Ready: Watch Amira's awakening now ▶️
All right, luvvies? Matt here with the Ready edition of Ready & Waiting, a fortnightly newsletter from Foggy Outline.
The Ready edition is all about the things we've made that are ready for you to enjoy right now.
Murderous Monsters: An evening of story and folklore for adults
8 November, 19:00GMT, London
I’ve listened to all of Graeme Cooke’s podcast Tales of Britain and Ireland, initially as research for Merely Roleplayers: Vigil, but now just because I enjoy it! This event is basically Tales of Britain and Ireland live. As the nights get longer and the spirits wake, what better to do than gather close and share strange tales? A tip of the hat to Ellie and Natalie Winter for letting me know this was happening!
Countryside Pollution, our animation raising awareness of plastic tree guards for Friends of the Dales’ Living Woods campaign, is out – and already getting buzz! The video got a nice write-up in the Yorkshire Post:
We made Countryside Pollution for free, because we like Friends of the Dales and believe in this campaign. We can do more stuff like this when you buy us a cuppa now and then.
For Hallowe’en, I Need A Miracle looks at the dark side of a world where everyone has a direct line to the divine and miracles happen every day: namely, people who simply love murder have the same access to miracles as everybody else.
And in Merely Roleplayers: Vigil: Tailor Made, Act 3 of 5, things are hotting up in Tailors’ Haunt (literally, Calistarius and Jinny are getting reckless with the fire magic).
And now, our feature presentation:
A Net Too Wide to Break His Fall
15. Prepare to depart
Callum attacked the airport security checkpoint like an assault course, vaulting barriers, running across the top of X-ray machines and swinging around metal detectors. The agent with the wand stiffened when he misjudged a landing and sent a stack of plastic trays scattering, but all the attention that should have converged on Callum instead got spread between whichever flyers each agent happened to be looking at right then.
Callum’s own attention only had one focus. Beyond the checkpoint, beyond the attempted distractions of the spirits and fragrances, around the blind corner into the main concourse, for the first time in the five years since their parting at Vivian Hithercombe’s house on Bronze Street, Callum set eyes on his sister Marielena. The first and central node in his network. The one person who’d ever perceived him all by herself, without an introduction. Without needing another person to confirm, “Yes, he’s really there”.
Mari perched at a high table by the bar, on her phone, wearing business formal with a couple of temporary substitutions for in-flight comfort. Within sight of a departure board, but not glued to it like many of the others airside. She looked taller than he remembered. Allowed five years to grow unburdened into herself.
All Callum’s momentum bled out in a moment. His heels dragged. Maybe this was selfish after all. To intrude back into her life.
Enjoying the story? How about you buy me a cuppa while I write the next chapter?
Five years. He’d never tried tracking anyone down again after drifting away. Never in their lives had he and Mari been out of touch for this long. Five years. Maybe the connection could fray. Maybe those connections—people—friends he’d let lapse would look straight through him if he could find them again. Maybe Mari, his first node, his only family, wouldn’t look up when he said her name. He’d been psyching himself up for a tough conversation, but maybe what was about to happen instead was, he’d take the seat next door and touch her should and say her name and she wouldn’t react. Not even an autonomic twitch of the tiny vestigial muscle behind her ear. No awareness of his existence at all.
He sat.
She looked up from her phone.
Not the vigilant side-glance of a woman travelling alone, unobtrusively assessing an intrusion into her personal space.
The total attention-shift of recognising, just from the corner of your eye, the silhouette, the body language, the smell, the entirety of the presence of a person you know, really know, who’s never far from your thoughts.
“Hey, Mari.” He’d meant to be humble, rueful, but the relief stretched his lips into a wide smile. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
See you in two weeks for the Waiting edition: all the things we're getting ready for you behind the scenes.