Chapter 33 Chinguetti Yet with every step, I feel the contradiction more keenly: treated as precious but forced to remain at the edges of trust. All I want is to sit under a fig tree with bystanders and stories, to be an ear, not an exhibit. Tomorrow, I decide, I will negotiate harder. Today, I…
Tag: women
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
Chapter 32 Listeners We rattle into Chinguetti mid-afternoon, dust trailing behind us like the tail of a slow comet. From a distance, the city seems built entirely of old secrets and the sort of stone that looks better in faded postcards. Minarets slice the sun, jagged and serene. The desert hush settles—ninety per cent heat,…
AUTHOR’S NOTE — The Holographer’s Atlas: Iliya
The Atlas started as a collection of what the novels couldn’t hold. Not because the material was too raw — rawness I can manage — but because these particular memories belong to the writer, not to Elena. Elena is still becoming. The writer has already been. That distinction matters more than it might appear. Guido…
Javea’24 – Part I (COMC Interlude)
INTERLUDE FILE 07–08 The Holographer’s Atlas Source Material: Benidorm ’89 / Xàbia ’24 / I. Ph. De Lange The Holographer’s Atlas I. Depth and Danger Twenty-five years old, the Cavalli dress, and it still fits like it was cut this morning. No bra needed — I considered braiding my hair but decided against it, long…
Javea’24 – (COMC Interlude)
The Holographer’s Atlas — Story II is coming. If you read Guido, Benidorm ’89 — two Madrileñas, a stolen boyfriend, and a communion saint that wasn’t his to give — then you know the register now. Short. True. No fictional distance. The second story is different in every particular and completely the same in what…
The COMC Files- Book VI Matriarchs
Chapter 31 The Black Script Most of the stories I collect aren’t buried in clean sheets or whispered behind clinic walls. They drift like I do, carried by wind and memory along the old caravan roads. When the merchant’s wife mentions Chinguetti, her voice drops. “City of libraries. Find Amal. Ask for the black script.”…
The COMC Files-Coordinates Tichit
Author’s note — March 2026 Elena is in Tichit. Mauritanian desert, vernacular stone, date palms, the Tagant Plateau at her back. She was kidnapped. Before that: her loyal sentinel and companion, Karim broke his Makhrûh for her — a sacred prohibition, not broken lightly. She was rescued by wolves, one of whom she shared the…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
Chapter 30 Sanctuary in Tichiit The gates of Tichiit rise pale and secretive against the new sun, narrow streets curling inward as if the town itself wants to swallow its mysteries. I arrive in Karim’s company, dust clinging to my cuffs and a hard new caution sitting in my bones. It is early, yet shadows…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
Chapter 29 Down from the Dhars The torchlight found me before the voices did. I was still sitting with my back against the painted wall, one hand on my belly, the other pressed flat to ochre horses that had galloped through ten thousand years without arriving anywhere. Asdar had gone quiet in that way he…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
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,…
The C.O.M.C. Files 