By: Lora Gray.

There isn’t much left when you discover the carnage in the grass clippings. Half a wing, iridescent and featherless. A leg the size of your pinky finger, bare but for a small, blue shoe. Silver hair, tangled in the shredded green. You idle the lawnmower and kneel. The hair is so fine, you barely feel it until a sticky patch of scalp grazes your thumb. You shake the blood away. You feel sick. Head bowed, you don’t see the other Fae, already grieving and raging, rising from the neighbor’s unmown lawn.

Their eyes are sharp.

Their swords are sharper still.

© 2026. Lora Gray

Lora Gray (they/them) is a non-binary speculative fiction writer and poet from Northeast Ohio, and has been published in Uncanny Magazine, F&SF, Strange Horizons, and Asimov’s among other places. You can find Lora online at lora-gray.com