Tidelands: III-One (36)

Idyllic. Hangnail. In Camera. Snorkel.

Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.

It is a lush green landscape, a rural idyll of rolling fields, their crests topped here and there with rows of teardrop trees that stripe shadows down the undulating slopes. Little red-roofed, white-walled buildings huddle together in small villages and towns, or else sit solitary upon their own hilltops that rise like islands out of the sea of morning mist. The sort of place people used to go on holiday, she’s heard.

[Well,] he says, [it used to be.]