The Quarry's Secret Name (Short Story)

In my dreams I found the Quarry dark and starless. I leapt the locked white gate and walked the ramp past the stones until I reached the perfect lake, and then kept walking across the water until I reached the far banks where the swampgrass grew. Among the swampgrass fireflies danced, and I realized these green lights were the stars themselves, who during dreams left their patient perches within the sky and formed new experimental constellations in grottos and berry bushes.

I don't normally write "true" prose — I spend most of my time working on games and game-adjacent stuff. But in the months after Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast wrapped up, I needed something to help me take a break from games, and I found myself drawn to fiction-writing. I have a lot of fiction left over from the summer: an unpublishable first draft of a novel, several half-finished stories, and this. I think it's really beautiful and I hope to find a home for it someday. I wasn't going to post it on Patreon because this is technically the possum creek Patreon and this isn't for Possum Creek, its my own personal stuff, but I thought you all might like it. I'm still at the commune right now and while I work on something adjacent to this story and celebrate the success of Inscrutable Cities (more than $40K! That's amazing!) I figured I wanted to share this with you. I think this is going to be the last of my December posts ... except for a "Possum Creek year in review" essay I wrote that I'll share after Christmas.

With all that said, I hope you enjoy this story. It's coming from a very near-and-dear spot in my heart, and even though sometimes it's a bit disorienting and purple prose-y (first drafts are first drafts, after all), I hope it's able to speak to you too.