When I got up in the morning, the whole thing seemed a bit silly.
It didn’t really make sense for the treegrave to not be real. It would be a really silly lie to tell, just to kill off people who weren’t useful to the ship. And a silly way to do that, too; you had to apply to become a p...
2025-11-18 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThat's right, folks! Expect The Void Behind chapters on Tuesdays and Saturdays (or on Wednesdays and Sundays), depending on where in the world you live). We're going back to 2/week!
2025-11-18 01:07:43 +0000 UTC View PostOn the last day of my break, I had a dream.
I was in one f the ship’s viewing ports again, alone. But Grandma’s wheelchair was there with me. Like last time, I couldn’t just see out of one wall; I could see all around. The Vanguard to ship-right, which was ‘behind’ from the outsid...
2025-11-12 00:19:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe number blocks were easy to use. There were little blocks that could be added together or taken away or sorted into groups to find out the answers to math questions. There were longer sticks, twelve blocks long, to represent twelve blocks so that we could work with big numbers without needing ...
2025-11-04 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostMum had her baby just as I was about to start Textiles, so she was gone for a few days, but came back fine. She was tired but okay; the baby was okay, safe in the orphanage. I never saw it.
Textiles was about what I expected, from talking to Hitan and from what I already knew. Fibres were t...
2025-10-28 23:30:58 +0000 UTC View PostWe did the rest of Farming, and most of it was stuff I knew and didn’t have to pay much attention to. Arai wasn’t paying much attention either, except for the basic attention that she always paid everything; I didn’t think that she’d choose to do a second pass with Farming.
I might....
2025-10-28 23:26:09 +0000 UTC View PostWe didn’t see any food making machines on the rest of the jaunt through the Kitchens, but that didn’t mean that I was wrong. They were probably just too dangerous to let kids our age close to. Maybe people who did a second pass in Kitchens got to see them.
After Kitchens was Farming, wh...
2025-10-21 23:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostI spend as much time as I can with Grandma over the next month, but it’s not easy. We have a big family, and she has old friends, so a lot of people want to spend time with her. And she has to spend lots and lots of time with the doctor, learning how to join the treegrave.
Also, I have to...
2025-10-14 23:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostWhen I went to sleep, I had a bad dream.
I stayed up late to spend more time with Grandma, and when I get to bed late I sometimes have nightmares. This time, I was standing in a viewing port, looking out at the stars, but it was like the rest of the ship was invisible; I could see the stars...
2025-10-07 22:30:04 +0000 UTC View PostI didn’t tell my friends about the treegrave thing at Rubbish & Recycling the next day. They wouldn’t have understood. They would’ve congratulated me, and when I explained why it was sad, they would’ve told me that I was wrong.
My friends don’t have grandmas. Hitan is growing ...
2025-09-30 23:25:52 +0000 UTC View PostRight from the first day of my jaunt, I knew that every girl on the Courageous must want more than anything to work in Rubbish & Recycling.
Arai didn’t agree. She said that working in Records was going to be the best, once we got to that part of the jaunt. But that was just b...
2025-09-23 23:30:07 +0000 UTC View Post“Did you hear what Lorna and Smon were talking about this morning?” Ketyk asks, landing on the large metal dish on the ground that Tyk is trying to inspect.
“What? No. You know I can’t hear enough of their sounds to understand their language. No woman can.”
“Yeah, most of ...
2025-09-16 23:32:08 +0000 UTC View Post“I have never claimed to be – ”
“I didn’t say you claimed to be anything. But that’s how you think. Like you and your people dropped out of the sky, a nascent beginning that gets to dictate our future. You repeatedly talk about how this is my people’s Earth, but not once have ...
2025-09-13 23:32:55 +0000 UTC View Post“Maybe somebody took her,” Ketyk frets. “Or hurt her.”
“There’s nobody around,” Yar assures him. “If there was, the scouts would’ve seen them, or we would’ve seen evidence of their foraging.”
“It could’ve been someone in this group,” Ketyk says. He rounds o...
2025-09-09 23:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe proposed Rayjo Tau site is very high above the ocean, but it’s not nearly as high as Tyk was expecting. Despite all of Smon’s talk about height being important, there’s still plenty of mountain above them as they walk out from between two sharp, steep peaks and onto a broad, mostly flat...
2025-09-02 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThings move pretty fast when you have essentially unlimited labour and resources to get them done. The Lightsong Travel Agency was up before I knew it.
Word of our existence was spreading to every aljik nest we could contact. Very, very slowly. Aljik nests don’t communicate with each othe...
2025-08-30 23:30:03 +0000 UTC View PostWhat should the supporter bonus be?
(Since we're down to one story as of September, I'll be adding more bonus stories to the options.)
2025-08-26 23:36:44 +0000 UTC View PostTime moves on. Smon gets her metal purified and then forged, expands her farm, and starts stockpiling food. Ketyk grows very quickly into a surprisingly strong flyer, soon able to make it up and down the communication tower without needing to rest on the way (a good skill, Tyk notes to herself wi...
2025-08-26 23:30:02 +0000 UTC View Post“That’s our cue,” Kate said. “‘Should we meet up and talk’.”
I glanced at the boys. “This isn’t safe.”
“It was never going to be safe. This is as safe as it was ever going to be. This is as harmless as we can make ourselves and as much incentive as we can give he...
2025-08-23 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostTyk is of course as excited about the wingsong stream as anyone. She’s desperate for news of home, and Kemia thoughtfully keeps abreast of the situation and the very morning after they start to get faint, fuzzy communication is able to tell her that the Redstone River Hive is facing no critical...
2025-08-19 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe human wasn’t wrong. All three of the ships here were mine, part of my Empire; was it really more of a violation to transmit from the Red Four than to have stolen the Oval Nine? But I did need confirmation that she was indeed hacking the signal somehow. It was possible, albeit unlikely, that...
2025-08-16 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe hiveheart announce Smon’s true nature and the Rayjo Tau plan that very afternoon. Smon helps them frame the situation as better than playing temporary host to some baby stars, as them being the hive that will shape the entire future of the continent, possibly the Earth, the origin point for...
2025-08-12 23:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe Firedancer was beautiful.
Queen Tatik had never really acknowledged it as her flagship, not while the remnants of the Stardancer still existed as the heart of our nest, but necessity had demanded some sort of vessel fit for a Queen to travel her empire when needed, and she had conceded ...
2025-08-09 23:18:55 +0000 UTC View Post“It’s a bold claim,” one of the hiveheart says, “for a handful of inexperienced children to make. That this new type of communication tower could reach all the way across the ocean.”
“Our star-travelling guest has demonstrated other powerful abilities,” another points out, “...
2025-08-05 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View PostI didn’t have to check the hull to know that it wasn’t doing great. Which is good, because I wouldn’t have been able to check it anyway; most of our external sensors were gone, burned away into space, except the ones we’d removed and taken inside for safekeeping. It was hot out there. Ver...
2025-08-01 23:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostTyk can’t help but be impressed by the restraint of the people of Glittergem Hive. Even as Smon, clean and well rested and adorned in her least tattered silks, strides through the entrance hall with Tyk and Mia and their truebrothers, nobody tries to approach her; they form a clear path and loo...
2025-07-29 23:30:02 +0000 UTC View PostBringing my rogue sister back to the Heart Planet is a very dangerous decision. Is it the wrong one? It might be. But I can’t risk killing her before I know which Queen her pack of traitors has taken the Crown Jewel to, I can’t stay away from the Heart Planet any longer knowing that war could...
2025-07-26 23:30:01 +0000 UTC View Post