The Alchemist Tuesday arrived in no time. The days leading up to it were a blur of work, relaxation outside The Suppression, cooking, and sleeping. The excitement of meeting the alchemist was all Rienna could think about. They rode into town again on the horses, following the road towards the nobles' district. Instead of continuing into the neighborhoods, they turned and began towards a large building in the distance that was the university. As they got closer, they entered a

You do not need to be excellent. The earth does not ask you to be. The trees do not ask  how many dollars you will make of them, and the worms do not ask how fast you travel in your car. The earth just spins, and the worms just crawl. The only thing you need to be is alive. The only thing you need to do  is love how you live. The dogs do not wag their tails at how well you do on a test, and they do not bark  because they do not have time for you. You mustn’t walk through hell

Introduction: Greetings and welcome. The first part of this is called How to Draw Humans part 1 and not a lot of this will make sense without that prelude. I am going to preface this tutorial by assuring you that we will be considering a myriad of phenotypical discrepancies within the human species. Please remember that nature is diverse, and your art should be too. In part 1, we looked at how the body is 1o units long (I’m using centimeters) like this. You might have noticed

People may have a bigger part in the story of biosonar than you may realize. Noise pollution caused by our technologies is putting strain on animals that rely on echolocation. But on a different note, we’re also learning that with practice, humans can also echolocate. So what do these two different revelations mean for the future? Perhaps it would be best to get a better understanding of how echolocation works first. When I think of echolocation, my mind immediately goes to b

Greetings, Earthlings.  The homo sapien is an organism that I’m sure we’re all familiar with. Most famous for being bad at running, swimming, jumping, climbing, burrowing, camouflage and even just making positive contributions to their respective ecosystems; the human animal is usually only redeemed by their remarkable intellectual capability. Now that you can place them, remember all of those times I said, “I will teach you anatomy, but not today”? Well, today actually is th

Secret Society It had taken time, patience, some pleading, a little bit of magic, an excessive amount of frowning, and three long days, but finally, finally, Rienna broke off a piece of clear crystal the size of a beetle. Without Xia being able to hurl the crystal into other objects with impossible force, it had been a fair amount more difficult than splitting the purple one. With malicious happiness, Rienna placed the crystalline shard in the locket around her neck and cha

I felt so much,  that I started to feel nothing I wanted to say so much,  That I said nothing   Yet that was everything. Too much of everything.  Stop me before my heart begins to race I'm reliving every second I promised wouldn’t leave a trace  You can look back sometimes, But don't ever fully turn around. Those feelings are an anchor, Proof you are alive. Because at least you can feel. Reach into me with your hands And your fingertips will kiss  the nothingness, That inhabi

The earth hums, beneath the roots. A language of shadow.  Dust,  each grain a word. Too small to grasp.  Each breath of hesitation. Between the old,  and the  forgotten.  The sky fractures  into a thousand pieces. Not one, fit together. Whilst clouds curl like smoke. They do not rise, only do they fold back into themselves. Carrying stories they refuse to tell. A stone sits heavy.  Its skin worn smooth by times of quiet insistence. No meaning in the smoothness,  only absence

There will come a day when i’ll be six feet under. The bugs will begin to consume me, slowly watching visions of you unfold, they’ll hear your name—over and over again. They will consume my skin and flesh and engraved in every crevice, they’ll find reminders of you. Reminders imbedded in the scars you kissed, the touch you left on my body, my eyes which had you memorized, head to toe, inside and out. And when they start to eat my heart, they will realize that the only thing c

The other morning, I watched a songbird hang in the wind like a drone. It was stitching the sky together with its bright thread of sound. Perhaps it thought I was a threat, warbling out a warning to nearby creatures. Maybe it was frightened or worried. It was a beautiful bird nonetheless.  Sometimes I watch the shore, and the ocean is restless, white at the mouth and gnawing at the rocks. Sometimes it is wide and unbothered, a taut canvas of deep blue. No one calls it the ang

During this 2026 winter break, I went to Washington State to visit family. Though we are approaching springtime, I still wanted to share a small photo dump from the trip!

Every year, Parker’s Honor Choir spends the first month of the spring semester preparing for the most exciting event of the year: Na Leo Hou State Choral Festival. Held at Central Union Church in Honolulu, around 400 students come from schools across the state to sing together in a concert held in the beautiful church. As a small choir compared to the rest of the schools, we almost never take the opportunity to sing our own song at the concert, but this year we felt that our