Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Why don’t you have more of a social media presence? It’s pretty much required for an artist these days.”

“If being an artist means strangers get to see my face, then I guess I’m not an artist.”

“Well, what are you then?”

“An enthusiastic amateur.”

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The parcel was wrapped in mauve paper, secured by some sort of adhesive tape that appeared to be visibly breathing and sweating. The shape was irregular bordering on the non-euclidean, and occupied more or less space in the room depending on the angle from which it was viewed.

“Here’s the problem,” the postal worker said. “There’s an extra ‘2’ in the ZIP code here. That’s only used for Alternate Counter-Earth deliveries.”

“How do I send it back? It’s digesting your floor just like it did mine.”

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A murmuration of starlings
And
A supercolony of ants
May
Yet
Give
Us
The greatest enemies-to-lovers storyline of all time

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807 in the wild
807 in the world
When you see a
Creature through
You viewfinder
They seem forever
Innumerable
But if every
Object in your
House was a crane
Your captive flock
Would outnumber the
Wild ten to one

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They say that John Sutton found one of those Japanese balloons. You know, the ones they sent over to try and cause wildfires? The ones that didn’t do anything but waste time, money, and kill a church picnic group? Old John, he always was a tinker, working away in the garage on his folks’ land. But while there’s lots of ways to make tinkering pay an honest living, he wasn’t interested in any of them.

Met him once. Big guy, tall, but wiry. Very polite, had a soft high voice, wasn’t much for talking. But he’d come into town every so often to try and trade bits of junk at the hardware store for parts he needed. Most of the time they’d turn him away, but he brought in something good just often enough that they didn’t ban him. Heck, old Gunderson still laughs about how he paid for a box of screws with an old engine block. It was worth a hundred times that in scrap, but it was also a royal pain getting it to the scrapyard.

Now, by that time, both Big John Sutton and Little Mae Sutton were dead, so it was just John out there. They owned the land, sure, but he didn’t pay the taxes on it. Weren’t much, but after a few years he owed well north of a hundred dollars and there was talk of the property getting seized. Well, when that happened, word is John said he’d simply fly away. He supposedly found that old Japanese balloon years ago, got it fixed up, and hung a chair under it instead of bombs. Guess he thought if he ever needed to get away be could puff it up with gas and set sail.

Well, that’s what they say he did. Just up and soared until the winds caught him and took him off toward Montana. Now, did that really happen? I can’t honestly say. Wasn’t there to see. But I can tell you this: when they eventually took his parents’ property for the back taxes, they accidentally set of an explosion. Killed three deputies it did, and blew out windows for a county mile. Now what would old John have need of that much gas for, if not a balloon?

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In the beginning, the great World Tree grew, and on each of its branches was a cone, and in each of the cones there was life. Gradually, each of the cones opened and the life within left the World Tree and went out. Each time, the World Tree offered them its wisdom, but each time the life, heady with young pride, turned them down.

The nuthatch, like all other birds, had spurned the advice of the World Tree and lived isolated and alone, always hungry and always lonely. But, unlike the others, the nuthatch came to realize its folly and returned to the World Tree, contrite, to ask for its forgiveness and its wisdom.

The World Tree was moved by the nuthatch’s humility, but it too was proud, and had been greatly wounded by the hubris its creations had earlier showed. So it offered the nuthatch a bargain: in exchange for something dear, the World Tree would give it three pieces of wisdom, timeless and immortal.

After considering the offer, the nuthatch agreed, and gave up its sweet song in exchange for what the World Tree would offer. The Tree then bestowed the three wisdoms that have since come to define the life of all nuthatches:

First, the secret to digging out homes from trees. By this wisdom, the nuthatches never needed to be cold and vulnerable again.

Second, the secret to banding together as a family unit, with siblings helping to raise their parents’ new brood. In this way, the nuthatches never needed to be lonely again.

Finally, the deepest secret of them all, one that only a handful in the world were privy to: tools. By using tools to seek for insects in the scaly bark of lesser pines, the nuthatches never needed to be hungry again.

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The old oak on the corner toppled last night
Liquified soil below, icy boughs above
Tipped over, root ball and everything
Took out a power line
Another laid limply on the street
It was all anyone could do
To pull the tree to one side
Put up hazard tape
Move on to more pressing emergencies
But it closed the park off
Parking lot blocked with oak and electricity
Deer graze this afternoon instead of joggers
Geese dabble in slushy mires
The only ones unafraid

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Humans
The human tradition of a groundhog seeing its shadow, and therefore predicting an extended winter cycle, has spread to most cultures and factions. Given that groundhogs themselves are extinct, humans tend to rely on a local substitute, like a Aldebaran Blood Maggot, or a cybernetic replacement, like the Dibovv OmniHog 3.0.

Vatna
The gyu’Vatna, ruling warrior caste of the Vatna Hegemony, hold that if a Vantna scorpssum’s breath is visible on the first day of Icemourn, that the glacier melt will be later than usual and lead to a drought. Given that gyu’Vatna war financiers tend to make major financial decisions on this basis, rumors persist that the ritual scorpssums are artificially heated.

Fulvan Hive
While traditional Fulvans eschew such superstitions, Reform and Orthodox Fulvans both have a prophetic animal legend, the Nova Bear and Pulsar Fox, respectively. If the Nova Bear emerges from hibernation before the rising of the white dwarf Fulvan β, then the nova from Eta Reticuli Δ will be more visible than usual. If the Pulsar Fox turns red due to high levels of ionizing radiation, on the other hand, it means that Fulvan β is entering an active period.

Zypger
Zypger are well-known to favor pet thoughtworms, which can read minds from a short distance and provide the entire contents of a properly devoured cerebral cortex. But if a rare red thoughtworm is born, it is thought to herald the future unraveling of a grand conspiracy. In these cases, the red worm is often set aside and used in the interpretation of data about said conspiracy as it unwinds. Skeptics do not hesitate to point out that Zypger society is 40% conspiracies by volume.

Ebzhyna
At the opening of the global Festival of Good Vibes, the semi-telepathic Ebzhyna will intuit the most psychically gifted boxhog and declare it to be the Joy Hog. Tradition dictates that the events of the following year will mirror the life of the Joy Hog, so intensive steps are taken to ensure that it lives a life of decadent luxury. It is not unknown, however, for the Joy Hog to die of excess or even be assassinated–with major harhsing effects on Ebzhyna vibes on a galactic scale.

Obet
The Obets’ closest living relative, the darorwo, resembles nothing so much as a large and particularly corpulent Obet–albeit one with razor-sharp teeth that is capable of lightning-fast predatory action. During their summer cycle, the first darorwo to emerge from a given swamp is given a defective hatchling to eat, and the manner in which it eats is said to be a portent of the cycle to come. A clean beheading, though rare, is a universal symbol of good fortune. A refusal to eat, which is rarer still, is thought to herald utter calamity.

11001001
All organic life on 11001001 Prime was integrated eons ago, but the myth persists in the collective shared consciousness that the first pseudo-random number generated by PRN.EXE during a statutory period will have an effect on the period itself. While this has long been explicitly disproven by 11001001 mathematicians and statisticians, it remains common. Particularly lucky numbers include primes and integers expressible as the sum of two cubes.

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