Broken Glass

Carver Lawson, Special Projects Manager

I’ve realized recently that I rely on my sense of sight too much. 

I’m so fascinated by the image in front of me that I don’t notice my posture is craning my neck, 

and I don’t feel how my body is knotting up from spending all day analyzing the feedback from my eyes, 

and I don’t feel the emptiness in my stomach and the headache from my hunger, 

and I couldn’t sense how my spirit was dead and dry because my fixation was futile, 

and it all didn’t even occur to me until I felt every sensation hit me in one go. 

So I broke my glasses, 

and now I can’t see. 

But I can feel the heaviness weighing down my eyes as I hear my body calling for rest, 

and I can feel the tension in my shoulders and neck that my back left behind, 

and I can even feel those muscles relax with every breath I take, 

and I can understand that I am not upset with you but my own inner turmoils, 

and I can feel my heart soften towards the world and people in it, 

and in these moments I can know my senses have returned to me, 

that I can taste my passions, 

hear my subconscious desires, 

smell the peace in the morning air, 

feel the love of the sun, 

and see through a lens of clarity. 

I broke my glasses and I’ve never had a better sense of sight.

Honesty

Carver Lawson, Special Events Manager 

I’m sorry,

In my defensiveness,

I denied you your humanity.

The truth, is I’m always asking myself what makes a person lovable,

What causes someone to be so fascinated with another like it’s an obsession they’ve always had?

I thought I stopped asking myself that question and I did for a good while.

I was going to let love find me like friends told me to,

so I stopped searching and then I was in your bed, 

and it felt right,

I was just bored and didn’t want to sleep alone that night,

but I thought that maybe the universe had finally rewarded me,

that I finally mastered what it meant to be lovable and enough of a fascinating person to get you hooked,

but I know now this isn’t about you,

these are about hard questions I ask myself for no good reason, a pattern I must have picked up somewhere 

It really isn’t about you and that’s what makes it hurt worse because this chase of love has always been about me, 

I was hoping that a stranger could tend my wounds just this once,

yet again i’m the only one who knows of secret doors and the shortcuts in the labyrinth of my heart,

It’s not your responsibility to tend to my garden like that, 

I have flowers so strange that no botanist has ever seen and that leave gardeners dazed,

so yes, I am sorry in my defensiveness I’ve denied you your humanity, 

I should have remembered the mazes and flowers I saw in you when I looked through your eyes.

The Forest: Destruction

Carver Lawson, Special Projects Manager

The lumberjack visited my forest often,

I’d see him sweetly swing that axe

and for miles you could hear the thundering whack. 

I’d always admire

how he could chop down

any earthy spire

and I thought “what dedication he had to show up everyday”

but it was only when it was too late

that I saw the price I would pay.

I noticed a wicked grin

as he cut my greenery paper thin 

and he got bold, no longer taking one tree at a time but thirty-three

—that day he brought a whole damn machine to decimate me.

and how could I not have seen these callously cruel crimes 

in all those traitorous times

he’d take and take 

until I had nothing left to give

his fortune was always at my sake,

to him my prosperity had to die for his to live.

How could I not see it

in the way he’d cut to my forests core

removing thickets meant to keep him at bay, all for him to ensure I had nothing more.

But since him I’ve regrown,

as nature always does,

and I’ve been shown

visions of infectious insects 

that swarm his mind

eating away at stolen solace

and now I can finally find

the justice in all of this

Serena

Carver Lawson, Special Projects Manager

Serena was a lucky and gifted girl. She had a loving family and was naturally bright and observant. Her hardest problem in life so far was boredom. She had just finished freshman year of highschool and had expected more from her education and society. Her disappointment with the lack of challenges in life was a regular feeling for her. Ever since she was a little girl she had quickly caught on to how life works. She knew herself and the human condition well and often found herself studying people. No matter if she was out shopping, eating, or with friends she always found herself watching strangers. She would deeply wonder about their life and create a story of where they've been and where they're headed. The fact that so many people seemed to be unaware of the depths they had never stopped fascinating Serena. She didn’t understand how the mundane hollowed out experiences of life could capture and cloud people as they do. If someone tried to start small talk with her she would immediately ask an intimate question. She’d wonder about their opinion on what love really is and if evil truly exists in our world. She craved to know of the weight they carried and how it had shaped their being and character. She wanted to know the truth that existed in people, they were the ocean to her and she was a scuba diver. Unfortunately for her that blunt approach often scared them away, and so she had to learn a more subtle approach.

