Stone Soup Magazine
— Fire-colored butterflies, falling snow, and guiding stars become a meditation on how fate guides rather than controls, ending with the declaration that not all maps must be followed.
— Natural elements—waterfall, brambles, ocean, rose—hide their true natures behind false facades until one rose's kindness earns it the gift of beauty.
— They are frozen but not yet gone They feel so sad but cold I can’t Oh I can’t feel my body when I stare at them for they’re so great...
— Alien scouts investigate Earth, finding a planet too corrupt to rehabilitate but too good to destroy, so they quarantine it until humanity can heal itself.
— A girl watches wild horses thunder down a Wyoming mountain, experiencing the landscape through all her senses in a moment of overwhelming beauty.
— A small hut on a hill weathers a fierce storm, then settles into sleep as the sun emerges, its empty interior somehow full of the warmth of home.
— A girl arrives at a family gathering in North Carolina, plays with cousins, collects wood for a fire, and finds home in the sensory details of the reunion.