A muted clanking sounded from the door. All of us in the room tensed, thinking the water pressure outside had at last overpowered the sealed door’s capacity to keep it out. But then the clanking came again, rhythmic, like knocking.

“They’re here,” I said. “Get ready.”

The group moved around behind me. I took several breaths then held, and pulled the door open.

A torrent of water gushed in, swinging the door wide and slamming me into everyone in a confused mass of tangled limbs and roaring water and cries of surprise. The room began to fill in no time. We floated upward with it toward the rapidly approaching ceiling.

Once above the door frame, the waters calmed. Then a person burst up from below the surface, wearing goggles and a tank on her back. She popped out her mouthpiece, spraying water. “How many?” she asked.

“Seven,” a woman next to me replied.

The diver handed out Y-shaped breathers. I affixed mine just as my hair brushed the ceiling and water closed over my head. The lights flickered out. By the beam of a flashlight attached to the diver’s harness, I saw her counting heads. Satisfied everyone had their breathers in, she made a ‘follow me’ motion.

We filed after her back down through the door and into the flooded shopping center. Racks of floating shirts tugged against their hangers, like curious cloth creatures. Other divers led more swimmers to our destination, a floor just above the flood waters.

When we climbed out onto dry carpet, I said, “What happened?”

“Levy broke out of nowhere,” our rescuer replied. She began collecting breathers.

“What do we do now?” a man asked.

The diver pointed out toward a balcony. “Wait for rescue.” Then she flipped back into the water and vanished below.

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Bring the Wanderer Home

The Hopeful Wanderer

Wander a world driven from mundane to magical by a secret hidden at its heart.

A slow apocalypse has corroded a distant planet, with the uncanny living in uneasy commune alongside those remaining. On a forgotten quest from the stars, the Wanderer roams among them, through crumbling societies and vibrant wildernesses, navigating a murky path toward an incredible past.

While helping and receiving help-or hindrance-from strange denizens of unusual destinations, the Wanderer must finish righting a wrong that threatens to extinguish the universe itself. Should memory of the responsibility return at all.

Featuring

100 Hopeful Wanderer tales
20 new short stories
10-episode revelatory ending
100% revised and expanded

A far-future science fantasy with sub-tones of soft-apocalypse and climate change, this hopeful adventure combines exploration, eeriness, and wonder across 100 short tales.

Join readers who loved the web series and journey alongside them in discovering the Wanderer’s wondrous past and hopeful mission to save the stars.

Woven through with themes of acceptance, kindness, beauty in difference, and the wonder and strangeness of nature, this story will charm and delight readers of Mushishi by Yuki Urushibara and fans of The CryptoNaturalist and Strange Animals by Jarod K. Anderson.

“I love how varied the experiences were. The heartwarming stories mixed right in with the unsettling and strange is a perfect picture of life. The underlying story for why this is all happening was absolute perfection…Definitely one of the more unique story collections I have read. I really enjoyed it!” — Amanda K. Collier, ARC Reader, God of the Backrooms