Kylie Wagoner - University of Arkansas

Joan leaned against the warm brick of her apartment building’s entryway, squinting against a slant of spring sunlight. Her face was squeezed into a tight pout as if she were nursing a hard and bitter seed in the red pocket of her cheek. In the parking lot, her ex-roommate Robin was getting into a moving van with her new boyfriend – just a month after she and Joan had both signed a lease together – leaving her with an apartment they had promised to decorate together, and a load of the dirty laundry Robin had forgotten in the dryer. (In which Joan had not felt generous enough to remind her of. There was a shirt she liked in there, anyway.)

Star Zuniga - University of the Incarnate Word

Council

We don’t go outside the containment zone. That would be treason. Our rules are simple: be civil with one another, reside in your assigned area, and don’t go outside. Our solemn vow is to protect the wandering adults and children who have not been shown the way. We have not been outside the silo since we were born, and we all live very comfortable lives as the council. We admit that our living quarters are neater and more organized than the others who inhabit the silo, but we feel as though we deserve it because of the difficult decisions we have made on behalf of everyone in the silo. Each of our assigned areas is elevated and isolated from everyone else, so we can hold private meetings that cannot involve interruptions by the others who live in the silo among us.

Rae Ackroyd - Western Washington University

Last night I dreamed I was lying at the bottom of Hirshman’s Harbor. There were barnacled rocks underneath my back, and I was looking up through shafts of light to the dancing surface. The water around me was cold, but I didn’t mind. It was peaceful to feel my hair moving gently around me in the liquid breeze. To feel the little crabs rushing to find shelter in the protected drifts beside my legs. I thought I saw a man’s hand break the skin of the water and I wanted to call out to him. But all I could do was gaze up – my words were lost in silent bubbles of air that floated to the surface. I thought it had been my father.

Sophia Flamoe - Seattle University

There was a boy who was said to have no fear. He was scared of nothing and no one, and thus, he believed himself invulnerable.

His name was Cygnus Bane, and unlike the legend, he was not always so fearless.

Cygnus Bane came from the worst sort of family for a boy like him; the seventh son of a seventh son of a poor farming family. Cygnus was all but guaranteed a life of no acclaim and no fortune. But Cygnus wanted more from his lot. He had heard whispers of a witch in his village, a woman said to be able to do unexplainable magic and grant any wish the heart could desire.