Sweeter Than Cheesecakeby Bitter Umami had enjoyed the date so far, even if Bitter wasn't exactly her type. Her favorites were taller, more masculine, a bit less gentlemanly, pudgier about the gut, were covered in scales and had a snout full of sharp teeth. But for dating another elf, she liked Bitter well enough. He had a cute, boyish face, fluffy blue hair, wore a gorgeous floral-print kimono that gave her all kinds of ideas for how she ought to dress up Nori, and most importantly, had pa

Prelude Nori stepped into the showers on wobbly legs, his calves and thighs aching. His biceps and triceps were aching, too. And his chest, and his gut, and his back. So, that is to say, it had been a good workout. The wolf-boy didn't much look like someone who frequented the gym, but he did take his job of being Umami's faithful bodyguard seriously. Though it was hard to guard the body of someone who enjoyed having it destroyed as much as she did, that was, nevertheless, his title, so he f

MERCURYby Bitter*** Taymi smiled and pulled her cloak tighter around her body. It was thick and warm against the cool morning air, and was built to muffle not just the sound of the body’s motion, but even the vibrations in the aura that could give a Fey away. That was good for Taymi, because aside from the fact that she was a city Fey more than a warrior, hunter, or even an outdoorsman, there wasn’t much else on her body to protect her. That’s not to say that she wasn’t dressed, tec

Kimberly
By Bitter
***
Kimberly hissed as her feet joined the rest of her in the stomach. "You bitch! You're gonna make me late for my date!" she yelled, mostly for the catharsis. Nobody could hear you through their stomach, and despite being as deep in their body as it was possible to get, you'd never make sense of anything they said to you either. And though going to someone's stomach was usually a one-way trip, Kimberly had a reason to be confident that she'd see her boyfriend again; this kin

HIS
FIRST TIME
by
Bitter
***
It
was the worst sort of inn: the kind that knows you want to leave as
soon as possible and obliges by helping you want to do so. The best
one could say about it was that it did have the essential functions
of a lodging. The rooms contained beds. There was a restroom in the
building, somewhere, if one was brave enough to go looking for it.
The doors possessed locks. If you wanted light, there was a window,
usually. And, best of all, it only cost exactly as much as it

A Threesome
By Bitter
---
A bell rang.
It was a single, quick "ting", a silvery finger in the ear beckoning playfully. At its call, a pair of elves waiting in a booth small enough to be a closet stood up from their benches, smiled to one another, and shuffled beyond the velvet curtain, though not before clasping their hands together, becoming a single organism in body and purpose.
Viselle wondered what she had ever done to deserve Bellamie. She was a towering woman, taller than most human men, e

PASSING
by
Bitter
***
John
stood with his palm against a palm tree, looking out over a bush into
the beach beyond, watching a gaggle of young women in swimsuits
enjoying themselves. Some of them were in the water bopping
beach-balls back and forth, a few had taken to the volleyball court,
he could see Karen reading a book through her horn-rimmed glasses,
and Mary was just sunbathing-- a view that fixed John's gaze for
quite a bit longer than the rest, because the way she was lying let
the curvat

Bakkenelika sat in a realm far from the reach of humans. All around her was a perpetual debauch, a massive canvas painted in thrusting flesh, wobbling fat, and crazed loops of digestive organs connecting the one to the other. Various imps and lesser devils of Bakkenelika's kind flitted about, carousing and mating without care for the bizarre worms and maws that yawned from the earth itself, occasionally catching one or two as they lay in an incautious torpor between rounds and swallowing them do

In the wearying frigidity of a cold autumn night, as the land was wreathed in fog, an inhuman frame lurched through the darkness. It had all the necessary appendages of the human anatomy, but they attached to an elongated triad with its point drooping toward the earth. Tumorous bulges on its front could be glimpsed in silhouette as it moved, its lumpy mass shifting and tossing its pitiful equilibrium to and fro. It moved with staggering half-leaps, one leg thrusting out and slamming to the turf,

