Zenith (2025-26)

Words and Stardust 

 Reagan Duprey

We are made of stardust without the celestial glow 

Hands and words caressed us into existence 

Cradled by a booming voice above 

Nurtured by the whisper that made lifeless dirt our DNA 

We are made of words and stardust 

We spread chaos and kindness with the same saliva  

From the molecules of Adam we still smell of bitter fruit 

On our tongues we laugh and love to the same heart beat as longing 

Each syllable is a symphony of power and glory 

A cacophony of divine eloquence we picked up from our Father 

But only our words resound with a bitter after taste 

The first ‘I love you’ was spawned from hate 

Infantile impatience taught our mouths the power they posses 

We create a catalog of life through our vocal cords 

Formless and empty was the beginning  

I’m sure His voice was a resounding symphony 

Or was it soft? Commanding? Reassuring? 

How far did the sound waves stretch?  

Are they still bouncing through space? 

Maybe our soundwaves stir the milky way like mixing a cool glass of Ovaltine 

Getting the powder under your fingernails 

Feeling dirty, itchy, sweaty, hairy creatures with music boxes in our brains 

Perhaps the crisp precision of earthly creation got mixed and muffled a bit 

God saved the best for last, gave Adam a laugh like no other 

Not a roar, a croak or a chip, but something more familiar 

Gave man the same instrument He used to make the soil he stood on 

We let our minds rot like ground beef in the sun 

The same mind makes melodies and poetry 

Through our lips those sounds and syllables escape to the page  

Or they trickle to the ear like summer wind,  

like lighting,  

like molasses,  

like shattered glass 

We make the words sewn together by our subconscious 

After holding our breath we hope that the best of what we meant is actually said 

Our words can bring rain or fire to someone’s eyes 

Faces contort or morph when you hear that one voice behind you, or inside you 

The aroma of a compliment is predictable 

A star’s shimmer is mirrored by those blinded by flesh 

Words and stardust can never be touched 

But building and burning is a power we’ve always possessed 

Zenith

Corrie Freece

Zen Mariol never accepted anything less than perfection. She was on the rise in the glimmering city of Rychess, a city filled with stars that shone so brightly that to stand out among them was a miracle. But Zen was a master miracle-worker.

The first person to notice her talent onstage was Laurelle Workman, a woman who had come to the concert to see this strange new indie artist and left with said artist beside her as they talked over contract details. Laurelle, it had turned out, was a representative of Divine Records and had signed Zen to the label so quickly that Zen had gotten access to company promotion practically overnight.

It hadn’t all been luck, of course. Zen had worked her right hand nearly to the point of carpal tunnel to write an album that promised to be a billboard topper, and she had to edit and record and edit again and re-record until the grumpy executive had finally given her a begrudging thumbs up.

So, with album recorded and duly promoted, she was back in a venue, bejeweled foot tapping as she waited for her openers’ performances to end. 

They were good, since she and the label had vetted them, but their sound was…lacking. Especially the singer that went right before her. He dressed in all black like those pale goth kids that gave Zen the heebie-jeebies, and the tone of his voice was mournful. 

She couldn’t hear what his lyrics were and was eternally grateful for that fact. She wouldn’t let him ruin her vibe. She was happy and shiny and glorious. As she started to make her way out from the wing where she’d waited, her shoulder hit his. She hissed in startled annoyance and expected him to react similarly.

But he just met her gaze with a pair of dark, nearly soulless eyes as he passed. The eye contact lasted for all of two seconds, and then he was gone, vanished into the shadows that no doubt shrouded his soul.

She shook it off and stepped out into the spotlights with a grin that shone nearly as brightly as her outfit did. When the audience roared, she lifted the hand that wasn’t holding her mic in a joyous wave and pranced to center stage. “Hi!” she said as she snapped the mic into the waiting stand. “How’s everyone doing tonight?” With another thunderous sound from her fans, the concert truly began. She sang and danced and laughed her heart out. During her most popular song, an upbeat number called “I’m Live, You Know,” she even handed one of her bracelets to a cute fan in the first row. It wasn’t an expensive piece of jewelry, but that girl would treasure it forever, and that was all that mattered to Zen.

After the encore, she returned backstage, handed her mic off to the sound crew, returned her outfit to its hanger after she changed into comfy street clothes, followed her makeup artist’s instructions to healthily take the layers of beauty off her face, and thanked every staff member she met on her way out the back entrance. As she stepped out the back door, she nearly tripped over a pair of black-jean-clad legs that were stretched across the landing.

To her surprise, it was the gloomy opener who lounged there, his phone casting his face in a sickly light. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked once she had recovered her balance and braced herself in the doorway with the door tapping at her heels. “You’re an opener. You get to go home early.”

