The prince came to the dude ranch in order to experience a big horizon while reimagining the West. He grew up with horses, and he loved adventuring with them.

“Keep your hands low, and let the horses’s neck stretch out. This isn’t like English riding, but we’ll let you use both hands if you don’t know how to neck rein.” Annalee, who worked for the ranch, wrapped her hands around his smooth gloved...

Just in time to stop the atmosphere of things from smothering me,

the night comes and blankets everything in darkness.

Light comes in all the ways you loved me through the day;

the love posts are like stars that make a constellation.

I see a form vastly bigger than us, and at your touch,

I am scooped up into a Big Dipper of delight.

You swoop me into your arms for a kiss;

passion blooms under the...

“James Burnham was shot and killed yesterday,” the reporter on the TV says as James pours himself coffee, smirking. His new movie is coming out in five days. Looks like his agent is up to something. This YouTube channel with its fake reporter is trying to get clicks, but the timing is suspicious.

His phone rings. It’s Linley Carter, his agent. “Hello.”

“James, you’re dead according to Star Sigh...

I rise out of the darkness with treasure at my feet. I’m always on my toes. I never make a random move. There’s no chance to slouch, to question my next move, to have an existential crisis, or to—gasp—walk like someone who isn’t dancing. My every movement is in rhythm with music. I know my place, and I’m happy to stand guard over everything in the box, to never let it be thought of as ordinary. I...

I am very hungry. I am incomplete,

little as a drop from grand,

unscrewed, released, no more to be marvelous

in solitude, without a hand to hold,

to bear enormous business all alone

and the fear that strikes and strives

when the desert terrifies,

all bright, all bestial, snarling marvelously

to fail, to flourish, to wither, or to win,

and I ride, ride, ride, on to the end....

(Religious theme)

Softly, in a high pitched voice like a little bell ringing,

Surely, short and sweet like a little bird singing,

She’d say her heart song to me:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart…”

Sometimes, in a life moment full of joy, I’d think I did so;

Sometimes, with no heart left, I’d offer the last bit of glow.

I’d hear her heart song to me:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart…”...

I have a new mare that is dark as the night and fast as the wind. She doesn’t spook at shadows, thank God, because the path to the dark tower is riddled with them. Giant conifers line my path, black as pitch in the twilight. I’m riding to the dark tower to bring a message. I was offered good coin to do so. I have a lantern strapped to my saddle and a sword on my thigh.

Suddenly, my mare stops...

One delightful day, under a light blue sky with fluffy clouds that seemed to frolic among themselves, I went out to an old beech tree and placed my magic satchel down by the roots. It looked like a bag made from an oriental carpet. I opened its wide mouth and pulled out a fawn colored angora rabbit. Very cute. Tuffs of hair dangled from his upright ears. I gave him a hug, then I plopped him down o...

It looked like both a harmless pinecone and an ominous grenade. It was my dragon egg, of course. I’d always known I’d get one, because the great dragon, Valimay, dreamed with me a hundred dreams of promise. My dragon and I would be able to fight off shadows in the valley of death and fear no evil. We’d be able to land at the top of the Mountain of Glory and know the meaning of triumph. I would l...

The wind picked up as the mighty ships of the clouds sailed overhead. Matazz, a dappled gray Arabian horse, felt jazzed up with the energy of a coming storm. He trotted up and down the pasture in a fancy prance, his tail up, ears flicking back and forth. It was the first time he’d ever been turned out into the night to see for himself how it swallows the shadows in a greater mystery, or how the mo...