The bats swept and dove like dark necklaces at the edge of the clearing. Dusk alighted on the forest trees behind the fence and smiled its half smile. Dadin had died.

First, we address those who shift under the surface yet somehow look the same from afar. We do not understand how you are possible, but we honor all kinds of change, including those who camouflage it.

Inside the dead of winter
Curls a fiery soul
A little bear that sleeps defiant
Waiting out the cold.

Perhaps an existential crisis
Shook the universe’s mind,
And sent out blasted aftershocks
To certain human vines--

A gallop through the forest without stopping under the moon, but you don’t know how you know such a thing. You angle your neck and groan and scratch your budding antlers on the tree. They grew from your head in moments like a handshake at a stockholder meeting, in the second it takes to snatch a champagne glass from a waiter and what is a stockholder?

The shaft of sunlight through the far barn window spun the hay dust into a different kind of gold. The colour lent the old barn a sense of prestige and solemnity, like a king’s robe draped over a farmer—lifting his hollow cheeks, straightening the wrinkles on his brow.  

“The Wind has not changed its pattern since the tumble of the world. It tears across the surface, weaponizing the cold weather so no one can live in it, and then it vanishes for seven days. It brings down branches, yes. But it’s never left such marks before, like—like a beast! Why has it changed, now? What else could it do?”

“Where the Wind sleeps,” Teren said, “Is not a mystery, though.”

The house-thief strikes
When I lay the scissors down,
Vanishing them under whatever scarf
Is most forgettable.

The air stagnated in the streets. No, it rotted, like so many leaves in a compost pile. Siran grabbed her oxygen mask off her bedside table and clapped it over her mouth.

The chip salesman lurks in the dark corner of the superstore, handing out three and a half of the Product at a time.

The wolves waited with baited teeth, the leaves dripping onto the forest floor stopped mid-drop, and the little mushroom people called Caps scrunched close and still against the loam. Nothing could move under her shadow, for Bright equaled motion.

Four-year-old Selka tipped her chair back and fell for a half-second. Half of her soul poured out before she caught herself.