Nicole Walsh

Nicole Walsh

Nicole Walsh is a cat enthusiast from the east coast of Australia who loves fern gardens and long dresses. She writes short stories and novel-length speculative fiction and urban fantasy that spans from a little bit dark, a little bit amusing through to a little bit steamy. Her work is available in a range of magazines and anthologies. She is the author of the steamy urban fantasy novel Lust and Submission (2022). Visit Nicole at: https://nicolewalshauthor.com/ and www.facebook.com/nicolewalshauthor

My husband disembarked an hour before I did, in an unmarked box.The devoted

Faithful, delirious with prayers and fasting, would have had conniptions if they suspected their God spent his first hour in that tiny, backwater hole on a filthy square of concrete, beneath a pile of my luggage.

I paused on the ramp, setting a perfectly manicured hand against the murky glare of the sky. Wet, warm air licked my bare arms. Summer. Humidity, rain and biting insects. My stiff new nose failed to wrinkle as I winced.

“Paradise,” Arial, my noctoriously unprofessional bodyguard, said, slinking to my side. “Who calls a city that?”

“Elves,” I said.

We stood on the exit ramp. Behind us, the grunge retro rustbucket of a starliner clinked and cracked as it cooled. There wasn’t an elf in sight. As each new starliner landed, the cluttered field heaved with a flow of slovenly-dressed human soldiers. Rusted-out hovers crossed this way and that, skimming over weeds and gravel. Men and women shouted and pointed, banging malfunctioning tech.

“A circus,” I said. “And we are its caged performers.”

Arial hummed agreement, checking her nails. She’d broken one in the mechanic’s back last night.