“Mav,” I repeated weary from repeated attempts to gain her attention. She stood with her back to me. Gray hair dangled chaotically from her bun. “Mav.”

I sprinted across the platform toward the waiting carriage, thin rubber doing little to disguising the rollers beneath through my sneakers’ souls. Ahead lay my escape from the last two hours’ torture in its pink gilded glory. My husband and daughter scrambled aboard the one ahead.

Wednesday has come around again and I’m happy to present this week’s flash fiction. Deep shadow fell across the path before Ryvia. She scuffed the dirt at the amorphous shadow’s edge. “Go away, Aivyr.” “I cannot.” The voice resonated with sorrow’s somberness. A pain which tugged at her heart calling for her to answer. She…

“Get home while you still can.” The words hastily flung at me stung as old woman rattled by her cane thumping over the ground. I knew she hadn’t meant them to hurt. She couldn’t have known what she said. Who she spoke too.

Don’t enter the Crystal Woods. The oft repeated warning rang in Silia’s ears though she could not recall who’d first given it. Or who had warned that entering bore… dire consequences.

The power writhed between Ellyn’s hands fighting against her direction. Or perhaps lightning, powerful and blinding in its grandeur. Raging at the audacity of thinking it could be touched by her.

Alfren knew he stood in the woods. Trees had surrounded him moments before. And yet… they’d melted away leaving him in night’s darkness leaning toward the music.