It was on a day in March that he created stars. Not a normal day in March, perhaps, because it was the last month of junior high school.

Jack had been writing poems for Lillian, but they’d all come out tangled, embarrassing messes. What were words to her anyway? If he gave her something she could touch, then things would be different.

What healing skills I had came by way of Cao Shen, the Spirit of Grass. Madame Ke might think me a charlatan for that, but medicine was medicine.

Irrel was halfway through milking Black-Eye when the sky went dark with dragons. He looked up to see what had happened and saw dozens of winged shapes obscuring the sun in the east.

Laris, of late priestess of the goddess Marya, now priestess of Mother Iron, awoke with a sweating, fearful trembling.

Caldus took the mask with trembling hands, the wax oily against his sweating palms. “I will honor this death with my life.”

It was the bridge that called to me and pulled me back, because that’s where I’d met my end.

Perhaps, some suggested, potential suitors were dissuaded by the family gargoyles, of which, it must be admitted, the family home had quite many.

Mizein had become a summer queen, clad in brilliant color: a gown of iris petals, deep blue veined in purple; ropes of lapis, amethysts, amber; hair as brown as wild earth.

There is a monster in me. I am a monster in him. Or perhaps that word means nothing, and a monster is merely the alien we do not know and therefore fear?