"Kill the witch! Kill the witch!"

She just smirked and said,

"Light me up all you want

I will not stay dead"

"Burn the witch, burn her down!"

She held her head up high

"I will soon return my pain

Tooth for tooth, fry for fry"

"Burn the witch! Burn the witch!

Wash her off her sin!"

"Water is for scrubbing dirt

Fire makes you clean"

"Kill the witch! Burn the witch!"

She agreed anew,

"I'm not selfish with my flames

You can all shine too"

Before picking flowers

From the meadow of words

You have to know

What they're made of

I can help like a lovely friend

There's nothing to be afraid of

First, start with the flower

As a whole bigger than parts

Arts of all kinds know it

It's a word, image, and motive

Something unique, truly

Essential, expressive, emotive

Next, look at its parts

Different but complementing

Letters are petals

And all beauty comes from them

The root keeps them in present

Meaning stems from the stem

Pick now a central flower

The main star of the bouquet

And arrange others around it

Highlighting its beauty and strengths

With great care for their feelings

Combine their colors and scents

Lengths and leaves don't matter

As long as it brightens up the room

Always remember you're a poet

And for you, words can't hurt

Nothing is written in stone

But gently planted in dirt

First and last day

In the frosty freezer

Are the same

Splash of red among white

Like blood in the snow

Like ketchup on ham

That sizzles and smokes

One sideways swat

And you hang out with friends

And a checkered pattern of their ribs

Take one last breath then

Quiet and tame

While you learn that breathing

Is not for pigs

Pain both

Creates and destroys

It can be in focus

Or background noise

Sweet suffering

Makes the blood go around

When seducing whispers

Flow from the wound

Petty punishments

Fill young eyes with fear

And no twist or turn

Will make it disappear

It's a curious critter

Pleasing and bitter

Needles and glitter

But mom raised no quitter

Strong, deep emotion

Black or white, never grey

But the worst thing it can do

Is to go away

I found my true love young

She swept me off my feet

She was smart, quick, and proud

And like juice, cute and sweet

But before I drank her whole

The juice spilled on the floor

One moment she was a glass-half-full

The next she was no more

Five long years passed right by

Lonely in love with a ghost

Five long years thirsty for juice

Holding what I love the most

Then one day I reopened my eyes

And wanted to start life anew

If I had to lose my The One

I deserved to find my The Two

On my way I found something

As scarce as hen's teeth

Someone dark, gloomy, and bitter

With faint sweetness underneath

He managed to make me question

My own instilled taste

Instead of pure juice sweetness

It’s the coffee trail I chased

I followed him through thick and thin

Courting for a while

I made him roll his eyes and sneer

And then I made him smile

Now he’s the one who’s in my bed

Even though he’s not my first

My heart and soul belong to him

He finally quenched my thirst

Her picture is still on my wall

To which I forever vow

I’ll remember what I had lost

And protect what I have now

Sometimes I got angry. It wasn’t pretty.

When others got angry, some bad words were said, some doors were slammed and some plates were broken. Nothing more. Yes, when others got angry, only small things got destroyed. That’s why others didn’t need to go into The Pool.

I was told my father was no human. That’s because my mom didn’t like ordinary things, they said. Seems I was getting too ordinary for her because she rarely gave me the time of day. At first, it made me angry. Not anymore. Now I got angry when she did.

My house was big and beautiful. I had everything I ever wanted and more. My room was spacious and shiny, my bed soft and bouncy, and my closets full of the finest clothes. I had a wide palette of everything I set my eyes on: from shoes to tiaras, from food to hobbies. I wasn’t an official princess, but I was a princess. My mom was the perfect queen in my world: rich and powerful, but cold and distant. And I was anything but cold.

Despite having it all, I still got angry. Even over minor things. I got so angry it completely overtook me, spreading through my body like a disease and poisoning my soul. I didn’t know what happened next. My mind went blank and when I woke up, something was ruined. Something important. I never knew what or why or when, all I knew was that it happened and that it was my fault.

My mom called it ‘my red side’. My eyes turned red and everything around me did too. She said my dad had it as well and that it shattered him. His red side made him red I didn’t want to end up that way. I didn’t want others to end up that way.

“I want you safe,” mom told me a long time ago. “The only way for you to be so is by protecting you from yourself. I built you something. You have a shelter now, a place you can take your anger to. The place you can drown it in. Go meet The Pool.”

