The line for the Shake Shack spilled out the door onto Newbury Street. Elizabeth begged Jules to grab something elsewhere. But Jules craved a burger, and Elizabeth couldn’t refuse her, so they waited fifteen minutes. After standing there with the smell of greasy meat for so long, Elizabeth wanted one too. Jules looked great today. ...

A hundred more feet, Vesta thought to herself, hidden among the shadows. Her hood covered her face as she dodged the moonlight. Her chest heaved with worry, and her muscles tensed to focus on every step. Carefully, she avoided the squeaks of scattering rats, interrupted in their search for scraps. She could teleport with magic, ...

Xi-3’s twelve moons flung strings of effervescent light into the basalt canyons below. The largest, lost in a perpetual eclipse, dominated the northern sky as a black void surrounded by red flame. The other eleven orbited in their own unique ways. Zhim and Graff-12 vanished for days at a time. The ‘Eight Sisters’ inched across ...

Almost a week after it happened, Elizabeth told Jules she had gone to see Mr. O’Donnell. They were both folding laundry in the room. The topic came up because Mr. O’Donnell had called that morning, asking Elizabeth to run some errands. She’d agreed, but knew that Jules would eventually demand an explanation. She wasn’t good ...

Footsteps echoed in the darkened temple as golden sunlight broke through slits in the vast curtains covering the wide windows. Crown Princess Rhiannon knelt in the quiet with her fiery copper braid sweeping the ground. She looked up towards the limestone altar where the statue of the Spring Goddess Evanthia waited. Gold-brushed bronze glinted in ...

A troop of children marched through the fields that encircled the town. Their voices echoed as they quarreled, and their little heads burned from the heat of argument. “Listen here!” Tomlin, a twelve-year-old, pinched off a head of renegade wheat. “The function of the state is to mitigate the unruly nature of man. Free will ...

Elizabeth called her Uber and drove back to International Village. Exhaustion swept over her as she sat in the car thinking about dinner. Mr. O’Donnell reminded her a lot of her grandfather on her dad’s side, who had died some years earlier. They used the same mannerisms, the same old adages and archaic phrases. It ...

“Elizabeth, you look radiant. Welcome to the Menton,” he said. The chef bowed to the pair and returned to the kitchen. Elizabeth greeted James in kind and sat down across from him at the table. She looked around for a menu but found none. “It’s not that kind of place, I’m afraid,” said Mr. O’Donnell, ...

Over a week had passed since the shooting. Elizabeth spent most of her recovery in her room hanging out with Jules. She had to avoid screens for the first few days, so they would sit and listen to podcasts instead of watching anything. Her parents had visited the weekend before, which was nice but also ...

Sam’s heart was light even as nature gathered itself for one final inconvenience in a morning mauled by them. His dog appeared to be on the mend, and he’d found his way back. Everything else was like a dream. A fantastical dream. An unbelievable dream… His step hitched. No one will believe it. He’d been ...