BOOBIN HOOD
by Bitter
***
"Arise, evildoer!"
"Gwunh?"
replied Gretchen.
"I say arise,
evildoer! Your reckoning is upon you!"
Gretchen reluctantly
attempted to obey the squeaky, chipper voice's demand. She didn't
really want to; it was the dead of night and the alcohol was sitting
on her like a heavy blanket (not that Gretchen knew what it was like
to sleep under a heavy blanket; she slept nude and exposed). But she
was being spoken to, and she was being spoken to in

BOSOM FRIENDS
by
Bitter
***
In an unassuming little
band of equatorial sea, there was an island called Mili'ki Atoll. A
volcanic island in eons past, built from numerous lava flows since
the dawn of time, it had slumped into the sea until only a tiny bump
jutted skyward. Yet all around the peak, the rock had piled up in a
gentle, round swoop, exposing much fertile earth for the nourishment
of life. Out of this grew all manner of fruit-bearing trees, which,
in turn, kept the island's inhabitants

INTO DARKNESS
by Bitter
***
The normally ebon
surfaces of the city's numerous tinted windows were slowly taking on
a ruby hue as the sun neared the horizon. Sunset, the closing of a
day. Following its daily tides, the sea of humanity that flowed in
the city ebbed toward home, receding back toward the points of light
that offered them respite from the encroaching darkness. Freelance
artist Cerulesta Silva was among them, returning home from a tiring
day of filling out applications for stabler emp

DINNER AT TWILIGHT
by Bitter
***
It was Friday. It
always happens on a Friday; it pretty much has to. I came home from
work with a mixture of excitement and trepidation in my heart. Most
people wouldn't look forward to the situation I was walking into. I
probably wouldn't have thought I would, either, but here I am. I
parked my car, a well-worn used thing I got from a Ford dealer a long
time ago and put even more miles than it already had on it, behind my
girlfriend's, which put it to shame. It

THE LADY'S FAVORITE
by
Bitter
***
Sunlight streamed
through the picture windows of the afternoon lounge, not yet tinged
golden by the advent of dusk. The light was still white, the sky
still blue, and the illumination ideal, for the room had been
designed to receive the sunlight at this hour. There was no need for
a lamp or a candle, but at the same time there was no glare and nor
would the sunlight fall too hotly on the inhabitants; indeed, so long
as one used it at the correct time, there was

GOOD GIRL
by Bitter
***
It's happening. It's
finally happening.
I've been trapping fey
for my big so long that I can tell when he's hungry. I get this
little itch in my puss like I'm sorta horny but not really, not
enough that I want to finger myself. That's how I tell. And I start
dreaming of someone I'd want to fuck, and that's the kind of little
he wants to eat. Sometimes I want someone feisty, sometimes I want
someone easy, and sometimes I want a girl or a boy and sometimes I
just don't care

BREAKFAST IN BED
by Bitter
***
"Hooooneyyy..."
John's voice gently
roused Sandra from an immensely comfortable sleep into a very mildly
peevish wakefulness. None of her fuzzy and muted ire went toward her
husband himself; she could never really be angry at him for
anything. Under any other circumstances the sound of his voice would
have been a sweet caress for her ears. But the fact of the matter was
that she was currently in bed, face down, naked and between
delightfully cool sheets o

CIRCLE'S END


by Bitter


***


Elin listened contentedly to the sound of rain all around him. The pitta-pitta-pitta of the near drops made a wonderfully sharp counterpoint to the vast, smooth hissssssss of the rain taken in total. Rain always gave Elin a sense of wholeness; it was so large, so total. Rain fell on the whole of Aun at once, nourishing the Earth Mother, giving life to all. And as part of Aun, the rain fell on him as well. Little shocks burst over his shoulders and ticklish

THE ARACHNE'S CONFESSION


by Bitter


***


The first sign that prey was approaching was the noise. Down here in the Deeps, sound is often better than sight; the tunnel's surfaces echo even the softest noises such that you can know exactly what's where and how it's moving, even in total darkness. That was how I knew that prey was on the way. They stumbled and groped at the walls, a clear sign that they were a topsider lost in the Deeps. They were alone, too: brave, foolish, unlucky, or ma

