Carina

by Anna Kahn

“I’ve had a baby. Still feels strange that you don’t know that — I’ve been looking forward to telling you. She’s called Sophie, which you might have feelings about, and that’s OK. I want you to know I think of you fondly and often. I guess that’s everything.”

Sophie replayed the recording. Carina’s lovely soft voice.

“You just missed her,” the citadel’s newest receptionist said.

“I always do.” A baby? There was joy in that, behind the anger — not just normal existence-of-babies joy, but fiercer, an illogical, selfish joy that the Carina Sophie knew fighting and scrabbling through her twenties would have a baby.

“Can’t you catch up or something?”

Sophie hadn’t realised the receptionist was that new. She could already feel herself slipping away. (Continue Reading…)

The Immortal Rabbit

By Audris Candra

Your most painful death fell upon you when your soulmate had forgotten who you were.

You’d shared a kiss in a previous life, under the lush grape vines on the cusp of Mediterranean hills. His lips were tender with wine, yours raw from his two front teeth.

“We’re immortal,” you said. “Because when our flesh fails us, I will find you.”

You had died together then, on the same battlefield, to defend your homeland against the Romans.

In this life you’re forced to balance on your toes under the golden brush of the ginkgo tree just to catch a glimpse of him. Here he sat on a porcelain garden stool, spine straight and hands smooth from a good life led as a Qing dynasty imperial official. (Continue Reading…)

Reverent

by Leah Ning

It’s the smell of gravity that tells me Father’s been to my rooms: empty and metal-sweet, the way you’d think a black hole would smell before it crushed your nasal cavities. Out here in the spire’s lowest hallway, it’s faint, hanging in the dark humidity of my hour like dust in a years-dead room. But I know it’ll thicken as I walk, weighting my lungs, and I know what I’ll find laid on my pillow and who Father wants it used for. I’ve seen this before. I’ve done this before. I’ve been dreading doing this again.

Someone will do this to me one day. At least it won’t be Noon.

I breathe the humid heat of the hour that follows mine and go to my door. My soft shoes hush against the pale cream floor. The door’s brass hinges creak when I open it. I suppose I should get someone to spin them back to new, but I’ve come to like the noise. It’s what wakes me when Noon comes in, her hour done and woven into the next. (Continue Reading…)