"Are you bleeding?"

Hireia freezes at the familiar voice behind her. She turns around slowly, pressing a palm to the wound running the length of her arm, revealed through the ragged rip in her bloodstained, dirt-mottled tunic.

"I'm fine." She tries for a reassuring tone, raisin her hands palms-forward as though warding off the concern of the woman speaking from her. "It's not my blood. Mostly....

Skira wakes dreaming of bees.

Bees and blood, bees and cages, bees and honey, suffocating her, drowning her. The same woman, every time, facing away from her. Skira does not know her, does not know her name, but she knows she must get to her, she must. She touches the woman’s shoulder, and she turns. Her face is a cage, the bars adorned with strings of gore and honey and the last surviving th...

Queen of the heart

Who stole thy tart?

And into a rage sent thee

None would hear

His single tear

His hearing was at three

Mad as a hatter

Clothes in a tatter

No longer will he drink tea

Sent into the aether

Long will he hate her

For he stole the Queen's treat

And she stole the Knave's heart...

The fourth deadly sin, of course, is Envy.

She is often overlooked, seen as a crash of Desire and Greed, unnoticed until she is all-consuming.

Envy is poison. Poison like apples and potions and the minds of rotting men.

Envy is green. Bright, roiling green like acid and sealing wax on cursed love letters.

Envy is hunger. Not hunger for more, always more, like Greed. Not the rapturous, bodily...

The Sun dipped down below my feet

The Moon tipping over my head

They nip forever at each other’s heels

But they will never catch

The Sun, the Moon, can never see

The dark of night, the light of day

The Moon waits always for her Sun

But when he comes she fades away...

The National Art Museum had an entire exhibit dedicated to the paintings of Yvonne DeLac.

Three interconnected rooms bustling with visitors standing before tableaus of ruins and rivers, bloodied swords and rusted armor, rendition after rendition of human faces twisted with emotion. Soaring happiness, crushing grief, stony resignation and deepest desperation—Yvonne DeLac's paintings explored eve...

Held, beheld, beloved

Hestia, hearth of the gods

General, generous, genese

Gave up her seat for a man she knew not

Forget, beget, forgotten

Hestia, the lost Olympian

Victim to the curse of selflessness...

The people of Four Stands didn't like it when Elder Renka Alderan told war stories.

With others, it was an anticipated event. The whole community gathered around a flickering fire, leaning in close to the storyteller with shining eyes and smiling through his tales of epic charges and brave deeds and glorious victory.

But not Elder Renka.

With others, it was immersive in a way that brought sigh...

The ground was uneven beneath Theina’s feet, the product of both rocky terrain and rotting corpses. It was a strange combination, she thought, somewhere in the back of her mind, somehow corpses conjured images of smooth ground.

“What happened here?” she asked Garith beside her. He sighed, regarding the field and the bodies with hooded eyes.

“An epic battle was fought here, 300 years ago. This si...

You never asked but…

The blood on the floor wasn’t mine.

You never asked but…

The reason I wore black so much wasn’t because I liked how it looked.

You never asked but…

I wasn’t doing what you thought that Friday night.

You never asked but…

The lock of hair in my desk wasn’t my mother’s.

You never asked but…

There’s a reason I always came home so late.

You never asked but…

There’s a reason ev...