F sat there, in that uncomfortable position, half-leaning on the windowsill, still gazing outside. It took her a while to notice the tears on her cheeks. Myriad raindrops appeared under a street light, to be illuminated briefly before disappearing again. …

If you ever feel empty,

Tell me, please.

I have bountiful love

I’m hoping to help you

Fill the gap and help you feel whole.

And because I have this love,

I have another offer for you:

If it’s not me you need,

I’ll willingly help you to find

The things you…

Everyone knows about the circumstances under which Key wrote the lyrics to the “Star Spangled Banner” to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven”….or do they?

Key and his pal, boyhood neighbor Ricardo O’Shea, were there watching the battle, and Sergeant O’Shea…

Leaving the kitchen light on

Tells me that there’s dishes to wash there before going to bed

.

Turning your blinker on

Lets me know what you’ll do so I won’t panic

.

That magnetic sign on the dishwasher

Informs me whether the dishes inside it are clean or …

I have all these feelings now, rolling around

Like the chunks in a hearty, thick soup.

They’re some of them toxic, and some quite sublime

But the mixture’s unstable. I haven’t got time

.To feel all of them, blent in a group.

.

So I’ll thank you to take th…

It's a chocolate kind of day.

I went to work, even though I felt physically ill. I'd already been to the restroom 4 times and I was hoping that was it. I had to work, because of the 3 of us in charge, one of us was already gone. I couldn't bail.

I moved…

Story is marked as mature

"Take that off, you know that I hate when you wear it." Keshintai said reopening their debate regarding the strip of purple-blue cloth covering Taka's eye.

"It lets me fit in, you know that." Taka replied, as she untied the cloth, revealing her gleaming …

Taka loved her time at the Tamori dojo. Wearing the strip of cloth her mother had given her about her eye, she was able to avoid the torments of her past life, and enjoy her lessons.

She learnt to commune with the kami, to wield the divine magics they co…

Almost the moment Mirumoto Keshintai entered the village, she found herself ambushed by a deep hug from a very excitable young Tamori girl.

The friends spent the better part of a day catching up, before Taka finally relented and let Keshintai spend some …

The rest of the year passed fairly uneventfully. The bullies were defeated thanks to Keneya's advice, and as an added benefit of the battle maiden's visit and subsequent victory, Taka was able to overcome her sorrow. She returned to reading once more, and…

The day after Keneya parted, the bullies returned to teasing Taka. They jeered at her, and they threw their stones. But Taka didn't fall. She didn't cry or scream or flee. Timid, shy, antisocial Tamori Taka, the freak cursed by misfortune turned and fixed…

"Haha, you're a natural! You were born with a horse between your legs!" Keneya commended Taka, "You'd fit in with the Unicorn, for sure."

Taka beamed at the ecomplements, "Oh, it's not all that. Kaze is an incredibly intelligent horse, I didn't need to d…

Keneya led Taka to an empty field and bade her wait. She was gone at least twenty minutes before returning with a horse in tow. No ordinary steed, however, but an Utaku warhorse, bred and trained by the greatest Unicorn horsemasters.

"Child, when I am sa…

"Leave that girl alone!" The stranger called. The children turned to regard the newcomer, a woman, clad in purple rising armour, accented with gold furs, holding an ornate spear.

Now nobody could accuse these children of being particularly intelligent, b…

In Keshintai's absence, Taka fell to sadness. Her life became a series of motions that she followed. Her lessons lost most of their meaning, her time in the library was spent absent mindedly browsing the pages of long-forgotten tomes, though not a word wa…

Three months later, Tenever heard the flashbang grenade go off in the next room and burst in. He spotted four targets and dropped the leftmost two. The man behind him fired twice, but Tenever had already wheeled left to face another four targets.

Two mor…

I saw God today.

At lunch time.

Surfing on the back of a lorry.

I was crossing the footbridge over the main road between the office and the supermarket when a figure caught my eye. He was laughing, his long hair streaming behind him in the slipstream,…

I think I've been bullied.

Maybe it's just that the person who complains about the speck in my eye needs to remove the plank from theirs.

I need to stop wanting to please them.

When they say something in a subversive manner, hint that this new way is …

The year passed all too quickly.

Taka and Keshintai spent every moment they could find together, exploring new tomes in the library, or playing in the forests. Keshintai even took to accompanying Taka to the firework lessons, though she didn't have the a…

The next week, when lessons restarted after the festivities, Taka couldn't wait to introduce Keshintai to Chiyome, for that is what she had named the fox. After all of Taka's efforts, Chiyome was well on the mend, and had taken to hiding away in Taka's ki…

Kabura extended his stay, solely to observe this enigmatic child tend the fox.

She fed the kit, cleaned it, changed the dressing on the wound, and each day, she would go out to the forest where she found it, and search for signs of the fox's den. Kabura …

The armoured vehicle drove through the night, giving Tenever plenty of time. Time to think, and time to experiment. Enough time that, when Sadie threw open the door and motioned for them to exit, he caught her arm.

He spoke, coming through on her secure …

The characteristic blaze of diffused hyperexplosive munitions lit up the horizon, prompting the survivors to rouse themselves. No-one deployed such weaponry without some kind of combined arms operation, and sure enough a second wave of conventional stando…

Leaving Kabura to finish clearing away their archery session, Taka gently scooped up the wounded woodland creature and examined the wound. The kit was losing quite a bit of blood, but the wound wasn't too deep. She'd read about this sort of thing. The wou…