The Sundown Stories

As a philosopher Sundown Quiet St. Marie is my go-to girl to speak to many things in the human condition, the matters of heart and soul, the inner strengths that in the end matter most of all.  SQ is by design the strongest and most versatile character I could build, she has to be, I ask a great deal of her.  These are stories taken from her long and exceptional life.  In the universe of her world line she is alive today.

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The Stories: Section One... The Forge of Life



Mark of the Beast  The south of France, 1907  This is the beginning of the tales of SQ, this first episode told through the eyes of her self-adopted sister Indigo.  It is a story of survival beyond hope, it tells how an unknown girl found left for dead came to call herself Sundown Quiet...

All Things Fair and Foul  (WIP)  Paris, 1912  In this story is revealed Indigo's past as SQ and Indigo take down a pimp responsible for massive damage done to Indigo's life who is also complicit in SQ's fate.  In this story the girls discover the price of justice, the cost of revenge and the value of honor. 

By Sun or Moon  France, 1913  The story of SQ's great love Jean Luc, their early married life, an erotic story of the healing power of love.  In this story is foreshadowed the fullness of SQ's fate, in this story is seen the duality in SQ that is the core of her strength.

The Lash of Fate  (WIP)  Paris, 1918  In this story is seen fate's third attempt on SQ's life, the death of her husband in WW1 followed by the death of her children to the influenza epidemic.  This is the tale of a trial of faith, for a time the breaking of a faith and a rage against God.

The Flowers of Hell  Paris, 1920  These are the darkest days of SQ's life, her years as a masochistic submissive seeking pain of the body to counterbalance the pain in her heart.  This is a story of inverted love, for in the end there comes to be a genuine love between she and her master, an inverted love to be sure, and yet still love. 

Half the World (WIP)  Paris, 1922  This story is of SQ's time living as a bohemian lesbian in the Paris of the roaring twenties.  It is a story set to examine the strengths and the limitations of the alternate lifestyles.  It is the story of the woman who in essence fosters SQ after her escape from the world of the submissive, a woman who in the end loves her enough to set her free, telling her "half the world is not enough, not for you..."

Pilgrim  India, 1932  This is the summation of the Forge of Life section, this is the story of SQ brought complete, her faith restored, her fate understood, her final understanding of the strange power fate entrusted her to carry among the mortals.  In this story a second point of the supra-natural finds her and judges her ready, she leaves India even larger than she arrived.  In this story the fully formed heroine seen through the remainder of the stories emerges from the fires of the forge.    This work embodies a great deal of my philosophies of life, it is a deep story I consider my best writing to date.

Section Two: The Adventures

The Falcon  Europe, 1944  This is the story of SQ in WW2 as an operative of the OSS, America's spies and special operations force that after the war came to be known as the CIA.  While the Dirty Dozen were at one end of France SQ is at the other, the nature of her target and mission the same as the men's, save only that she attacks from the inside...

The Sandbox  France, 1946  This is the story of SQ's final closure with Raul, her old master, and with the family she lost so many years before.  It is the end of her war, the beginning of peace.

All the Colors in the Box  (current WIP) New Amsterdam NY USA  1964 

This is the story of SQ among the first of what would come to be called the counterculture in our world-line.  She is weary of the establishment having spent the years since her farewell to France establishing her own fortunes in the world, she is now a very rich woman.  It is a time of retreat from the public eye, a return to the spiritual and battles contesting new evils beginning to prey on the world... they whose motives are malice, and whose weapon is money...

Rematch New Amsterdam NY, USA  2004   This was the original Sundown story, the pilot episode if you will. Like most pilot episodes the style is not quite the same, I've revised it to maintain continuity with the other works.  This story began with the thought of almost a fan fiction work set in Gotham, SQ allied with, but unknown to, the Batman... his female counterpart in the war on crime. But... no, the character was bigger than the constraints of Gotham.  Still though, this is the kind of story where if the Batman were to appear?  He would not be out of place...

Mothers and Brothers  New Amsterdam NY, USA  2006  This is SQ in full form, a story of a cruel and callous villain beyond the reach of the law brought to an inner justice of the sort only SQ can really deliver.  It is not a story for children, before the end the story deals with things intensely sexual.

There will be other stories in this series, SQ's life runs well over three hundred years.  Before the end I plan to take her to Mars before she returns to earth to find another to carry on in her place...