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F/F, Contemporary Fantasy, Romance [Coming March 20, 2025 / 4,000 Words] When Karna completes her degree in magical studies, she's disappointed her girlfriend can't make it to the graduation ceremony. Karna doesn't blame Celeste. It's always been a challenge, balancing grad school ambitions, a high pressure corporate job, and a long-distance relationship between them. Still, Karna misses Celeste so intensely that she's halfway convinced she can feel her through the magical tether connecting them. But that's impossible. Celeste is busy in New York. She can't be here in Minnesota, just within reach. Can she? There's no one else standing quite this far from the bustling beehive of activity at the center of the quad, and Karna finds herself grateful for the illusion of solitude. She needs a minute to breathe. To settle. To collect her loose ends back into herself and stop them from fraying, before she puts herself back among her peers and professors, her proud family, her friends who came all this way to cheer her on. With a motionless push of exertion, Karna summons a flicker of magic, like warmth beneath her skin, coaxing it through and around her and then—there—like tucking in the edges of a blanket, the magic cocoons her completely and winks her out of sight. She doesn't go anywhere, of course. She's still standing exactly where she was before. But she's invisible now, safe from the prospect of anyone catching sight of her across the quad and coming over to ask if she's all right. This is a frivolous use of magic. While she was still a student, Karna would have been chided for the silly wastefulness of the display. But she isn't a student anymore. She can do as she pleases. And given how onerous she finds the thought of being cornered to make small talk in this moment, it doesn't feel frivolous. It feels necessary, easing the worst of the overstimulated tightness in her chest. Yes, she's hiding. But only for a few minutes. Just until she's on a more even keel. Then she'll go rejoin the festive gathering of people who will eventually wonder why she wandered off. Invisible or not, it's surreal to be loitering at the uncanny perimeter between bright blue sky and sheeting rain. Karna glances through the arches behind her, taking in the upscale neighborhood swathed in gloom and damp. The road is divided by a wide grassy median, muddy and flat. The trees along every curb stand thick and healthy with foliage after a spring of stubborn rain, but they look grim beneath the drumming of today's steady shower. The rain isn't coming down very hard right now, but it's been almost three days of alternating drizzle and downpour, and Karna thinks she hears an occasional crackle of thunder in the distance. When she turns her back to the archways to study the campus interior instead, the difference is striking, almost night-and-day in its contrast. Sunlight glows cheerfully down across trampled grass and smiling faces. The buildings that crowd in around the main quad are limestone, pale and tall and bright in the sun. They have almost the look of a medieval castle beneath the ivy, mostly uniform but with the occasional darker turret or wall sneaking in between, from eras when building materials were scarce or the school's budget required making do. Karna has always thought the darker buildings and more colorful bricks give the campus more character than bland uniformity ever could, especially when coupled with the relentless array of vining plants and a truly astounding number of walnut trees growing in unlikely places. She's not sure if the walnut trees are simply a matter of nature growing wherever it wants to, or if the magical studies department had something to do with them through the years. Either way, Karna loves them. They're sturdy and tall, and they provide plenty of shady places for studying outdoors. The tallest of them grows directly beside the library tower, its upper branches topping out just below the big stained-glass window, and the view is especially picturesque today. Karna pulls out her phone, intending to snap a photo, only to be abruptly reminded the device is already dead. A flutter of frustration moves through her, not just at having forgotten her battery is dead, but because this should be a problem she can fix. Surely if she deciphered the right bit of magic, the right way to nudge technology along, she could extend the life of a battery. Maybe revive it completely. It's one of so many questions she wants to study further, a code she's confident she can crack given enough time and focus. This certainty doesn't help her now, and she puts the phone back in her pocket. Maybe it's for the best, though. She would have texted the photo to Celeste, and though she wouldn't have intended the message as a rebuke, she can guess how it would've been received. Her girlfriend already feels awful for not being here to see Karna stride across the stage and collect her diploma. Celeste's absence is the only disappointment of the day, really, and Karna will not let herself mope about it. It isn't Celeste's fault brutal work deadlines landed right in the middle of Karna's graduation week. And neither is it Celeste's fault that Karna's own frantic schedule these past couple months has kept her too busy to meet up along the way. Living in separate cities while Karna finishes school has been a necessary torment, alleviated only somewhat by the knowledge that it's a temporary separation. Now the wait is over, and Karna refuses to be wounded that Celeste couldn't physically be here for the ceremony. She knows damn well Celeste is proud of her. They'll celebrate in their own way, once they're finally together. Okay, so maybe Karna is sulking a little. But surely she can indulge her messier, more selfish inclinations for a few minutes without making it anyone else's problem. |
Cover design by Yolande Kleinn ISBN 978-1-946316-56-1 |