TO GROW
by Bitter
***
Peeking out from around
the clouds, the sun cast its light down toward the Mystic Wilds
below. The tight-woven boughs of the canopy of Kale's Forest caught
all that they could, but some light was fortunate enough to make its
way to the surface undevoured. Bright speckles flickered here and
there, offering momentary excitements within the otherwise
undisturbed doldrums of the shade. But even the darkness had its own
intrigue; a gentle breeze made the leaves wag to and fro an

INTERRUPTION


by Bitter


***


Morgan made her way along the thin trail that connected the urban regions of the island of Tanibri to its more rural climes, alone. The sky was clear and the air was windy; the currents were such that there was always a breeze. The only question was how strong the wind blew. Today it was more tolerable than most, only strong enough to ruffle the tassels on her robe. The majority of travelers traversed the pass on a mule or a horse, but Morgan was on foot--

THE RATTLER


by Bitter


***


The year was about 1830, give or take, reckoned since the time when people started keeping track. The old days were long gone, but the modern era hadn't quite arrived. The times were changing quickly, and people couldn't quite change fast enough to keep up. Especially if they weren't human. Humans used to be thought of as the weakest things on the planet. Shrimpy, no fur or scales or claws or any real advantage to speak of. But it turned out that they were c

BAD GIRL


by Bitter


***


I'm a bad girl. I'm a bad, bad girl.


In the forest, there are two kinds of fey. There are bigs and there are littles. It's pretty easy to tell who's who... the bigs are a little taller, and you can see their muscles, and they've got these big, sharp teeth. But it's not just that... that's not even the first clue. You can tell the bigs from the littles because the bigs are just more. They're heavier. When there's a big around, you know. You could put one big

AN ANGEL'S MILK


by Bitter


***


It was a day of stillness. The air was hushed and empty. The vast canopy lay at rest; not a single leaf could be heard to brush any other. The clouds above hung thick and without motion, looking like feathers frozen in a glide that would never advance. The sun was visible only as a yellowing of some of these clouds, its sparkling muted by the intervening vapor.


It was a land without a name, like many in the Mystic Wilds. It was neither dead nor fallo

A DUO'S DUSK


by Bitter


***


"Aaaaaaaaaaah! Fuckin' gorgeous weather!" exclaimed a blond-haired man, throwing his arms apart in a yawning gesture. A woven-reed basket, nearly two feet deep, swung outward by the handle in his grip.


The man beside him ducked out of the basket's arc. "So you keep saying," he said.


"Because the weather is fuckin' gorgeous, Dollo!" said the blond. "The only thing better than a day like this is a night like last nig

AUTUMN


by Bitter


***


Hunger drove me out from my den. It is my sole motivation in autumn; in spring, there is the scent of females in heat to drive us males into the mating frenzy, and in summer there is the raising of the young to occupy our time. But the young have fledged by autumn, and as it is perilous for a naga to keep the company of a larger one for long, they will have gone to make their own dens before the leaves begin to turn. Then there is nothing left but the anticipatio

THE FISHERMAN


by Bitter


***


Once, in the province of Kulloran, there lived an old man who lived by the river Ellix. The Ellix was the single largest river in Kulloran and the world beyond, starting from the mountains in the south and running the entire length of the continent, practically splitting it in half. Tributaries flowed in from tamer regions, but for his own reasons the old man chose to live on the banks of Ellix itself. Privacy was the foremost of these; he had planted the

BLACK SHEEP


by Bitter


***


Rellime was in a poor mood. Outwardly, he had no reason to be: the weather was delightful, as it typically was in the realm of Pastoria. Pastoria was a land of plains. It never rose above the height of a man's waist (though the grasses enjoyed tickling people's knees), and extended far further than the eye could see. Its sun was a distant one, and the winds ran free in the absence of trees and tall stones, so there was always a breeze to make the coolness co

THOSE WHO KISS HONEYSUCKLE


by Bitter


***


The Mystic Wilds, true to its name, is an eternal wilderness whose borders, cultures, and civilizations are ever-changing, eroded from the outside in in the fullness of time. However, now and again the conditions are just right to support a rare bout of prolonged stability and order. Even chaos must contradict itself on occasion. So it was in the region called Carilliny, a tract of the Wilds that was rimmed on all sides by precipitous mountain

ARRANGEMENTS


by Bitter


***


It was the perfect kind of day for a vacation. The sun shone bright in a sapphire sky, momentarily concealed now and again by a passing cloud. Serpentine shadows wound around the grassy ground, painting the rolling landscape in shades of green. The knee-high grasses shuffled and danced in a consistent southerly breeze that cooled what heat the sun sent down. This same panorama played out for miles in each direction, a roil of emerald extended all the way to

REPERCUSSIONS


by Bitter


***


It all started with a perfectly normal Isharan scene.