As her curiosity grew, she began studying psychology in 8th grade and the summer leading up to freshman year. By the time she was in her first year of highschool she had landed on hypnotherapy. She saw the practice as a way of shoving people’s fear aside to plunge into their subconscious. Obviously Serena knew she couldn’t use a pendant and swing it right in front of someone. She wanted a more subtle tool so she could place someone under a trance and go unnoticed. She found the answer by accident when she was eating dinner with family. Her dad was rambling about some game and she was getting bored. As he mumbled on, she started looking back and forth at his eyes in a smooth slow motion. She was counting as she did this and almost didn’t notice him go still and stop speaking. Serena looked at her father in the unsettling frozen state and grew a wide smile on her face. She let her fork fall onto her plate making a noise that shocked her dad back to consciousness and quickly excused herself. Her head was filled with ideas of how to use this new discovery to shape the social structure of her school. She decided that first she would single out the most influential people in the school and use the trance to learn everything about them.

For the next two weeks she found the best athletes, social butterflies, and student government representatives she could and asked her questions. She’d say “What are your principles/fears/desires/beliefs”, whatever questions came to her based on what she’d observed from the person already. When her curiosity was satisfied she would blow on their face causing them to blink and end the trance.

Each person would snap out of it and say “I’m sorry I zoned out, what were you saying?”, and she’d give a soft smile and tell them what they wanted to hear. She could feel every single one of them unfold in her hands and become like dough. Serena was pulling at the deepest part of her peers and she had them exactly where she wanted them. She’d head home after her secret interrogations and write in her journal the progress she had made. By the end of the first phase of her plan her journal contained an in depth psychological profile on all of her targets.

Next week she didn’t approach any of her targets because she knew they were coming to her. She purposely sat alone as often as she could during school to attract the one on one time she wanted. Her method worked flawlessly as she had already bumped into half of her targets and ate lunch with the other half by the end of the week. She had a hot streak going and wasn’t planning on stopping any time soon. The next month consisted of Serena solidifying her new position on top of the social hierarchy she was building. She was intent on making her new “friends” feel close to her and like they really understood her as deeply as she understood them. They bought into her illusion easily as she knew they would and it brought her immense excitement to know her plan was working flawlessly. Nobody even noticed her extreme shift from the quiet girl to an immensely social being, except the friends she had made last year. 

Holden and Charlie were friends Serena had since middle school, and they had spent a lot of time together since then. During freshman year she would sit with them and crack jokes or read in silence and so of course they caught on to the change in her character. When Charlie and Holden approached Serena about it, she simply pushed them into her trance and wiped their suspicions clean. She didn’t want to allow her old friends to throw a wrench in the grand plan she had for her entire grade. Her other friend, Opal, was a different story. 

Serena had met Opal a little before freshman year had started and they always had a strange magnitude towards each other. They were an unlikely duo but perfectly complemented each other. When they hung out freshman year they never had a dull moment, and despite their little time together, they saw each other for exactly who they are. So when Serena tried her trance on Opal it blew up in her face. She said in a cold clear voice, “Forget what you’ve noticed about me and see it as none of your business.”

“What?”, Opal replied shocked, “I’m not just gonna forget that all of a sudden you went from hanging out with us to somehow knowing everyone and being so involved in their lives.” 

Serena was frozen with disbelief and Opal just stared at her waiting for some explanation. Disappointed and impatient, Opal decided she wasn’t finished. “Everyone seems to see it as normal but like a month ago you were just sitting here with us reading your psychology books. But you disappeared without saying anything, you’ve been avoiding us and I haven’t hung out with you once since this all started. Do you even care about our friendship or are you too obsessed with this new goal of controlling these people around you and building some empire?” Opal threw up her hands to add to her sarcastic tone and Serena was still speechless. She could only utter the words “I’m sorry.”

