The Pen and Book Files

 What is your wish, Miyoko Hatano?  What is the wish that will make your Soul Gem shine? I wish for a family where I can be myself. A searing pain, like hot glue had been pressed against her chest. She frantically grabbed at the invisible source, begging for the pain to stop. What was the price of her lifelong wish for it to burn her heart?  The pain reached its peak and her eyes fluttered shut. With her Soul Gem in her hands, Miyoko collapsed to the ground in slow motion. The gem pulsed amethyst light through the gaps in her fingers.  By the time that she was aggressively shaken awake, Miyoko Hatano had become both a Magical Girl and a Defender. The two things were so intertwined that when the group disbanded following the End of Days- later renamed The God Storm, like naming a rediscovered painting- the sense of loss was undercut by something else. A nagging feeling that part of her identity was lost in the destruction. If she wasn’t a Defender anymore, who was Miy...

 Everything used to be big when I was small, or maybe it was just that it was the same size and I was shorter. Sometimes I have vague memories of a hallway that I no longer know, each step tall enough that I had to lift my leg high up to my waist to climb up them. There was someone waiting at the top for me, a nondescript figure in brown heels. The ones that look like they have a T going across them. With each step that I take up the stairs, her mouth moves. I can’t comprehend that she is talking to me. Colorful paint has been put on all of my fingers by a tall lady, who probably isn’t that old but she’s so much taller than me that I can’t see the top of her. Taller than the highest tower that I can build out of blocks, taller than me until they go falling down. It was hard work to build that tower of blocks, and I cried when they fell down. I didn’t like seeing my tower fall down.  Just like when the tall lady puts the paint on my hand, I start to cry because it is cold. I do...