It was love at first sight. The tension washed away as soon as my body got immersed in cold water. My soul cleansed. I felt the liquid shift around me, ripples running down the pool. In this place, I could be serene. In this place, I discovered placidity.

Years passed. Every time I felt like bursting into red, I closed my eyes and went to The Pool. Every time, it worked. Sometimes I’d swim in it, sometimes I’d lay on my back and listen to the hypnotic voices of the waves, singing to me under their breath.

And sometimes, only sometimes, I’d submerge my head underwater. It’s where the real treasure laid, where all my rage was quenched, all my troubles fleeting. I found peace.

It was only recently I found something else. I heard it before I saw or felt it, it sneaked up to me. It was so loud it pulsated through the walls but despite the intensity, I knew it was only in my mind. Not an illusion, not imaginary, but something only I was meant to hear.

“My skin was dust

My blood was rust

Long before I was dead

My soul is sole

My soul is whole

Still bright and burning red”

Song with a rhythm of a heartbeat. My heartbeat.

I was sitting at the very bottom of the pool, training my underwater breathing. I practiced it regularly and could stay beneath the surface for five whole minutes, but the unexpected encounter forced air out of my lungs. My eyes opened wide.

I saw white with tones of blue, then red. The red orb was flowing around me like a shark, like an eternal bubble escaping my throat. It was the color of blood and I was blood in the water. The last bubble ran away and dived out, gasping for air. My peace broke along with the surface, my body floating and my heart sinking. I got out and ran to safety, droplets falling as I went.

My mother disliked my change of heart. I tried to explain what I saw, explain I was in danger, but she wouldn’t listen. Maids went to check on it and found nothing: no red balls or water spirits, just a normal pool filled with normal water.

“I don’t understand why you’d do this,” she said. “You love that pool.”

“I loved it, yes,” I said. “But now it doesn’t calm me. In fact, it makes me uneasy.”

“I built that pool to keep you afloat,” she said. “It helped you all those years. You need it.”

“I need a new solution,” I said, trying my best to keep my composure.

“Actually, I think you need it right now,” she said and clapped her hands. I knew what that meant.

“Mom, no,” I said, feeling my insides warming up. It was happening and it made her right. Two bulky men lifted me and carried me out of the room. “Mom, please!”

She turned her back to me. “I can’t go back there! It’ll find me! You can’t do this!”

But she could and she did. The water splashed when they threw me in. I heard the lock click as I was falling under the surface. It didn’t hold me. Tears joined my wild heart and I knew what my heart could summon.

Despite the panic, The Pool calmed me as always. At this point, one drop of its water could heal my suffering. Mom was right, I needed that pool. Without it, I was a fish out of water, I was burning in the fire of rage. I was laying on my back, breathing heavily. Tension dissolved, leaving me like the toxin it was.

Stripped off all my emotions and pushed into placidity, I almost forgot why I ever wanted to abandon this place. Then I remembered.

The song was the same, and it got louder by the minute, following my heart. I flipped from my back but didn’t get out. Locked in here, I was bound to face my fears one way or another. I was determined to pick my way.

“Who are you?” I asked into the crimson. The sphere was solid and shiny, beaming like villains’ eyes in old cartoons. Like my eyes. I stared back. “I asked you something. You can’t barge into my pool like this. It’s mine!”

I felt the rage return but this time it was called for. The source of my power. When I got angry, something got ruined. I was counting on it. “Answer me or you won’t get another chance.”

I didn’t move but the red did. It slowly wallowed towards me, fearless. I had to change that.

“I’ll count to three,” I said, my fists trembling, my eyes sharp.

“One.” It stopped for a moment but continued.

“Two.” It was right in front of me, almost touching my shivering skin.

“Three.” It touched me and the water became clearer.

I could finally see my own reflection. I knew what I was always intended to. Closing my eyes, I felt our heartbeats syncing. My anger vanished in a blink of an eye.

“Dad?”

He didn’t need to answer, I knew. Our souls – our red sides – recognized each other.

After that, I rarely left The Pool. Mom thought she’d taught me a lesson but I would soon be teaching her one. Dad and I had to make up for the time lost. We swam and dived together, our souls sharing secrets and telling stories. We didn’t need to say a word. We only sang one song.