He raised his eyes from his phone, and the eyeliner framing them gave him an almost ghostlike look. “I’m waiting for someone,” he replied, easing himself upright. “Sorry for almost tripping you.” He was still glum and a little scary, but at least he was polite.

She shrugged with a smile. “Oh, no worries.” She carefully stepped down and past him. “I’ll see you at the next show. Have a good night!” She walked to the car waiting for her and got in, sighing as her tired body melted into the heated seat as the driver took her home. 

For some reason, as she was doing her skincare and getting into bed, a certain black-clothed boy featured prominently in her thoughts. She wondered if he sang sad songs because he hadn’t yet experienced joy. Maybe that was why her label had put him on her tour. Maybe they wanted her to share her infectious happiness with him and save her audiences from his depression. 

She went back to the same venue the next afternoon for her second show. She had a total of three shows here before she and her openers went on the road, and her friends Carmen and Gina had only been able to get tickets to the last one. It was fine, as long as she was able to see them before she vanished for a few months, and she would make sure to save some energy so the third night show would be her best one yet.  

As she stepped out of her dressing room, she once again came face to face with her emo opener. He leaned against the wall across the hall much like he’d lounged against the railing outside the back door last night. His outfit was indiscernible from the one he’d been wearing yesterday, same ripped black jeans and some sort of oversized black graphic tee that hung loose on his thin frame. His hair was messy like he’d rolled out of bed only minutes before, and the black metallic earrings that curved up the side of his right ear stood out against skin so pale it could belong to a lifeless vampire. Despite the careless, almost grunge aesthetic, his clothes and shoes were spotlessly clean and his fingernails looked like they’d gotten a fresh coat of black polish since last night.

Zen gave him a smile, intending to just pass him by and consult with the sound team, but she stopped dead in her tracks when his lips hesitantly curved in a return smile. “Didn’t know you could do that,” she said, coming a little closer so they weren’t talking across the hall.

“Do what?” he asked innocently. His dark eyes, which she could now see were a coffee brown, were a mix of inquisitiveness and satisfaction.

“Smile,” she replied, taking the conversational bait. “It’s not, you know, exactly part of this whole depressed aesthetic you’ve got going on.”

He tipped his head like a curious bird, a piece of his messy hair falling into his left eye before he swiped it away. “You think I’m depressed?”

Zen snorted in disbelief at the question. “It’s what you’re communicating. It looks like you’re not even trying to look normal or be happy.” She shook her head and headed off for a quick sound check, her attention diverting from the conversation she was having with Laurelle when the boy she’d just talked to in the hall started his sound check. She couldn’t deny that he had a good voice or that his fingers picked out gorgeous melodies on his guitar, but it was the lyrics that dragged with a heavy weight she could hardly stand. Phrases like “I’m alone with my thoughts aimed at the ceiling again” and “attention was your only god and goal” certainly didn’t help. Propping a hand on her hip, she asked Laurelle, “What’s that kid’s deal?”

Laurelle, who had taken on the role of manager with Zen, frowned. “Nadir? He’s been writing songs since sixth grade. He started posting snippets of his demos online a few years later, but he didn’t really gain a lot of attention until two years ago, when some serious drama went down. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I do know he ended up in jail for a good few months.” She shrugged. “I guess he was cleared or whatever, but it skyrocketed his career. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets his own tour by the time yours is done.”

Zen couldn’t tear her eyes away from the boy on stage. “Why would Divine sign on an ex-con?”

“I told you he was found innocent.” Laurelle folded her arms over her black tee that had MANAGER written on the front and back in neon green letters. “You want to know more? Talk to him about it. Don’t try his manager,” she cautioned. “That man’s as close-lipped as they come.”

Zen nodded absentmindedly. “We’ll see.” She went through the show without letting her curiosity distract her from the performance, only letting herself wonder once she was changing in her dressing room. What would be serious enough to put a young artist in jail for months? And what had happened to clear his name? Was he actually innocent? Or had those few months been his sentence? She was so caught up in her questions and conjectures that she almost tripped over his legs again when she went out the back door. She grabbed the rail and doorframe to steady herself. “You really should stop hanging out here,” she told him. “One of these days, I’m going to end up with a broken nose or something. And believe me when I say my manager will sue that oversized shirt off your back.”

His hand found her elbow to help her regain her balance, and it was surprisingly warm. “Two lawsuits are plenty for the rest of my life,” he replied, letting her go once she released the rail. Two lawsuits? Which had been the one that landed him in jail? “I’ll try to remember that you come out the back.” He actually sounded like a human being trying his best to be decent towards her. “Believe it or not, I don’t want to make you trip or fall.”

She leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms. She still felt the warm imprint of his hand on her arm, and it was weirdly touching that he’d cared enough to help her. “Last night, you said you were waiting for someone out here. What’s your excuse this time?”

He gave her a tight smile, the motion far less relaxed than it had been earlier. “I was. Maybe it’s toxic, but part of me hopes she’ll show up.”

“She?”

The tight smile turned bitter. “My ex. Last night, she sent me a message saying she knew where I was playing and threatened to show up. So I waited out here for her.” He lifted up his narrow shoulders in a shrug. “I guess I thought she was gonna cause a scene about me still deserving to be behind bars.”

Zen frowned, giving the door a nudge with her foot to let more light out onto the landing. “Do you? Deserve to still be behind bars?”

He set one foot on the low metal rail behind him. “She’d say so. Apparently, using my own pain from the relationship to write songs is illegal now.”

Zen felt her eyebrows rise toward her hair. “She sued you over that?” That was just ridiculous. Yeah, she wrote upbeat songs, but she definitely channeled some pettiness toward exes into her lyrics. None of them had ever dared to sue her over it.

Nadir nodded. “That was the second lawsuit she filed against me. I didn’t end up paying any damages, and she’s still stewing about it.”

“Then the first one is the one that landed you in jail?” Zen both had to know and didn’t want to hear it at the same time. 

Nadir slumped back against the railing. “She accused me of murder.”

Murder? Oh, this was getting better and better by the second. How had he ever been cleared of murder? “And?” she asked, unsure of the response she would get. Would he murder her too?

“And it was all fake,” he answered, his tone biting. “As we all found out three months after her judge father sentenced me. It was all one giant manipulation to make me believe I was better off with her on my side.”

What sort of psychopath did all that? “She did that after you broke up?”

“Before.” He picked at a sticker on the railing with one chipped nail. “Like I said, toxic.”

“That’s not toxic, that’s psychotic.” Now Zen wanted this girl to show up too, if only to call security on her.

Nadir wasn’t looking at her anymore. “No wonder I’m depressed,” he said flatly.

“I’m sorry.”

He glanced up at her. “What for?”

Zen fumbled around for the right words and then replied, “For kinda mocking you earlier. I didn’t know.”

“You were probably too focused on your career.” He was back to not looking at her. “Everyone who was online knows what happened. It was everywhere.” He got a piece of the sticker off and rolled it between his guitar-string-calloused fingers. 

“Why tell me all this?” she questioned. “We’re practically strangers. I wouldn’t trust a stranger like this.”

He shrugged. “You asked. Most people steer clear of me without ever even having a conversation with me first. And maybe I like talking to you.”

She blushed a little, even though he was far from the first person to tell her she was enjoyable to talk to.

“You’re a little naive, but you’re bright. It’s a nice break from my own thoughts.”

“That’s not very nice,” she said, scowling at his assessment of her. “I’m very smart.”

“Never said you weren’t,” he replied without returning her scowl. “Naive and dumb are two different things. I said you’re naive cause you seem to only look on the positive side of things. It’s a narrow view of the world.”

“And only looking at the negative isn’t narrow?” she shot back. “If I’m naive for my perspective, then so are you.”

A smile that seemed very close to genuine came to his face. “I’ll agree with you on that.”

“I–” she started and then belatedly realized he hadn’t disagreed. “Wait, you agree?”

“Yeah.” The smile grew a little bigger. “The famous Zen Mariol gets flustered by her depressed opener,” he teased, sounding like a clickbait headline. 

She rolled her eyes, liking the way his smile transformed his pale face. “You wanna grab something to eat instead of waiting around for your toxic ex?” she offered, shocking herself with the sudden proposition. 

He didn't seem so shocked as he pushed himself off the railing. “Sure.”

They headed down the stairs and off into the city, Zenith and Nadir—the highest and lowest points in a star’s path.

Road Killed

Douglas Groothuis

You are not insignificant,

but creatures of God,

the Lord of all creation.

You have beautiful fur,

running blood, sentience.

Your eyes once saw the world

in your own way.

You feel pain,

maybe dread of

the giant wheels of death.

You had a life,

a mother and father and siblings.

You had your own way

as a squirrel, a possum, a racoon, a deer.

You were killed for no purpose,

not for food, not for danger.

You got in our metallic way.

You were crushed in our hurry and

killed in our haste.

I am sad when I see you

on the road, your open grave,

and when the birds feed on you

(nature red in tooth and claw and beak).

Why won't empathy withdraw?

Why personalize what our machines so easily kill?

No, I won't endanger a man to miss hitting you.

But I will slow down and turn away, if I can.

