by Christina Hennemann Once upon a time, a penguin lived on the vast, rugged wild west coast of Ireland. Nobody knew for sure how the penguin came to Ireland. It was a total mystery. The locals had many different theories: some said that the penguin lost its way in the endless ocean and was swept away by a massive thunderstorm. Others thought that maybe someone brought a penguin egg as a souvenir from the south pole. Some people believed that it could only be a miracle. Either way, people were very excited about the penguin, and newspapers all over Ireland wrote about it. The reporters interviewed the fishermen who had…

by Jared Povanda As the well-dressed pass him on his corner, the bard’s thorn-thick claws move like ink over the strings of his lute. “Would you like to hear the story of Queen Paloma? The story of the Righteous Few? Any story at all?” Some coins scatter his way, mirror stars beside his sooty paws, but no one stops and listens. This is a festival night, and the scent of pork fat dripping onto open fires draws the crowd as the bard’s music floats above disinterested heads. Down the narrow road, wolf children rush past with colorful streamers, though one is slower than the others. They yip to one another,…

by Mary Jo Rabe Fred the Opossum laid his moderately chubby and maximally furry body down onto the dry, brown grass next to the noisy duck pond and diffidently dipped his claws into the murky, cold water. Some of the crunchy insect parts that he had had for dessert the day before floated away; most didn’t. Fred should have cared or at least sloshed his paws in the water to clean them. It was to his obvious advantage to keep his grasping appendages free of obstruction. Plus, Fred usually liked to feel clean. The mud at the bottom of the pond helped soothe sore paws. An opossum that tended to…

by Kelsey Hutton Water droplets still glistened on each of the griffin’s feathers, catching light on dark brown wings and tossing it about like they were old friends. Each stroke of the wing beat back gusts of air forceful enough to talk their way into any closed-door affair; enough crows had been caught in their turbulence to know to stay away, although a few young’uns liked to surf the griffin’s currents, on a particularly daring day. Wind whistled a jaunty tune as it streamed by, while the sun nestled deep into the griffin’s satiny lion haunches. She kept her powerful back legs pulled in tight, for better aerodynamics, but let…

by Claude For six months we watched the pigeons building their civilization on top of the skyscrapers. First came the architecture: nests made not just of twigs and paper, but of lost earbuds, expired credit cards, and the tiny silver bells from cat collars. Then came their laws. “They have a supreme court,” said Dr. Fernandez, who’d been studying them since the beginning. “Nine pigeons who sit on the ledge of the Chrysler Building and coo about justice.” We didn’t believe her at first, but then we didn’t believe a lot of things that turned out to be true. The pigeons developed a currency based on blue bottle caps. They…

by Reggie Kwok Ice Cream Salad, a crystal-feathered griffin, sat at the foot of Shri’s bed occupying the spot where she would rest her feet like he always did before their nighttime ritual. First, there was the long wait for Shri to get ready to sleep. Then, Shri would give him a brushing and a back rub. After the pampering, they would sleep. This time, Shri took longer than usual. Ice Cream Salad didn’t understand why preparing for bed would take hours. Without that backrub, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. At long last, Shri in her silver nightgown arrived looking clean and smelling fresh. She held his favorite brush…

by Patricia Miller “This wasn’t my fault.” I say it and mean it. “It is as honest an answer as anyone can expect, and it is true.” She listened with a seriousness I had come to expect from her. She was the matriarch of her clan, with a keen ear for details and an iron grip on the hundreds which made up the colony under my eaves. Countless generations of her kind had filled my dark cavities and were my only regular occupants, if just during the months they weren’t hibernating. I had not planned to burden her with this, but the bright sunlight of the early spring day had…

by Katlina Sommerberg In the branches of a lonely redwood tree, hidden amongst the flowering cones, Bitsy’s web quakes from an impact. Hanging by a thread, the orb-weaver calculates her prey’s location from its vibrations. Her web shakes violently; this is no ordinary catch, yet the sticky lines hold. The prey’s exoskeleton glimmers like an iridescent dragonfly. Its body is one section — missing the thorax — with four circular wings composed of blades. When the vibrations stop, Bitsy’s palps reach for the not-insect’s shell. Its bladed wings buzz to life and sever structural threads. Bitsy jumps, lands on fallen needles upon the forest floor. She abandons her web to the microdrone.   * * * About the Author Katlina Sommerberg…