Author's Note: One of the Celestial Reviews had a contest to write stories containing a certain vocabulary. (The list is below.) I thought it called for a particular style, and quickly wrote what you see below. The plot was to be that K would find some kind of redemption in the love of a good but unfashionable person. Well. Not only is the style hard to maintain, but I had no idea of what this unfashionable person was, so the whole thing fell apart pretty quickly. Still...

I had only worked a couple of the words in by this point. The list was:

acerbic	adept	ameliorate	apocryphal	assuage
constrict	dilatory	egregious	fatuous	guile
hedonism	impervious	incipient	irascible	lethargy
mundane	prolific	redundant

JS

Time's End

Copyright © 1998, 1999 Jordan Shelbourne

There is a city called Time's End, where all miracles and wonders exist, and in that city was a woman named K. (It was the fashion at that time to bear the minimum adornment, even in names, and K was *very* fashionable; only A through J were swifter to adopt or drop a trend.) And though she was the eleventh most fashionable person in Time's End, K was also troubled. Her existence had gone from blithe to blighted, and she did not know why she should have gone from care-free to care-full.

She spoke of it once to her friend Edonai, who had been an angel but who had retired. Edonai said simply, "I felt the same way in the city of Celestial Light."

"What did you do?" asked K.

"I quarrelled with God, and then I cut off my wings with a blade of malachite."

"I see your back when we make love," said K, who did not wish to appear credulous (for it is not fashionable to believe what you are told), "and it is as unblemished as a pail of milk. There are no scars there."

"Like my wings, they are invisible."

"And how did you know your wings were cut off?'

"When my feet touched the earth."

K smiled sadly. "I have no wings to cut."

And Edonai smiled sadly as well. "Then I cannot help you. Would you come to bed?"

[...]

And that was the way of things even in Time's End, which exists in all worlds and in none of them.

---And it ended here---

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