My soul is bare...
there is nothing left, not a single drop
to burst into a fountain of magic.
There is nothing,
no fantasy sublime with which to enchant.
My words have failed me—
fled from my mind into
darkness.
All that I own are
the little fancies—
sweet, wispy dreams
that elude my grasp...
and gone are the days that held my clearest thoughts.
Deep is the cavern where the
lost have fallen.
I am left with only a prayer,
heartfelt for its vagueness,
a bare offering of my soul

Something was moving in the forest. Beck didn’t know what it was but it scared him.
He bit his lip, keeping himself from crying out with some effort. Of course there was something moving. Plenty of magical creatures lived in the forest, silence would be impossible, day or night.

For as long as I can remember, I have been captivated by clouds. No doubt this love was greatly enhanced by the fact that I grew up in the American Midwest, where some of the most spectacular cloud formations in the world are the daily norm. Hours upon hours of my childhood and teen years were devoted to lying on the ground or sitting on a high vantage point, watching everything from cotton puffs to monstrous storm cells move overhead.

I stopped at the very edge of the forest and slowly extended a hand towards the nearest tree. Its skin was strange—chunky, jagged, and craggy. I had never been close enough to one to see it in detail, so I was unprepared for such a texture. Fruit trees were confined within carefully secured orchards, and the few varieties of small, ornamental flowering trees—little more than bushes, really—that were allowed inside the Clearings all had skin that was more or less smooth with only an occasional bump in it.

By the end of my first day of teaching the following week, the ball seemed years ago, a distant memory buried under an avalanche of paperwork, schedules, lesson plans, grading, and assignments. Had it not been for Devorah Erren’s insufferable boasting to the other girls about the ball (she being the only one of the class whose parents had allowed her to attend) I might not have thought of it at all.
By the middle of the week, however, my thoughts had turned to the upcoming festival that I was to attend with Mira and her family.

As Raya walked along the beach she looked out to the sea; breathing in the salty air and watching the waves kiss the sand.  She stopped to watch the dolphins swimming in the cove then turned to walk up the path to her house, she did not notice the ship on the horizon.  Finn, Raya’s older brother was playing volleyball with Jay their cousin, the twins Triton and Tyde, and Adrian, Finn's best friend, as she walked up the path Raya looked up when her brother called her.
“Raya, come play with us, we need one more player!” yelled Finn.

In my hands I hold the world
A pot of gold I seek to find
My pathway: beams of sunlight, pearled
The rainbow’s end in light enshrined.

The night around me closes fast
Blue skies now deepen into black
I look up to the heavens, vast
For fear of unforeseen attack.

Look! Yonder, there a shadow road
To where it leads, I cannot say.
Dark silhouettes of creatures goad
A swifter flight by moonlit ray.

Pete and J-Boy pulled the boat further onto the island.
Once they had tied the boat safely to the tree, the boys walked around the island to get a bearing on where exactly they had landed.
It was an island, much the same as any of the other islands, with the express difference of being the only one they were currently standing on.
Measuring roughly thirty meters across in one direction and fifty in the other, it seemed to be on the smaller side. At least insofar as the boys could tell, not having much experience with these floating islands.

It was snowing again.

Ileuad pulled her mud stained cloak tighter around herself, trying not to wake Ewen. She shuddered in the cold, and cast a glance over to the other side of the cave. There Adaon lay, never to rise again. He was shrouded in his dark cloak in the very farthest corner of the cave.