Hugh J. O'Donnell

He exited superluminal space discombobulated, but his ship’s medical computer detected no injuries. He had done the impossible, traveling farther and faster than any human before him. And he returned to tell the tale.
Earth was just as beautiful as when he left, but that was understandable. A two-week superluminal trip for him equated to two years of Earth time.
He brought up his communications hub to brag about his accomplishment. But as he logged into Earth’s network, he felt a rising panic. His social media feeds were gone, decimated in his absence. He wept for all the lost memes.

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She was the best weaver in Atlantis and knew all the secrets of her ancient art. She knew how to treat the seaweed fibers to make them strong and light and the correct method for curving fish spines.
But nobody cared about the old ways anymore. The crowd passed over her baskets in the market and favored cheap, mass-produced crap that barely lasted a season before breaking.
If baskets were out, she found new uses for her skills. She used them to create a new building material that was strong, light, and sustainable.
She would show them who was useless.

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His grandfather taught him the prayer but didn’t tell him what the words meant or what language they were. He said it was an Orison, something to say in times of trouble or when you were looking for divine protection.
He whispered it over his grandfather’s casket and in the nursery after his son was born. He recited them on the ship as they left Earth for the last time.
On a distant planet, under a strange Sun, he taught the words to his granddaughter. He never learned what they meant, but it was enough that he passed them on.

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The crack appeared in the air along the side of the highway, near a stretch of road they called ‘The Deadly Curve.’ It made the trees behind it glow with an odd, sunset-colored light. It reminded him of the broken monitor on his desk.
He went to test his theory, sneaking passed the cops on guard duty. He picked up a rock and threw it at the crack. It made a ripple in the ‘air,’ and the damage expanded. He stared at the sky for a long time, knowing the boundary of his cage for the first time.

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She grew up in The Spire, a beautiful city of terraced towers that grew up from the sea, ruled by a benevolent council of wizards.
Unless you lived in Undercroft, the sprawling neighborhood huddled at the bottom. She dwelt in the shadows at the base of the towers and lived off of whatever the upper class dropped.
One day, she found a weathered and stained book. The tome was still legible, if dirty and damp: A grimoire full of the ruling magicians’ secret arts.
She studied it eagerly, waiting for the day she would use her oppressors’ magic against them.

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When the girl fell from the heavens, the villagers thought she was a goddess. Aside from the glowing, you’d never know it to look at her. She was curious and kind, and while she never spoke, she seemed to hear everything the villagers said, although she didn’t always understand.
The village took her in and adopted her. That year, they had the best harvest ever recorded.
When their lord came to collect the girl, for he liked fine things and cared little for the village, she didn’t want to go.
That was when they discovered her benevolence had a limit.

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She set the forest ablaze to weaken him and smoke him out. In the firelight, her fine armor and weapons gleamed.
But she underestimated him. Order always underestimated Chaos.
The soul of the forest, he rose like a hawk on the thermals and called every creature still breathing to his aid. A murder of crows became his arrows.
She kept them at bay with her bright steel, but the groundlings charged from the burning wood and overwhelmed her.
As the forest died, so too did his power. Chaos lamented another draw as the husk of his avatar fell to earth.

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The second the Sun sank below the horizon, he opened his eyes and raced outside. Once again, he had missed the sunset in all its fantastical and beautiful colors. He stared up into the gloaming.
He had always been an early riser. That hadn’t changed after he died. His eyes were better now than in life, but it wasn’t the same.
The gloaming wasn’t a sunset and never would be. Still, as the vampire watched the dull reds shift into twilight purples, he savored what light he could stand and worried for the night when it was no longer enough.

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She was ready to leave almost as soon as they moved into the haunted house.
“We’ll flip it as soon as I get it fixed up,” he promised.
“This place needs a priest, not a handyman,” she countered.
“It’s not that bad.”
“So far this week, I have been woken up by mysterious howling, found threatening messages written on the bathroom mirror, and was chased down the hall by dripping blood!”
“So the house likes to play pranks.”
“Pranks?” She asked, opening the bedroom closet. A pile of skeletons tumbled to the floor.
“This place has good bones,” he protested.

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I offered her the seed, and she examined it with a covetous expression. Her brown, twiggy hand hovered over mine.
“Long have I desired this,” she said. “In the place of a pumpkin king, you would have a queen, not spooky, but beautiful and terrible as the blood moon, as tempestuous as an early blizzard. Sweeter than all the candy corn of the earth!” The sky around her darkened. Leaves sprouted from her shoulders, flowing in a cape down her back, and a crown of stars wreathed her round, orange head. She pulled back her hand and the vision faded.

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