Love in Dark Settings

On September 11, Doug and I visited Rock Hall in Kent County, just north of Tilghman Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It's an old watermen's community, and though the watermen have nearly been squeezed out, there are a couple of museums there that have watermen's devices. Then, two days later, we took a return trip to Dorchester County - in particular, to Hoopers Island.

( Rock Hall )
( Interlude in Lewes, Delaware )
( Hoopers Island )
( Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge )

I'd love to go back to Hoopers Island in late October, which is when my character walks across the upper island - I'd like to know what wildlife is out, and how much bird noise occurs then. (Dorchester County is part of the Atlantic Flyway for migrating birds.) But that would be pressing Doug's patience, so I'm going to have to use my imagination to fill in the gaps.

Now I just have to convince him to take that much-delayed trip to Southern Maryland. "We just got back from Hoopers Island!" he said when I tentatively pointed out on Wednesday that I had only ten days left before the research portion of my year ended.

This is flash fiction for my upcoming Prison City retrofuture series, which is partly set in a 1960s world that has Jetsons-like devices. It was written in response to this prompt by Lothy at the slavefics LJ community.

Depositing money in the bank was always the worst problem.

Born into a society with a strictly ranked system of masters and servants, Carr has sought to tred his way delicately between the clashing values of the parents who raised him and the uncle whose household Carr will one day live in. Yet when he and other students at his boarding school become the latest participants in an ongoing battle between the oystermen of their bay, Carr finds that his position of power may bring danger, not only to himself, but also to a schoolfellow he is drawn toward.

Master and Servant is the first volume in Prison City, a retrofuture series based on the Chesapeake Bay oyster wars, homoeroticism in British public schools in the 1910s, and 1960s visions of things to come.

Parental supervision is strongly suggested for this story.

Rudd, who had watched Meredith through narrowed eyes for the first week or two, gradually lost interest in scrutinizing the activities of his fag.