My father had kept me at a distance my whole life. I never thought better of it, and paid little to no attention. To me, this was his way of displaying his affection for me, and I learned to accept this.

I didn’t learn I was wrong until I had lived twenty years of my life and had the ability to see things from his point of view — literally.

I illegally bought the potion on the black market, just...

Open skies beckon in something broader

The lion is yellow

Or so I tell myself

It isn’t real

But it is true

And all I need is myself

And my truth...

I would have liked to say our hovercraft touched down smoothly and successfully as planned. That it sank into soft snow, quietly descending from blue, undisturbed skies like we hoped.

From takeoff, everything was fine. We were rebels in a world that didn’t want us, but we were escaping, and that was enough.

Our crew set out to land on Vandon, an isolated and icy peninsula off the coast of Della,...

I don’t think I can do it.

I mean, could you if you knew your biggest fear was yourself? The broken images you see in your mirror, the lilting whispers never fading from your ear?

But I bite my fear back and trudge forward.

Immediately a blast of zero-degree air hits me. Knocks me back. Leaves me spinning. Even as I stand, still several meters away, I can see images burning at the back of my br...