Posts Tagged ‘plants’

Escape Pod 945: Walking with Thorny

Escape Pod 945: Walking with Thorny is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:27 — 42.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Walking with Thorny

by Stetson Bostic

Hitchhikers clung to Tasi’s pants as he neared the edge of the forest. He brushed them off while walking and looked ahead to the open field that showed through the final rows of trees. The golden grass flowed in the sunlight, appearing welcoming and warm, and easy to traverse after hours of trekking through the chill of the dense forest.
He’d been careful to avoid the Jagged oaks—stout trees with roots that threatened to trip and thorns grown to grab. Staring at the warm open land had become hypnotic, and Tasi lost focus for just a moment as he passed by one of the final few oaks before the tree line.

He walked too close and felt a dull push, a pinprick of pain in his side. Tasi stumbled out of the woods into the grass, touched at the wounded spot, and felt the thorn.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: , , , ,

Escape Pod 874: Common Speech

Escape Pod 874: Common Speech is an Escape Pod original.

This story deals with plagues and description of injuries.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:28 — 55.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Common Speech

By Elise Stephens

Dr. Jaiyesimi Obiaka tugged at her sweat-damp collar, wiped her eyes, and tried to focus on the copied pages of the final experiment she and Ganiru had created together. Just looking over his familiar handwriting blurred her vision with tears.

Jai’s colleagues had told her to stay home, to take time to grieve, but she’d allowed herself just two days to mourn her husband’s death before donning her lab coat again. She had to be pragmatic. (Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 281: The Notebook of my Favourite Skin-Trees

Originally published in DayBreak Magazine

Rated R: This story contains erotic imagery and sex.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:54 — 32.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Feedback for Episode 273
  • Next week… You go to a coffee shop.

The Notebook of my Favourite Skin-Trees

By Alex Dally MacFarlane

BANANA

The best part of these are the fruits, growing on their fat stem, dangling down the person’s back or from their arm. I always bow and smile, asking, “Can I taste one of your fruits? Bananas from a skin-tree are so sweet.”

So sweet and so small, a single mouthful.

I also enjoy the place where banana tree meets flesh, roots curving over and into the person’s limb — pressing my lips there, my tongue — and the small shade cast by the leaves.

Kim Cuc saw advertisements everywhere she looked in the walking street market, but only on the leaves of the skin-trees: names of shops and cafés and restaurants spelled out, Thai or English or other languages, in the bright white veins. Aside from the occasional cry from stall owners or vendors — “I have the finest grilled bananas in Chiang Mai! Come and taste!” — no other form of promotion cluttered the senses.

That had always been the intent of the skin-trees’ engineers and earliest supporters. Kim Cuc smiled often, seeing the remains of once-garishly lit billboards, or walls that several years earlier would have been covered in paper.

No smiles on this night.

(Continue Reading…)

hot mature website