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Diversions Word Search - Pentatonix
Find the words in the list hiding across, backwards, up, down and diagonally in the grid. Words separated by a slash “/” are found individually in the puzzle. Words in parentheses “( )” are not in the puzzle. The unused letters starting at top left and going down by row will reveal more about them!
Pentatonix
A cappella/Group (Began in) Arlington/Texas Won Third/Season (of NBC’s) (The) Sing-Off (2011) (1st EP) PTX Volume 1 (2012)
Scott/Hoying (gay)
Mitch/Grassi (gay)
Kirstin/Maldonado
Kevin/Olusola
Matt/Sallee (in 2017) Avi Kaplan (left 2017) Multi/Platinum/Selling (11) Studio/Albums (6) Compilations (& 6 Eps) Pitch/Perfect 2 (2015) (2024) Netflix/Film Meet Me/Next/Christmas Grammy/Winners (2015-17) (Christmas) In The City/Tour Sunday/November/9th Ball/Arena (in)/Denver
Visit DiversionsPuzzles.net for more free puzzles & book info!
EDITOR'S COLUMN
When I picked all the themes for this year last fall, I was excited to do a sci- Suspect Press takeover, and I knew that with our current political climate, the theme Can We Get a New Timeline Please would be appropriate. Unfortunately, if you had told me exactly how appropriate, and shared some of the stories behind the dystopian goings-on of 2025, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Some might say that reading dystopian or dark ction when times are tough is just depressive wallowing, but I disagree. Much like the corners of our community that create art through drag, fashion, makeup, music, or v isual art, creating ction and poetry about the trials and tribulations of our reality can be a great way to process and make sense of an unfair world.
Impending societal collapse has never stopped us from serving looks, so in addition to the insightful content, get inspired by the dystopian warrior vibes of our cover shoot set at Denver’s very own post-apocalyptic paradise, Seventh Circle.
Times may be beyond dark and tough, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still make art about it and through it. Join us in humoring our dark sides and taking a walk through the bleakest, most revealing corners of our imagination.
-Addison Herron-Wheeler
“THE WORLD IS FULL OF PAINFUL STORIES. SOMETIMES IT SEEMS AS THOUGH THERE AREN'T ANY OTHER KIND AND YET I FOUND MYSELF THINKING HOW BEAUTIFUL THAT GLINT OF WATER WAS THROUGH THE TREES.”
-OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, PARABLE OF THE SOWER
by
Photo
Zack Hartman
by Justin Lee
Original Photos by NASA & CottonBro Studio
WE MEET ON A SHIP IN SPACE
Hovering
Floating
Waxing and waning
Silence was speaking in the atmosphere.
My eyes found yours and waited in the lonesomeness, Searching within the sparks.
At that moment, within the vacuum of space and dust, We landed on Mars.
I saw elds of owers for miles.
Smelled honey, citrus, and fresh clay from a river.
I now live on the edge of time.
Neptune, where all loud things are diminished.
Lions become ies and great oaks turn into dandelions. Every thought becomes a translucent reality in its open valley.
I could have waited for you, but my eyes had dried,
and my heart had nally come to a resting beat.
I saw every reality.
“I love you,” I heard from the north.
But most of all, I saw light from a distant star touch your silhouette.
Hand in hand, we shared a kiss, and then faded into the fresh rose petals.
Hovering
Floating Waxing and waning Into the sweetest parts of the planet.
ere were suicides on Venus. It was my rst time seeing it in person.
I could taste the mustard fog that surrounded every living and non-living entity.
I kept watching, one after another, Lovers, dancing and laughing and crying and spinning. Until one of them would notice how the other moved. eir spins were not quite in rhythm.
On Venus, there was only a stage, A play where any two people could pretend to be the eye of the universe.
“You are mine,” one said.
“I am yours,” said the other.
Like a prophecy unfolding, one was proved to be wrong. A heart traded for a black hole that could pull everything into an endless emptiness.
All lovers died on Venus.
