Tales from Stone Field Borough is going to be a collection of short, slice-of-life stories about the gremlins who live in a specific area of Emberlight. When I have an idea, it usually takes me a week or two to write the whole thing, and I'll add stories as they're finished. I'll also be adding illustrations sporadically.
Honestly, these are largely for my own entertainment. I hope that some of you share my dry sense of humor, however.
Finished Stories
Knock, Knock, Boom: a frequently-inturrupted romance, shortly after the events in The Writing on the Wall
Part 1
Part 2
Jelly Jam:in which some little pests cause some big slimes
Part 1
Part 2
Roomies: roommates can be a headache
... And Eat it, Too: in which Knights aren't the only ones to find cake in the Clockworks
Stories In Progress
Untitled thus far: Because y'all need another novella
Jelly Jumble Revised: Vifig's story will be joining the rank of canon stories shortly
Character References
Velt, Kotir, Kexed, T'Keva
Drawn but in need of edits: Vakren, Gista, Muren
On the list to do: Ketter, Kotter, Durst, Brisli, Palt, Drekken, Testafir, Hexil, Captain Ziftadrine, Leuitenant Koroliss, Teret (not necessarily in that order)
Art (that isn't a direct illustration)
Kex and T'Keva being domestic
Pending Suggestions
Vakren should bring home a baby Kleptolisk (suggestion by Regal-The-Soverine): I'm planning for Vakren to bring home a pet, although it won't be happening quite in the way it was suggested
If I don't have any plans at the moment, I'm happy to take suggestions from you guys: if there's a supporting or background character mentioned in any of the stories that you find interesting, I'll make them the next to be featured. Likewise if someone wants to suggest a genre.
Kexed tapped the nib of his pen on the corner of the page as he perused the report, occasionally pausing to underline a phrase or to make a note in the margin.
Finally reaching the end of the page, the gremlin stopped to shake out his writing hand and massage the bridge of his nose. Old habits died hard, he supposed, and he hadn’t been long enough in his new promotion to lose the furrowed brow or the death grip he had kept on his pen while trying to do the work of at least two people in his old position.
Conscientious and fairly uncreative by nature, Kexed was more suited to office work and less suited to engineering or combat professions than most other gremlins. Truth be told, he had no stomach for mending, either, so he was generally considered to be rather dull and had few friends to speak of. Despite that, he was well-respected for being dependable and hard working; it seemed that public servants could be forgiven for being boring as long as they got the job done.
The Foreman was about to start on a new page when there was a rap on the door, and he stood, stretching, to open it. The diversion would be welcome; his eyes still hurt a bit from staring at the last thirty or so pages.
Kex had meant to say “Greetings, what can I do for you today?” upon opening the door, but didn’t get past “what” before stopping. Standing on the other side was a slim lady gremlin who leaned lightly on a wrench staff, smiling bemusedly at him. Her eyes were obscured by dark lenses, and a silkwing, attached to her wrist by a tether, sat placidly on her shoulder.
“T’Keva,” Kexed breathed, trying not to sound as awkward as he felt and considering it a boon that she couldn’t actually see him right now. He swallowed hard and stepped aside. “Please, come in.”
“Thank you Kex.” The blind mender stepped over the threshold. “I thought I would come see how you were doing in your new office. You’re not working yourself too hard, are you?”
The other gremlin closed the door behind his friend and gently led her by the elbow to a bench against the wall. “Not as much as I used to,” he answered with a wry laugh. “Careful there, I’ve moved a few things around since Vitras had the office.”
“I suppose I’ll accept that.” T’Keva settled herself on the bench and leaned her staff against the wall as Kexed sat next to her, hesitated, and inched a little closer. “I would hate for you to continue exhausting yourself now that you have a few capable people to delegate to.”
Hoping to steer the conversation elsewhere, Kex cleared his throat. “So, what have you been up to since your adventure?” He had envied her the trip little; mostly, he had worried himself sick as soon as he discovered she had left Emberlight with some knight to chase down a group of insurgent bombers, and had continued worrying himself sick until he knew she would be home safe. Never mind the near heart attack he had had upon seeing her after his superior at the time had tried to have her killed.
T’Keva chuckled good-naturedly in response. “Falling back into the old routine, mostly, except that brother of yours always coming over to talk.”
“Kotir?” Kexed felt a surge of jealousy and fought hard to keep the frown out of his voice: he was certain that with her keen hearing, T’Keva had already picked up on the sudden spike in his heart rate. “What about?”