I do not view you as "roadkill";

I will not use that phrase to mean

something worthless,

because you are not worthless.

Since God names the stars,

maybe he named you as well.

New Beginnings: Zenith Poetry

Sophia Koon

You are my Zenith

You are my Zenith

My starting

And ending point

I want to spin, spin,

Into oblivion

I want to ride the tendrils of a comet

Let it send me into space

And have me drift among the stars

As I look up

Trying to reach you

What Remains

Wrap me up in a shawl

Of indigo and violet and swirls of clementine

The bright pinpricks of stars

Lay glittering among us

I look heavenward

And I think of all of us

Slowly dancing, dying, twirling, crying

Making our way to our final destination

The point of the Zenith remains

Idol

I put you on a pedestal,

Among the clouds in my mind

You spoke fancy words

And laced them while we wined and dined

You were but my Zenith,

What I looked up to

Day and night

Night and day

But now I must find

My own beginning point

Forgetting

Carry me gently and release me

Like a lantern drifting slowly, rising above the water

Let me drift and settle into the sky like a star

So I may be among my ancestors

Let me go,

So I can find my Zenith

And tether myself to

This other world

Obsession

Cover me in stars and glitter

Tell me I’m pretty

Wrap me up in your adoration like a scarf

I’ll let it tighten around my throat until I choke on it

You are the Zenith

I wait for every morning

As the sun rises

As the sun sets

The Zenith is present even in the darkest of nights

You could never hide from me

The Celestial Point

She was but in the Zenith of my mind

The thing that always greeted me in the morning

as a shimmering pale image

A memory slowly fading

She was but my Celestial Point

An ethereal thing

Wrapped in shawls of moonlight

She wore stars as adornment

And her eyelids and her clothes glittered

With fine glitter and sequins

That I still find in the crevices of my floorboards

She left me

To go dance among the stars

And sometimes when the moon hangs low in the sky

And I sit by the creek bed

Hearing nothing but the sounds of rustling wind through the trees

And shaking leaves

And water running smoothly over the stones I lay my feet upon

I see a twinkling star

Glimmering proudly in the night sky

Reminding me of her whimsical nature

She is still alive to me

She exists only in the context of my mind now

How to Reach the Stars

Ethan Stevens       

“What are you thinking of?” asked Vera

“How we’re the perfect people for this,” Trudo said, “and they picked the perfect people entirely by accident. You?”

“What I think all the history books get wrong,” Vera replied. “Yours seems like quite a think.”

“So does yours,” he said as they stepped out of the truck and looked up towards the rocket where it gleamed in early sunlight. “But we’ve got time and you asked first, so you go first.”

“When I first joined the project,” Vera said as they strolled across the blast zone towards the rocket, helmets tucked under arms, pressure-suit boots kicking dew from the grass, “everyone was excited about how they’d unsealed all the records about how many people in our government tried to sabotage the alliance, but I decided to dig into what people actually thought when the mountains first rose.”

They craned their neck simultaneously to look over their shoulders at the wall of thirty-thousand-foot peaks taking up a quarter of the sky, sunlight gleaming from the untold trillions of tons of fresh earth’s-mantle stone weathered by two centuries that were only an instant to it. The space base had been built near the mountains so that launches would have as much clearance as possible to avoid crossing the line in the ocean that marked the mountain’s antipodes.

“Some kind of world-spell stopped by a hero and his party half-way made?” Trudo asked. “I heard that’s what the travelers who rappelled their way across in the first generation of separation said. A vast spell that hit mageless lands and died a violent death rather than fade away.”

Vera nodded. “The lands where we are now, close to the mountains, used to have some hedge witches and subtle talents, but after the mountains went up, they became as uniformly barren as it is today. Things went on more or less the same for a generation after, but then, of course, a young woman from a boring little town with a lot of coal figured out how to run a forge triphammer on steam and that was that. They only put of a statue to her in Gevosta two years ago, trying to recapture their pride now that it’s clear that coal is no longer king and their days as the great city of the continent are over.”

“And that’s what you think the books got wrong?” Trudo asked. “They forgot people like Reste Hevdaughter?”

“No,” Vera said. They were close enough to see the technicians all around the launch platform, but they had not been noticed amidst the worried checks and double checks. “Every history tome since the printing press, be it printed in the Union, the Republic, the Commonwealth, or even one of those new alliance textbook they say favors all three but is really just the Union saying how great we are. Well, it tells a very particular tale about why we’ve come so far with things that we really should have always been able to do before.” She looked again toward the mountains, frowning, “They say that the mountrise was a rescue. They say that it brought freedom from a world of monsters and magic blades, but more than that, from a fundamental disordering of character that came from reality changing with a word and a wandwave, even thousands of miles away, and that that was what held us back from flush toilets and gunpowder and inoculations and telephones, which we otherwise would have invented long ago.”