I never thought it would be my turn.
I followed your voice and found an apparition of you.
Only, you were taller. Your eyes, too symmetrical. Your ngertips, too short. en you spoke:
“You’re actually very good at being quiet company, waiting with the rubble.
Do you promise to keep my skies blue?
Yours are orange, too yellow for my liking.
Do you promise to keep the sun shining, only on my patches of land?
Trade a bit of your shine for mine.
Let me use what’s left of you after your stem has broken, your petals have faded, and roots disintegrated.”
I now reside in Mercury, a desolate location, too close to the sun.
Scorching heat, 9,000 degrees.
Your elemental mixes have now merged with another. And as for me, a pile of ash is all that remains.
Hovering
Floating Waxing and waning
In the darkest space between our planets.
Poem for Somebody Else’s Wife Poem for Somebody Else’s Wife
By Julie River
is poem is from the book Punk Rock and Science Fiction: Poems by Julie River available now from Q Publishing.
String theory suggests there are in nite universes parallel to our own Which means that everything you can imagine exists somewhere in another universe.
I want to nd a portal to the universe
Where you’re in love with me
And we get to spend the rest of our lives together. at or the universe where Doctor Who is real.
Or the one where Bu y is real.
Fuck it, if there are in nite possibilities,
I want the one where Doctor Who and Bu y are real
And you and I get to be together.
I’ve got a junior scientist kit
Hooked up to a microwave
And every episode of Sliders on DVD.
Until then, I’ve got a medical marijuana card
And an overactive imagination.
You can show up in my dreams
I’m determined to gure out how to break into another universe.
And make my nightmares happy.
ere’s a player piano in your chest
at knows every note to my song.
It’s the full text of Finnegan’s Wake
Recited over a Ben Folds instrumental.
What I mean is I have taste and make no sense.
I got lost in a spiderweb
Disguised as a major corporation
And am slowly being devoured. You were the only other y at’s sitting there surviving.
You make me look forward to Mondays And dread weekends.
Your husband, I’ll admit, is a pretty cool guy. I don’t want to like him, but I do. I get why the two of you are together. Maybe you could love two people?
I pray you let me never be a stranger, Nor an acquaintance.
Never less than importance.
I want to be the lighter in your pocket,
A pen behind your ear,
e bottle of vodka on your living room table,
Something you reach for when you feel a very important need.
I can be whatever is most necessary.
Let me be your Swiss Army Knife.
A choose your own adventure novel at’s half blank pages
So you can write in whatever ending
You want the most.
Because you are the greatest story I’ve ever read And I would give anything to be a main character.
But this is something I’ve never felt before.
I’d like it if I could be with you It would make me happier.
But if I never had the chance (Which it’s likely I never will)
e mere fact of you brings me joy. It just makes me happy to know that you’re out there. In the world. Being your awesome self. You four-eyed joy machine.
present. Only the garden, but lonely in the garden.
by Matt Maenpaa
Grief's Garden G
rief is a weed, she thinks. e roots of a weed choke out other living things, growing rampant.
Her ngers dig through the soft soil, relishing the texture and smell. Marla hunts for the root, rips it out. Sends dirt ying. She can’t rip the grief from inside her, but that weed sure as hell won’t choke out her azaleas.
She takes her morning co ee in the garden, overseeing the bees as they go about their rituals. Sometimes she remembers to eat lunch, if she isn’t too dirty or sweaty. e garden is the only place she nds comfort.
How long has it been? Marla ignores calls, turns away visitors. Not even her parents, or her sisters. Takes in the care packages left for her by well-meaning friends, tries to remember to eat the food they send. Marla rattles around the empty house, haunted by dusty ghosts trapped in mementos, in photos.
She took leave from work, but who can really put a calendar alert on bereavement? Her boss may have been one of the calls she never answered. It didn’t matter though, not in her garden.
Each cluster of foxglove was a memory. e azaleas, a fragment of joy. All she had left were the blooms, so Marla would make them last forever.
