Psychological
The Substance
I stepped out on my porch, the rays of the sun beating against the window beckoning me to come outside. The warmth from the morning sun felt comforting but there was something off about the air. Like a storm approaching. I looked up. The sky had a strange hue to it. An odd shade of pink and grey coming together to make a color that's hard to describe. A color you didn't think could exist.
By Jasmine Aguilar9 months ago in Fiction
When Silence Was Whole
Flower InBloom writes at the threshold where myth meets nervous system and spirit meets structure. This piece is not a cosmology to believe in, but a remembering to feel into. If something in you softened while reading, that is the field recognizing itself.
By Flower InBloom9 months ago in Fiction
Follow The Rules
One of the things that was always trotted out was: "If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear" That would be fine if the systems worked properly and were transparent and above board. People were told that slight changes were needed to ensure the safety of them and their families, and people generally accepted it.
By Mike Singleton đź’ś Mikeydred 9 months ago in Fiction
Ascension Day . Runner-Up in Everyone Is Acting Normally Challenge.
Welcome, everyone, to our coverage of one of the most important days in our calendar. Ascension Day. Stay tuned for a brief history lesson into when and why Ascension Day became so important, interviews with members of The Ascended, and all you could ever want to know about the Intake of 2086. We will speak to the individuals shaping our future and the families they will be assigned to life with.
By Paul Stewart9 months ago in Fiction
The Inversion
March 30th, 2027: The Day the World Turned Inside Out No one screamed. That was the first strange thing. On March 30th, 2027, the sun rose in the west. Not dramatically. Not in a cinematic blaze. It simply appeared where it did not belong — quiet and confident, as if it had always preferred that direction.
By Flower InBloom9 months ago in Fiction
The Naming
The tree was never meant to shake. We knew that before we knew anything else. It had held storms. It had held gods. It did not tremble. But that day the wood groaned. Not from wind. Not from thunder. From within. We pressed our palms against the bark. The trembling moved through us like breath drawn too fast. For a moment, we thought the sky itself was breaking. Not from above — but from beneath us. The tree had never moved. That was the rule. If it could move, what else could? The roots had always meant permanence. The branches had always meant shelter. We did not step away. We waited for it to correct itself. It always had. Somewhere below, something that had always been held was no longer held. We did not hear the wolf first. We felt the absence of iron. The world had been holding something back. And suddenly it wasn’t. Then came the sound. Not rage. Release. Ash fell before we knew the sky was burning. It settled in our mouths like unfinished words. They had chained him for what he might become. They had cast the serpent into the sea for growing too wide. They had named it monster before it moved. We might have done the same. The sea did not rise at once. It hesitated — as if remembering its boundaries. Then something vast shifted beneath it. Not hunger. Not wrath. A body too long confined uncoiling. The tide forgot its shape. Salt crept inland like a thought no one had finished. They had thrown him there to keep the world from shifting. But nothing that must bite its own tail forever stays quiet. We did not see Odin fall. We felt the air thin where his ravens once circled. We did not see Thor’s hammer strike. We heard it end. The old thunder broke against the horizon and did not return. No choir marked their passing. No light split the sky. Dust settled in the hollows of the bark. Sap bled slow and unremarked. The air did not shatter. We waited for something greater — a final crack, a tearing of roots, a sign that nothing would remain. None came. The world did not end all at once. It loosened. It emptied. It left us standing inside what remained. The tree held. It always had. Even for those who feared what they had raised. Even for those who mistook control for order. We had believed monsters were born. That destruction arrived whole. But we had watched the forging. We had watched the exile. We had watched the naming come first. Fear had moved before the wolf. Fear had coiled before the serpent. Fear had written prophecy and called it fate. We had repeated it. We had called it wisdom. We had learned to trust its warning, spoken the same words without knowing their weight. We had grown beneath those words — lived inside that certainty as if it were law. It was easier to believe in inevitability than in responsibility. What we had taken for destiny was only fear carried long enough to harden. When the ash thinned and the sky remained empty, we waited for instruction. None came. The silence did not feel holy. It felt unfinished. The tree no longer trembled. Its bark was split. Its roots were gnawed. Still, it stood. We stepped from its hollow with resin on our hands and salt in our lungs. The air felt thinner without thunder in it. The sky stretched wider — not brighter, just empty. Branches lay splintered along the shore. Ash gathered in the creases of the sand. The sea no longer struck the land with anger. It breathed. We did not know where to look first. Upward, where the ravens had circled. Outward, where the horizon no longer held its line. Or inward, where something heavier had begun to settle. The wolf moved along the waterline. Not toward us. Not away. It walked as if the world were simply wider now. As if the horizon no longer pressed against its ribs. As if the sky had ceased to measure it. It did not look like ruin. It looked like something that had never been allowed to be small. Its paws left shallow crescents in the damp sand. No chain marked its step. No iron dictated its pace. The wind did not bend around it. The sand did not recoil. We could not tell whether it felt freedom or only the absence of restraint. The distance between us felt deliberate. The sea breathed behind it — unbound, but not raging. “The gods were wrong,” LĂfthrasir said. LĂf did not answer. Her hand tightened at her side. The wind shifted. Sand lifted and settled again. The word wrong hung in the air between us — not accusation, not absolution — only weight without direction. The wolf stopped. It lifted its head. Not in challenge. Not in hunger. In awareness. It was not larger than the world. Only made to seem so. “It could grow again,” LĂf said. “Should we stop it before it does?” The word stop lingered — iron has many shapes. The wolf lowered its head and continued walking. It did not look back. We stood with the weight of naming in our throats. There was no prophecy now. No voice above us. Only the space where fear might settle if we let it. The naming would be ours. We understood the cost. The tree did not tremble. We did.
By Tifani Power 9 months ago in Fiction