Opal left knowing Serena couldn’t say more. In the empty hallway, Serena processed everything that just happened. What Opal had said cut her to her core. She hadn’t considered that her friends would have been so affected by her changing. She had always assumed she was so subtle and hidden that nobody would miss her. For a moment she felt real. The pain was shocking her back to reality and she realized she needed to make things right with Opal. She devised to reach out on text and find a way to smooth things over from there. 

In the meantime Serena’s boredom would not let her give up her social experiment. She kept up her appearances and even started taking it to the next level. She started using her trance to influence people to be more vulnerable and real. She also decided she needed a boyfriend to keep a greater hold on her influence. Serena turned her whole month into a giant speed date. She’d flirt with a guy and get a date, then cast her spell and ask her questions. None of the candidates captured her and she was soon running out of her most influential options so she started taking it slow. Her school’s lacrosse team was the best sport so she finally gave in and settled for one of them. The relationship couldn’t even be considered a side project to Serena due to Opal. She had sent multiple texts over the course of two weeks and Opal had only now responded. Serena pleaded for them to get coffee so she could explain herself and Opal finally obliged. When Serena sat down to face Opal she suddenly forgot all the words she had rehearsed for the moment. She was left totally on her own.

“Thank you for seeing me and..”, Serena paused to take a slow breath and continued, “I don’t expect you to forgive me, but you still deserve an explanation and an apology because I was treating you like everyone else and you’re so much more than that to me.” So Serena told her friend the whole story from the crushing boredom and numbness, to the moment she found the hypnosis trick, and so on. Despite what she had said she did expect some understanding from Opal. Somehow Serena misread the situation again as Opal’s face was appalled. “Wait… so when you told me to ‘forget what you’ve noticed’ and moved your eyes like that you were just trying to control me and keep up this ploy you created because your life felt numb?” After Serena heard it said back to her all she could muster out was “Yes.”

“What if it had worked? Would we just lose our friendship because you didn’t care to maintain it and I forgot who you were to me?” Opal knew the headspace Serena was in so she kept going but decided to take it easy on her, “Serena I get it. Sometimes life can feel so dull that it is suffocating. I was exactly where you are when we started hanging out, but something about you changed the way I was moving. You understood how I saw the world as so boring but you decided to have fun with it, and you never let the shallowness ever affect you like it is now. This new lifestyle is an erasure of all of that so when you started getting distant it felt like you were trying to erase any connection you had to me.”

Instantly Serena found herself responding, “I could never erase you and I am so sorry you felt like I was trying to get rid of you. I don’t know what would have happened if I did make you forget, but I know nothing in life feels as real as you do and maybe that's why it didn’t work.” She gave Opal a soft smile, “I’ve been in a weird place and it's not fair that I wasn’t considering how it was bleeding over into your life. I’ll give you space and time if you need it, but I’d like to get closer again.” Opal sighed “I’d like that too.”, and gave a relieved look to Serena.

After her talk with Opal, Serena decided she needed to be more real with herself. Her friend had a grounding effect and reminded Serena of what was actually valuable to her. She had been ignoring her own emotions for so long and she knew this. She was finally beginning to accept that she could not run from her boredom and set out to make a change. She went and broke up with her lacrosse boyfriend and stopped subconsciously influencing her classmates. Nothing about her self-made hierarchy or influence brought her any real satisfaction or fulfillment. 

