“Have you ever noticed that every snowflake is the same?” Ade remarked to Ekkule. He held out his hand, red and chapped from the cold and wind. Ekkule leaned over it and watched as two of the flakes they’d been struggling to clear away from the squash patch landed on the back.

Both were exactly the same. A delicate five pointed star that quickly melted with into Ade’s skin.

“Curious that,” Ekkule said. He paused in his brushing. “Didn’t the Faith say that everyone is made different, though?” He looked up.

Ade was gone. 

Jude held her phone up and scowled.

“No fucking service, are you kidding me?” She sat down on one of the rough brown stones that littered that mountain side.

“Camera still works,” remarked her new photographer. Jude didn’t bother with his name and simply thought of him as ‘Scruffy-Man’. “That’s all that matters, right?” He added timidly when she shot him a glare.

She pulled out her pipe and began to pack it. “I’ll be happier when we’re out of the mountains,” she scoffed. She realized he was staring. “What?”

He shuffled. “I’ve never seen an Elf smoke before,” he mumbled. 

Jude rolled her eyes. “Then get used to it.”

Spectra remarked that she thought she’d met one of the Five, once.

“I’m not sure. It’s not like they wear signs around their necks. And obviously they all have about a billion representatives at any time. I mean,” she waved her paw at Clio and Monaco, “look at us.”

“But I think that it was someone who worked closely with Air, or maybe Air themselves.” She was quiet for a moment. “They were tall. Long hair. Just standing on one of the beaches, looking at the stars. It must have been over a thousand years now. I just remember thinking it was strange and asking who they were.”

Spectra barked a laugh. “They never did tell me.”

The Wandering Planet was passing through a space cloud. Every morning Salai woke to a horizon bathed in a shadowed rainbow, studded with distant stars.

He and Monaco would walk through the forests of thought, just staring through the crystalline treetops at the sky above. The shadows would refact the colors around them, making it like walking through a kaleidoscope.

“I suppose you haven’t seen the like,” Spectra remarked. She barked-laughed. “You and Monaco are still so young. And cute. And small.”

Even Eleonore seemed to find it beautiful, as Salai kept catching her on the roof, staring upwards.

“It feels as if I could fall into it.”

A/N: Tom is from a novel I hope to publish later this year.

When Tom was still a kitten, his favorite place was in the house library.

He would spend hours curled up in the chair next to the fire, looking through the books, at pictures and maps of faraway places. He’d read through the collection of scripts that his mother and father collected from the theater. He’d look through the window, dreaming about what his life would become.

After the theater had been bought and Tom’s life was changed, one of the first things to go were the books. In small stacks at first but by the end, the whole library was empty.

Now, while he was teaching Clyde to read, Tom couldn’t help but think back to that sheltered room and miss his books. 

Mabarina didn’t understand when Barty gave her the ring. 

“It’s shiny,” she remarked and tried to hand it back to him. He curled her hand around the silver band. 

“You gave me a name. I give you the ring,” he explained. 

Mab looked at the ring with renewed interest. She held it up and looked through it. 

“For our union?”

Barty beamed up at her and she just had to reach down, grab his horn and kiss him. 

“The inside summons a dagger,” he gasped when she released him. “But only for you.”

“My only love, you know me so well.”