The First Day of the Rest of Your Life (excerpt)

Author's Note

Thanks to various writing prompts, the characters in this story were going to be ogres. The main character's family were rural ogres with old-fashioned values, conservative naming conventions, and a belief in reincarnation. (Also they raided human farms to put dinner on the table.) Our protagonist would run away to the big ogre city and get the education that would allow her to pursue other opportunities than those her small-minded parents insisted on. The necessity of her chosen profession would have a lot to do with relevant quirks of ogre biology.

Thanks to time and word-length constraints, pretty much none of of those details made it into the story. Only the bit about naming conventions survived. But there's no reason to assume that these characters are human, even so.

Cover art incorporates U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Nicole Mickle.