Author: Clara Ward
Publisher: Atthis Arts
Release Date: June 30, 2026
Heat Level: 1- No Sex
Pairing: M/NB (ace)
Length: 146 pages
Genre: Sci-Fi, Nonbinary/Trans, Ace, Neurodiverse, Environment/Ocean, Solarpunk, Hopepunk
Book Description:
You don’t need to reach Mars to reach your dreams.
Robbed of their chance at leaving Earth to pursue green-energy innovations, Ryn embraces new dreams—fighting deep sea threats in conjunction with a giant cephalopod. It’s 2139 in the Cali-Coastal Corporate Zone, and Ryn struggles with their own body and brain as they fight to survive five days locked up with academic rivals and the military-backed billionaires who’ve misled them all since their teenage years.
Ryn needs an exit strategy but doesn’t know whether to trust Akira, the hacker-spy who may have saved their life, or Jay, the geeky military rebel with a secret stash of hot chocolate. Not to mention, Jay keeps falling asleep in their bed, and Ryn’s not sure if either of them is interested in more—but at least they like the same shows!
Five Days. One Ocean. Unlikely allies connect to Dream the Deep.
for more info or to get a copy of the book
https://clarawardauthor.wordpress.com
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Excerpt
title
copyright info
Dream the Deep
Copyright © 2026 by Clara Ward
Cover Illustration by Matthew Spencer
All rights reserved.
Sweep snow over the future.
Protect—Hide—Survive
One ball rolled away, out of place. Grasping it, Ceph-Ryn longed for their young. The sphere tasted rich, metallic, packed with all the elements the littles would need. Soon.
Releasing small suckers, they uncurled from the tip down, replacing the stray ball precisely, back in the circle. The nodule now carried their traces, rubbed from their flesh, embedded again and again as they turned and tended their precious cache. As they rippled their length, a puff of marine snow settled over this protected circle, hidden within the sheltering crater.
Ceph-Ryn flowed away from the precious nodules. Awareness kindled from their center, which saw the entirety of their crater alongside the barricade of loose rubble they now climbed.
Each arm made its own way. All brought the beak closer to their prey.
The center hungered. The center saw pale exoskeletons flee into a stone crevice.
Ceph-Ryn darted after the prey. Stretched thin and deep into the crevice, Ceph-Ryn curled around the fragile crustacean, not nearly so tough as their precious nodules. The lightest squeeze stopped the prey from wriggling. Keeping their touch constant, they let the confining stone surfaces guide their movement backwards to extract their catch. A sharp edge scraped unpleasantly and Ceph-Ryn angled both the captured crustacean and their own suckers away, flattening their flesh further to avoid pain. It took only a moment longer to deliver their catch to the central maw.
The center was distracted. A long, triangular plume of dust pointed to a scraping entity that was not prey. Nor was it any creature known to the center or to any arm.
Like the crustacean, the new entity carried a hard shell above scuttling arms. Rather than pale and partially translucent, the boxy intruder looked metallic, like nodules wiped clean of snow. Its wide flat beak scraped the seafloor, clearing away life in a moment that had taken centuries to grow, adding a future harm from the plume of dust that trailed behind.
Ceph-Ryn pulled from their overmind the concepts of “robot” and “rover.” They became aware of their sleeping human self. Ryn’s overmind knew about thousands of square kilometers of seafloor scraped for polymetallic nodules in the middle of the last century. Dust plumes that decimated thousands of kilometers more of ocean floor. Cascading ecosystem failures that stretched from mangrove forests to calving glaciers. But not now. This was only a dream. This could not be happening now.
…
The door was unlocked, as it had been whenever Ryn came for paper or an extra blanket. Now they pushed past a disused desk and zeroed in on the boxes at the back, covered with old military stamps. They found a case of twelve chicken stew MREs, their second favorite after pizza, and carrying it in both arms, headed out.
This time, a lone figure leaned against the wall outside the supply room. It was a military man in a tight black tee shirt and the pixelated camouflage pants all but the Space Force military now wore. The key card at his belt confirmed his Ocean Force rank of Commander and his pronouns. He raised one dark eyebrow below messy dark hair and asked, “Hungry?”
“Very.” Ryn practically growled. “Think you’re funny? Someone poisoned me today.”
“Huh. I didn’t realize things were that bad up here.” Then the guy did a doubletake and said, “Seriously?”
“I don’t find jokes about anaphylactic shock funny. And pointless questions are a waste of my valuable time.”
“Is that so?” The guy half smiled as he stepped away from the wall and rolled back his shoulders. His tight black shirt pulled even tighter around his muscular chest, in a way that could be either flirtatious or threatening. “Let me make it up to you by grabbing a couple more boxes.”
Ryn worried it was a setup of some kind, but the guy came back with two more boxes of MREs and said, “Name’s Jay. I just got assigned to guard this floor. How about you?”
“Ryn. Lab 1. Evidently not going to Mars.”
“Me neither. Better company here.”