CHAPTER 3
“Take a seat. Please”

He slumped into one of the armchairs, setting his briefcase upright on the floor beside him, where it promptly fell over.

“Harry… “

He stopped abruptly, looking down at his clenched hands, then slowly relaxed his fingers before looking back up at the two of us on the settee.

“There have been rumours, you know. I wasn’t sure… Short form, then. Mary, could I have that tea after all? Please?”

She brought an extra mug from the kitchen, and the three of us sat silently as she poured and handed him the cup.

“What do I call you? Harry seems a bit awkward”

“What everyone else does”

“Ellie? I always did wonder about why you pushed that one. Bit too glib, I thought, and I was right, wasn’t I? So, please, executive summary”

I looked quickly at my wife, then jumped in. Soonest humiliated, soonest over.

“Lots of cliché stuff, really, so I won’t go into the usual rigmarole”

Having been invited out by an old acquaintance Barb goes with Cindy a short shopping trip.

CHAPTER 15
I had indeed been squeaky new when I had met Hira, just settling in at the Cardiff hub as I was. I had realised early on in my training that while I was competent at driving the big box of an ambulance, I didn’t have the spatial awareness of someone like Tom, who seemed almost to wear the vehicle like a second skin. My forte was that of an advanced nurse practitioner, with extra trauma skills, so I concentrated on those aspects. It meant a lot of mixing and matching crews for a long time, but eventually Tom and I gelled.

It had been a wet and cold summer my sister April and I had been
cooped up indoors nearly every day and we were getting bored. April
said Danny have you seen these films on YouTube, I said which ones are
you talking about. April said these and she showed me it was a short
film about a sister making her brother look like her sister.
April said I have watch a few of these and I bet we could make a
better one. I said you want to turn me into a girl. April said no just
looking like one. April said you are quite slim and about my size you

My Diary.

By Nikkie Silk

Dear Diary

Today was a busy day. This morning, I kissed Daddy goodbye at the front door, wearing my pink baby-doll nightie. The nightie rides up to show my matching knickers, which barely cover my little cockette in its cage. Daddy keeps the key close to his heart on a chain around his neck, which I think is supersweet of him. It is gestures like that which make me love him so much. Only he can use the key, as it should be, I hasten to add.

The Lois Einhorn Story
A Short Story inspired by an old Movie
By Maryanne Peters

I wake at half past four to something wrong with my underwear.

The trio left Damien’s father and friends behind. After receiving some more directions from Stephanie, the Taxi took them to a quiet mews not far from Red Lion Square in Central London. They waited in the street while the cab did a ‘U-turn’ and disappeared into the traffic in search of a new fare.

As Samantha grows closer to the children and volunteers at Willow House, Samuel begins to find unexpected meaning in the role—just as the secret edges dangerously close to home.

This time something a little more mature than the last one.

Sent By Sophia

Chapter 14: Growing Connections

A Transgender Coming of Age Adventure

A Story from THE ONE

Ariel Montine Strickland

*

Clara, To Be A Flapper

My history class was becoming quite a problem. The teacher was middle age and female; she was strict in her teachings, making us learn every facet of history or we would not pass. She loved to assign research papers on the time of history we were studying; she handled that by engaging us in debate during class about some part of what we were studying.

I lived alone with my Mother as my Father had
died a few years ago. We were going to visit my aunt,
my Mothers sister who lived a two hour drive away.
My aunt had two daughters and their father was away
working in Saudi. We started out straight after
breakfast, we were about three quarters of the way
tas far as when the car stopped. We had no mobile signal
so we had to walk to find a phone to get a garage out
to find out what was wrong with the car.
Mother said we had passed a village about two

Torn from his own world and stuffed into the body of a villainess, facing the end of a doomed route he himself wrote, "Amelia" must navigate a world she really should know - too bad she was never great at worldbuilding.

Stuck in a world she (maybe) created, Amelia quickly finds that reality has filled in the details she failed to describe. The characters who were so flat when she wrote them now have nuance, and motives. The kingdom she wrote into existence is experiencing internal strife she never even thought about. And let's not even get into the complexities of the magic system, or the demon that forced her into this situation to begin with...

Oh, and then there's the fact that she's about to be arrested and executed... but surely she can come up with a way to write herself out of that, right?

...Right?

Aftermath
Part 1: Kintsugi
By Tomi

Three years after leaving for a company training assignment, Haruto Akiyama comes home carrying wounds no one can fully see. Back at his old office, he struggles to fit into a life that continued without him while learning to accept a body that no longer feels entirely familiar.

Supported by his family, reunited with lifelong friends, and quietly welcomed back by a gentle coworker named Rina, Haruto begins discovering that healing is found not in extraordinary moments, but in ordinary days shared with people who never stopped believing in him.

On Monday, August 14, I tried to summon Aries and bring myself to the world of the Sea Men again, but as Jody this time. It didn’t quite work, though. I arrived in the world, but I was sleeping alone on the beach and the doll was just a doll, in my house. I decided that this answered one of my questions about the power in one of the ways I thought might be true. I could not summon Aries today because I was trying to summon her into a world where she already exists, even though that was some distance from here.

What Should I Do
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

Can anybody love someone as much as my Pete loves me? Sometimes I feel that I am the luckiest girl in the world – or I would be, if I were a girl.

Mitchell is a normal teenage boy, though things always become a little out of the normal whenever a cousin visits.

Chapter 3

Chapter 61: Segregation for Power

Royal Decree of Queen Yuqi

To all dragons of every class and clan:

The house smells like garlic and rosemary when I push through the door, gym bag on my shoulder, the t-shirt still damp at the collar from the shower. No bra underneath - the sports bra is in the bag with the soaked sweats, and I didn't put it back on, just pulled the t-shirt over bare skin. The cold outside made itself known on the walk from the cab.

The heat was the first thing.