Excerpt

Sunrise in the Elven Haven
I close my eyes, planting my feet, and breathe in the fresh, crisp morning air. Elys Shale, the Elven Haven, emanates an ethereal beauty at any time of day, but there is a particular quality to the dawn’s illumination of its temple towers that especially captures me. From my perch within an envelope of mighty pines, the Haven’s rounded walls seem to flatten into their landscape, and I can see the village beginning to stir. Dawn-fires are lit around the temples to frame their bulbous crowns, and in each their turn, thin tunnels of smoke come roving through the mountain mist, bringing on their tongues a distant taste of burning oak to wade through the scent of evergreens. The elves offered kindness and respite, caring both for me and for Moonshine, my coal-colored horse, as their kin. We have already crept out to the hills by the time the light breaks, and, before returning to our path along the hidden mountain pass, I slide off her back and pause to watch the scene transform.
By Sophie Swan4 years ago in Fiction
The non-existent girlfriend
One Christmas, the roommate went on a date with his girlfriend. I was alone in my room. I turned the bathroom lights on, turned the hot water light on, and the bathroom fogged up with light, like a miracle manifestation. I was surfing the internet, journaling, tweeting, pretending I was waiting for a woman to finish her shower and come out to have sex with me in a room across from the living room, but I actually turned on the water and no one was in the bathroom.
By BlossomParker4 years ago in Fiction
The Sparrow Falls
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By John Heusted4 years ago in Fiction
Corn
When you're all alone, do you really chew with you mouth closed? Do you gently dab your napkin to your lip? Do you cut bites that actually fit in your mouth? Or, do you stuff your food into your mouth like a blue whale gone rogue?
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Mama's Porch
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There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Long before she had been old enough to grasp the concept, she had heard the adults speak, in whispers, about the beasts. They whispered, as their parents and their parents before them, had once shouted, because the years had worn them down, left them able to do little more than raise their crops and their children, debate and plan their communities, and always, prepare themselves for war against their enemies, be they human or reptilian. What fabulous enemies they made, these legends of the air and the water and the very bowels of their Kingdom-earth, how magnificent!
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By K.J. Wilson4 years ago in Fiction