A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

by Sangu Mandanna

This is the first place I’ve ever felt sheltered. This is the first place I’ve ever had space to be exactly what I am.

And yet, for some reason, it felt like that was exactly where they were supposed to be. Like this was a thing that had, somehow, become important. Like his lonely and her lonely fit perfectly into the empty spaces at the other’s side, saying nothing, asking nothing, just keeping each other company.

“Phoenix,” she whispered. A creature of the sky and the stars, burning, dying, once, twice, a hundred times, only to come back, stubborn and persistent, to rise out of the ashes, to be resurrected, to live.