Saturn by Sleeping At Last
                "You taught me the courage of stars before you left"
                             Let's face it, Garen, it's you.
The Scientist by Coldplay
                "Questions of science, science and progress"
                            You know where this ends, don't you, Aiela?
Blood Red Roses by C21 FX
                "The depths, they wouldn't claim her"
                            Cardinal. Honestly. This is your angst song.
Clocks by Coldplay
                "Tides that I tried to swim against / have brought me down upon my knees"
                            Galithan. Oh, Galithan.
The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel
                "But my words like silent raindrops fell"
                            Arthur. 
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2
                "But yes, I'm still running"
                            Sage, this is you in 4 minutes and 37 seconds.
Here I Am by the Boxer Rebellion
                "I follow blindly, however unlikely"
   ...

December - month of first snows, cold days, and of change. Not always fast ones; they can be compared to the movements of a glacier. But change nonetheless, sweeping through my world in a flurry of snow and shouted wishes for good holidays out of car windows. 

This year has found me struggling with a great change: a new school. Not that I moved, but that the school was renovated to become a monolith of glass, sheetrock, and clean modern white walls. For me, change from routine is hard enough when it's simple things like a new schedule or a new after-school activity I signed up for. An entirely new learning space, even if it is filled with all the same people it always has had, threw me for a loop. My fellow classmates, whenever I expressed this panicked feeling growing inside of me, looked at me funnily. After all, the school is larger, better equipped for all of...

December - month of first snows, cold days, and of change. Not always fast ones; they can be compared to the movements of a glacier. But change nonetheless, sweeping through my world in a flurry of snow and shouted wishes for good holidays out of car windows. 

This year has found me struggling with a great change: a new school. Not that I moved, but that the school was renovated to become a monolith of glass, sheetrock, and clean modern white walls. For me, change from routine is hard enough when it's simple things like a new schedule or a new after-school activity I signed up for. An entirely new learning space, even if it is filled with all the same people it always has had, threw me for a loop. My fellow classmates, whenever I expressed this panicked feeling growing inside of me, looked at me funnily. After all, the school is larger, better equipped for all of...

Frigid winter wind
gusting
among pillars of ice and snow
Constant, and yet quiet

Silence is King here,
Malice is Queen
[Although he has admitted
to liking Beauty better--
Everything likes her,
so he is forgiven]

A long way North
of Somewhere
East of Nowhere
in between thought and reality
They are there, but in solitude

For Winter is demanding
and scepter of ice
melts in the warm air
Cape of ermine fades;
the throne should disappear
but Malice and Silence would remain

No, no,
much better to be alone --
forever frozen in the cold
than to meet those
who rule this haunted place

Frigid winter wind
gusting
among pillars of ice and snow
A kingdom within a kingdom-
in a place all its own

Polaris Terra Dolosus had never truly liked her uncle, even before she had entered the Court of the Stars. He was a seedy man, with a long willowy frame and two sharp black eyes. On his hands sat ten spindled fingers that had the habit of tapping against anything he could find. And, as if to prove a point, the crown he wore upon his head was ill-suited for such a skull as his. It looked stranded on the long black mane that made up his hair. It looked as if did not belong.
That crown, Polaris knew, could have been her father's, had he survived to fight for the throne.
Her uncle's voice was cold as the void of space, cutting through everything in its way. If there was ever any emotion in him besides that of the ice, Polaris had never seen it. It was fitting, and some would say poetic, that such a cold man would have...

There is so much to say, and so little time to speak it all: if I were to begin at the beginning of my heart and unravel every core rule I believe in, it would never end. Because I am always learning. And while I hold that belief dear to me, there are still other ones to speak of, to whisper into the cover of night like they are but mere phantoms that will blow away in the light of day. 

This is what I believe in: the me that lives and breathes came here through a series of choices - not all of them mine, not all of them good. But they are the past, and we live not in the fourth dimension but the third. There is no anti-time; there is no moving back to change that which has worked its ways on us already. I accept who I am - I accept what I see in the...

The sky stretching overhead
becomes a canopy of hand-painted wonder
and the trees live and breathe,
rustling about the latest breeze and sighing out a whisper

The corn shakes itself just a few 
blinks of peaceful over the way
and somewhere there is a deer stip-stepping,
leading their herd on a search for a sliver of the fading dusk

There is an owl, 
beginning to sing
Perhaps it's on the roof
perhaps the sky

A shooting star arcs across the darkness,
leaving behind it a trail of secrets
and stardust and fire and wishes
and it winks before heading on its way

The grass murmurs quietly
and the crickets inside begin to sing their soft soli
to the fireflies overhead,
who flicker to the beat of night

 

World hangs heavy over the roof;
gravity stretching up to grasp at ankles scuffing the ground
World-weariness - gifted, not asked for - ringing in ears too tired to listen

Oh, but that we could close our eyes,
push ourselves back into the world of imagination
That these mortal temporal issues could fade away
like sugar on a waiting tongue
and not bother us for a day, a year, a century

But the sky presses down on our dreams,
mocking us, saying, "I'm the limit; this is all you could ever be."
And you know you could but shove upward
and the sky would bow to your wishes and rise up
but there seems to be no point.
What goes up must come down: this is a basic law of the universe,
the type you've forced into your head in a desperate attempt for knowledge

World hangs low over our heads,
whispering of things made of monochrome;
of things left...

Green carpet spread out beneath the sunshine,
swaying in the breeze -
the scent of cut grass lingering as blades flop defeated
on the hot asphalt

crossing the driveway without shoes, feet still wet
from the garden hose, listening to
birds chittering at the empty feeder

Sky overhead is blue-blue-blue like a robin's egg,
commandeered by cumulus clouds towering above

there is the smell of hostas blooming,
and the sharp scent of tomato, too;
my stomach rumbles and I sneak a raspberry
from the patch in the backyard, savoring
its tart sweetness while it lasts


 

She is bitter acerbic rain,
a whirlwind of cataclysmic sorrow encroaching on the horizon;
She is the sound of laughing quietly to herself
when nobody else is around
(If nobody else is around,
does her laughter make a sound?)

She is a cacophony,
the dramatic crescendo sweeping the piece up for the finale,
a chord echoing through the heartbeat of a thousand people;
she is the tumble of words spilling out onto paper,
mindful of their order and intent yet still untamable

She is black to the sun's gold,
rain to the clear sky

She is their antithesis,
and yet they can't walk away

Laughter, breaths spent whispering in my ear. Late-night conversations, banter, inside jokes. Forgiveness and trust. Your home was my second home. You’d catch me when I'd stumble and I'd catch you.

When we parted, you were still stubbornly with me, saying “We’re in this together.”
 

Listen closely. There once was a girl with no past, and she turned into a monster. Nobody knows how, but there are rumors - they whisper of a man with coal eyes and a smile of ice and daggers.

They say she lost herself on the night of the Red Dawn. Wouldn’t be surprising if that's true. If that was the moment when she turned from human to monster.

Do you know where she is? No? I can tell you. She hides in the shadows, the floors, the walls. She might be listening right now.

Be careful what you do, or she might come for you, too.

.....

It’s been a thousand years - a day. No - it’s been a moment between breaths, one where a microcosmic universe is created and destroyed. Yet, at the same time, it has been forever. Because it isn’t possible for such a moment to be so small. It shouldn’t be so easy.

She’ll...