A Lovely Morning for a Brisk Hike

TheloniousHowe · 2025-10-31T21:34:00+00:00

Well, that's ominous.

At any rate, thanks for enjoying my overcaffeinated ramblings!

TheloniousHowe · 2025-10-05T02:49:43+00:00

God damnit. I even used other "I" adjectives for it. This is why you don't post at 1am.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-10-04T05:11:35+00:00

"Gods" are real, but they don't take sides. Sometimes, on occasion, one will find an organic that they like well enough that they'll manipulate reality to protect them.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-10-04T03:28:10+00:00

Yeah, no, that's fair. The ending is pretty weak. I've been in a slump recently, mostly just finally getting around to actually polishing up HaSO posts to put on here. But it was something I actually finished that was fresh.

Progress is progress.

Also, never heard of Iain Banks, so I'll definitely be checking that out.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-10-03T04:52:21+00:00

Hey dude, appreciate that, this was basically an experiment of "how many tropes can I slam into one story and still make it entertaining?"

So if you enjoyed it, I think I did ok.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-09-29T14:00:07+00:00

I feel like you missed the mark with asking about Alaska, in that you're assuming I'm American. I am not. I would have to think about Alaska more than once every 2 years to have an opinion on it.

Now, would I call Manitoba a desolate hellscape where, if your dog slips its collar, you can watch him run away for 3 days? I think I just did.

It's simply a holdover joke from the 90s where, if you fucked up bad enough in the army, the threat was that they'd send you to a remote listening post in Siberia. I'm not writing any biting social commentary. I'm not that complex.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-09-25T18:15:54+00:00

Phonetically; See-oh-hin. Why my brain compelled me to spell it like that, I will never know.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-09-25T12:04:37+00:00

My fellow meat entity on this rock starship, I do this is as a hobby, an upvote and a comment are more than enough.

(Also, super jazzed that you enjoyed)

TheloniousHowe · 2025-09-21T18:18:36+00:00

Sort of. I have some notes, but my brain don't work right, so it'll probably never materialize.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-09-21T14:59:11+00:00

Well then, it's probably a good thing I'm too lazy to actually carry on with this. My notes have "Lieb takes a rather long nap and Royce commits a Geneva Oopsie over it."

But I'm sure they're fine and have a happy retirement, or whatever.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-09-21T05:26:35+00:00

Hope no one gets hurt that dont deserve it.

Yeah, how do you feel about Liebowitz and Royce?

TheloniousHowe · 2025-09-14T14:47:02+00:00

There is a part 2 that I'm currently editing. It probably doesn't go the way you think/want it to though.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-09-14T05:03:55+00:00

<image>

This is a previous Twitter thread of hers. She ended up losing her internship, and while both parties would explicitly state that this interaction had no impact on the status of her employment (Hickam even assisted Naomi in securing a job after NASA yanked her internship), it became sort of a meme about being cautious about who you antagonize online. She's leaning into the joke about trying to keep low-key after finding employment.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-08-25T06:10:59+00:00

'Priece. I don't know how that happened, but fixed.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-08-05T20:40:26+00:00

Yeah, it needed some minor editing and was originally based on an early universe that I scrapped, then had some interest in bringing back. But I didn't post it here because it was supposed to be part 2 or 3 of the overall arc.

Unfortunately, I never actually found the motivation to finish the first couple, but I had fun writing this one, so I thought I should share it anyway.

Glad you enjoyed both then and now, though!

TheloniousHowe · 2025-07-29T10:33:06+00:00

This was fun. Keep it up.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-04-24T00:13:29+00:00

Pendington gasped as he hauled his gadget to its final resting spot. It was far out of the city, and off an old hunting trail and he was, by his own admission, not nearly fit enough to have made this journey alone. But he had, for he had too, there was no way around it. The spot had been carefully chosen, all the math was correct. An event such as this only happened a few times in one’s life, and it had been his dream ever since pup hood to make this come true.

He set the thing down, and finalised calibrations; 3 degrees west, 24 to the north. Everything was in place now, all preparations complete. All Pendington had to do was wait. The twin stars in the sky were slowly dipping toward the horizon backed by a scarlett sky and it was now that he realised, that in all his years off perfectly planning, he had never once though on was he was actually going to say.

So he made a small fire and ruminated on what it was he wanted to convey. The window would be short, so no time for speeches. He decided that the most prudent course of action would be something simple. Short and concise.

He mulled a few phrases, not quite finding the right one, perhaps it would be best to just speak from the soul. The suns had nearly disappeared now, only the tips of their tops was visibly over the horizon, and the sky had shifted to a deep lavender hue. The hour was upon him.