Although Serena was done entertaining her impulses, she still wasn’t done with love yet. Her interest in dating was sparked by her experiments but it had started to grow on her. She liked the idea of someone finally seeing her and understanding exactly who she was, and she now wanted that type of bond. In all of her romantic daydreams there was one consistent guy from her school. He was in her chemistry and history class but all she knew about him was that his name was Elio. He rarely spoke in class and when it did it was when he was called on by the teacher. He always seemed in his own world but somehow maintained enough attention to always answer the questions the teacher asked him. Serena never paid Elio any more attention than that because he was so unknown and didn’t have an influence she could use. Yet, she was still captured by Elio and regularly found herself wondering if he noticed the things she did and if he felt just as isolated as she did. She watched him for a few days to see if she could gather more intel but only came up empty handed, so she took a more direct approach. After their class together Serena quickly packed up her things and stopped Elio before he could leave.

“Hi, I’ve been really falling behind in this class and you seem to understand this stuff effortlessly so I was wondering if you could help me?” Serena shot him a quick smile after. He responded that he would be happy to help her. Elio was flattered that she viewed him as the best choice to tutor her. They made plans to study together after school on Friday and exchanged numbers. 

When Friday came, Elio texted Serena that he would have the house to himself for the weekend and offered to have their study date there rather than the school. Her cheeks grew warm when she read the message and agreed. By the end of the school day her patience had been worn thin and she raced home to get ready to see Elio. She felt so giddy while she pampered herself with makeup and perfume. On all the dates she had gone on she only felt dread but all she felt now was excitement.

When she got to his house she felt comfortable and at ease. Serena was not in her removed analytical state that had become so familiar to her. She asked Elio her questions about the class but kept them short so she could steer the conversation to questions about him. She started small, asking about school and if he has always been naturally academic but before she could go any deeper their natural chemistry took hold. They both began unraveling and talking about everything and nothing. Elio would tell a story about himself and in turn Serena would share a story of her own. The conversation was pure bliss to her. Serena had never crushed on a person so willing to discuss all the deeper parts of life that she loved discussing. She found herself wanting more as the conversation went on and out of habit she performed her trick. Her eyes began swaying back and forth across from Elio’s, and out of admiration for Serena his eyes did the same. They became locked in this trance and suddenly the room was getting darker for Serena. She blinked for a second and was instantly in a flat void with an endless dark horizon encompassing her. She sat upon a tall stone chair and in front of her was a chasm with a pendulum swinging left to right. Across the chasm, she noticed Elio sitting on a chair just like hers with a tall wispy creature standing behind him. Startled, Serena whipped her head around to see a similar tall and wispy creature that felt oddly familiar. She looked back at the swinging pendulum and the darkness that enveloped them and she started realizing she was in her own trance. Serena slowly turned her head back to the creature behind her and the creature seemed to smile.

“Hmph you know he’s not the best choice for our plan but at least we finally found the chemistry we’re looking for.” Serena gave the creature a disturbed look and told it, “I’m done with creating plans to try and control my life. I don’t want to use Elio as a means for my impulses either, I just want to have fun with him.” It only laughed, “Serena I am your subconscious form and I know all of your hidden desires and thoughts. You feel caged to what you call your ‘boredom’ which is actually just your apathy or depression. You’ve been avoiding all of it too and I know you don’t want to face it and that you aren't ready for it. Besides, these people in your life you cherish aren’t always going to be there for you or understand you. We’ve studied psychology to its core Serena and it is psychologically engineered in us that we are selfish self-oriented creatures. These hidden desires you label impulses are inevitable Serena you know it is only-”

Serena screamed and snapped her and Elio out of the trance. Before he could ask what happened Serena told him she accidentally left her hair straightener on and was out the door. She only lied because what really happened petrified every inch of her and she needed Opal. As she raced to her friend's house she heard the echo of her subconscious calling her name. “Serena.”, it whispered. Then again it came but only louder, “Serena!” Serena couldn’t tell if her name was actually being called or not but she felt that it meant she had to hurry to Opal. As she grew closer to her destination the sounding of her name became like a ringing in her ear. The voice only grew louder and more frequent until it shouted her name with a force that echoed in her mind. In one swift motion Serena felt all of her senses shutdown as she blacked out.

