Editor's Note: This is a content warning for those sensitive to certain topics; self-harm, child loss, graphic descriptions of violence.            Sylvia bent over the lifeless bodies of the newborn infants she had just spent six hellish hours delivering. Screams of anguish poured from her diaphragm, blood soaked her nightgown from the waist down. Her husband William knelt beside her, stroking her shoulder in a futile attempt at comfort. The midwife, an elderly Inuit woman, knelt on her otherside. “Please miss,  you must lay down. Your body has suffered incredible stress, the birth was not a good one.” “My babies, my babies, this can’t be!” Sylvia shrieked, deaf to the woman’s words. “Shh, shh,” William was muttering as he rubbed her shoulders. “Maybe it won’t be, I have already sent for the spirit leader of my tribe. He should arrive any moment.” “Don’t be a fool! How dare you give my wife this false hope! You can clearly see the babie...

  Uncle, it is happening again. The rain has come. I have spent thousands of nights praying that the world would realize something when they pulled your small body from the river. How delicate life is. How precious. How it floats and swells and then vanishes in even the gentlest currents. I prayed you would be more than a forgotten proverb. In a story about big men in faraway places. Their empty fists and uncalloused fingertips meeting tabletops unscathed. And the rain falling faithfully in turn. They say they are here to protect us. That we are safe behind a blinding cloud of rubble and the dust of month-old bones. But I always wonder why they did not protect you; my most precious kin. I wonder what it is that must be offered to deserve their protection. Because your fluttering pulse and brand new eyes for an old and broken world were not enough. A child’s body and a child’s heart is not enough. They didn’t protect you when the squall of fire and metal touched down on the land...

It’s the sense of being an outsider, I think. An odd, directionless haunting that tells me I do not belong. There’s a new awareness of intersectionality in my life lately, with more than too many big, complicated feelings trailing off of it. The friction on the seam where two facets of identity knit together. And in that awareness I’ve grown to understand the vague, faceless sense that has followed me through life: That I am an interloper. Spending time in male spaces I’ve always felt vaguely repulsed: the machismo: the casual objectification of women: boasting about and embracing their emotional trauma — hiding in habits and socialization that I fought for years to unlearn and outgrow. “My parents beat me and I turned out fine.” Men talk about work. Men talk about hobbies and productivity and video games and sports and drinking and women and casual violence and anything to distract from the black, sucking emptiness where their capacity to feel was ripped out of them when they were boy...

 Hey everyone! Spring is nearly upon, and may soon grant us reprieve for our seasonal cabin fever. I had a few things I wanted to go over, and some programing notes! First off, for the next three weeks, I will be showcasing pieces from some other very talented writers I am proud to call my friends! Keep an eye out in the coming Saturdays. A short schedule, which will also be up on the Facebook. • Intersection, by Josh Luffred, 3/16/2024 (Next Saturday!) • Rain, Again, by Charlena Kea, 3/23/2024 • Gemini, by Brian Rydquist, 3/30/2024 Please check back in to see their pieces! Sharing my small platform with others has been something I have wanted for some time, and I am pleased to finally do so. After this month, we have the second birthday of Roll for Writing! I am beyond excited and pleased to share some stuff I have been working on for months now. After April, though, I am taking the month of May off, so there will not be any uploads until June. After two years, I think it is high-...

      The smallest island in the Duchy, Ios was long ago promised to the Triton by Poleon himself as part of the peace struck long ago.     Today, a Triton serves as Baron of Ios, but as part of a long tradition, does not taking a voting role upon the Despot Council. Instead, they serve as a liaison between the Naxians and the Triton Kings beneath the waves.     Ios, itself is off-limits to any visitors, is vigorously patrolled and guarded by Triton warriors who only ever warn once before attacking any that attempt to land. No non-Triton knows why they protect Ios so fervently, but stories say that it is integral to the eldritch rites of the Triton priests. As far as what can be gleaned from ships passing perhaps too closely, Ios is covered by the same kind of jungles that can be found across the islands, and a small mountain protruding from the center.

      The smallest of the Baronies, the Donusians are actually a set of smaller islands in the extreme southeast of the Duchy, farthest from Naxos. Much of these islands are dominated by forests consisting of perhaps the greatest strategic material in all of Naxos; Naxian Oak. This wood is twice as sturdy as any other lumber, and does not rot in seawater once treated in a certain way, which is a closely guarded state secret. For this, by ancient Royal decree and modern Ducal orders, these trees may only be used to make Naxian warships for the Navy.     The only official permanent settlement, Makria, is dominated by vast lumber yards, smaller shipyards and drydocks, and the equipment needed to load large amounts of lumber onto ships headed to Avgi or Kythnos. The population in Makria is unique, in that it is one of two settlements in the Duchy that satyr make a majority of the population-- the other being Oneiro, a baronet on the Isle of Naxos. This has long led ...