They reached the platform at that moment and had to stop for the final check of their suits and gear and the run through of various lists. It was only when they had begun the long climb up the ladder that Trudo asked, “But you don’t believe that?” to Vera above him.

“No” she replied, speaking a little louder but keeping her eyes on the rungs. “In the earliest reports, the records and ballads and wills from the first generation after the mountrise, there’s no relief. There was some fear, but ultimately most it was sorrow for the loss of wonders. I don’t think the cut off from the lands of magic was escape from anarchic harrying, but freedom from a smothering parent. I think that, fundamentally, magic didn’t make things too hard, but too easy. I think it robbed us of the kind of will that is now driving us forward, upwards, towards the stars.”

She fell silent as they reached the door and climbed into the cockpit of the small orbital module. They radioed back to base and ran though a few more systems checks, but then fell quiet for a moment before Trudo said “I guess what I’ve been thinking has more to do with history than I thought. You know it was, in a real way, the space program that made the alliance?”

“I guess that makes sense,” Vera said. “The union fought it to the end, but I suppose as all three plotted and schemed and laid plans against each other, they utterly ignored the generation’s mounting yells that these concerns were far too petty.”

Trudo nodded. “We’ve known our half-ensorcered little sphere was just one of many planets since the telescope. But when we spotted the first of the far ships moving among the planets, a real shift in our thinking began. Mankind in the mageless lands knew that we’d had been cut off for so long not only from the bounties of our earth, but from our kin among the stars.”

Vera was silent for a moment, then asked “Ever wonder why none of them respond to our radio?”

“Would we respond to smoke signals across the mountains?” Trudo asked back. “We need to go to them, and to do so we need to get past the stupid problem of orbit.”

Vera surveyed all the myriad controls, each in two sets; the one for the first half of orbit, keyed into the circuit and vacuum tube system that made up the module’s brain and communicated directly with base by radio, and the other of delicate pulleys and pneumatics for when they finally crossed into the space above the magical hemisphere and electrical currents stopped producing magnetic fields. All of it should work perfectly, all of it had worked in every test. “You said we’re the perfect people for this,” she said, “and they picked the perfect people entirely by accident. You mean that we’re willing to do this even though we don’t know why Kay’s module didn’t come back?”

Trudo nodded. “I don’t think they ever intended to send people out on maybe-suicide missions. But fundamentally we’re here not because we’re the best, though we are, but because we want off this mage-haunted rock more than anything else in the universe.”

Vera nodded simply, and with absolute conviction. “Finally free to walk as men and women away from the parents who spoiled us until we could do nothing for ourselves,” she said. “But the thing is, no spell we have record of from before the mountrise could reach orbital heights. No magical device could have caught Kay’s module. But we trust those records because the magelands had stayed utterly static for millenia before the mountrise. Same swords, same castles, same kingdoms. But if the mountrise has set our lands free to finally mature, what might the mother have done separated from her children? What might…”

The speakers crackled to life and both snapped to attention. The final checks upon checks were made. Both fitted on their helmets and their words became a radio signal between them. The countdown descended from ten to one and the first stage rockets roared to life. It was ten minutes of roaring before they finally exited the atmosphere and the last-stage rockets fell away. The second countdown to the mageline on the ocean, antipode to the mountains, proceeded and the switches were hit, the generators powered down, and then there was true silence as the radio from control cut off. They continued silent and still over blue water; the western continent, home of dragons and elves, rising on the curved horizon before them. Then Trudo felt the line between his helmet and Vera’s pull tight, an ingenious elaboration of the tin can-and-string children’s telephone that linked their headrests and entered their helmets so their voices could pass to each other even if the cabin depressurized.

“We’re here because we want to get into space more than anything else,” Vera said, without looking at him. “But, more than even that,” she turned towards him, the speaking wire pivoting while still transmitting sound, “I want to get into space together”

She’s finally said it, Trudo thought, chest suddenly tight. I had hoped so hard and feared so much as she has finally… he couldn’t think anymore as he reached out a thick gloved hand to take hers, looking past the gleams on her faceplate into her eyes and…

Both saw the rich blue light come flooding through the portholes but did not see its source as they felt the module stop dead in midair.  

******

Zel’thal Kaar of the solar cruiser Crystal Sphere turned from the scrying orb mounted in a meteoric alloy frame before their captain’s chair and touched a rune that dissolved the airlock’s wards. Valc, a mage of some talent who was the Dragon Kingdom’s liaison to the Karr-Rev trading fleets, stepped in and saluted politely.