“Our skin was slick

Our blood was thick

Long before we were tied

Our souls are done

Our souls are one

Passed to the bright red side”

by Ariana Dobrostal

She was there because she could burn the world between her fingers. I was there because I was a hero.

I’d never call myself a hero. No real hero would, right? But it’s not that I wouldn’t do it because I was so virtuous that even the slightest diversion from the right path would physically pain me nor so humble I couldn’t utter one word of praise on my behalf. No, I was none of these things.

What separated me from a hero was the lack of the core hero ingredient: good intentions.

I didn’t feel bad for not being a hero. Not many people truly were. I’m fairly sure admitting you’re no hero brings you closer to being one than trying to mask yourself with obnoxious displays of fake goodness. I knew many people like that in my village. They carried groceries for old people and donated bread to the orphanage, but once the real problem presented itself, they presented only cowardice and passivity.

Then from the shadows emerged an unlikely hero: Nacai Nonem, a no-name farmer with nothing to lose and no one to lose him. I was the perfect candidate for this mission: alone and worthless and belonging to the shadows. So, to the shadows, I went.

I went on a search for the wish-granting monster at the end of the cave. Tale as old as time, yet there wasn’t one person in my village that didn’t believe in it wholeheartedly. The challenge was simple: you enter the cave, find the monster at its end, and make a wish. Then you had to climb uphill back to the civilization.

Once you stepped your foot outside the cave, your wish was fulfilled. Just like that. Anything in the world could be yours. You had only one wish, but it could be anything at all. Yet, as long as people lived comfortably, they didn’t reach into darkness for gold. No one dared to risk their lives to reach their dreams. It’s only in times of need we reach for miracles.

“How deep do you think it is?” Izzy asked.

Her name was read as “easy”, but nothing was easy with her. She was the only fire witch left, orphaned since birth and in great debt to the village. She was the opposite of me in both looks and demeanor: fair, cheerful, and bright. The real hero, the fire to my shadow, and the pain in my ass.

“How could I know?” I said.

“I didn’t ask how deep it really is, just how deep you think it is.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “I’m not a huge fan of wild guessing.”

“Come on, you have nothing to lose. By the end of this, we’ll either die or become best friends.”

“Or remain perfect strangers.”

She went silent, but I felt her unhappy stare at the back of my neck. I sighed, “I’d say around half a mile deep.”

“Only half?” She sounded even more disappointed than when I ignored her.

“The deepest cave in the world is only around one mile deep.”

I heard her steps grow faster and in a second, she was in front of me, light melting on her face. With the light coming directly from below at such intensity, she looked sinister, her eyes impossibly big and her teeth impossibly bright. She smiled widely like she knew exactly how to make a grown man weep.

“Why do you assume we’re not in the deepest cave right now?”

With that, she turned on her heel and skipped ahead, forcing me to follow her shadow.

She was like a little pixie of the cavern, jumping from stalagmite to stalactite and making shadows dancing on the walls, hunting you till you fall and haunting you when you sleep. I sped up just enough not to lose her, although it was hard to lose the fire in the dark, no matter how fast it flew. I enjoyed some time alone, even if she was just around the corner.

With a moment to think, I realized I wasn’t the biggest fan of caves. The terrain was pointy and damp, making me slip and stumble. It was the most uncomfortable slide in the world, slowly angled and high in friction. Even higher in humidity, dripping drop by drop and missing the value of water that carves its paths.

At least I had to admit that minerals created interesting shadows. If I was still a child, I’d be able to see shapes in it: a huge octopus stretching its tentacles or a tree losing leaves, or maybe a queen living in a different universe even if we breathe the same air. Or even a hero, helping me save the world.

Only, I was a kid a long time ago and couldn’t keep him, so I saw only rock icicles that could fall on me and spikes I could fall onto. I heard Izzy gawking at a statue of a ‘sleeping kitten’ and felt relieved at least one of us was able to keep their spirit, if not their sanity.

We walked down the same trail for what felt like an eternity. There were no splitting paths, no sudden changes in sound or scenery, just the same drops and sharp rocks surrounding one dull straight line. Izzy didn’t try to talk to me again, and enough time passed that I began to question whether I liked it or not.

