Chapter 28 Sit and Stay He accepts my gift without a word, drinking the golden liquid — an ancient thing, alive with magic both healing and wild. I close my eyes, surrendering to an intimacy deeper and older than language. In that endless hush — rock art above, life between — something is exchanged: strength,…
Tag: travel
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
Chapter 27 In the Dark of the Earth The Dhars Tagant. Astonished awe sweeps over me and I press a hand to my mouth. I’ve studied these rock engravings in photographs, in crowded lectures, in the late-night fever of grant proposals. Never — not once — did I imagine stumbling upon them like this, a…
Benidorm 1989- Part 2 (COMC Interlude)
A true‑story interlude from The Holographer’s Atlas (COMC universe), set between Book VII and VIII. After a few days he asked me to call my father. He said it simply, the way he did everything — no preamble, no theatre. He wanted to take me back to Italy with him. To his village above Milan, his family,…
The COMC Files-Book VI-Matriarchs
Chapter26 Between Wolf and Stone The ruined well — its cool stone and tangled brush — offers me a brief, fragile sanctuary. The first taste of freedom, shimmering beyond terror and exhaustion. Crouched behind the jagged stones, I press my back to the chilly rock and catch my breath as shouts and gunfire split the…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
Chapter 25 — The Desert Night Karim and Saleck Karim’s hands tremble as he turns the sat phone off. Cool desert darkness presses against him. Saleck arrives in a battered Toyota Hilux, features half-lit by dashboard glow, eyes narrowed like a man who has seen every cruelty the sand can conjure. “You brought water?” Saleck…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
The Chronomancer and the Twins of Time The truck hits a pothole, jolting all of us so hard my teeth clack together. My eyes blaze—not with fear, but a kind of scorched indignation, as if getting kidnapped is just another workplace hazard that’s finally tipped me over the brink of career fatigue. Shadows flick past:…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
The Chronomancer and the Twins of Time The next morning, Karim rises hollow-eyed, every movement edged with the fatigue that follows a night spent wrestling with ghosts. Though he dresses with precise care, as if routine can anchor what feels suddenly adrift within, I sense the change at once—the subtle withdrawal, his gaze fixed somewhere…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
makrūh Maison des Sables The border at Guergarat is behind them. Hajja Zohra’s name opens a door in Nouadhibou, and M’barek receives them as family — lamb, mint tea, lamplight. Safe enough. But the night has its own border crossings. What passes between Elena and Karim in the dark of a borrowed room is tender…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
The Chronomancer and the Twins of Time Memory by the Atlantic The old Peugeot hums along the coastal highway, windows cracked just enough to let in the salt-tinged breeze. I shift in the passenger seat, unconsciously pressing my thighs together at the memory that surfaces unbidden as the Atlantic stretches endlessly beside us. “You’re thinking…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
The Chronomancer and the Twins of Time Departure Morning: Atlas Village The sky is streaked with pale gold and indigo as the village begins to stir. We are greeted by the aroma of baking bread and woodsmoke wafting through the mountain air. The villagers, wrapped in woven shawls, beckon us into the communal room, where…
The C.O.M.C. Files 