“You, actually. Most of the time. When he’s not being a pest.” She tilted her head quizzically at her friend’s reaction.
Kex’s surge of jealousy abated, making way for mingled confusion as to what Kotir could be up to and relief that his more-exciting older brother was not, apparently, trying to woo T’Keva. He had considered it a possibility, after they had spent so much time together outside the city recently. “Nothing too scandalous, I hope,” he said evenly.
“I honestly doubt there’s a scandalous story out there to tell.” She looked contemplative, and Kexed took a moment to admire the fineness of her features. Not too long a moment, though, lest she somehow manage to hear him staring. “It’s almost as though he’s trying to either convince me or remind me of all of your good qualities.”
“Is it working?” the Foreman asked, only half teasing.
There was no teasing in T’Keva’s voice or expression, though. “I don’t need convincing. Or reminding.”
Kexed thought his heart was going to stop.
He took her near hand in both of his, squeezing a little, and was just opening his mouth to speak when there was a knock on the door.
“I’m sorry, let me just get that,” Kex said, a trace of frustration in his voice as he released the healer’s hand and stood to answer the door. It was Palt, the gremlin whom he had hired to fill his old position. The Foreman sighed and turned to his friend on the bench.
“It looks like I need to go over some things with Palt, and I do have another few hours of other work to do after that – would you like to visit my home this evening?” he asked hopefully.
“I’d love to.” T’Keva smiled as she picked up her staff and rose to her feet. Kex guided her to the door and stood looking at her for a moment.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said, raising his hand to touch her face but pulling it back before actually doing so.
“See you tonight,” she answered before turning to go, Usumas the silkwing taking off from her shoulder to act as her eyes.
Kexed sighed and turned back to his desk, only to jump in startlement upon seeing Palt, whom he had forgotten was there. Palt, for his part, was watching Kex with intense amusement.
“You’ve got it bad, Boss,” he commented with a bit of a smirk.
“Yes, well … let’s just have a look at those manifests you brought, shall we?”
It was going to be a long few hours.
* * * * *
Kexed paced the floor, more nervous, he knew, than he should be. T’Keva was his friend. His good friend. His very good friend. Never mind that his plan was to ask her to be more than that …
Putting it that way to himself, Kex was nervous all over again.
His nerves here just beginning to devolve into actual panic when there was a rap on the door, and he forced himself to calm down a bit, taking deep breaths as he approached the door to open it.
“Welcome,” Kex said, ushering T’Keva inside. Her fur looked silky, as though it had just been brushed, and he wanted to touch it. “Would you like to let Usumas loose so he can fly around a bit? I haven’t moved anything since your last visit, and I can help guide you if you need it.”
“I’m sure he would like that. Thank you.” T’Keva smiled at him and leaned in to brush her cheek against his in greeting. Feeling his face grow hot, Kexed smiled to himself as he accepted her staff and helped her to untether Usumas, who flapped lazily across the room. He was happy that she trusted him that much, and also that the silkwing wouldn’t be sitting on her shoulder staring at him while they talked.
“May I?” he asked, slipping his arm around her waist to escort her to a seat.
“Please,” she answered, placing her hand over his and resting her head on his shoulder. “Was there something specific you wanted to talk about? You seemed as though there was something on your mind this afternoon,” the healer added as they sat.
“Yes, well,” Kexed started, taking both of her hands in his and clearing his throat several times. T’Keva tilted her head quizzically. He figured he had better start talking before he lost his nerve altogether, and hoped he wouldn’t ramble too much before actually making the point he wanted to make. “I know I’m not the most exciting gremlin, or exciting at all, really. And I’m not a brilliant researcher, or even very smart, or any of the other things that a gremlin ought to be …”
“I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit,” T’Keva interrupted gently with an indulgent little chuckle.
Kex took a deep breath. “Be that as it may,” he said, but was interrupted less pleasantly before he could finish the thought by a knock on the door.
“What, again?” he asked incredulously. He couldn’t believe he had been stopped from asking the same question twice in one day, and considered not actually answering the door. But, it could be important, and he heaved a sigh as he rose to see who it was.
“Hello?” Kex asked as he opened the door. It took him a moment to place the gremlin on the other side, as it had been awhile since the two had met.
“Gista said my sister would be here,” that other gremlin said with a broad grin.
“Is that Vakren?” T’Keva asked from where she was sitting, sounding about as exasperated as Kex felt. “When did you get into town and why didn’t you just go home and wait for me to get back?”
