Peach Tree Grove

There was a figure standing in the shadows, a silhouette still in the corner.  Elenore approached the window slowly, her eyes never leaving the dark figure, and with one motion, down she pulled the velvet curtains in a sweeping trail of dust.  Her lips parted in wonder as she slowly stepped forward. The figure was too still to be human, posed lightly, ever so delicately, on the toe of one foot.  She was a doll.  She was a doll unlike any Elenore had ever seen, the most beautiful toy, the most beautiful figurine she could ever have imagined, brushed a deep midnight cobalt, gold flaking forward on her brow and cheek bones, her hair tumbling back over her shoulders. She had been made to be small girl about Elenore’s age, with slim, elegantly structured limbs, a perfectly sculpted face, and thick, dark lashes closed in a curling line over eyes large enough to look unnatural on anyone but this already impossibly lovely doll.  Elenore stepped forward and slowly traced...

          I want to be a thief, a gentlewoman with downward-tilted hat and elegant gloved fingers, gloved fingers that left no marks on the sparkling glass case where the jewels rested only a moment ago as I disappear in a puff of smoke, an immaculate fantasy, a beautiful phantom; daring, flamboyant, impossible.  I want to be a detective, tapping, smoking, my suspenders shrugged off my shoulders, pacing a floor littered with newspaper clippings and grainy photos fluttered down from their pins, possessor of more luck than my Irish ancestors, more dogged than any hunting hound, a determined devil to any man with a clenched smile and a smoking gun. I want to be a knight, a dragon-slayer, a lone samurai with a humble heart and only a honed blade and an unbent back left to me, a disaster to the demon-dragon with forked tongue and spiteful fire, a shield to the innocent and the worst of nightmares to the wicked.  I want to be a maiden pure, unstai...

Isaiah leaned on an empty bus stop, empty now of its usual crowd of commuters. Between the fingers of one hand he held a smoldering cigarette, and with the other he wrote in sharpie on the wall.  “You know those things’ll totally destroy your lungs.”  Isaiah straightened. A teenager stood next to him with earbuds in hand, out for her morning run. She gestured to the tube between his fingers. He didn’t say anything, just turned to face the road and took a long drag of his lung-destroyer.  “I mean it. You should look it up on Google. Those pictures’ll get you off them in a snap.”  Isaiah turned to look at her again but didn’t answer, just held her eyes steadily. She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze for several seconds, until he finally turned his eyes back to the road. She shrugged, relieved that he had turned away from her. “Whatever. I was just trying to help.” She glanced over at what he had written.  “What is this stuff anyway? It doesn’t make any sens...

What a tiny cog I am in this great celestial machine, spinning and whirling amidst a hurricane of trillions of stars. What a fragile little soul, flickering in my tiny world above the clay and the copper and the iron, a flame half as bright as the last dying ember of coal in the cold furnace.  I dance here in the whirlwind below a thousand million swirling spheres of iridescent flames. I dance here, one of trillions of fragile little soul-fires, some red and impotent with rage, some pure and white-hot with sacrifice.  Here I dance, dancing to make myself hotter, dancing till I am made even greater than the great swirling explosions in the sky, dancing till I am made even greater than the powerhouses of His enormous celestial machine.

    *Cough cough* Meghan wheezed and stumbled backwards, jerking out of the trunk.     " Ouch! " Her head banged against the lid, and two pewter statuettes and an ancient fan thunked to the floor inches away from her foot as her lungs worked desperately to drive the invading clouds of dust out of her throat.    "Are you all right sweetie?" Meghan's mother poked her head around a shelf.    "Yes," She wheezed out between coughs.     Her mother smiled and disappeared back into the shadows and dust that permeated the store. The front had been clean and well-lit by the display windows, but you could tell only a few rows out that the owners had lost the battle with the dust out on this frontier.     Meghan replaced the figurines on their lace runner and moved away from that deadly trap of a hope chest.     She and her mother were in an antique store, one of many that her mother loved to visit, but t...

   Erraline sat at her balcony looking out at the pearly sky and snowy peaks that surrounded her. Dove-gray clouds softened the stark black and white mountains that ringed the hotel on all sides.    This was her favorite space in her rooms, out here alone with the open sky and cold mountains. Being with them made all her frustrations seem very temporary, they cleared her thoughts and made her feel like something would come, something might change.    "Erraline?"    A voice wafted out from inside, and Erraline sighed. She lifted her head and enjoyed the wind against her face a moment more, skirts ruffling against her legs, stray hairs wafting away from her neatly done hair.    The balcony door opened with a chuk  and Erraline turned away from the wind.    "Erraline? There you are, it's time to begin your lessons."    Erraline followed Madame Oyena into the little library that served as her schoolroom. ...

   His footsteps echoed as they hit the dark marble and bounced off the walls. Crow would never understand why his mother had needed such a big castle-it was a little too warlike to be called a palace-when it had always been only her, his father, and the bare minimum of servants, and then him and Dryr near the very end. Maybe she had been planning to make her own court someday, people of her choosing to throw her balls and parties for. He couldn't see any other reason for such a big, gaudy ballroom.     He placed his palm on a gray marble column. There were cracks running through it, a few chips coming off where the divisive stone webs made crossroads. The rest of the room was full of dust, cobwebs criss-crossing the spaces between draped velvet and the walls and hiding in corners around the ceiling.     His eyes fell down to the crest above the double doors he had come in through. It had an enormous chunk gauged right out of its center, a wound j...