When she awoke she was laying on a soft wispy floor. She looked out to see the ever expanding ground and roots of grey wispy clouds above her crisscrossing throughout the infinite landscape. Occasionally, there would be a flash of light through the roots that illuminated the whole of the structure she was in. She stood up and started walking towards the source of the flashes she was seeing. As she got closer she could begin to make out a distant glowing core that was sending out the pulses of light. It was shrouded in a fog and seemed to be the driving force behind the psychic storm she found herself in. Serena assumed the core would be where she could find her way out of this place or, at least, a way to control it. Lost in her thoughts, Serena didn’t notice she had started falling through the clouds until she was hitting the floor. She looked around checking for the light and saw it was still in front of her at the same distance she was before. She started walking towards it again but slower and more attentive. As she was getting to the spot where she fell she touched her foot out and felt it go through the clouds. She lowered her foot further and started testing the ground nearby but was immediately flung back. She got up, frustrated and annoyed at the rules of this place. She knew she couldn’t reach the glowing core or investigate how it was keeping her out. This mental chamber seemed to just want her here, but why? She didn’t understand it, despite her best logical efforts. Serena knew the brain well because of everything she had read from her books so she knew she was in the depths of her psyche. So why was her mind working against her and acting as a cage? Why couldn’t she seem to understand her own subconscious realm?

Serena stopped, “Why can’t I understand myself?” she wondered. It was the first question in a while she was asking herself that wasn’t meaningless. She had been observing others so long that she forgot to observe herself too. The thought made Serena sad and she felt her head go quiet. She just sat there and then laid down and let herself sink into the floor with her limbs sprawled out. It felt nice to finally let her body feel what she was actually feeling. Serena felt her chest untighten and her shoulders release. The clouds started encasing her and she could feel them holding her with a silky touch that lightly tickled her. She sank deeper letting the sadness and blots of depression tucked tightly in her heart expand to the rest of her body. Her eyes were closed as she took deep and shaky breaths so she could allow her body to process the pain. A tear slipped down her face slowly and then a few more slipped out until the floodgates were busted wide open. She sobbed and ugly cried as she let the clouds hug and comfort her. In her emotional release she was slow to realize that the clouds had begun to move her and spit her out right next to the glowing core she was so desperate to reach. She sat up wiping a few of the tears and let out an exhausted sigh to prepare herself to face what was at the center of her mental prison. Upon looking she found within the bright core was a little girl painted in a blue hue that illuminated the surrounding area. The girl was not looking at Serena, but instead was stuck in a frozen state of dissociation with tears that would roll down her face, fall, and then be picked up by the weight of the girl's emotion. Countless droplets orbited around the statue of a girl and this sparked Serena’s curiosity. She looked deeper at the girl wondering what her story was and why she was here in her head. At that moment Serena realized that the little girl was her, and in an instance she took the girl's place in the swirl of tears and blue light and a mirror took Serena’s spot. Sereana felt the tears on her face and looked down at her hands which were now smaller, softer, and more gentle. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the mirror but she could not yet look at herself in this state. The emotion she was sitting in was overwhelming and all she could do was be there in the moment and hold herself. In the quiet of her mind she started to remember how when she was a little girl she would get this same feeling. An unbearable sadness that this world and the people in it had no space for her and no capacity to understand her. She squeezed her arms around herself tighter, not to hug this version of herself but to hug that little girl that lacked the care she needed. Finally mustering up the courage she looked at the mirror. What she once saw as her weakness and greatest fear became her strength right before her eyes. She began to feel unbelievably proud of that little girl in her that had endured the complexity of her emotions and survived them.

In her head she whispered to herself “We made it, we’ve found a place in this world for us and people who see us for who we are. We made it Serena.” She thought of Opal and all the adventures they had gone on and all that they had done for each other, and a smile grew across little Serena’s face in the mirror. She started to hear herself laugh and she cried more but instead the tears were ones of joy. As her laughter echoed in her mind and the joy became radiant, her form began to shift. She watched in the mirror as her body grew and progressed through all the stages in her life until she was once again in her present form. As the versions of her passed across the mirror she felt peace knowing that she had already conquered so much in life. The challenge she was facing now was just another obstacle that would become so laughable and silly to her in the future. The clouds began to lose their gray color and become a soft shade of white and the blue hue began to change into a beautiful mix of colors you would see in a sunset. As the environment shifted it only got brighter until Serena couldn’t see a thing.