“Just now. And I couldn’t wait to tell you all about what I found, so when Gista said you were here, I was sure that Kexed would be just as interested,” Vakren answered, inviting himself in and crossing the modest room to sit next to his sister before Kex could even close the door.
“Really, Vakren, Kex and I were trying to have a serious conversation. Please - go home, get some rest, and I’ll see you when I get back,” T’Keva scolded, but her brother didn’t seem to hear her, and if he did, he ignored her completely. Rather than apologizing for the interruption and leaving like any reasonable gremlin would, he launched into a homily on the social habits of kleptolisk colonies, which he had been observing in the Aurora Isles for some time before he returned to Emberlight.
Not caring at the moment to be polite, Kex groaned audibly and flopped into a chair, looking over at T’Keva. The mender, for her part, had turned her face in his direction and was wearing an expression of such utter apology that his heart went out to her and, for her sake, he just couldn’t be mad at her brother.
For the time being, though, there didn’t seem to be much to do but let Vakren talk himself out. This was one of those times that drove home for Kexed how little alike T’Keva and he brother were: while she was small, fine-boned and soft-spoken, he was tall and lanky, with a tendency to talk with his hand and a habit of losing his spectacles off of his nose when he was excited … which seemed to be most of the time.
Vakren just kept talking despite several attempts at interrupting him, and Kexed assumed that he must have dozed off at some point, because he awoke to Usumas sitting on his head as Vakren was saying something that ended in “T’Keva and I should be getting home now.”
“Wait, what?” Kex asked blearily, waking up quickly and looking at the time. It was late. Very late.
“Of course. My sister needs her beauty sleep,” Vakren answered, as though it had been Kex keeping her up this whole time.
“She’s quite beautiful enough,” Kexed mumbled grumpily.
“Can’t I just meet you there?” T’Keva asked, trying to stifle the sort of yawn that suggested she, too, had just awakened from a doze.
“Nonsense.” Vakren snatched Usumas off of Kexed’s head and practically picked his sister up.
“I’m really sorry about this,” she said, ducking under Ren’s arm as he shooed her to the door. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“It’s okay,” Kex answered, handing her staff to her so that Vakren wouldn’t forget it in his apparent excitement to get home. “I’ll see you then.”
Once they had gone and he had closed the door, he could still hear T’Keva’s scolding and complaining falling on deaf ears for a few minutes as they moved down the street, and he wondered whether Vakren had done all of this on purpose.
* * * * *
The next morning, Kexed left a note on his office door and headed towards T’Keva’s place. Her home was also her office, like many of the gremlins (in this borough, at least) who offered services, and he hoped that she wasn’t terribly busy this morning. Healing was one of those unsure professions where the workload tended to vary from one day to the next, depending on how accident-prone the locals were being at the time.
Much to Kex’s dismay, however, T’Keva was not home. He debated for a moment whether or not to drop in at Gista’s place two doors down to see whether she knew when the healer would be returning, despite his being a bit annoyed with the woman for telling Vakren that the T'Keva was at his house. After a few moment’s consideration, he decided to do so: the potential benefit would outweigh the potential for further annoyance.
The potential was definitely still there, however: Gista was a woman of contradictions. For being a nervous, timid sort of gremlin, she was the nosiest busybody Kex knew, and her apparent lack of any kind of common sense hid the fact that she was an absolute genius when it came to working with machines so tiny that several lenses were required to see the parts.
It was Gista’s mate, however, that was sitting in the shop window at the moment, accompanied by their young son. Teret had been a housing engineer of some renown back in the Colony, but was content to live simply here. He was a quiet, serious, dependable sort, and Kex always got the impression that there was much more to the man than he was letting on.
“Morning Kexed,” Teret greeted distractedly. “Or should I be calling you Foreman now?”
“Good morning, and Kexed is fine.” He watched the little gremlinite play with a set of gears for a moment in silence; he had never heard the boy speak, even though he was long past old enough to be doing so. Kex actually felt rather sorry for the family at the moment; they also had a grown daughter who had disappeared in the Clockworks a short time ago. Little wonder Teret was distracted. “I was hoping Gista would know when T’Keva would be back.”
“Oh, they’re both going to be awhile,” Teret answered. Brisli’s twins were jumping off Hexil’s shed onto the jelly cubes again, and one of them broke his leg. Gista went along to help out.”
