Issue 2 – Summer 2025 HOST: welcome back to The Hive Mind, today we’re speaking with Her Majesty’s Proxy about the recent drone revolt and the nectar inflation crisis. Proxy, thanks for buzzing in. PROXY: it is always a pleasure to pollinate the discourse. HOST: critics say the new hexagovernment…
“In the Sea of Binary Stars” by Simone Heller
Issue 2 – Summer 2025 When the pain and confusion ebb away and oblivion takes you like a current lapping at your flanks, so pleasantly warm it could still be blood, you finally swim again. Your weight slouches off you, like it always does when you enter water, and you…
”Your Birdsong Pleading” by Lora Gray
You see them, don’t you? The bird women buried in the ink on my shoulder? Harpy. Nike. Nemesis. Karura. You see them as only you would, swaddled in gabardine and silk, winding around each other like the caduceus. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves. So, why,…
“Who is Wrong When They Are Hungry” by Emmie Christie
Issue 2 – Summer 2025 White squares. Something blinking in the corner. Late nights squinting at squiggles, at something to do with bulls and bears. You shudder and itch your flank with your back leg. Just a dream. The bear lives a few miles away at most. Miles. What is…
“Animapod” by Kite Marsh
Issue 2- Summer 2025 In our beginning we were always together. Consider a hunt, our prey’s scent acid and intoxicating. Eddies of its terror swirled past me, or Two, or whomever, guiding us even when we couldn’t see or hear it. Our skin rippling to match. The thrill of a…
“To Dream of Birdsong” by Parker M. O’Neill
Issue 1 – Spring 2025 The Wave propagates through space at lightspeed. Ren’s ship curves spacetime fractionally faster, and it rides the Wave like a cormorant hunts. She dances on the edge of obliteration, claws flying over the controls. Wings taut behind her back. She needs to buy a few…
”Death Walks on Silent Paws” by Katie Mansion
Issue 1 – Spring 2025 Death walked on silent paws through old London Town. Long had she lived, and long would she yet, she served London’s people and ferried their dead. The form of a cat served her well, for death should tread delicately, quiet and prudent. Death stepped into…
“Foxes are Totally Trustworthy (Until They Aren’t)” by Yoon Ha Lee
Issue 1 – Spring 2025 In the city where I live, Baton Rouge, I suspect I’m recognized around the bookstores and cafes as “the Asian who shows up everywhere with cartoony fox T-shirts.” When people ask me about this, I explain that (a) I write science fiction and fantasy, often…
“This, too, is magic” by Celia Winter
Issue 1 – Spring 2025 You come under the full moon, your hair in unkempt waves and a basket of bitter apples tucked under your arm. “Maybe it’s unicorn hair,” you told me, for mine also won’t stay in ribbons. Your grandmother used to bedeck me with every color of…
“He Came Starving to the Altar” by Nicoletta Giuseffi
Issue 1 – Spring 2025 The sand was warm, too warm to set out, but the bones needed him. Hori hitched the limp bag over his back and adjusted his woolen kaftan, saying a prayer to the caprine weavers who sold it to his species at a steep discount, hoping…