Spell Bound

by F.T. Lukens

I could really do without the whole summer season, though. For one, it was too hot. Especially in the city, where the asphalt baked, and the air shimmered with heat, and all of it was trapped in a suffocating concrete hellscape. It was not conducive to my aesthetic of long sleeves and jeans and dark fabric, which I was not about to abandon despite the fact that I felt positively smothered.

Don’t worry about being palatable for other people. Be yourself, Sun, and if that’s not enough or too much for someone else, that’s their problem, not yours.”

What was it with sorcerers and their penchant for theatrics and moral ambiguity?

Sometimes a family was a mischievous magical boss, her magical rival turned friend, a magical girl who used to be a babysitter and now was like an older sister, and the person you didn’t understand in the beginning but liked so much now. And sometimes it was arguments and sometimes it was hugs and sometimes it was banding together to fight a morally corrupt government body and sometimes it was just existing in the same space together as friends. But whatever this family was right now, whatever it was going to be, and however it would turn out, it was mine.