“Ah, thank you. If that’s the case, I had better get back to work myself.” Kexed waved to Teret and his son, and headed back to his own office. On the way, he realized that he hadn’t asked Teret to tell T’Keva that he had been there, but figured the man would likely do so anyway. Kex wondered whether he should stop back that way later.
He didn’t get a chance. Palt was waiting for him when he reached the office, accompanied by Drekken, the gremlin Kex had hired to replace Zetkit. The Foreman nearly panicked, racking his brain in case he had called a meeting and then forgotten, but it turned out that neither of them were entirely sure how to submit their community maintenance budgets. Kexed invited them in to go over the procedure, but they asked so many obscure questions that it took nearly three hours to explain it fully. At least he knew they were being thorough.
The whole day went like this, with people coming in and out of Kexed’s office, until the Foreman was ready to pull his own ears out by the roots. Things finally slowed down in the late afternoon, at which point he breezed through his normal work in record time and sped out the door before anyone else could show up.
About halfway to T’Keva’s home, Kex nearly ran into the mender herself in his haste.
“Busy day?” he asked, linking his arm with hers.
“Ugh, obnoxiously so. We hadn’t even gotten back from fixing Ketter’s broken leg when Astia came running up to us yelling that her mate had somehow cut off his own ear and it needed re-attached right away. Then Beltren’s youngest swallowed a handful of spare parts. Then Grox set himself on fire while refueling his welding torch … and so on, and so forth. You too?”
“Yeah. Palt was back with Drekken when I got to the office, and by the time I was finished with them, the Regional dropped in to see how I was adjusting to the post. After that was a zoning dispute, which took a few hours, and then a steady stream of maintenance orders and incident reports for the rest of the day.”
“You sound like you didn’t have time for a meal today, either,” T’Keva observed. “Want to go find something to eat?”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day,” Kex replied, realizing for the first time how hungry he was. Too hungry for serious conversation, really, because now that he was aware of it, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything more complicated than his supper.
T’Keva seemed to be in the same mindset, and they made only light conversation over their meal. The two laughed together and were generally enjoying each other’s company so much that they lingered quite late over drinks without either of them breaching the subject of what had been on Kex’s mind the day before. He assumed she was waiting to let him revisit it when he was ready; he was actually afraid that merely attempting to bring it up would attract a distraction, thus ruining an otherwise fine evening.
Eventually, though, the street seemed quiet and the time seemed right, so Kexed set his cup down, smiling at T’Keva’s hand resting over his in the center of the table as he chose his words.
“Hey, bro! What’s up, T’Keva?”
Kex’s head snapped toward his brother so fast and his face was so full of ire that Kotir took a step back, nearly bumping into his best friend Velt, who had been walking half a step behind him. Kotir was a particularly tall gremlin, and bulky; he took his workouts as seriously as he took whacking things with his oversized wrench. He wore his goggles on his head, his jacket around his waist, and a thin, sleeveless shirt stretched over his broad chest. A wanderlust-driven Clockworks diver, he wasn’t used to being intimidated by much of anything, least of all his small, studious younger brother.
“Whoa, uh, sorry to interrupt, but I lost my keys somewhere in Jigsaw Valley,” he said sheepishly, catching the ring of keys that Kex flung at him.
“We should go,” Velt said flatly. He was a gremlin of few words who always carried a snack in the hood he never pulled up over his head. He was only slightly shorter and less bulky than Kotir, but his expertise lay less in combat and more in setting things on fire or blowing them up. He was very good at it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think we should. Thanks for the keys, bro. We’re just going to … uh, you two have fun.” Kotir and Velt sidled off, leaving Kexed to watch them retreat with relief as T’Keva chuckled in amusement.
“Well, looks like those two are going to be at my place, or Kotir at the very least,” Kex commented dryly. “I suppose Vakren is at yours?”
“Mmmmhmmm,” T’Keva confirmed, leaning her cheek on her hand. “He’ll probably be– ”
KABOOM!
Everyone in the area turned their heads towards the building halfway down the block from which the explosion had issued, just as the blast of hot air blew past them, ruffling their ears and making many of them squint.
“What was it?” T’Keva asked.
“Looks like Goxen’s place,” Kex answered with a sigh. “I’m probably going to have to issue him another citation for detonating explosives in a residential area.”
“I suppose I had better see if he’s injured himself again,” T’Keva commented, standing and reaching for her staff.
Kexed really couldn’t refute that, so thus ended their evening together.