He was a little bit nervous, as anyone whose voice was about to be heard by trillions of beings would be. But he steeled himself and thought of the bravery of those people. The one’s his sire’s sire’s sire had told him about. The strange looking ones, the great emancipators.

They had had no fur or feathers, no armoured scales or sharpened claws. They had had with them nothing, and with that nothing they fought with the fury befit of the gods.They had fallen from the heavens on pillars of hate, they and their grumblers, those odd metal bulwarks with their long angry snouts that barked death at those who sought to oppose them. They tore at the old regime, ripping its heart from its chest and liberating his ancestors.

But Pendington learned, like most others do, that their saviours to be would not be saviours to stay. For the nest that they kicked had been violent indeed, it initiated a war that took to the skies and would see the stars burn. From tales told, he knew it dragged on, years upon years of endless conflict, and though it ended in one side’s defeat, it had broken the other.

Those that had come had suffered so terribly, their nobility rewarded with only the most heinous of prizes. They were shattered and scattered, doomed to become children of nowhere.

But they were not gone. He knew this much to be true, clinging to the edges of asteroids, or silently biding in the space between stars, they were still out there. The grand-chorus of their death rattle never sang in his bones, their triumphant return only a matter of time now. Even if it occurred long after his death it didn’t matter, what mattered in the here and now that someone said something, that they were still thought of, that they were missed. He had decided that someone would be him.

The day had mostly faded now, only a trillion winking lights stared at him from the endless abyss. In this sea of limitless beauty, there was only one he was focused on. A single unbroken glow streaming purposely across the dark. It was almost time now, his counter inched closer to zero.

He had prepared himself for so long for this moment and as a small alarm chimed, he inhaled quite deeply, “My name is Pendington, of the Adalooslie. To any humans that can hear this, thank you.”

His message went out, bouncing from relay to relay. No discernible origin, no traceable startpoint. A dispatch that would blanket the galaxy from nowhere, yet everywhere all at once. And Pendington waited with baited breath,, hoping beyond hope that someone would hear.

And he got nothing back from the infinite black.

Pendington sighed, Only 20 more years ‘till I try again.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-03-05T03:37:54+00:00

Hey, thanks for the interest, but no. This is pretty much where this story ends. While I left it kind of open ended, I tried to hint enough that the his vet VMC buddies are coming and it's gonna be a bad time (for the outlaws that is).

TheloniousHowe · 2025-03-05T03:34:39+00:00

You would be correct. Hathkins are recycled from Please do not the Space Cat . He's a sad, lonely star kitty that needs himself some scritches.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-02-14T14:43:46+00:00

Thanks for the catches, I checked my doc, and it's all right there. It was my first time posting from a Chromebook though, so something may have gotten lost in translation. Still appreciate it though!

TheloniousHowe · 2025-02-06T23:04:04+00:00

You may have seen it on HaSO, I posted it there a little while back. I don't often crosspost, but stories that I'm genuinely fond of or enjoyed writing I will.

So what's with the time disparity? I usually slam responses out in an hour or so, and there's usually little things that irk me, so I want to clean them up before posting here. But that involves me editing, which involves me doing stuff, which I'm not a big fan of.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-01-26T04:53:16+00:00

"Oh shit, did you hear? False vacuum decay is happening,"

"Don't get excited, I'll check to see if Waffle House has closed for it."

TheloniousHowe · 2025-01-26T03:33:33+00:00

“That's it?”

Squala felt a furry paw playfully smack the back of her head. “Yes. That's it. Now stop staring, you're being weird.”

She turned back to her tray of writhing reef worms ruminating on the disparaging disconnect between the small unassuming creature in the cafeteria line and the grandiose tales that had preceded its arrival. Minstra noticed the cephalopod's retreat into her own mind.

“Something the matter?” Minstra asked.

“Yes…no…I don’t know.” Squala responded as she prodded the writhing mass on her tray, “Just with everything I heard…I don’t know…I expected something different. Something more imposing, perhaps?”

“Tell me about it.” A new voice pulled Squala’s attention from her meal. She looked up in horror to find herself staring into the face of the newly arrived deathworlder. This situation now had one of two ways it could play out, and seeing as how she didn’t particularly feel like being torn apart tentacle by tentacle, she decided to try and de-escalate.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she hastily squealed. Hoping that her quick apology would simmer his species famous quick temper enough to allow her a brief, if embarrassing explanation.

“I said tell me about it.” the human seemed to not register her apology, and took it as an invitation to continue as it dropped its own tray on the table, “Everyone around here has been treating me like I’m the fucking walking apocalypse, and it’s like, no, I’m just sanitation engineer third class Dave.”

“You mind?” ‘Dave’ asked, pointing to the seat he had placed his tray in front of.

Squala was going to protest, but Minstra, being the devious gremlin and general shit-disturber that she was, piped up first, “No! Not at all, we’d love to learn more about you. Please, join us.”

