Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Essay – 2043 words The king is out of his mind. His desire to enter heaven alive has crossed all limits. “In this body,” he prays to the gods. They refuse to answer. The night sky is granite and crystal, rockface he can’t crack open….
“The Python of Idemili” by Bella Chacha
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Fiction – 4108 words The river remembers. Its currents whisper against my scales as I drift through the moonlit reeds, coils loose, tongue flicking to taste the night. The air is heavy with rain not yet fallen, with the breath of frogs hidden in the…
“A Mountain Retirement” by Jeanne Kramer-Smyth
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Fiction – 3270 words Mirri landed, tired but hopeful, on the highest peak overlooking a lush valley. She stretched her long neck and relaxed her shoulders, folding her tired wings against her body, and let out a grateful smoky sigh. Excellent night vision let her…
“Colors of Not-Belonging” by Rod A. White
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Fiction – 3469 words The scent trail of grief wound through the eucalyptus grove like a river of sorrow, thick with the chemical signatures of loss that only the Chromatic Cuscus could read. Kaya pressed her velvet nose to the bark of an ancient tree,…
“Covenant of Echoes” by Carol Mbugua
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Fiction – 1488 words Act I – The Flickering Star The valley was never silent. It thrummed with wings, pawsteps, songs, and currents, all woven into a harmony the animals called the Living Chord. Above them, the Echo Star had always burned as the chord’s…
“The Cemetery Cat” by Renee Carter Hall
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Fiction – 3464 words The first ghost Jules ever saw was his mother’s. He knew it was a ghost because her body was lying there next to it, blood-soaked and broken from the car that had sped around the curve and faded into the distance….
“Soft Underbelly” by Autumn Bettinger
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Fiction – 842 words The rain has stopped long enough for your dirt-covered head to emerge from a chicken-scratch den. First time making shelter without Mama, now that you’re big enough to be on your own. But now, you’re hungry. The air smells of trampled…
“‘Hold Your Horses’ Close” by Rachel Ashcraft
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Fiction – 857 words The plan is to run. My breath snorts hot—hyu hyu hyu—steam rising in curls. The deep thud of my heart pounds like my hooves against the hardpack. My mother’s heart beat like that, my ear pressed to her ribs in that…
“Choir of the Void” by Ayesha Mansoor
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Poem – 17 lines Void Whales do not sing of water, weight, deep.But explore the interstellar nightWhere antiquated, noiseless comets sleep.Their songs are woven out of nonappearance, lightThat passed on a billion years after our birth,And gravity’s inflexible, dim weight.A soloist will breach the hull…
“Feline Domestication” by Mary Soon Lee
Issue 3 – Fall 2025 Poem – 24 lines Post Uplift, a paltry span of yearsbefore cats domesticated people (a process begun centuries earlier,of course, but previously incomplete) in place of the politics of conflictcame the peace of hearth and home in place of human acquisitivenessa relinquishment of possessions each…