But nothing could last forever, so at one point the light stopped escaping me. It waited, like the light at the end of the tunnel, only it wasn’t nearly the end. It was a slightly wider area, not bigger than my old cottage, but in comparison to a narrow track, it seemed enormous.

The number of minerals dwindled, leaving the room bare except for a flowstone centerpiece. Izzy sat right under it, letting each droplet fall on her forehead before it evaporates from her warmth. Her palms were hidden under two vibrant flames that did wonders to the glossy surface.

“Took you long enough,” she laughed. “I think this is a fine place for a camp, don’t you?”

I shook my head. “We have to keep moving.”

“You say that, and yet you can’t keep up with me,” she said. She giggled when I frowned. “Oh, come on, don’t be like that. Sit with me. We can eat something, chat a bit. Do you hate fun?”

“Maybe,” I sighed. “Alright, we’ll take a break.”

I sat next to her and opened our tiny supply of dried meat and bread. It might be the last one we’ll have, but the people left in the village had their last meals yesterday.

“Do you think it’s real? The wish-granting monster?” she asked between bites. She stared at me with anticipation, checking if I didn’t speak because of a full mouth. When she realized I didn’t, she continued, “Dumb question, of course. I know you don’t. You probably just did this because of boredom. Or spite. Or both.”

“I do,” I said. “I do believe in it’s real.”

She smiled. “So, you do? Why?”

“Because there had to be some hope left in the world.”

Izzy chuckled. “That doesn’t count. You can’t believe in something because of some pessimistic quote, it’s contradictory.”

“Why do you believe then?” I asked.

“Who said I did?”

“I know you do. The village knows you do. The whole world knows you do.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure I do. That’s why I’m here – to find out.”

My jaw dropped. Izzy wasn’t as naïve as she seemed. Maybe no orphan was allowed to be.

“What would you do if it’s not?” I had to know. I didn’t know what’d I do if it was not real.

She took a long pause then grinned. “Then I’ll become one.”

I got my hopes up too high. I nodded to her with the notion that our conversation came to a close. I turned my back to her, and we crumpled on the floor next to each other, drifting to very different but equally dangerous dreams.

The reality was even more dangerous. One scream and I was wide awake, on my feet before my mind caught my body in a nerve net. Izzy was on the floor, struggling as a monster held her down. There were flicks of fire between periods of darkness when she attacked, but I couldn’t distinguish what an intruder was. Its shape wasn’t familiar.

Nonetheless, I jumped it, pushing it off her. Its skin was smooth as glass, cold as it too. I shivered as I regained my balance, but the monster had already hidden from me. Izzy jumped on her feet, propelling flames left and right. Fireballs were more intense but shorter than her usual flames. I saw sudden fragments of motion, flashes of the cave rotating around me.

“Please stop, we can talk, please,” I mustered in all the languages I knew. I squeezed my mind till it was dry. Nothing. It occurred to me too late that it might not have a language at all. I noticed it approaching me too late too.

The monster climbed up the walls as easily as we walked down the dusty streets. It flowed over flowstone, gliding like on ice, slowly but gracefully. Its skin merely existed.

I saw it more clearly as it lunged toward me, its antennas and shells moving in sync. It was an oblong bug, with translucent skin and millions of legs, some starting on its belly, not only on the sides. It was a bug the size of a sheep. All its organs wobbled inside it, held together only by the jelly of its flesh. They pulsated from the jump and they’d stop when they crush me.

Izzy summoned the whole underworld. Hellfire. I had to close my eyes to keep them. Blinding light could burn the whole underground and she didn’t care if she’d seal us here forever as long as the creature evaporated into thin air. Each of her fingertips burst a flame that turned into a fireball, flying steadily to its target. Only, it was a moving target.

I found myself on the floor with my vision blurry. My arm stung, my eye twitched and I felt the strong smell of burnt corpses. I wasn’t one of them, and that was enough to calm the buzzing in my mind. I heard all languages screaming in me, cursing me in a union, then priceless silence.

“Are you alive?” I heard Izzy ask. She didn’t seem concerned, maybe because she believed in me, maybe because she didn’t care.

“What happened?” I asked, trying to sit up. My eyes wandered, looking for the monster, but found something much more disturbing. My right arm was in shambles, the whole forearm burnt to the point of resembling cave walls. Seeing my own flesh that rugged and coarse made it hurt more and I fell back, breathing heavily.