“I’ve been asking the fleet” Zel’thal said without preamble, “and though I was rerouted a couple of times, I found that this kind of thing happened over in the Dwarven Empire’s airspace a few months ago.”

“What exactly is ‘this kind of thing’”?  Valc asked.

“A spaceworthy, or at least space-survivable, vessel from the void half of your planet.” Zel’thal gestured up an illusion showing the metal cylinder. “Ingeniously convoluted thing. They make use of the lack of hyperspace to set up these elaborate energy exchanges with lightning and chemicals and can get it going fast enough to get off a surface and maybe land on a moon or something.” 

“So it was a space vessel?” Valc seemed incredulous, and rightly so.

“Oh, no.” Zel’thal waved a tendril. “No zero-inertia wards, no artificial gravity signals, and most of all no hyperdrive. No more a space vessel than a lump of pumice stone floating along is a ship.”

“And what of the humans in it? What did they do with the last one’s pilot?”

“Oh, for the last one, once we got the translator-rune implants in and explained how the only way to get back voidside was to climb the mountains because no ship will go within a thousand miles of that barrier, first thing he did was sign on as a spacer.” Zel’thal managed to look sheepish despite having a face made mostly of heat perception pits. “The regrettable thing with this one is that I botched the tractor beam catch and only one of the two survived. But now we’ve explained things to that one. I saw the same shell-shocked look as the last one had in the recordings. I very much doubt this human’s going to turn down the chance at space either. After all, it’s not like you can get anywhere near the stars without a great amount of magic.”

Old Arizona Cowboy

Evan Paul

Old Arizona Cowboy

How do you see the end

For when those cattle herds do leave

When the runs are empty once again

Old Arizona Cowboy

How could it live on

Will you pass it along

Or will it leave with you in the end

Old Arizona Cowboy

You wanted a better life for them

They have come on home

To see you off before the end

Old Arizona Cowboy

What does it bring to your mind

Will you let them leave tonight

Or will you bring them to your plight

Old Arizona Cowboy

Will they understand

Where their hopes stem from

Or will it go with you as well

Old Arizona Cowboy

Your stirrups finally hung

Old Arizona Cowboy

Let us send you on home

Old Arizona Cowboy

You’ll tell it again someday

When we meet you in heaven

All those miles away

This poem is dedicated to my great-grandfather, Daniel McDonald Bishop, and my grandfather, Rory Bishop, or Opa to me and my siblings. My great-grandfather was a cattle rancher who ended up leaving his trade after selling his ranch, and provided a better future for his children, including my grandfather. My great-grandfather, however, sadly passed in 2020, living to the great old age of 84. My grandfather has taught me the value of hard work and to have pride in one's work. He, along with my grandmother, have also left a long-lasting impression in my faith, and have made it stronger with both their wisdom and their teaching handed down through my father. While it is not often now that we think about those of the past who have helped build us to what we are today, they truly have shaped me and my walk with Christ.

Flurry (Spring 2026 Contest Winner)

A Flurry of Footsteps

Alisha Shedd

Mara always moved as if the world were half a step ahead of her and she was determined- desperately, breathlessly - to catch it. Her coworkers joked that she didn’t walk so much as scatter, leaving a trail of half‐finished thoughts and misplaced pens in her wake. Even her hair seemed to participate, a dark, wind‐tossed halo that never quite settled.

But today, even for her, was a lot.

The first snow of the season had arrived overnight, not in a gentle curtain but in a sudden, swirling flurry that blanketed the town before anyone had time to remember where they’d stored their gloves. Mara woke to the sound of her phone buzzing with messages from the community center where she worked: the holiday craft fair was still on, the vendors were still coming, and the heating system was, of course, still broken.

She bolted upright, already in motion before her brain caught up.

By the time she reached the center, the parking lot was a churned mess of tire tracks and slush. Snowflakes spun in tight, frantic spirals, as if the sky itself were rushing around in a panic.

Mara felt a strange kinship with the weather.

Inside, the chaos was worse. Tables half set up. Extension cords tangled like seaweed. A

choir of elderly volunteers arguing about where to put the cider station. And in the middle of it all, the director, Mrs. Halpern, waving her clipboard like a white flag. “Mara, thank goodness. We’re behind schedule. The vendors are arriving early. The lights on the main tree won’t turn on. And the snow...”

“I’m on it,” Mara said, already moving. She darted from problem to problem, a flurry within a flurry. She rewired the lights, rearranged tables, soothed a panicked ceramicist who’d dropped three mugs, and convinced the choir to move their rehearsal to the hallway. She didn’t stop long enough to breathe, because breathing meant slowing down, and slowing down meant noticing the tightness in her chest that had been building for weeks. She didn’t want to notice that.

