Author Topic: PC665-666: Reading Dead Lips  (Read 866 times)

Ocicat

  • Castle Watchcat
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 3722
  • Anything for a Weird Life
on: February 11, 2021, 07:43:49 AM
PodCastle 665: Reading Dead Lips — Part 1

Author: Dustin Steinacker
Narrator: Tatiana Grey
Host: Setsu Uzume
Audio Producer: Peter Behravesh

Originally published by Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

---

Content Warning:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)



Show Notes
Rated R.



Nouelle had always thought that she’d feel a sense of homecoming when she returned to the country that had birthed her. But after eight years, it was already a foreign land. Her first day back she risked a hostel, near the border, and the shower water was wrong; it stung her flesh with its force but never seemed to rinse off the lather. The loudest voices in the common room all spoke the occupiers’ dialects and she stayed silent rather than mark herself as a Czir. The cooking smells too were unfamiliar.

After that she slept out of doors.

She was wiser than she’d been when last she breathed Czir air . She now knew occult sciences, after all, and had acquainted herself with the many stages of corpse-stink. So yes, she was standing on ground that she’d had to sell herself to escape, occupied ground. But she was also prepared. She’d lost everything she ever had in this country and now, dammit, she had the chance to take just one thing back.

Somewhere within these borders was her sister.




Listen to this week's PodCastle.
Follow us on YouTube and Spotify!



Languorous Lass

  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1522
Reply #1 on: February 17, 2021, 02:26:49 PM
Just listened to Part 2 of this story.  Powerful, worthwhile stuff.  Not of the type I would typically think of as fantasy — I might have classified it as science fiction—but I don’t quibble over genre; the key for me is whether a story works, and this one definitely does.

I’m trying my best to avoid spoilers, so I’ll just say that I hope part of Nouelle’s healing is finding and reconciling with the character who departs near the end.  That may be too neat of a resolution, though. 

Thanks, PodCastle, for this story.