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“So I just learned that, I’ve got this extended cousin I never knew about, an’ everyone calls him “Bagel.” She laughed, running tiny candlestick fingers through her cotton candy hair, flashing a silver-studded smile. “An’ I said, if his name really is “Bagel,” why the hell haven’t we been introduced yet? Gotta be an interesting guy with a name like that.” She giggled again, like a kid at a birthday party, and shifted her perpetually shoeless legs. “Seriously! Who names their kid after breakfast food?”

2AM. A dying yellow cathode buzzed above my head. The sick light slid down into the grimy bathroom mirror and sputtered backwards to catch in my hair like spiderwebs, painting my skin the color of last week’s obituaries.
I stood perfectly still. The mirror couldn’t see what my hands gripped desperately, shaking and white-knuckled, below the rim of the cracked ceramic sink, and although I would never admit it I was glad to not see it staring back at me.
My heart was flailing like a dying insect. I mentally told it to shut up, to stop making me sicker than I already was, but its frantic throes persisted.
The buzzing light was swallowing even the silence. It felt as if time had keeled over sideways. What was my name again? Did it even matter?
Cold metal shivered between my fingers. I closed my eyes.

Flashes of red and pink were dancing in the corners of her eyes, filling her with a strange and impossible hope. For too long, she had simply stood and watched like this. How many years had she spent, praying and wishing and trying until her bones ached, looking to the skies for an answer? But now that the moment was here, was it worth taking a chance? Or was she really going to spend another lifetime waiting?
No… she refused to wait any longer. If there were going to be any miracles today, they would be wrought by her hands, clenched in determined fists.
I do belong here, she told herself. I am worth something. I can do this.
And this time, as diamonds sparked to life within her, she believed it.

And then the city was alight.
Reduced to nothing, burning away.
Then sparkling, glowing, reborn.
Destruction healed.
And you and I, together, above it all.

We had our wings, our stellar bodies, and you […]

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His feet slammed into the bronze-slick floor as he ran, breath quick with hopes and terrors, through the clamorous house of bells.
He had an absurd mental image of a box of fireworks, dropped into the middle of a […]