Reluctant Diva 4
Inspired by Lipstick Discipline
Chapter 4 – Just the same
The next day was indeed another day and after school, despite all my coaxing, Tom plonked himself down in front of the TV and refused my requests for him to change.
“You can’t make me dress like a fairy and neither can Mom” was his repeated retort.

We made our way down to the lobby on our way to the dining room where Helen looked up, saw us and smiled. “Looking good tonight girls, it’s a pity that it will all be wasted on a group of other women, you’d be fighting the boys off if you were out on the town.”

Confronting
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

The story that I am telling is set in the year 2001 which is the year that my mother died, but it really starts much earlier than that, in the year 1969, which was the year before I was born. Earlier that year my mother had a miscarriage. My sister never lasted too much beyond conception, but my mother mourned her until the day she died.

Gakkou no Kaiden:
The Frosty Kiss of the Yuki-Onna

Satoyama is a rural village located in the mountains. The mountains that surround Satoyama are heavily forested. And since the Edo period logging has been one of the oldest businesses of the village. Generations of young men have followed in their fathers footsteps and gone into the mountains to harvest the trees that grow there. Merchants from Tokyo pay a high dollar for the wood harvested from the mountainside.

CHAPTER 18
What could I do but hold her? Eventually, she slipped off, well before I did, which was probably because I was so worried. I managed some sleep, Alys warm beside me, and it wasn’t until I saw and felt the warmth of sunlight through the tent that I realised I had actually slept for more than a few minutes. It was indeed sunny, the rain having ceased in the night, and it was surprisingly warm; when I struggled out for an urgent toilet run, some of the tents around us were actually steaming as they dried.