe fire, and you have soft skin and breathe air that smells like whatever you ate for lunch. The dragon--which is definitely not you--is…
Birthday Child
When Nora arrived at the fertility clinic, Jim was there, waiting. He was an amazing husband, hard working and kind, and made entirely of flesh. Nora's only regret was that they met too late to have a baby unassisted. "How's Vivian?" Jim asked. "Did you see her baby?" "A bundle…
Grass Girl
The other girls are made of driftwood, but I'm made of bamboo that whistles in the wind. My bamboo makes a hollow thud when the other girls kick pebbles at my legs on our way to school. "Bamboo isn't wood, it's grass," Sylvia says. She isn't kicking pebbles, and I can't tell if…
Dancing With Fire
The pond where I grew up was swampy and buzzing with insects. I slept in a bed of stargrass, and Mother whispered lullabies in the gentle current. Mother grew up in the ocean, and she hated our pond. Too many memories of Father lingered beneath the surface, long after drought…
Goodbye, First Love
I fell in love with a boy from the playground. Other boys dangled from the monkey bars and tried to make the swings loop all the way around, but he played alone in the wooden playhouse under the slides. I snuck up on him and watched him make a shimmering portal on the playhouse…
Garbage Trucks of Discontent
The first sign of trouble is a garbage truck. My cameras catch it at the corner of 72nd Avenue and Eagle Street. It stops in front of TimTam's--the more popular of the two vegan bakeries within my perimeter. The owners, Tim and Tammy, are facing a lawsuit from an Australian food…
Sugar Showpiece Universe
The best pastry chefs in the Milky Way meet once every two hundred years at the Intergalactic Pastry Competition, sponsored by FTL Travel. We prepare desserts and candy showpieces in hopes of impressing the judges, and I'm among the favorites to win. My main competition is a…
Goat Milk Cheese, Three Trillion Miles From Earth
Eljay went to the goat enclosure with two plastic jugs and a resource acquisition ticket. Four hundred goats lived in the colony ship's livestock bay, sharing space with the three sheep that had survived the visna-maedi epidemic. All three sheep were male. The geneticists that…
Coin Flips
Heads. Most people wouldn't decide to ship out to the colonies on a coin flip, but we're not most people, right babe? When they said you wouldn't come out of the coma I had the medical team transmute your consciousness into a gold coin. The head is your lovely face; the "tail"…
Meat That Grows On Trees
Hailey had a degree in business management and a talent for witchcraft, the perfect combination to start her own company if she could come up with the right idea. Most of her best ideas had already been taken--enchanting the calories out of desserts, or trees with blood instead…
Meat That Grows On Trees
Hailey had a degree in business management and a talent for witchcraft, the perfect combination to start her own company if she could come up with the right idea. Most of her best ideas had already been taken--enchanting the calories out of desserts, or trees with blood instead…
A Million Oysters For Chiyoko
Nanami was the oldest of the ama. A Japanese mermaid, the tourists called her. She dove for oysters, lobsters, sea urchins--most anything edible fetched a good price these days, seafood had become so rare. For decades, Nanami had gone diving for shellfish without any special…
Bread Babies
Bread Babies Anna could make a baby out of bread, well enough to fool the fey. After forty years of practice, she could bake bread babies practically in her sleep. Over the years she'd made rye babies and wheat babies and golden-crusted sourdoughs. She had a knack for getting…
Do Not Count the Withered Ones
Callie kept her heart in the front yard, as people often do. Here, her father's oak, solid and stoic and unchanging. There, her sister's rhododendron, which bloomed with pale pink flowers. One root from each plant grew into her heart, which nourished everything in the yard. She…
Pieces of My Body
I gave my left arm to Elizabeth. You've never met her, but she was my dearest childhood friend. After my disembodiment party she went home to London and put it on her end table, hand side down, with a lampshade made of green velvet and children's nightmares. The nightmares…
Current and Still
I am in love with a man from the current. My mother thinks this is foolish. She wants me to settle down with a boy from the still. She doesn't understand. She met my father when they were in the current. Otherwise I wouldn't exist. The man from the current lives his life in…
A Crown of Woven Nails
My best friend growing up was a Splitter named Cobalt. She was nicer than the human kids--they called me Stump because my left hand has no fingers, or Puddle-lover because I spent so much time with Cobalt. Splitters are shape-shifters, but they come from a world with low…
Harmonies of Time
You do not know me yet, my love, but I can hear you in my future. You are there from the beginning--at first just a few stray notes, but your presence quickly grows into a beautiful refrain. I wish you could hear time as I do, my love, but this song was never meant to be heard.…
The Safe Road
"Do as I do," Mama tells me, "and you'll be safe. We walk this road together." The road is seven feet wide and four billion years long. All my ancestors walk ahead of me and my progeny follows behind. Today the road is a pair of tractor ruts in a field of screaming-psychosis…
Blue Sand
Five days after my mother dies, I push her into the ocean. Her body is a darker blue than mine, iridescent and nearly purple. Her carapace is brittle, and it shatters beneath the force of the waves. Her body breaks down into a coarse grit that washes up onto the shimmering blue…
After the Earthquake
After the earthquake, Steven drove to his grandmother's house to check on her. He knew the damage was bad the moment he walked in the door. The entryway tiles were covered in a puddle of spilled memories--a week in the hospital, his grandfather's last ragged breaths, the funeral…
Deathbed
"I remember dying," my husband tells me. "Everyone I know comes to visit my deathbed." "It will be nice to see everyone," I say, forcing a smile. I don't bother to remind him that what he remembers hasn't happened yet, at least not for me. We only have a few weeks left, and I…
Shades of Orange
War came to my village uninvited. Demons who thought they were gods dropped a monster in our midst. The monster was Ao, a giant sloth of a beast with skin the color of carrots and eyes like rusted metal. My village chose me to lead the fight, though I was a farmer, not a…