Thorns Amidst Fireflies

By Jae Loren

It was a power game, the old ones would say. Once caught in the glamour of flickering lights, there was no way to notice the danger until it was too late.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jae Loren
• Release date: Jun 27, 2012

Jae Loren

Jae Loren is a California-born, Jersey-raised young writer who has been creating words on paper and word processors since she first submitted a story in third grade about a dream jar. She is a self-proclaimed linguaphile and traveler at heart; she loves to incorporate other cultures and languages into her writing wherever possible. Her goal is to write stories in each of her favorite genres, and to pen stories that everyone can enjoy. More excerpts as well as details about her stories and current projects can be found at her blog: http://drabblingwhymzie.wordpress.com

Book preview

Thorns Amidst Fireflies

A short story

By Jae Loren

Thorns Amidst Fireflies

Copyright 2012 Jae Loren

Smashwords Edition

Find other stories by Jae Loren at Smashwords.

Afternoon Ceylon, A Chroniker, & the Shattered Looking Glass:

Book I. Uninvited Strangers

Book II. The Peppered Sweets Trilogy

Book III. Mauve-Tainted Specters

Book IV. Dappled Harmony

Book V. Prodigal Aberrations

Book VI. The Poison Forwards

Short Stories:

Rapunzel

Table of Contents

Thorns Amidst Fireflies

Excerpt from The Poison Forwards

Excerpt from The Peppered Sweets Trilogy

Thorns Amidst Fireflies

The heat of the forest clung to his skin like a second layer. The scent of bamboo and waxy-leaved plants permeated his sweat. The pungent fragrances had seeped so deeply into his nostrils that he could no longer tell the difference completely. Muggy air hovered in a thick gray gloom on the ground, moving slowly like lazy clouds. Soft chirps of crickets and water-frogs rose over the hot atmosphere, filling the night with their unbalanced melody. He had gotten used to this ever-night, this constant darkness. He had adapted without sunlight quickly, was able to see things more clearly than when he had first been stationed at the First Line. Across his vision, scurrying giants with small wisps of tails hunted flightless heart-faced birds; it was an awkward dance of life and death.

A few streams of perspiration escaped the barrier of his thick black brows and found refuge in the duct of his eyes. It hurt, briefly, but his hands were dirty and he wisely decided to wait out the discomfort. A few men in the camp had scratched at their eyes in a fit, and had caused enough damage to ensure they would not see again. They claimed that the sockets had begun to itch, and in their search for relief, they had not noticed the immediate consequences. There were enough strange things occurring since they had first made camp here, and he did not want his eyeballs in his hands due to some minor annoyance.

Others claimed it was the forest: that the forest was acting on the warning that the old men in the villages had proclaimed when the army had began moving. The battle against the unnamed invaders was taking place just beyond the other side of the towering forest, the last barrier before the savages would reach the Great City. Stories floated around about the invaders: that they ate the bodies of their ailing and wounded, that children were taught an early age the monstrosities of the basest forms. They were tall, made of stone with eyes of fire, and ate their captives. None of these could be confirmed, of course, but neither could they be denied. No one had yet seen the outsiders, but the whispers had been carried from afar. There was a distant cry from the reaches of the Empire, speaking