When her vision returned to her she was on a stage in her school’s gym with a spotlight shining on her. Upon glancing around quickly she realized she was at her homecoming dance and must have won homecoming queen as there was a crown on her head and Elio was to her right with a crown on his. Frustrated, she realized her subconscious had kept the promise it made and continued Serena’s old goal of social domination and control. The room was silent and she could tell they were waiting for her to speak so she did without holding anything back.

“I don’t know how I ended up here and I don’t mean as in i'm humbled and shocked you all chose me. I don’t know how I ended up on this path to become this person you all see me as. It was some stupid version that I manipulated you all to fall in love with and you clearly did because I am here on this stage. But none of you actually know me, you have no idea what I have been really feeling or doing to all of you this whole year. I was bored and borderline depressed and I took that out on all of you by playing some game of creating a new social hierarchy for us because I thought I could change this school to be more enjoyable for me. But I was wrong, the thing I needed was to change myself because honestly I don’t care enough about what everyone else is up to and all the connections I made with the people who put me on this stage. I don’t want this crown, I don’t even deserve it and yet you all still placed me here because you believed the persona I presented you with and there was only one person who snapped me out of all this. I had felt nothing this whole year until my best friend shattered my delusional lens and pierced into my depths with their eyes and words.” Serena motioned to herself and the crown, “This, all of this, is just some shallow bullshit that I thought would make me happy for a bit or at most shock my heart back to life. But this has never been for me, so I give back my crown. Take it because it has no real meaning.”

It was then that Serena took off the cheap plastic crown and threw it into the crowd. She walked off stage, kissing Elio on the cheek as she passed, and headed towards the back of the gym. She passed the chaos of the crowd fighting for the crown that was already broken due to the poor material of it. Behind the mess she found Opal off by the punch bowl laughing and enjoying the madness her friend had caused. “It’s good to have you back ‘Rena, I missed this side of you”, Opal said with a soft smile. “It’s good to be back, I’ve missed me too”, Serena replied with a wide grin and light chuckle, “Now let's get the fuck out of here”. So they left with their hands held tightly together and their heels in the other. They walked down the road giggling and cracking jokes about the bizarre year they had endured, and for the first time in a while, Serena actually felt alive and like she was right where she belonged.

Cassidy

Carver Lawson, Special Projects Manager

Everyone has heard of the ice queen. There are countless tales of a woman with a sharp tongue and an icy heart, but the village where she grew up knew her as Cassidy. It was a small place where everyone knew each other to the finest detail. A community is exactly what Cassidy needed, but her and her family were the outcasts of the village.

Her father had left years ago when Cassidy was only 5 and her brother was just born. This would have been fine for her but her dad was a con artist. When her parents met and settled down, her dad promised to find a real job. With his reputation, the only job he was able to get was occasionally helping out on the nearby farms. Over the 5 years he gained the farmers' trust and used it to steal from each of them before leaving for good. To compensate, her mother, Joanna, picked up humble jobs of cleaning houses, babysitting, and being a substitute for the town’s school. Since her husband was dead to the townspeople, she became a sort of unofficial widow in their eyes. Cassidy had to become the new caretaker of their house, due to her mom’s newfound occupation. This responsibility left Cassidy unable to attend school until her brother turned 5 and was able to come with her. To make up for her disadvantages, Cassidy stopped in at the library whenever she had a moment of free time. She was there so often the librarians knew her personally and let her check out without the usual restrictions. In her years of independent education she stumbled upon a book about the occult. The pages were filled with herbal remedies, healing prayers, and rituals all relating to archaic medicine. The book reminded Cassidy of her mother. 