Of all the places in her lonesome house, the garden was the least haunted. Here at least, the ghosts were joyful. It was a balm for her grief, caring for something.
Oh she would venture forth from her botanical sanctuary, for food. For more plants. She never stayed out long, never went far. No idle chats meant no uncomfortable questions.
Roses were always too ashy, she’d thought. ey were frail and nicky, needy and attention-hungry owers with an in ated sense of self-worth. But Marla planted a primrose bush because the color reminded her of young eyes peering at her through leaves.
Yarrow, sage, myrtle. Waving fronds of wheatgrass and blue grama, jutting tall over her owers. Healing her and hiding her away from a world so irrevocably di erent it horri ed her.
Resting under the shade of the elm, Marla’s ngers traced etches in the wooden seat of the bench. Initials, hearts and the impossible glyphs of a child’s imagination. Music felt hollow; she had no attention for anything but the garden. But the present. To look for the future meant answering the past, answering those calls.
blooms, buried the hardest memories under layers of fresh soil.
Now she was sympathetic to the rose, wilting unless in caring soil. Caring for them kept her soul from wilting, so she wove rose bushes through the trellis arch by the bench swing. ere were no single seats in her garden, never meant to be a lonesome place. Ghosts sat beside her on the swing as she watched the roses.
Marla was startled one afternoon as she pulled weeds from the bed of herbs along the fence. Somehow she failed to notice her sister standing above her, looking mournful and concerned. Leona was usually sweet, but the worry in her voice verged on anger. She all but dragged Marla inside, complaining of the dust and clutter. Bags of soil teetered, leaking in the kitchen hall. Mail piled on the table.
For Marla, there could only be the
Sisters ght, and for a time, the lonesome house was full of clamor. Of shouting and tears, unkind words shredding barbs like only siblings can muster. After a time, Leona gave up. It was late. She was staying in a hotel nearby, but she wasn’t afraid to move in if she had to.
It was dark when her sister left, but Marla still had to clean up her tools in the garden. Under the moonlight, she yanked weeds with sorrowful tugs. Leona couldn’t know, really, what the garden was. e weight of the ght sank deep into the chasm inside Marla, so she kept weeding.
She woke to the buzz of bees, the morning songs of birds and the warm sun washing over her. Marla was beside the herb bed, covered in soil and tangled in the pile of weeds she’d pulled. Falling asleep in the garden was new for her, and so she checked herself gingerly for stiness.
Instead, Marla found herself almost refreshed. As if some part of the chasm had been lled.
Leona returned, but they said nothing to each other. Marla kept to the garden, except for co ee and water, and when Leona made her sit down for a sandwich at lunch. ey ate silently, then returned to their tasks. Marla, the garden, Leona a goal of tidying the haunted house. Leona wouldn’t hear the ghosts anyway.
Leona wouldn’t be leaving. Not until they spoke. She’d traveled so far to check on Marla. e whole family was worried, but she was the closest.
Marla insisted she was ne. She wasn’t ready to leave the garden. ere was nothing else to say.
e lie hung heavy in the air. ere was plenty to say, but Marla said it to the garden. Poured her love into a thousand
At dinner, Leona urged her to see a therapist. To call a friend. Go out in the world. She refused, and refused to explain. e ghosts of bright smiles, tiny laughs and little feet echoed through her. e ghosts weren’t loud outside the house, but without them she was too lonely. So Leona left and Marla spent another night in the garden.
Vines seemed to tangle through her toes when she woke, but it was only the stalks of lavender and chamomile. She must
have shifted in her sleep. Soil caked in her nail beds, lightly dusting her face. Marla felt almost calm, the morning sun brighter than it had been in too long.
Marla showered, changed into fresh clothes. Sat on the swing with a cup of co ee and thought about calling her sister. Instead, she watched the bees and butter ies it about her garden. A place of life, of love and the wildness of the world. Did beautiful creatures like butter ies know joy? Or were they just nature expressing joy in a living thing?
