Not too long ago, the stars guided civilizations through the oceans and marked the optimal times to plant and harvest. People from all over the world used the sky as a calendar, a map, and a mirror for their beliefs. It was a compass, a clock, and an altar. Taking inspiration from both old and ...

It is a regular Thursday mid-morning. Bagley awakens from a half-remembered dream and blinks a sleepy hello to his cream ceiling. He watches a spider scuttle across its large expanse in fits and starts. He wonders, as badgers often do. Soon, wondering becomes wandering, and Bagley finds himself downstairs, alphabetizing biscuits. Now, dear reader, most ...

I can almost hear the trill of seagulls as I gaze at the mural on the wall across from my bunk. A calm ocean meeting a distant horizon, like one would see from a balcony view on a luxury cruise liner. It was painted for Val and me when we came aboard five years ago—a ...

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. It is an adaptation inspired by the fairy tales owned by the Grimm Brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm. This story is not associated with Disney’s adaptations, their added characters, or story elements. Memories are special to the Elven kind, the Starborn, as we call ourselves. We hardly ever sleep, ...

In Egyptian mythology, Anubis was the jackal-headed god of the dead, who determined which souls could enter paradise and which were doomed to eternal damnation. Your heart’s weight decided the length of your sentence. Truth and justice in your actions would grant you entry into the afterlife. Older gods’ precepts formed the base of Christian ...

Luna fussed with her hair for the hundredth time. The pair of diminutive silver barrettes she’d snagged at Al’s Emporium functioned to hold the strands out of her face, but old habits die hard. Distracted, she stepped backward and almost knocked over a display of Omarite healing crystals. Under normal circumstances, she was careful to ...

Fucking zombies. The one thing I swore I would never live to see. But here I am. I slice my sword left, right into the damn thing’s shoulder. The person, if I can even call it that, doesn’t slow, reaching for me with shriveled fingers. His gaze is unfocused and a cloudy white, like the ...

Good Morrow, Dear Reader! The Narrator here. Do you like stories? What about stories within stories? I do. I love them. In fact, I gobble them up like treacle tart on a rainy Tuesday, and sometimes I eat so many, they leak out of my ears, and tickle the ends of my whiskers. Oh yes ...

NYC summer felt alien to Lacey; it was like a different world. Heat radiated from the pavement, a thick air hung heavy, and people bustled through it. When she walked the city, she wasn’t used to seeing the type of crowd sizes she saw. Every inch of sidewalk in view seemed maxed out with patrons ...

Yes, in ancient history, the poet Hesiod was one of the first figures to discuss love as a powerful force capable of emerging from Chaos itself and affecting both gods and mortals. Some suggest that hate is its twin sentiment, but I digress. Its sister is anger — an emotion equally intense and explosive. My ...