By noon, the fair was in full swing. Children ran between booths with paper snowflakes

stuck to their mittens. The smell of cinnamon and pine filled the air. Outside, the snowfall

thickened, the flakes larger now, drifting rather than darting. The storm was settling into itself.

Mara was not. She was halfway through helping a vendor restock handmade soaps when she heard someone call her name.

“Hey, Mara!”

She turned to see Jonah, the center’s maintenance tech, jogging toward her. He was the

opposite of her in every way: steady, unhurried, the kind of person who finished one task before starting another. He had a calmness that made people breathe easier just by standing near him.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said too quickly. “Just busy.”

“You’re always busy.”

“Someone has to be.”

He studied her for a moment, snow melting in his hair from his trip outside. “Come with me for a second.”

“I can’t. I have to...”

“It’ll take one minute.”

She hesitated, then followed him through the back hallway and out the side door. The

cold hit her immediately, sharp and clean. Snowflakes landed on her eyelashes, soft and startling.

Jonah pointed upward.

The sky was a quiet gray, and the snow was falling in slow, drifting spirals - nothing like the frantic flurry of the morning. It was peaceful. Almost hypnotic.

“Storm’s calming down,” he said. “Thought you might want to see it.”

Mara blinked at him. “Why?”

“Because you look like you’re about to vibrate out of your own skin.”

She let out a breath that fogged in the air. “There’s just... a lot to do.”

“There’s always a lot to do.”

She didn’t answer. The snow kept falling, soft and steady.

“You know,” Jonah said, “not every flurry means panic. Sometimes it’s just movement. Change. A shift in the air.”

Mara stared at the snow. “Feels like everything’s shifting lately.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

She didn’t know how to explain the feeling that had been following her for months, the

sense that if she stopped moving, even for a second, everything she was holding together would collapse. That stillness meant vulnerability. That quiet meant noticing the things she didn’t want to feel. Instead she said, “I should get back.”

Jonah nodded, but his eyes were gentle. “Just... don’t forget to breathe.”

She returned inside, but something in her had slowed, just a fraction. Enough to notice

the warmth of the cider station. The laughter of the kids. The way the lights on the tree glowed softly now that they were fixed.

The fair wound down by late afternoon. Vendors packed up. Volunteers drifted home. The building grew quieter, the kind of quiet that felt earned.

Mara stayed behind to clean up. She moved more slowly now, not rushing, just working. She stacked chairs, folded tablecloths, swept stray glitter from the floor. The snow outside had settled into a gentle, steady fall, the kind that blanketed the world in softness.

She was carrying a box of leftover decorations to the storage room when she heard a faint

sound, something like a whimper. She paused, listening.

There it was again.

She followed the sound to the coatroom, where she found a little girl sitting on the bench, hugging her knees. Her coat was too big for her, the sleeves swallowing her hands. “Hey,” Mara said softly. “Are you okay?”

The girl shook her head.

“What’s your name?”

“Lila.”

“Hi, Lila. I’m Mara. Are you lost?”

“My mom was here,” Lila said, voice trembling. “She said she’d be right back, but then

everyone left, and I couldn’t find her.”

Mara’s heart tightened. She knelt beside her. “It’s okay. We’ll find her. You’re safe here.”

Lila sniffed. “I was scared.”

“I know,” Mara said. “Sometimes things get confusing when there’s a lot happening all at once.”

The girl nodded, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

Mara sat with her until her mother rushed in ten minutes later, frantic and apologetic.

Lila ran into her arms, and the woman thanked Mara over and over.

After they left, Mara stood alone in the quiet coatroom. Something in her chest loosened, a knot she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying. She thought of the morning’s chaos. The rushing. The flurry of movement. And then she thought of Lila: small, scared, overwhelmed by too much happening too fast.

She recognized the feeling.

She recognized herself.

When she stepped outside, the world was transformed. Snow lay thick on the ground,

untouched and luminous. The air was still. The sky was soft. The storm had passed, leaving only quiet.

Mara stood there for a long moment, letting the cold settle into her lungs, letting the

stillness settle into her bones. She realized she didn’t have to move like a storm to be useful. She didn’t have to rush to matter. She didn’t have to outrun her own thoughts.

Some things - like snow, like breath, like change - were meant to fall gently.

She walked home slowly, her footsteps muffled in the fresh snow, each one deliberate.

Not a flurry. Not a scramble.

Just movement.

Just enough.