Watching them felt like borrowing someone else’s joy. By the time her sister returned, Marla felt the chasm opening once more. Leona brought with her cold waves of reality, washing out the borrowed happiness. Leona had started putting things in boxes, labeling them, sealing them away.
Can you put ghosts in storage?
Do you really forget them if they sit, collecting dust in the attic?
ose were Marla’s ghosts, thank you, sister. Stop that now.
Marla spent all day stopping her sister from sealing o the ghosts, until Leona gave up. She had a long drive back to her home. Mom would be here in a few days; just let her in. Let her help. Let us love you.
Love, a wretched thing. A miserable ghost, fragmented through a billion tiny moments, a million hot tears.
Love had been a thing to nurture, and be nurtured by, but all Marla had left was the garden. All her love had gone into the roots.
Days later, Marla’s mother found her sleeping in the garden. Shook her gently awake, carefully plucking a blossom from her hair. Marla winced, like her mother had yanked a hair loose.
She didn’t ght with her mother like she did with Leona. Her mother didn’t ask questions, didn’t lecture, urge, invoke, or harry. She tidied the house and tucked boxes in the attic, but Marla didn’t try to stop her. Mom even joined her in the garden, complimenting the blooms, the arrangements, the roses on the trellis arch.
at night, after dinner, Marla wept
by Joan Herting
Illustration
into her mother’s chest for hours. Grief spilled out of her in endless torrents until exhaustion took her. en her mother took her to her old bedroom, dusty and haunted.
When Marla woke in the haunted bed, she was surprised to nd owers in her hair and dirt under her nail beds. Dusty soil on her face. Out the bedroom window, her mother sat on the swing with a cup of co ee. Marla joined her, and they sat silently sipping their co ees, watching the butter ies.
For a brief moment, Marla remembered being a child. Being nurtured and loved by her mother, always with the right words or an appropriate silence. Always warm. Too quickly, the memory was taken by her ghosts. Never again to feel small arms around her waist. No more tears to dry but her own.
Grief was a weed with deep roots, tainting the soil, choking the life from every feeling, every memory, until there were only ghosts.
ere would be no sleeping in the garden with her mother around, so she shu ed through life and slept in the haunted bed. Went to lunch. Let her mother buy her a new dress and get her hair cut. Days away from her garden, except in small moments, and she felt hollowed out once more.
e weeds would be getting unruly, feeding only ghosts.
Marla’s mother left with a promise to return soon. With her father. ey were looking at renting a place down the street. Maybe you could stay in the spare room sometimes.
Sure, Mom. Tell Dad I love him. I promise I’ll remember to eat. I won’t sleep in the garden.
And then it was Marla, her ghosts, and the garden. Returning to her sanctuary, Marla wept near the primrose bush until sleep dragged her under.
Marla dreamed of primrose eyes. Of small hands. e brightest smile and laughter like a song. Arms wrapped tight around her body, in joy and in fear. In her dream, Marla’s world hadn’t ended.
She woke with the dawn, wrapped loosely in a blanket. Stretching, she felt vines twining her legs. Her ngers found soft petals in her tangled hair. A trip to the bathroom mirror revealed a wreath
of owers, a gift from her garden. e garden itself, though, had begun to wither in the time her mother had visited. Just those few days was too much neglect, echoed by the chasm inside her. Each day, she tended the blooms; each night, she slept amongst them.
A night under the roses lled her dreams with passion and sweet, blissful memories. Strong, soft hands rubbing her shoulder, the heat of esh pressed together. Her body ached mournfully when she woke, skin in amed by delicate thorns sprouting from her arms.
Marla didn’t mind the changes. e boundaries between her and the garden had always been thin at best.
If anybody else noticed, at the garden store or the grocery, they didn’t say anything. Maybe they couldn’t see, or they didn’t want to upset the crazy plant lady. Marla didn’t mind that either.