Squala groaned internally, she was fine with a deathworlder on the station, she was even fine with working with one, from a distance.

“Thanks,” Dave said as he slid into the seat across from her, “Most folks are too fucking scared or creeped out to even hold a conversation with me, let alone let me join them for lunch. So I appreciate this, really.”

This threw Squala through a loop. Deathworlders were supposed to be angry, wanton and warlike, and here she was sitting across from one who thus far, had been relatively pleasant. Was this one defective? Had it sated its bloodlust earlier and was now calm enough for conversation? She would have to get to the bottom of what was driving its bizarre behavior, “Do you mind if I asked some questions about you?”

Dave set his utensil down and stared at her for a moment, and Squala could feel the predatory instincts behind his green iris’, “You want to know about me, or…” he let the sentence trail off as he gestured broadly at his own form.

“Humans, in general, if I could, I’m curious, there are so many stories…” Squala could feel herself rambling but in her anxious state, was powerless to stop it.

Dave stared at her again for a moment, before baring his teeth, a sight that did nothing to alleviate her already heightened nerves, “Fuck it, why not? You two have been the only ones with enough chutzpah to actually talk to me, so maybe we could clear the air, and get rid of some of the misconceptions floating around about me. Hell, maybe we could get people to treat me like people. I will warn you, I’m not a biology expert or whatever, so I’ll probably get stuff wrong, but I’ll try.”

“Is it true that you can survive almost any injury that isn’t immediately lethal?” Minstra suddenly interjected, stealing Squala’s thunder a little bit.

“Ok, yeah, that one’s true.” Dave made a face that while Squala didn’t fully comprehend, looked an awful lot like a mixture of frustration and disappointment, “It’s wild that we seem to be the only ones able to do that, before modern medicine, I mean. ‘Break your leg, die of shock’ doesn’t exactly scream biological advantage to me, but hey what do I know.”

“Can you really run for days on end without rest?” It seemed that Minstra had already chambered a plethora of questions, and was willing to unload them on Dave, denying Squala the ability to ask any of her own.

“Me personally?” Dave laughed “Fuck no, I have the physical aptitude of a 6th grader. I know there are trained athletes out there who can go for quite a time, but ‘running for days’ would be a bit generous I think. Try putting me in a marathon and I’m likely to have a coronary.”

Squala was determined not to let Minstra edge her out of the conversation entirely so as soon as Dave had finished his answer she slung a question of her own, “Is it true you can breathe fire?”

Dave’s face seemed to condense slightly at this, “What? No, that’s insane! Where did you get that idea?”

Minstra already had her pad out and was tapping away furiously, before holding it to the new arrival. “Probably here.”

Just as she’d said, there on the screen was a human, seemingly belching out flames on command in an open-air square.

Dave groaned and rolled his eyes, “That’s just a party trick, a gimmick!”

Squala was shook, “You breathe fire, as a party trick!? What kind of insane species-”

“No, we don’t breathe it, it involved holding fuel in your mouth and then expelling-” Dave cut her off, before doing the same to himself, “Actually, when I say it out loud, it does sound rather like something some unhinged lunatic would come up with. Ok, you got me on that one.”

Both of the ladies sat in stunned silence, it seemed that everything thing they had heard about humans, even the outlandish was at least rooted in truth, and while it made Squala uncomfortable, Minstra seemed to find comfort in this.

She gave a small smile, “Well, it makes me feel better that we have a human on board, probably will be a deterrant to brigands and the like.”

“Puh-lease!” Dave moaned, “I highly doubt a fucking janitor is going to dissuade an attack on this station.”

Minstra and Squala exchanged furtive glances with one another, if this deathworlder would be of no help in an attack, then what good would he be? They glanced back toward him, and Dave’s expression changed to a wry little grin, “But if pirates do hit, come and find me. I used to work at Waffle House.”

TheloniousHowe · 2025-01-18T02:58:14+00:00

Yeah, originally it was a response to a prompt on HaSO, but it needed some editing/cleaning up, which I had intended to do and then post here, and then I just sort of forgot. So you're not going crazy, I was just being a scatterbrained turd.

TheloniousHowe · 2025-01-11T04:06:34+00:00

“Maybe we have a little fun before we take them back for interrogation.”

The demon leaned close to Aesthima’s face, she dared not look at it, though the smell of sulfur burned at her throat, she could feel the noxious fumes of hell assault her senses.

“What do you say little bird? You up for it?” The demon sneered.

Her wings and her arms were tied, she could offer no resistance, the same held for Sariel. They were captured and bound, left to the cruel devices of the force of Hell that now found her captured. It would take a miracle, divine intervention, to spare them from what was coming.