“Nacai!” Now she did sound worried. She kneeled beside me and brought water to my mouth. “Drink. Breathe. I’m so sorry.”

I let the fresh water clean my throat, feeling I could drown it in with no regrets. Then I remembered we didn’t have fresh water. Or any, for that matter.

I spitted it out immediately, my sweet heaven becoming hell by the second. “What is that?”

“Monster water,” she said casually.

“Monster water?” I wiped my lips in disgust. “You made me drink from the monster’s corpse? First, you curse me with fire, then with water.”

“I drank it myself,” she said defensively. “It’s good. Better than the water we have left anyway.”

I remembered the water we had when we left – a bottle half empty. For some, it might have been half full, but I was positive no one would call it that by the time of the attack. Izzy saved my life and our water supply in one fell swoop.

“Sorry,” I said. “Thank you for saving me.”

She smiled. “Now we’re talking. I’m glad I saved you for that sentence alone.”

We put our camp back into the backpack and moved on. Even with my wound, we couldn’t rest one bit, I was painfully aware of it now. Every second crushed our odds, and they looked grim in the beginning. I wrapped my arm into a spare shirt, not the best solution, but not the worst either. I tried to block the pain by counting my steps.

The cave became more twisty, making it hard to navigate. Each tunnel split into many more. With every choice to commit to a certain tunnel, we took another risk, pilling up into infinity. Izzy brushed it off, saying that all roads lead to the same destination, but her voice didn’t sound right. She marked each entrance we walked through with a burned handprint, holding her hand patiently on freezing walls till she melted them.

The deeper we went, the less Izzy spoke. Even though we didn’t encounter any more direct dangers, her spirit was broken. She was a wingless pixie, moping beside me. She didn’t deserve to be like that. There was a price for saving my life and I was going to pay it.

“Were you afraid?” I asked gently. She jumped in surprise at my voice. “Of the monster?”

“So, you don’t want our every bonding moment to be by the campfire after all,” she laughed.

“Just answer the question,” I said.

“Not really,” she said. “When you control something that can leave thousands without a home, you are rarely afraid.”

I nodded. “Thought so.”

“Oh, actually, this is interesting,” she said, her spirits climbing the ladder. She opened her arms and her flames stretched, looking like a ribbon between her palms. “Want to hear a story?”

“Make it a good one.”

“Wait!” She grabbed me by my left arm. “You need to pay close attention to this.”

She opened her palms towards me like she was giving something to me. At first, all I could see were flames – magical and majestic and mesmerizing – but nothing new. Then it happened: the first ripple and then the other and another. The fire was alive. It infused with life before my very eyes.

“When I was little, I was always afraid,” Izzy started. The fire recast into a little girl in a simple style, but wild in motion. She ran along her palm, making backflips and cartwheels. “I was left alone. I never knew of security. Families in the village gave me a changing home. I was passed around like a doll everyone liked, but no one liked enough.”

The fire girl stumbled and fell, the cheerfulness from before exorcised. Her body started skipping again, but she didn’t control it anymore. Her small frame moved from side to side against her will, violently. Then subtly, her shape lost its roundness, becoming rougher. It was barely noticeable, but I noticed, and couldn’t notice anything else. Only her pointy features that once were smooth.

“I constantly felt the unease,” she said. “What if they abandon me? I knew only our village. Only they could protect me, but who’d protect me from them? Kids picked fights with me daily. I was an easy target, always polite and sweet, always doing everything so they like me, so they keep me for another day.”

The fire girl stood perfectly still.

“One day, I was playing with a group of girls my age at the park. I was six. One of them brought a new doll and we took turns carrying it. When it was my turn, she wouldn’t let me take it. She said that if my mom didn’t hold me, then I shouldn’t hold a baby either.”

I frowned. I knew where this story was going. It started for me when I was six too.

“I got so mad,” she said shakily, “that I felt my face burning. The flame lit up inside me – and it stayed. I reached out for the doll and the doll went up in flames.”

The fire girl did as well, her hair becoming the flame that consumed her. Fire killed by fire.

“After that, they behaved perfectly around me. After that, I didn’t hear as much as one bad word directed at me. After that,” she smiled, “I wasn’t afraid.”