In the evenings, after dinner, Marla made a habit of calling her mother and sisters. Short, soft conversations to keep them at bay, stave o the worried visits. She didn’t tell them about the garden, and they didn’t ask. No, Mom. I’m eating. No Leona. No Anna. I’m not ready to meet
people. I don’t know that I will be. Nobody would want to live with her ghosts or her garden, but that was alright with Marla.
Marla didn’t mind the rain that came in the night. It didn’t even wake her from the deep, blooming dreams. She slept in a simple shift, to let her body be closer to the earth. Vines crawled along the high fence, keeping out any prying eyes.
She didn’t need tools in the garden anymore; she could feel the roots reaching through the soil. Marla sunk her ngers and toes into the dirt, feeling the whole of her breathe with the life around her. ey were her roots, reaching the memories buried deep in the garden.
Marla kept the garden vibrant and thriving through the heat of late summer and into the cool of early autumn. While the rest of the world’s colors faded into the decay of winter, her owers bloomed anew. She spent less and less time leaving the house, happily tangled in vines.
Still, as the nights grew colder, Marla knew her garden would have to rest and her along with it. Her body felt slower,
growing more tired easily. She burrowed into the earth near the primrose bush, enveloped in gentle warmth.
Each night she burrowed deeper. Each night, ghosts waited in her dreams to wrap her up in memories.
Marla spent more time sleeping than awake, even with the sun out. During the waking hours, she remained half burrowed in her garden, feeling the roots stretching through her and around her. e veil between waking and dreaming grew thin, like the boundaries between Marla and the plants around her.
e late autumn air grew sharper, the last of her blooms grasping for the pale and hazy sun. She knew it was time to rest.
e day after the rst frost, Marla’s mother came for a visit. She hadn’t heard from her daughter in weeks. She almost didn’t notice her, half buried in the garden and tangled in vines. Marla appeared to be sleeping, errant ower petals in her tangled hair, her mother thought. en she saw the thorns, the dead vines, and she wept.
apple in his left hand, knife in his right, he presses the knife into the fruit’s crown at the rst incision a drop of juice bubbles out shh, shh, the sound of the knife separating skin from esh, one long lock of hair lengthening, falling to the ground in a coil. the apple, shorn, naked –then slicing, paring away, bringing meat to mouth revealing bony core.
father
By Melody Hsu
watching me watching, yearning for my own share of sweetness, he cuts down a jutting edge holds it out to me, stuck on the tip of his blade.
Photos by Anna Nekrashevich, Julia Filirovska, & Mikhail Nilov
PHOTOGRAPHER
PHOTO ASSISTANT
Noah Hartman
MODEL
Brie Hinton @pyrokittywitch
LOCATION
Seventh Circle Music Collective
Zack Hartman
by Julie River
The newspaper is streaked with blood again .
I’m reading about the story of Jax Gratton
A transgender woman like myself
Who died of suspicious and mysterious circumstances
After going missing for two months.
Another transgender sibling to shake loose the mortal coil
Before I had a chance to meet her.
Did death stalk her like a scorned lover in the shadows?
First
Or did the overwhelming mood of hate weigh too heavily on her shoulders?
I’m a bit older than Jax was when she died,
As if I’m tempting the Fates for threatening to become an old trans woman
In a world that wants us dead young.
And I start to wonder if I could become the next story in the newspaper Dripping blood puddles onto your breakfast table
As I turn into another statistic like Jax.
I’ve been without a car for two years now
And I’ve become a little more cavalier
With my comings and goings than I perhaps should be.
I scuttle along Colfax late at night in skirts and dresses
Like the street doesn’t have teeth, Like every alley isn’t haunted by the spirit of hatred at hides in the cobwebbed corners of America.
So if I ever become a victim of the hate hounds on my trail, Here are the things I want you to do after my death:
and foremost, avenge me .
I’m not one of those “take the high road” dead people. No, fuck that.
Do me a favor and nail my killer to the fucking wall.
An A g H a te t and
Then burn the NewYork Timesin my honor.
I don’t mean burn a copy of the New York Times
I mean burn the entire transphobic New York Times to the fucking ground.
ink of me.
