There aren't many frogs out and about now, being late autumn and all. By this point, most have already burrowed into the mud to hibernate for the winter. As the ground around them grows colder, their bodies will eventually freeze into solid blocks of ice …

"Give back my magic!" Ruta called. She forced herself to get up.

"Oh, no. I won't. I'd much rather keep this. Look at how lovely it is!" She twirled.

Ruta attempted to catch her, and the girl bounced away.

"Let's try out these new powers, shall we?" She…

Ruta stepped through the portal and onto one of the scattered little islands. Her golden hair, clothes, and tiara all shimmered with each movement she made. She summoned a golden bow, and pulled back the string, and a golden arrow appeared.

She let it fly…

It's time I made a different kind of move.

I'll go pursue my int'rests and forget

That I have duties here. I seek a diff'rent groove

Than I have heard before. There's promise yet!

I handed my coupon to the receptionist who showed me to a room. I'd never visited a spa and was grateful for the privacy to undress and don the fluffy white towel that barely covered my vulnerability for the next 2 hours.

Dear Janey

I entered the saun…

My cell hadn't rang in days. I no longer cared where it was.

I lay looking at a wall four inches from my face trying not to think. The thin covers kept me warm enough and as I stared at the wall, committing my entire being into a single-hued landscape of…

It’s time to come back, it’s time to come home

I’ll find my way home to Brockton

Though I’ve been away for ever so long,

I think I’ll return to Brockton

With Brockton I’m safe, I’m not misunderstood

It’s never my fault, I’m loved ‘cos I’m good

With Brockt…

This is stupid.

It's stupid to get upset, to feel so left out and stood up when you ask me a question, I deliver, I ask one back, and never get a response. It's how you do things.

I can't count the amount of times I've forgiven you for leaving me hangi…

Today, I was hit with a ton of bricks. Killed me outright... stone dead.

I never even saw it coming. I was just walking along with a friend, talking about something trivial just to make conversation. Then, suddenly... right out of the blue, wham!

So wha…

The first had been a rock from the garden but it hadn't even quivered. The second had been a coin. The only thing it did was give off a noise like a muffled metallic scream. That shook me. For the third I chose a stick. It had twisted and curled, writhing…

Your moving on, choosing someone who was not me, hurt like a white hot knife to my gut.

At first I denied the pain, startled that I meant so little to you. I tried to ask you to show or tell me that I meant more.

You said that I meant just enough.

Th…

Sometimes I forget that home has a scent

A comforting reminder of a familiar space, habits, and expectations

It’s unexpected

The pain of it’s absence

Especially knowing how transitional my locations will be

Without it I am less

On my journey to become …

There is ten minutes 'til my train's departure.

There is a man bathing in the bathroom sink.

There is a wet spot on my pocket; I don't know how it got there.

There is room enough for all of us anywhere we go.

There are blotches of orange paint on my watch…

I'm a monster.

Every time I share my real feelings I upset those that I tell them to. They fight, they get angry, they take on my monster spawn emotionally inside themselves and struggle to disperse it. My monster has babies that grow and fester and infe…

The coach receded into the night. Heartbeat slowing from its frantic pace, I suddenly felt the weariness of the day settle onto my shoulders at last. I had been granted a reprieve at Master Lorenz's knock, and no more.

It's a silly dream, I told myself…

He trudged through the sand, up and over great dunes of the stuff, while the wind blasted him with even more of the fine grains. Visibility was shit, and he walked more by instinct than anything. He'd long ago lost his way. The gale-force storm did nothin…

In the past, it had always been an acknowledgement-in-the-abstract that hope and despair are two sides of the same coin. But it is far more vivid, visceral and horrifying to have the truth of the thing.

I looked back, previously, and regretted the presen…

The cool of the window pane seeped into Roger's skin, bringing blessed cold. In a few minutes it would be too much but for now it felt like relief. Anything to bring down the fever that was overheating his body and stealing his energy. It was worse at nig…

Story is marked as mature

Challenge the limits you set for yourself

When you were too tired to predict the consequences

Examine the desperation behind daily darkness

A poisonous buildup within a practice of working through lunch

And the costly decision to pay for drinks instead of…

Hello again Elsha and Robert! I have no cell phone, just a laptop computer...it's not my own one, it's furnished through the courtesy of my hosts. So far they just leave it in this room and let me use it. I don't know why. Perhaps they think I'll try to m…

Forbidden freshness cools beneath the boards

Unwilling hornets sting the burst balloon

And gnaw the captured heirs with sated swords,


Projected slowly into sprightly tune.

It's just as if he'd never left the stage,

The flaccid vaccination of the ill--

W…

Twigs cracked under my plated feet as I backed into a clearing in the dense forest. There were eyes out there, and arrows that struck with an unnatural accuracy, and claws that dented and buckled armour with the force of their strike.

I kept backing up, …

I joined my papa at the top of the hill. Intertwining my fingers, I stretched again, slowly pushing the sky away, reminding my muscles that they too must wake and ready themselves for work. The pleasant ache started in my upper arms and flowed both up and…

Lieutenant Commander Morell watched twelve specks of white light streak away from the carrier. She tracked their departure, but was distracted for a moment by the captain's pacing. Her gaze drifted, the view detected the subject of her attention, and zoom…