Having done this before, I convinced myself that nerves were unusual but not unexpected.

It was practically habit by now to count the heavy footfalls of the guards. One…two…three…

On seventy, there was a brief pause as the guard turned around at the end of the corridor and came my way again.

Thirty five footfalls. That was all I had to get out of sight.

I had done it in twelve before. This wou...

The gnarly tendrils of the oaks came down again and again, sucking any remaining life out of me; but my lungs had long stopped producing enough air to cry out. I could feel my now-shriveled limbs sticking gruesomely out of the fine gossamer dress that had been pristine just hours before.

Just hours before, when I hadn’t yet been picked to be the offering to the forest.

The forest supposedly prot...

When scratchy voices started carrying a noisy conversation a few aisles away from me, I startled. I had been waiting at the doors of the library for it to open, and I had thought I was the first and only person in here.

“This is ridiculous!” The exclamation cut through the soft noise of my turning pages.

“What, that they made you prettier?” I was paying attention by now.

“No! I miss my old gree...

I needed to get out of my jacket, but I couldn’t stop paddling for even a moment. Not even to take off the ostentatious coat that was no doubt helping my pursuers track me.

My breaths were coming in sharp pants, my muscles squeezing tighter and tighter until they could barely function; but still I kept moving. I couldn’t afford not to.

I hadn’t seen anyone this side of the Mississippi River ever...

I always thought it was ridiculous how people drop things in shock. It affects your mind, without even the slightest impact on your hand muscles.

I was wrong.

Never had I experienced such horror before. My fingers went numb, and I felt the cup slip out of my grasp almost in slow motion.

And then it was falling, falling towards the ground. I nearly crumpled too.

“No,” I choked.

The implosion o...

The wind whipped my hair around, even as I held my bonnet closer to my head. Perhaps the sea thought that if it captured the hat, then I would stay.

But I couldn’t stay.

Tears gathered in the corner of my eyes - the effects of the wind, I told myself. The sparkling waves, catching the evening sunset on their far-off ripples, seemed to know they were saying goodbye.

Papa didn’t know he was dragg...

The clouds smile brighter every day

Watching the little specks of black and yellow

Go about their way

The aroma of the bee’s nectar

Floats up towards the heavens

And blesses even the evilest spectre

Only man grounded below

Rarely reap joy from the bees

Preferring to steal their precious gold

They wave away the gnats they see

Not recognizing the hard workers

Spreading love, bee by bee...