The thing about the way you see the world is that it’s all internal. There’s no way to be sure we all interpret colors the same way. I think about this sometimes: think that my red might be someone else’s green. And there would be no way to tell. There are differences you *can* tell. Aphantasia, for one, the inability to form mental images. But the interesting thing about people with aphantas...

They sent the children away. The house of an old warrior whose old enemies often found him, no matter how well hidden he tried to stay, was no place for babes. And their mother, though she loved the children of her body as deeply as she could, lived too much in the world of her pencils and paints and canvases, and what was yet to come, to properly care for two infants.

So they gave a child ea...

Reina - May 1st

Keeping a diary is an objectively stupid thing for a Power to do, unless you actively want to lose your abilities. Anything which risks revealing your true identity is a stupid risk. But at some point, something has to give, and the leading theories in psychology suggest that if you can’t talk openly to a therapist, trying to talk openly to yourself is the next best thing. And ...

I find the piece of paper shoved partway under one of our many bookshelves, grimy and creased. It’s one of the worksheets Vi put together (presumably still puts together) for her students to improve their writing and vocabulary: complete with cartoony clip-art of a sandy half-circle topped by a palm tree. I take it to the table and hunt around the flat until I have found a mechanical pencil that...

She called herself Titania. It was an accurate name, for she was as beautiful and capricious and prone to dangerous grudges as the faerie queen of legend, though “Mab” or “Morgan” might have been even more appropriate. Her power was insidious and terrifying in its scope—even limited to one Suggestion every new moon—but her desire seemed to be more for entertaining drama than carnage. For now. ...

You who were inquisitive,

Shall never cease to ponder

Your curiosity shall live

He thanks you for your wonder

Who crafted with dedication

Now must leave your craft behind

We will treasure your creations

He will treasure still your mind

There’s a final path to follow

For those drawn to the unknown

Leave your loneliness and sorrow

Let your Joining bring you home.

You who taught and shared your ...

My grief is a lonely feeling

Though I’m not alone in grief,

Nor in my attempted healing

Absent imminent relief

But the grief itself is lonely

And it summons other friends:

Like the guilt of sometimes only

Wishing for a swifter end

For there are few things in nature

Crueler than a long decline

Than the gradual departure

Of the memory and mind

Grief and guilt I feel in essence

For what’s no...

“I think I just met the happiest person in the world,” Marianne exclaimed as she bustled in, setting aside her parasol and fussing with her shawl. “How envious I am.”

Ethel looked up from her perusal of Fordyce. “Oh? There are very few contexts in which *I* should wish to be known as ‘the happiest person in the world’,” she replied levelly.

Marianne’s doe-like hazel eyes widened behind her w...