The few seconds between bungling her over-practiced landing and actually slipping the black ring onto her finger were the most precarious of Hodja's entire life.
Hodja
Many girls in many dimensions, one mysterious piece of jewelry…
Lucia
Lucia preferred the tranquility of the underwater world to the hectic, more populated surface. She'd worked with the Ocean Reef Group, helping to maintain Nemo's Garden, an agricultural experiment off the coast of the Italian Riviera that grew samples of land-based crops in underwater greenhouses called biospheres. But after storms & the pandemic cut off access to the project for months, the team was pared back to a skeleton crew, & she was cut loose. Not long into her hunt for a new job, she was contacted by a company called Reprion & recruited to work on their research submarine, the Thalassa. Eager to get back underwater, she didn't ask as many questions as she probably should have…
Karina
Karina returned to campus just as the mushrooms were kicking in…
Xerew
Like any artist in her gallery's stable who desired to remain as such, Xerew was required to attend all opening night celebrations during which at least one of her works hung on the walls. But instead of schmoozing & selling herself or her paintings (as the gallery would obviously prefer she do), she tended to find herself more interested in determining who amongst the crowd was actually human (and if so, just how human).
Prescilla
Prescilla believes in the cyberpunk future we all deserve…
Mae
Mae, honestly not all that surprised to confirm that giving herself an impromptu tarot reading at the behest of a whispered voice emanating from a black ring would have immediate and particularly harrowing repercussions…
Zuira
Zuira put on the black ring and wished for snow…
Gia
Gia, about to bring the hammer down…
Kienna
Kienna, working the night shift at the mermaid tadpole nursery…
Katharina
Katharina, taking sweet, sweet revenge…
Talula
Talula had come to prefer hosting her own gatherings rather than visiting anyone else's home, as few other hosts turned out to be amenable to the trail of flora that sprang up from whatever surface she'd just stepped upon. She was gradually training herself to control the appearance and rate of growth of this vegetative trail, but for the moment it was still beyond her ability to stop it completely…