Keep my memory alive
But don’t let me anchor you to the past. Continue to live your life for you
And know that I’m proud of each and every one of you
As I watch you from the other side.
Know that a world that accepts trans people
As the beautiful angel creatures we are Is coming eventually.
I didn’t get to see that world, because God is a jerk;
I’ll have a word with her about that. But never, ever doubt that it’s coming, We will win, And trans people will never, ever go away.
Lastly, burn Harry Potter in my honor.
I don’t mean burn a copy of Harry Potter I mean burn Joanne Rowling to the fucking ground.
And, as you scatter my ashes
Know that I loved this world. And I probably loved you, too.
ick. You were never into old movies, but she thought they were interesting. Liked to learn behind-the-scenes facts and analyze the storytelling. You always told her she would’ve made a beautiful movie star. Edie speaks up, “Your grocery delivery is here.”
foot outside of your door to grab them. Edie always does it for you. It’s because of your weak joints. She rushes over and gets to putting the groceries away. You don’t even know where everything goes anymore.
You stand up, taking a minute as you feel the pain bounce through your joints. You aren’t built the same anymore.
You stare blankly at her. “What is it?” e batteries.
You remember the days of the kids, when you and Bethy would take them to the grocery store. Inevitably sneaking candy and checkout lane toys into the cart when you weren’t looking. When they’d get away with it, you’d get on their asses about it. Put them in time-out, hide the toys on a shelf much too high for them to reach.
e kids. Oh my god, the kids. Why can’t you remember their names? In your head, their faces are blurry. You can’t even goddamn remember their hair color. ere must be a picture of them somewhere, anywhere.
“I can get it,” She a rms, standing up to glide through the hallway to the front door. e walls are empty, easier for Edie to clean that way. ere used to be a painting or something by the front, but you can’t seem to recall what it looked like, or when it had vanished. You glance down the hallway, watching as the drones unceremoniously drop o the grocery order, and y up and into the misty sky. Edie e ortlessly grabs a couple grocery bags, lled perfectly and e ciently.
You suddenly realize that you can’t recall the last time you picked up groceries. e last time you even stepped
“Edie—” you start. Do you really need to ask your robot what the names of your children are? To ask what they look like?
“Yes?” She responds promptly, head tilted, awaiting further instructions.
Without another word, you bold to the third drawer from the left, down two rows in the living room. Feel the almost non-existent weight of the coin cell batteries, as you bee-line somewhere. Your mind isn’t sharp enough to connect where your body is taking you.
It’s when you get upstairs that you realize what it is. e digital picture-frame. Old and outdated by now, covered in dust on your bedroom shelf. Way up at the top. Wrinkled, sun-damaged hands reach towards it, just long enough to knock it o the shelf. As it tumbles to the oor, you hear a sharp snap.
You scramble to your knees, “No, no.” you repeat quietly, not wanting Edie to hear you. It’s not broken, you don’t think. Just cracked. And as your ngers run across the sharp split of glass, reminiscent of a spiderweb, you hope that the batteries work. at the faces of your children aren’t obstructed.
Wendel Moretti
The year is 2,000,000,025.
Humanity has long since abandoned its cradle, a pale blue dot now a speck of cosmic dust, its legacy a scattered diaspora of star-faring civilizations. e greatest of these, the Solarian Compact, had, over eons, solidi ed its social structure into a rigid, unquestionable binary. After the chaotic "Epoch of Discord"—a historical period where the very de nition of humanity was lost in a maelstrom of con icting self-identities—the Compact’s founders implemented the Binary Directive. You were either designated A or B, male or female, and your public expression was a carefully monitored, androgynous uniform of gray.
life reinforced the binary. Your career path was determined by your designation; your social interactions were limited to pre-approved networks; even the architecture of the mega-cities, all stark lines and right angles, mirrored the unyielding divisions. e public art was monochromatic, the music a series of monotonous, harmonically simple tones. To express an emotion was to betray a fault in your programming.
