Hello, seekers dear! I remain on hiatus from any long-form writing, so Analogue Ruins won’t be returning anytime soon. That said, I’ve had this story on the backburner for a while, and the time felt right to finish it.
“Cinder’s Pavilion” was intended to be the first chapter of a long-form novel I titled Sirens of Deceitful Fruit, a horror story set in the Louisiana Bayou. I’ll most likely never finish that book, but during the drafting I did last January, the Pavilion bloomed into something intriguing enough to deserve a shot at standalone glory. I wrote the first 11,500 words then. I’ve revised and expanded it, adding a further 6,000 to bring it up to its current total of 17.5k.
Edit: of course, while I was getting ready for dinner, I had a last-second brain wave about a way to improve the climax. I’ve replaced the original uploads with quick-fix versions, and changed their file name to reflect that. Be sure to download the new ones if you have the old, and if you happen to have both… well, you can enjoy indexing exactly what I changed!~
There are probably a few typos, but I’ll come back and iron those out at a later date when I reread this story for pleasure. I don’t think I’ll ever write something like this again. The process took a lot out of me. That said, Pavilion is now one of my favorite pieces, and I hope you enjoy it just as much as I do. It’s too long to post in WordPress format, so here’s a Word document and a .pdf. As always, you have my blessing to convert this story into whatever other formats you like, and to redistribute the documents however you like. Just don’t remove my name from the opening credit!
If you’re hungry for more after finishing this, consider browsing my Assorted Stories and Lore for more quick reads, or My Books if you’d like something with real heft to it.
Ashenvein Gate: Stories & Dreams 