Ember (Fall 2025 Contest Winner)

Roads

Katelyn Hildabrand

The road winds through the forest like a thread and needle, stitching together the present with fragments of Mara’s past. Its curves are barely visible as they disappear into a haze of shadow and sunlight. The asphalt beneath her tires is smooth but worn, cracked in places by the press of time and nature’s slow reclaiming. She drives carefully, not out of fear, but because the road feels fragile—like a memory she doesn’t want to tear. Tall trees line either side, their trunks dark and weathered, their branches interlacing overhead to form a canopy. The canopy dapples the ground with shifting patches of light, like fragments of stained glass. Mara’s mother had once called it “God’s cathedral,” laughing as she leaned against the car window on this very drive, pointing out the way the sunlight filtered down like a veil. Now the forest’s silence holds that laughter as if it were pressed between its leaves, a faint glow that refused to fade.

The air is thick with the scent of damp earth and pine, sharp and grounding. Every so

often, the delicate sweetness of wildflowers drifts in through the crack in her window, a lazy

perfume that tugs her back to afternoons when her mother insisted on pulling over just to pick one, tucking it behind Mara’s ear before they continued.

The steady hum of tires against the road fills the silence, soft and rhythmic, punctuated only by the rustle of leaves stirred by the wind and the distant calls of unseen birds. Mara lowers the sound of her radio. She doesn’t want artificial noise to intrude. The forest has its own music: the brushing whisper of leaves, the sigh of wind weaving between trunks, the crunch of gravel in the rare stretches where asphalt gives way. As the road curves again, the shadows thicken, the light momentarily swallowed. Mara feels her chest tighten at the sudden dimness, then loosen again when sunlight spills back through a new opening. Every bend feels like a test, every flash of shadow like a coal being turned, something old and glowing faintly beneath the surface. When the air shifts cooler, tinged with the moisture of the woods, Mara breathes deeply. The scent of wet moss and decaying leaves rises, earthy and ancient, as though the forest itself is reminding her of its long patience. People come and go, but the forest waits.

The further she drives, the more it feels as though the forest is closing around her. The

road shrinks into the wilderness, no longer a strip of human order but a thread barely keeping her tethered. She remembers this feeling from years ago—the first time she and her mother had driven out here to hike the trail her grandfather had loved. Back then, she had thought of it as an adventure. Now it feels like an act of devotion. Her mother used to tell her that hope was a flame– you have to tend it gently, breathe life into it, or you'll see it fade into ash. Mara wonders if her journey was a way to protect that small fire, keeping it alive long after the world went cold.

Finally, after what feels longer than the map had promised, the road narrows, gravel

crunching under her tires. The trees part just enough to reveal a small clearing where a wooden sign, weathered and moss-clung, marks the start of the hiking trail. She pulls over and kills the engine. The silence folds around her, so complete it feels alive.

Mara steps out, gravel crunching beneath her boots, the air cool against her skin. She lifts her gaze to the sign: Hollow Ridge Trail. The letters are chipped, but the name strikes her.

Hollow Ridge—the place her mother had always promised they’d hike together again, though life and illness had interrupted those plans. She adjusts her backpack, the straps pulled tight against her shoulders, and steps towards the trailhead. The canopy thickens almost immediately, branches reaching overhead to form a vaulted archway. Sunlight filters through in fractured pieces, dappling the ground. Her footsteps are muted by damp soil, and the forest exhales around her.

The deeper she goes, the more the air changes. The scent of pine grows sharper, layered with the rich tang of earth and the faint sweetness of unseen blooms. The sound of birdsong fades, replaced by the low murmur of water somewhere ahead. Shadows deepen, the light narrowing into thin golden blades.

She walks slowly, each step carrying weight—not just her own, but her mother’s

memory. The quiet presses against her, intimate and unyielding. And yet, there is something else here. A pulse. At first, she thinks it’s her imagination, the thrum of her heart in her ears. But then she feels it beneath her feet: a subtle vibration, like the forest itself breathing. The pulse beneath her boots felt warmer than before, faint but steady like an ember buried deep beneath the roots, waiting to be uncovered. The road had led her here, the trail pulling her deeper into a place that feels both ancient and awake. The path curves again, and as Mara rounds the bend then, she stops. Ahead, the trees part just slightly, and sunlight spills onto what looks like an old stone marker, half-buried in moss. Its edges are rough, its surface carved with markings she doesn’t recognize. The air around it feels cooler, thicker, as though the forest is holding its breath. Mara steps closer. Her fingers twitch at her side, aching to brush the moss away, to uncover whatever is hidden beneath. But she hesitates. Because in the silence, she realizes the forest has gone still—completely still. No birds. No wind. Only her breathing, and the faint vibration beneath her

feet that seems to grow stronger with every second.

She reaches out–and the light catches on the moss, a faint flickering glow, as if

something beneath still burns.

An ember, waiting.