In the Solarian Compact, every facet of
Kael lived his life as a model citizen, his face a perfectly impassive mask. He performed his duties as a data archivist awlessly, each day an endless, gray corridor of data streams and algorithmic sorting. A, B, they were just letters, the government said. Yet, in the quiet solitude of his mind, Kael knew he was neither. He felt like a swirling nebula of stardust, a mix of brilliant
Glitter and Stardust
by Addison Herron-Wheeler
purples and greens, a symphony of color and emotion, yet he was forced to display only the dull, conforming gray.
His only solace was the Whispernet, a clandestine data stream that hummed with rumors of the Underground. It was a place where those who felt the same could connect, a hidden world of vibrant life. e Whispernet was a dangerous game, a digital ghost chase through rewalls and government trackers. It was the only thing that made Kael feel truly alive. It led him to a set of coordinates, a dead zone in the data-verse, a ghost in the machine that promised to lead him to a physical reality. He felt a tremor of fear, a spark of hope. is was a direct violation of the Compact’s most sacred laws. e penalty for "emotional deviance" was re-calibration, a process that stripped
away your individuality, leaving you an even duller shade of gray. But the promise of a
Following the instructions, Kael navigated his grav-pod to an asteroid belt on the fringes of the inhabited zone. e stars were a pinprick tapestry against the black, unmarred by the Solarian Compact's light pollution. His ngers trembled as he landed in a hidden cavern, its entrance cloaked by a sophisticated electromagnetic eld that warped all sensor readings. Inside, a low hum vibrated the air, a melody unlike anything he had ever heard, rich with complex harmonies and unexpected crescendos. e cave opened into a massive chamber, and Kael's breath caught in his throat.
e space was a riot of color, a supernova of expression. People, or what he presumed to be people, moved with a uid grace he had never witnessed. e cavern was lled with bioluminescent ora that pulsed in time with the music, casting an ethereal glow on everything. e air, thick with the scent of spiced incense, was a welcome assault on his senses. People
wore towering headdresses, feathered and bejeweled, that scraped against the cavern's ceiling. eir faces were painted in intricate, swirling patterns that seemed to tell stories of forgotten galaxies.
A gure with skin painted like the surface of Jupiter, all swirling ochres and whites, twirled on a platform, their seven-foot-tall crystalline dress catching the light and refracting it into a thousand rainbows. Another, cloaked in what looked like the nebulae of a distant star system, glided by, their hands trailing stardust-like glitter. ey were beautiful, grotesque, ethereal, and wholly themselves. Here, the binary had no dominion. Here, they did not just choose to be A or B; they chose to be a constellation of identities.
A gure, draped in shimmering silver fabric, glided towards him. eir face was painted with a map of constellations, and eyes, a deep, knowing purple, held the wisdom of a thousand light-years. "Welcome, lost one," they said, their voice a melodious echo that resonated with the music. "Welcome to the Celestial Ball." eir name was Astra.
Astra gestured to the surrounding crowd. "We are the lost children of the Compact," they said softly. " e ones who refused to be led away into neat little boxes. We came here to remember who we were before they tried to make us forget."
Kael felt a tear track down his cheek, the rst he had shed in centuries. e sterile society had taught him that emotion was a weakness, an imperfection. But here, it was a release, a moment of profound truth. He looked down at his dull gray uniform, then at the vibrant, living universe around him. For the rst time, he felt whole, not as A, not as B, but as Kael. He watched as the performers took the stage, each one a di erent manifestation of a universe of possibility. A being with wings made of pure light soared above the crowd, and Kael felt a part of himself, a long-dormant part, begin to stir. In this vibrant, glittering world, the universe was not a binary. It was a kaleidoscope of a billion, billion possibilities, and he was nally free to be one of them.
Imagery courtesy of Pexels contributors: Editor Crash, Israyosoy, Maor Attias, Merlin Lightpainting, and Philippe Donn
Celest ial Ball"
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