Then, it ended too soon.


Much later, it all started again... with another perfectly normal Isharan scene.


There was a small patch of land somewhere in the northern regions of an Isharan peninsula which was, to put it simply, ugly as sin. It was as though the creator of everything had, at some point in the artistic process of world-smithing, had an attack of indigestion that had left his mood

THE SHORTCUT


by Bitter


***


It was a beautiful day somewhere in the wilderness that shadowed a third-rate city on a fourth-rate world in the plane called Ishara. The bright sunlight, subtle cloud cover, and perfect temperature did wonders for the mood of a woman named Rynoc, who was currently making her way home to a local Ironbelly outpost. She was headed back from the mines where her tribe harvested a kind of mushroom that was a staple food source for their lower class. It had absol

SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR


by Bitter


***


It was a dark age in the Land of Seven Suns. Millennia of prosperity came to an abrupt close as the celestial play fell from its script. The seven suns that gave that region its name were now reduced to one. Kazathoth, the Red Sun, the Blood Star, the Lord of Evil, had spun from his course. One by one he set upon the other gods and devoured them, becoming stronger and larger until none remained but him. Kazathoth's victory was the Land's demise, f

MEET THE ANURA
 
by Bitter
 
 
Hello!
 
Please do not be alarmed. I'm a fey, just like you. Or, rather, I used to be. Right now, I'm... what would be a good way to put it? Ex-fey. A fey in the past tense. Dead. Quite thoroughly dead, in fact; you needn't worry. I know what it looks like, and... well, you probably aren't comfortable just taking my word for it, but I promise you my word is all I have to give. This isn't my real spark, and it can't do all the horrible things

SEVEN OVERALL
 
by Bitter
 
 
It was a room of such beauty that it must have been one of the chambers of Heaven. Yet this bedroom was not divine; exquisite, but not divine. Its existence, however awe-inspiring, was explicable. Adrift above the clouds that hung in the skies of the Mystic Wilds, there was an island called Arielanei. Arielanei was an island by its purest definition: a mass of land well and truly removed from all others, not merely a sunken mountain but its own cont

THE KAEIN
 
by Bitter
 
 
The music pounded in Eria's ears as she circumnavigated the dance floor. It was the kind of music that pounded no matter how loud or how softly you played it. The heavy synthetic drum went THOOM, THOOM, THOOM, THOOM-BA-THOOM, THOOM, THOOM in the cadence of a heartbeat; it was the pulse of the entire club. The same rhythm flowed through everything. It wavered in the air, it pounded in the dancers, it throbbed in the heart of the girl in the corner and th

NINE AND ONE
 
by Bitter
 
 
I have heard it said that the simplest disproof of an intelligent and loving creator is a cursory evaluation of the bottom of the Earth's ocean. There you may find creatures that baffle the landlocked human expectations of proper animal design: creatures whose bodies are filled with light-emitting diodes designed to snare prey, creatures whose composition strays upward of seventy percent teeth, and creatures whose flesh is entirely transparent. To wi

BY THE OASIS
 
by Bitter
 
 
In the desert known as Auluroch, a fey stooped to take a drink. He had happened upon an oasis, one of those rare spots where the sands sank close enough to the underlying rock to hold water, and wisely decided to refill his body's reservoirs. The fey of that region had long since adapted to life in the dry heat of the Auluroch; at times when other fey would have collapsed of thirst, the Aulurochi fey would barely have begun to think of water. Protect

