by Amy Hammack Turner No male pheromones have ever affected the farmer so strongly.  At the entrance to a side corridor, she stops in her tracks, antennae waving, oblivious to the press of eager workers behind her.  Though she is still young, she has mated many times, and knows how to sort out the signals of age, health, and ancestry.  All of those signs beckon strongly, joined by something mysterious.  She turns and follows the tantalizing scent.

by Ville Meriläinen The wasteland opened before us, cold and bleak like we’d stepped inside a predator’s eye. Blue Girl sat on Huntress’ back, shoulders drooping, the hem of her dress ripped at the knees. She’d be fine tomorrow. Until then, the wolf would gladly ease her burden. Blue Girl had a smile to cut glass and enough heartache to kill a man, but we liked each other well enough and were useful to one another, so we journeyed together.

by Hannah Montine Finnigan wanted the weight of a world on his back. It was his right, his responsibility, his entire reason for existence as a Cosmic Turtle. Why couldn’t Grandfather Bumi understand that? “I do understand, Finn,” Grandfather said. Being several billions of years old, his intuition into the thoughts of others was all but omniscient.

by Alexandra Faye Carcich The animals hushed as the foreign princess entered the cathedral. They whispered, “What will the court do with this flesh eater on its throne? Can any animal be safe again?” She was a wolf princess from the kingdom of carnivores.

by Michelle Muenzler She dreams she is a spider. Words sail from her spinnerets, casting traps about the space she occupies and capturing the pale gray moths that formulate her entire diet. Except… she doesn’t just dream she is a spider. She is a spider. She is vast. Her abdomen bulges with words. With worlds. The universe quakes at her passage, bits and pieces crumbling into the void. Without her span, there is nothing. Formlessness rules.

by Searska GreyRaven Dragons are made, not born. We make ourselves, one scale at a time, forged from seething rage and quenched in cold hate. We string each scale together, forming chains, forming mail, armoring ourselves with these heavy plates because they feel like protection. We don’t think about how they weigh us down, or of the wings clenched tight to our backs. Dragons don’t fly. We might have been born with wings, whatever we were before— (I don’t remember what I was before.) —but a dragon’s armor is too heavy and too solid for flitting about. Deep in our lairs, we curl around a pit filled with fire. Each…

by Rachel Rodman —1— “Wolf!” cried the little pig, “Let me come in!” She stood… this time… not before a cottage in storybook land, but rather before an apartment in 1908 Vienna. And the pig, herself, was—possibly—not precisely a pig, but a construct, built of paper, with the parameters of her existence encoded upon it in ink. And with a dusting of magic, on top of that—a light layer of misdirection—which made her seem mostly human. And the Wolf, somewhere behind that door, was, to a certain way of thinking, not a Wolf… but rather a young man, brooding and pitiable, and still somewhat shy of nineteen. But the pig…

by K. A. Rochnik The sun sets behind the row of giant pines as I watch my manta ray son circle slowly near the bottom of the pool. I hunch at the edge, arms wrapped around my belly, like I’m bleeding from a hidden wound. I track my son’s smooth glide, intent on soaking up every inch of his dark bat-shaped body. Last year when he was still wholly human, he darted about, dodging sharp corners by a hair, artfully prat-falling. I would put my nose in the crown of his tousled head, and savor his smell. Now I can’t tell his scent from a bucket of chum.

by L Chan You know where the selkies come ashore, where they shrug out of their skins, leaving them wrinkled and steaming on the rocks. Not just the protected parks, because selkies are wild things, and even if they speak in their soft, unaffected tongues, they care not for the laws of man. She stops you with a glance. The weight of her gaze pins your hand to the sealskin, a bloodwarm puddle of skin and fat. If you want her to wife, you have to take the skin. Take the skin, take the woman.