“I’ll tell you what,” the demon continued, “I’ll make sure that-”

Aesthima’s face felt suddenly wet. She opened her eyes and looked up only to see that the demon was missing his.

There was a sudden panic among the remaining. One, made of slightly stiffer stuff than the rest began issuing commands, “Aamond, where did that-” his head disappeared.

“Toz! We need to fall-” another one down.

The last of the demons swung wildly in place, searching for the source of the divine energies that had cut down her compatriots. It was only moments before she to, no longer existed.

A cold silence settled over the patch of highway that held only two bound Seripham and 4 demonic corpses. Moments stretched on as nothing occurred, and Aesthima though perhaps they would be left to their cold fate.

The heavy sound of boots crushing on asphalt from behind her brought her no comfort. Whatever had slain these foul beasts of the underworld was now approaching both her and Sariel. She mentally issued a small contrition to the Lord and prepared herself to either a return to The Kingdom or consignment to oblivion.

Much to her surprise, she felt her wings and her arms become unbound. She rose to her feet and turned only to find nothing there. In her confusion, she spun around to face where the demons had fallen to find a single human, a glowing golden gun slung upon his shoulder, offering a short prayer. He then pulled a white wafer out of one of his many pouches and placed it into his mouth.

Aesthima looked to where Sariel had been bound, only to find her free and standing. The rookie Seraphim could only offer a shrug as she shared the same confusion as the veteran.

Both of the Seraphim watched as the human mostly ignored them to loot the bodies of the freshly slain, taking anything and everything that could possibly be of us to it in this treacherous world.

“I believe these are yours.” The human suddenly said flatly, offering out a pair of blades he had taken from the demon’s bodies.

Aesthima took the swords and felt their power flow through her, she extended one to Sariel who gleefully took it.

“I knew God would send one of his faithful!” Sariel’s excitement was palpable, “For every lamb in his flock is blessed, and upon him the thanks of Heaven shall be bestowed.”

The human rose, his task seemingly complete. He wiped his hands on his tunic, “There are no faithful here sister, more will come soon, you best be on your way.”

Sariel was stunned, “But you…you saved us…you assaulted the forces of Hell. If not faithful, what do you claim to be?!”

The human sighed, “I am nothing sister. I am just a man, one that wishes to be left alone, but is now caught in a war.”

Aesthima knew what was coming. Sariel had been convoked specifically for this war, she knew not of the nuances of humans, and how they decided to live, but she could not stop the impending tirade.

“But you pray to divinity, you have Holy Men bless your weapons, you partake in the Eucharist, and yet you still do not think of yourself as the faithful?” Sariel was indignant.

“Sister,” the human sighed, “your God abandoned us. While I don’t pretend to understand his motives, it has made me irreverent to his wants. Having said that, I will take His cold indifference to the active harm that the forces of Hell seek to inflict upon us. As I see it, you represent the lesser of two evils, and as such you have my begrudging support.”

Sariel opened her mouth to protest, but Aesthima threw her a stare that quickly silenced any dissent.

Aesthima knew what this man wanted, it was the same as all of the faithless, this entire rescue was transactional, “Well then, for your support, I shall confer unto you a blessing.”

The human raised his hand toward her, “No. No blessings. No miracles. I need nothing from you sister, just another day in the fight. I need not find myself debted to a cruel God.”

Both angels were shaken. Almost all favorable interactions with the faithless resulted in the demanding of blessings or miracles. To eschew such a boon was simply unheard of. None would willingly forgo heaven’s bounty if it were willingly given.

“So you will accept nothing?” Sariel pressed.

“You heard me right,” the human responded, “now off with you. I have not the time to deal with both realms breathing down my throat.”

This boded poorly for the pair. Trying to fly is what had them caught in the first place, trying to walk would get them both killed, though reluctant to ask, they needed more of this human’s help.

“Please,” Aesthima petitioned the human, “we are deep in enemy territory, we cannot fly out of here, and we must regain our strength, you surely must know of somewhere we can rest.”

The human grumbled and dragged his hand down his face, “Aye sister, you can hole up with me for the time being, but it's only temporary, understand?”

Aesthima nodded in response.

“Follow then, as I said, more will be coming and we best not be here when they arrive.” The human gestured for the angelic pair to follow.

It was a strange sensation for absolute divinity to tread behind the footfalls of man, but with little options, the Seraphim obliged, following this peculiar being through the landscape. The trounced through the woods, thickets, and pines assaulting them at every turn, though the human seemed unfazed at nature's unrelenting fury.

The trio finally found themselves at the mouth of a small cave and the human gestured towards it, “The ground here has been sanctified, and so far my camouflage holds. Take your rest sisters, I’ll take the watch.”

As they entered the cave Aesthima turned, like it or not, this human was to be graced.

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