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I always knew one day I’d lose you. We could choose a life rural or urban and it wouldn’t matter because fairytales linger in your blood like flecks of microplastic. They may shimmer and shapeshift, hiding their sharp bones under prettier stories, but they never stop singing their warnings. How the sweetest lips taste of small deaths, how to spot a wolf and what wedding dress is also a burial gown. The story you loved most was how to escape by sewing your mouth shut and refusing the gifts—jewel dark berries, worm-kissed apples, fresh toadstools and meat pies brimming with rot. But when he comes for you with golden offerings, you smile and open your mouth, waiting for the poison to take. This is you crawling into the throat of the wolf, armed with fists and teeth, unhinging your own hunger until you’ve devoured everything but the skin and eyes. This time, O this time, they’ll fit.   --- Faith Allington (she/her) is a genre-blending writer in Seattle, where she admires fungi and drinks too much tea. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Online, Haven Spec, Kaleidotrope, and Crow & Cross Keys. She can be found at www.faithallington.com.

Cynthia’s neighbors were the first in the county to receive a star child. He arrived with a blinding streak across the winter sky. A haunting whistle. They showed off the babe in town the next day: their son, who had died in the war twenty years earlier. Their Henry, returned to them brand new.  Cynthia visited Henry’s grave and found it had vanished. Only an unbroken plot of snow-dusted grass remained. Where had his old body gone? Had the universe folded his cells back up, like a baker gathering scraps of unused dough?  To create the star child? They hadn’t even dated before he went to war–not really. Just one lingering kiss in the field behind her parents’ house. Cynthia had been sad enough when he died, but it wasn’t for Henry she grieved now, remembering that long ago kiss. At eighteen, she’d been porous and molten–a different Cynthia, who went out walking beneath an endless sky and kissed a boy just because he was there. Just because her body longed to be kissed. Starlight instead of blood in her veins.  Where had that girl gone?  That night, Cynthia was awoken by an ear-splitting whistle. Out the window, a burst of light struck the snowy field. She ran, barefoot, not feeling the cold, until she found a glowing puddle of snowmelt. In the center, swaddled in a smoking blanket, lay a star child.  She lifted the babe and brought her close; familiar eyes stared into hers. “Oh,” Cynthia murmured. Understanding. Not yet afraid.  Good luck, she wanted to tell the child as she carried her home through the snow. Maybe it was the cold, but Cynthia thought she could already feel the tips of her toes begin to fade away.  I hope you get it right this time.     --- Jennifer Skogen loves reading too many books at the same time and going for long walks in beautiful places. Her work has appeared in journals such as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Orion’s Belt, Factor Four Magazine, Luna Station Quarterly, Hungry Shadow Press, Drabbledark III Anthology, and Crow & Cross Keys.