When a mishap revealed that the little heart locket around her neck contained a mirror, she faced endless mockery by her coworkers that barely bothered to toe the line between friendly ribbing and naked contempt. She hadn’t been lying when she said she liked to look at her beloved’s face. Some day, they would get the body-swap curse reversed, and she wouldn’t need a mirror to look at her favorite face in the world.

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LL#1276

The sunflower plot out at Wagonwheel Field, planted with seeds collected last year, has proven to be a particularly radiant hybrid. We are requesting that anyone with solar panels or rechargeable batteries please lend them to town power workers attempting to make the best of the situation. For anyone dropping off equipment or just coming to admire the crop, we recommend eclipse-level eye protection and vampire-rated sunscreen, as the stellar flowers can be intense at close range.

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LL#1274

Something small and light flitted among the heavier tomes in that Accidental Library, only a few pages thick and folded up like a praying mantis. The zines were not juveniles, nor were they parasites, for all that they liked to populate the small, unused corners of the colonies and often built themselves from scraps and remnants of the bigger books. They were, perhaps, best understood as distant relations, ones with punk tendencies and transient habits, united nonetheless by their hearts of knowledge.

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LL#1272

When Leslie took ill and the bakery needed leadership, Evgeniya stepped up to fill those duties which did not involve ovens and piping hot bread. While the apprentices prepared the day’s offerings like always, she secreted herself in the office to manage orders of midsummer wheat, and stardust sprinkles, and five species of eggs for the dratted Egg Supreme breakfast buns she helped them brainstorm the month prior. While her shop’s esoteric ingredients came with their own vexations, at least she had never had to negotiate with a talking cuckoo who had a corner on the local market for wind eggs.

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LL#1270

As the summer weather kicks into high gear, the Frog and Opal Bar is offering a new line of chilled drinks, available with and without alcohol, to serve during their extended summer operating hours. The staff have been brewing sun teas with refreshing additions like hibiscus flowers, seashells, ballpark grass, and sugared mosquitos, all chilled with preserved hail from winter storms. Come inside and cool off with the best of summer and something to take the edge off the worst of it.

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LL#1268

When she got the parrot, the shelter told her he had been found on the side of a highway, which sounded like the sort of charming tale meant to encourage a certain sort of person toward adoption of an otherwise questionable pet. It would have been a charming surprise when the bird started talking, if she had been able to understand him or even recognize the language. As it was, it took her ages to work out the strange land from which he had come, and the fae folk there never quite let her live down the fact that her pet spoke better than she did even after years among them.

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LL#1266

The hacking group took the old public service announcement as a challenge, rather than an admonition, and started with creating a way to download a car. Eventually, they figured out how to pirate everything from chicken eggs to couches, digitizing and transmitting real-world data in the first rudimentary replicator technology. They were not devoid of morals, however: their pirate’s code demanded they share their ill-gotten goods as widely as possible, so that they gave much more than they ever took.

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LL#1264

For those who find themselves troubled by a lack of father, for whatever reason, as Father’s Day approaches, we offer some positive alternatives in which you may find comfort. Rocks, particularly when sun-warmed, offer a paternal sturdiness; antique tools carry that musty, grease-streaked smell of the more mechanically inclined fathers and would love to share a project with you; and neighborhood dogs are eager to offer their feedback on your running or biking form with that fatherly mix of encouragement and criticism. Of course, if you feel strongly about sharing a species with your parental figures, the old man you always see at the library might enjoy the company of another book lover as much as you would.

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LL#1262

When you say, “They are all out to get me,” or, “The world wants me dead,” you are mistaken. Take this small dog, for instance, which is experiencing the new thrill of receiving head pats from you for the first time, or this bee which has been enticed over by that new perfume you treated yourself to, or this flower which dusted your nose with pollen when you smelled it and gladly made you an accomplice to its reproductive cycle. The world is vast and full of things, and a small and shameful percentage of your own species cannot outweigh the hundreds of thousands of beetle species who think you are entirely acceptable, just for a start.

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LL#1260

The little tugboat that patrolled the waters off Rocky Head Beach was captained by an equally little person who appeared to be somewhere between forty and seventy-five, depending on how historically severe one imagined the weather conditions to have been. They would, with no prompting at all, inform visitors to the boat that she had hauled warships and schooners and weekend warriors in kayaks as a free public service. Such a conversation usually took place in the middle of haggling over the price of some piece of the waterlogged treasures of dubious origin heaped on the stern, the bill-paying side hustle to their charity.

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LL#1258