The compactness and limited characterisation of the short story form did not lend itself well to Cherryh's precise and complex novel construction methodologies.

Sunfall is a collection of stories set in the far future on an ancient Earth under a dying Sun that is emitting dangerous levels of radiation.

"Companions" is a novella about a ship stranded on a planet with Warren, the sole survivor, and Anne, a computer whose job it is to "protect" him (not unlike HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey).

In "The Brothers", Caith is damned by faeries for committing patricide and is cursed with Dubhain, a shapeshifting phooka, as his perpetual companion.

"Willow" deals with temptation and lust, and concerns a knight returning home from a ten-year war who has his battle-hardened indifference and contempt changed by a beautiful women and her daughter.

Two of the stories are set in Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe: "The Sandman, the Tinman, and the BettyB" takes place in the vicinity of Pell Station and concerns the crew of space prospectors and miners and their encounter with an inert rogue missile fired by an unknown warship in a decades-ago war; "The Scapegoat" sees an unusual truce formed between the Union, the Alliance and Earth to deal with the Elves, a technologically inferior alien race that insists on launching suicide attacks on any human ship in sight.