Posts by Than Niles

Genji returned to his home to find his mother and sister training mugai-ryu in the garden. They swung dull wooden sticks in unison, practicing their forms together. His father sipped tea nearby, concentrating on the valley below as if he was memorizing its every feature. Genji collapsed in the doorway from exhaustion and began the…

The mania eventually broke, and Genji felt heavy, the kind of heavy that balances the weightlessness of ecstasy. Through the chaos, he sensed a faint but pure energy. The energy was focused terror and desperation. “How could this be,” Genji thought to himself. “How could something so awful exist in my utopia?” The creatures of…

One day, while Genji was disturbing the dog heads by tickling their ears during their deep sleeps, a small rabbit sprung into the clearing with masterful silence. She glided through the air, landing only to sniff for her next meal. Genji noticed her from the corner of his eye. This was the first time he…

Genji did not feel alive or dead. His form resembled that of an undead monster from bedtime stories used to discourage children from misbehaving. “Can you do what is needed, young one,” Haetorigusa asked. The God’s voice was no longer an external force, but was rather, inside Genji’s head. Genji was finally able to take…

Genji noticed that, despite the awful nature of this horror, its colors matched that of the beautiful flowers and lush trees around the clearing. It made the horror seem natural, as if it belonged to the forest and the forest belonged to it. The vibrant greens, oranges, reds, purples, and cyan glowed beautifully amongst all…

Genji Gozen was a young man, born to the Samurai class in the mountains of feudal Japan. He was a warrior, trained from early childhood to be ready to die for his daimyo. Genji was competent as a fighter, but he struggled to focus on training, and would often be accused of disrespect to his…

The Guardian and the Gardener is a short story that happened as an artistic perfect storm. I am proud of it and the way it stitched together, like its existence was an inevitability. The process is difficult to explain, but often times, the exploration at the beginning of a project can be like squinting into…