CONTROL
 
by Bitter
 
 
She is in control. Though every indicator screams to the contrary, her command over the situation is absolute. The wilderness is, by its very definition, untamed and free, but this thicket of trees is her court and this sun-soaked rock is her throne. Despite its rough and knottled texture, she lies upon it as if it were a bed with satin sheets, perfectly at ease, even smiling as the sun slowly bakes her naked body. There is no clothing to be seen, neither

THE WAY OF THE WILDS
 
by Bitter
 
 
The bright sunlight of an enchanted noon shone down upon the Mystic Wilds, the land beyond reality where all creatures of magic live. A colossal forest, finite perhaps but large beyond the comprehension of mortals, covered the earth for intractable miles in all directions. In this forest, huge yet but a fraction of the Wilds, there lived a race of creatures known as the Lesser Fey. The Lesser Fey, despite their name, were among the highest of

MEETING HER MATCH
 
by Bitter
 
 
In the deserts of the land of Sorja, near the mouth of the river Eripides, there exists a city called Senzorca where the naga live. Like the naga themselves, Senzorca was built low to the ground, with single-story buildings predominantly made of mud brick and sandstone, with one exception: the grand colliseum that towered over all else. But the colliseum was empty at this time of year, when the harvests were still being pulled in from the rare t

A MESSAGE DIVERTED
 
by Bitter
 
 
Somewhere in the heights of the Pajuris, a swath of mountains in the northern reaches of the world of Kanilupe, a snowstorm raged. The wind cut whistling ribbons through the air, whipping the thick white snow into a frenzy. The powder poured endlessly from the incongruously still black clouds above, who were seemingly oblivious to the chaos that raged beneath them. When at last the flakes fell low enough to the ground, they found their infinite

THE FALL OF IRAI
 
by Bitter
 
 
A pair of moccasins slapped against the great slabs of stone that made up the Iraian Way, one after the other over and over. Raindrops from the angry storm clouds above hurled themselves down, sacrificing themselves in exchange for a meager "tsick" as a response. Tiny though each one was, together they swamped the report of the messenger's feet, drowning the footsteps in a tide of sound. Lightning flashed above, adding the occasional cr

THE ANTI-WSP SUIT
 
by Bitter
 
 
A pair of automated sliding glass doors opened as three scientists approached. The two standing aside the third were dressed in white lab coats that covered them all the way down to to their polished leather shoes; one cradled a wooden clipboard in his arms, the other carried a tripod and a high-quality video camera. The third scientist, however, was not wearing anything that could possibly be construed as professional scientific attire. In fact

DEATH WARDEN
 
by Bitter
 
 
White petals swirled through the air in a world of endless sakura trees. This world was not like our own; it had no horizon, no roundness, no center-point. There was only the earth and the sky, and the infinite trees. The air was still, yet the petals swam in dancing patterns as if carried by their own private windstorms. Soft green grass lined all the earth that did not carry a tree, fed by an eternal rain from the clouds above. There was one oddity

THE PYTHON'S BATHHOUSE
 
by Bitter
 
 
Slowly, carefully, all senses alert, Arain bestrode the forest called Suithen. He was an elf, a native of the glen, one of the children of the Great Tree. But he had strayed from the Great Tree's protection, ranging beyond the elven city of Suithara, into the mass of trees beyond the city walls. The Great Tree watched over this place, too, but here that mighty spirit would not defend the elves from harm as readily. So Arain traveled lightly

THE INSATIABLE GUILD OF LADY-KILLERS
 
by Bitter
 
 
It was a sunny day in the metropolis of New York. In that city, where Dame Liberty stood tall to welcome new immigrants to the land of opportunity (even if only the opportunity to work for minimum wage your entire life), an innocuous waterside delicatessen, the Pandora's Breadbox, was seeing a suspicious level of activity. It was dinnertime, so one might expect a good deal of traffic to be passing in and out of it, but there l

JUST IN TIME
 
by Bitter
 
 
It had had all the marks of a doomed expedition. The first red flag, only visible now in retrospect, was the fact that Kingo had joined the party on account of the other three members not having members, and on those grounds alone. There was a certain glamor about the Hunters; whenever they returned to Ilmaster from an adventure, you could be sure that their very next destination would be someone else's bed, ensuring the survival of the species. So,