Author:
M.J. Swenson has been writing stories since elementary school and earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. Besides writing and reading, M.J. also enjoys playing music and video games.

The wind ruffled the red and orange leaves of the half-wire trees, and strangers walked on either side of Lysandra, keeping their heads down, never once casting a glance at her. A perfect day for masquerading. If only every day could be as perfect as this one.

Lysandra’s skirts swished around her ankles, and she held them up just slightly with her hands as she ran. She parted the crowds on the street with hardly a motion, and no one even looked up to wonder why she ran when they didn’t. The wind rushed through her long auburn hair, catching it on the breeze just as it caught those leaves on the trees around her, real or not.

The wind did not rush through her hair when she sat in the window back at her father’s house—the screen blocked it. And her father’s servants seemed to think it was unbecoming of her to stare dreamily out the window in the first place.

Rewriting Memory

"So he left," Lysandra told Zephyr the next morning. "I can't believe everyone just accepted that he was gone so easily. Yesterday while I was sitting in my room at night, I kept thinking that I would hear him knock and announce that he was there."


"It'll take some time to get used to it," Zephyr said, reaching up and plucking a lone half-wire tree leaf from a branch above her head. The hybrid trees had begun to lose their leaves and scatter their bio-mechanical waste around the streets of Oblitus. The regular wiretrees kept their leaves, but descended to a temperature of about zero degrees.


"I know." Lysandra dodged out of the way as Zephyr attempted to shower her with leaves. "But it still doesn't feel right."


"Lysandra," Zephyr sighed, dropping the few leaves she held on the road behind her, "you should be happy. You didn't have to bear his acting strange around you. You didn't have to act strange around him."


Chapter 57