She brought her palms together, signaling the end of the show, and created a normal flame in its place. I felt a sudden sting as it ended but was grateful I witnessed it. “It was beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Izzy smiled. “You’re getting better by the minute. What happened? I hit your head as well?”

My head hurt. After she shared such a thing with me, I wanted to share something as well. My chest felt hollow. I never thought I’d share my secrets with anyone, but I also never thought I’d end up in a cave with a chatterbox I didn’t hate. After all, after it’s over, we’d never see each other again.

“Want to hear a story too?” I asked and her eyes lit up.

“Mine won’t be as long,” I started. “Actually, it might be very short. But here it goes: when I was little, I was playing in a barn a lot. My father had a cow and having a cow was even rarer back then than it is now. I spend so much time with her, that I started talking to her. And, after some time, she started talking to me.”

“At first I thought I was crazy, then I tested it on multiple animals and travelers from far-off places and… I’m not crazy,” I said. “I’m a witch.”

Her eyes displayed no surprise, no shock, no wonder. They stayed positively happy, but not impressed. I never thought my biggest secret would cause such a weak reaction.

“I know,” she shrugged.

“You do?” I was surprised enough for both of us.

“Yeah, every witch can feel other witches,” she said. “Can’t you?”

I blinked in surprise, trying to feel Izzy’s magical energy, but only feeling the thermal energy she always radiated, the warmth intertwined with the very core of her being.

“No, I’m totally messing with you,” she grinned. “I just heard you screaming nonsense at the top of your lungs, and you don’t seem like the type of guy to scream nonsense, so I assumed they were magic spells.”

I sighed. “They were no spells, they were desperate pleas to the monster.”

“I know that now,” she said. “I know everything now. Except…”

I knew it. She was going to ask me to talk in animal languages and make a fool of myself. I braced myself for the weirdest animals I could think of, deciding on a whim that I’d give her one if she chose it wisely.

“What would you wish for if you had a choice?”

She didn’t choose it wisely.

“What do you mean?” I feigned surprise.

“If you didn’t have to save the village, what would you ask the wish-granting monster for?”

She was still smiling, but her posture got serious, more wooden. Like she turned into a doll. “Be careful with it. It can be anything in the world, so if you choose wrong, you’ll regret it forever.”

“To start my life anew in a big town, to be rich and happy,” I said readily. “It’s what I’d wish for.”

It’s not what I’d wish for. It’s what I will wish for.

“That was fast,” she laughed. “Did you think about it a lot?”

“As much as any other person who heard the story,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter now. Now it’s different.”

We arrived at another crossroad, this one consisting of only two tunnels. As she was marking the right entrance, I asked, “What would you wish for?”

She took a moment to think, then said more confidently than me, “Even if the village wasn’t in danger, I’d still wish for it to prosper.”

She finished the mark and turned to me. “Even if it isn’t perfect, it’s the only place I know. The place I love.”

I nodded. “It’s admirable, to be that selfless.”

She shook her head. “It’s not. It’s as selfish as your wish is, even more so. But it seems innocent.”

We walked in silence some more, with a new skill of mutual understanding. It was as if the rock fell off my chest. Maybe there was some merit in sharing your secrets and desires with other people. Maybe I only needed one language.

With silence, the pain returned. I managed to dig it under countless layers of distractions and words, but now it emerged on the surface, pushing me to the ground. The cloth I wrapped around it got damped from the liquid air, making it less painful, but felt more like a walking infection.

“Izzy, I need to rest,” I said. “My arm is getting worse. I need to inspect it.”

Izzy grabbed my other arm, ignoring my request. “Quiet.”

The silence was the opposite of what I needed. I needed something to save me from the pain, not push me into it.

“Can you hear it?” she smiled. “Tell me you hear it.”

“Hear what?” I heard other words again, words in languages I didn’t like.

“Water!” she exclaimed. “There is water near.”

“So?” My mind was a blank slate, my flesh a stained one.

“It means we’re near the end,” she beamed. “The water digging the cave, it has to end up somewhere. It will end up in the end, right? We’re near the end!”

I smiled. Through the agony, a silver lining found me and dragged me along. Even if my only wish at the time was to go home – to any home – I found the strength to keep moving.

We picked up the pace. I got dizzy as Izzy ran forward, always one step ahead. The ground became wetter. Our hopes became stronger. We were so close we could feel it, on our skin, in our ears, in our nose. Soon we’d see it too, see the great monster everyone knew about, but no one knew.

