Introduction

This is going to be my collection of scattered one-shots and drabbles, set throughout the Immortals series. (Anything set after Realms of the Gods will be published in a separate collection.) And, as with everything I do, this requires an explanation of how my insane mind works.

Most of these short stories are going to be set between the books. There may be missing scenes from inside the books, I don't know yet. Each one will be preceded by a brief summary and an explanation of where it fits in the timeline, and any warnings that I think are necessary – probably none. I was originally trying to keep them all in chronological order, but I'm going to keep thinking of ideas for years to come, I imagine, so that won't work.

Wild Magic is set in the spring and summer of Daine's thirteenth year. Wolf-Speaker doesn't take place until the autumn of her fourteenth; that means there's over a year to play with. Emperor Mage is set a year later, in the autumn of her fifteenth year, and Realms of the Gods starts just a few months after that, just before her sixteenth birthday. So there won't be many stories set between the third and fourth books.

Some of these will be canon – for example, Daine's encounters with hunters as a deer and a goose that she tells Kaddar about in EM, or when she and Numair discover that Stormwings hate onions that she tells Maura about in WS. Most of them will be entirely from my own head – be warned.

And sometimes I may ask for requests for stories; I cannot believe I'm even contemplating letting you lot ask me for things! You know I love you all, but seriously, you are all absolutely mental. And you know it. Anyway, that won't be until I run out of ideas and/or inspiration. If requests are open, I'll put a message up on my profile and have a thread open on my forum – contact me there, via site messaging, or if you don't have an account on here then leave an anonymous review on one of my stories and I'll see it.

These won't be updated to any kind of schedule. They're short stories, one-shots, drabbles. I'll be writing them whenever I'm inspired to do so or whenever I want a bit of a break from other stuff.

I'm also going to be deviating from Numair's point of view. I still love him to pieces, so you'll be seeing a fair amount of his perspective, but some scenes work better through someone else's eyes – mostly Daine, but sometimes other characters will get some screen time too. Some of them might surprise you. Some of them surprised even me.

I can promise plenty of silliness and non-romantic but nonetheless sweet fluff. Romantic stories – i.e. those set after Realms of the Gods – will be in another collection. If I manage smut, that will be published separately under a high rating. So these stories will all be purely platonic, but I assure you there will be plenty of cute moments, because as my regular readers and stalkers will already know, I'm a total sap. There will probably be some angsty moments too, and maybe even some action, shock horror. Probably some nerdy moments too, I have a couple of half-developed ideas for lessons between Daine and Numair that will basically be me rambling about their different magics.

On the subject of nerdiness; the title, Lacunae. A lacuna is defined as "a gap or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument." I thought it particularly appropriate since most of these are going to be things that TP really should have written for us herself, and are thus missing parts. I feel Numair would approve.

To save my having to repeat myself, here is my disclaimer. None of the characters or places in these stories are mine. I merely torment them for my own perverse pleasure, especially Numair. I will eventually return him more or less unharmed, although perhaps slightly traumatised. This applies to all the stories in this collection.

I leave you with the immortal words of Mark Twain: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR."

Loten.