Izzy tripped on a puddle and fell, but the only thing she did was laugh. She splashed it around like a crazy person. For a fire witch, she really enjoyed the water.

“How long have we been down here? Hours, days?”

I smiled. “How could I know?”

After a few minutes, we were knees deep in water, rippling the floor with every step. My arm got huge, swollen like a soaked sponge. I felt the pain grow along with its source. But if I gave up now, I’d forever be that person who died a step before the finishing line.

“I can see it!” Izzy screamed. She sent more flames to the front, helping me see it too.

The wish-granting monster at the end of the cave turned out to be the wish-granting cave at the end of itself. The fully formed face stood in the wall, smiling blissfully. It was the last wall, the wall at the end. It closed the cave.

The face was pointy like the rest of it, Izzy’s shadows making it even sharper. Big eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones, eyes closed, but lips slightly parted. It would speak any moment. The cave’s lips opened slowly, painfully so, like they wanted to chew on me. Izzy was speechless and I couldn’t allow myself to be.

“Are you the wish-granting cave?” I tried the language I grew to like, but to no avail.

The face froze for a long moment before it proceeded to move. The water beneath it shifted like it was meant to run through its veins, lending it life. Waves splashed our legs, pushing us away and pulling us in. The face struggled to move, the rocks twitching unnaturally. Not that there were many natural things about the living cave that granted wishes.

Finally, something clicked and it was ready to start anew after long years of being forgotten. It picked up the pace and roared into our faces, blowing our hair like a wind. The sound it produced was menacing, mocking even, and I couldn’t understand it.

I brushed away all my fears and focused on sounds alone. Howling blocked my ears, sending shivers down my spine, but I listened. I caught every whisper, every gasp of air, hoping for real words to leave its mouth.

When they did, I wasn’t ready for them. “What do you wish for?”

My throat was impossibly sore. I translated my selfish wish into the ancient language I never heard before as easily as breathing but found talking hard. I breathed in and out, concentrating on the spot on the floor and hoping that the cave would be as patient with me as I was with it.

The flames weren’t as patient. Izzy put the fire out as suddenly as kids blew candles off their birthday cake. One second you saw it and the next you drowned in the darkness. My light left me in shadows.

“Make the right choice,” she said in a cold voice, “and I’ll light it up again.”

The air was freezing. Izzy was boiling. My arm devoured me. The floor was wet and my mouth was dry.

I licked my lips and turned silence into sound.

Imagine being woken up by the storm

And realise the storm is you

Imagine making life-changing mistakes

That no one else can undo

One day a human, taken by the curse

One day a god, for better or for worse

But by the second day a monster

Destroying the universe

In this case, I just can’t embrace

Whatever I have become

Crushing the world between my palms

And holding it under my thumb

I tried to change it for the better

And fulfil everyone’s dreams

But instead of a sugar-sweet laugher

I got bitter-sour screams

There are too many twisted souls

Piling upon my reign

And too few pure-hearted minds

Betrayed again and again

At his rate, it’s way too slow

In this state, I’m way too small

Although I’m bigger than them all

No god can separate the good from the bad

If bad is everything we ever had

And if it’s impossible to update

What this world needs is a clean slate

So I’ll be the one to choke the sky

And suck the life out of earth

I’ll kiss all the nations goodbye

And watch the planets’ rebirth

In the eye of the hurricane, they will wait

For their pity souls to fly

For ‘forgive and forget’ is way too late

The last god – that am I!

My world is a home

To spirits and souls

They're connected in wisdom

With no faults or holes

They're hopeful and helpful

Built of passion and spice

They build kingdoms from nothing

And it's paradise

My world is a home

To fairies and elves

They're rooted in nature

Sprouting flowers themselves

They're playing in petals

Hiding sweets you can't see

They build forests from nothing

And it's fantasy

My world is a home

To demons and angels

They're conflicted in mind

And forever strangers

They're prideful and spiteful

Spitting hate through desire

They turn things into nothing

And it's a hellfire

My world is a home

My world is my home

To my hidden spirit

Hugging me slowly

So I can feel it

Protecting me wholly

Through thick and thin

Countless of creatures

From my world within

To have such best friends

Is a rarity

My souls shine like gems

And it's verity