As the town widow Joanna had become a wife and mother to all of the townspeople. Through her obligations, she became more than a babysitter and cleaner and was now a midwife and nurse. She had become a nurturing force in the town and was a revered healer. When Cassidy could finally attend school she felt she was too far behind. The forgotten mystical books hidden around the library caught her attention more than any of the historical or scientific ones ever did. Soon it became clear to her that the only path for her to follow was her mother’s path. She stopped attending school and began joining her mom on her outings. They would go from house to house and she would watch as her mom tended to each person with the utmost care. Joanna had all types of patients and her experience gave her the wisdom to alleviate their pains. 

Cassidy tried to learn as quickly as she could to keep up. She studied the symptoms of each sickness and their corresponding cures. She had memorized multiple herbal remedies and decided to test them on her mother’s patients. The first she tried was a sedative tea meant for a woman claiming to be troubled by wicked spirits not letting her sleep. Cassidy made the woman a tea with herbs used for protection and relaxation and handed it to her. After checking in the next day Cassidy found that her mixture was a success and the woman was very pleased with her. The victory left Cassidy ecstatic and pushed her to experiment with her knowledge of the occult more. She started chanting healing prayers in her head while delivering a baby or preparing teas for the ill. She would bless someone’s house upon entering by dropping cinnamon behind her as she walked through the door. Cassidy even began to attempt lucid dreaming so she could pass into other’s dreams and soothe their nightmares while granting them deeper sleep. This ambition was the very thing that brought her heart alive with a fiery passion, yet it would be her very undoing. 

As time went on, her unique style of healing brought her out of the shadow of her mother. She was no longer seen as an apprentice but as a skilled healer like Joanna. Her growing recognition allowed her mother to retire, but Joanna occasionally helped out. By the time Cassidy was fully rooted in her position, she had mastered her craft. The people claimed she had healing hands and that you could feel the heat radiate from her. She was happy with the reputation she had grown, but the pedestal she was placed on attracted the wrong attention. 

During her training with her mother she had met a boy who grew fond of her, but she didn’t return his affections. The man had now married another girl and had his own family but he never forgot Cassidy’s rejection. His son was ill and so Cassidy went to heal him and give him the medicine she knew, but the boy remained sick. She told her former admirer that it was in God’s hands and not hers, she was powerless. Cassidy’s justification was not enough for the man and soon, he spread rumors. She heard that he claimed her hands were icy cold and didn’t radiate heat like they famously did. According to him, Cassidy chose to deny the little boy her gifts, as if she was scheming with death himself. 

Cassidy was unphased by the awful lie and carried on with her practice. She felt confident in the reputation she had built and she knew she worked for her spot among the townspeople. What she had done for others did not matter to those that remembered her as the outcast with a deadbeat dad. Somehow, all the effort she put in was outweighed by where she happened to come from and circumstances out of her control. One of her critics was a girl she grew up with, who lived two houses down from her. When they were young, she and the girl would play for hours outside until they had to return home. The two experienced distance though when Cassidy’s dad left town, and Cassidy’s busy life left little time for reconnection. 

Despite the childhood connection this woman was now claiming that Cassidy was coming for her husband. She claimed Cassidy placed a love spell upon the man after Cassidy had come to help alleviate a cold he caught. The truth of it was that the couple was simply having marital problems and the husband had become unfaithful to his wife. She had caught wind of this and saw her husband eyeing Cassidy one day and so she decided to make Cassidy her scapegoat. Cassidy’s successful yet unorthodox healing methods brought her the reputation and fame she desired, but it also brought jealousy. The people admired her gifts but also feared them. They couldn’t forget Cassidy’s roots and felt uneasy that a conman’s daughter had control over the town’s health. This unspoken tension between the town and her family always existed, but it became heightened by the rumors that grew as Cassidy’s reputation did. She had grown used to the consistent skepticism, but the town began to question her mother and brother about her abilities. 

Cassidy still lived with her mother and took great care of her but Cassidy was rarely at home in the daytime. So it was late when she had come back from her duties to find her door wide open. She slowly entered and saw her mother in their kitchen sitting and she was surrounded by 3 men. They were aggressively questioning Joanna about what she taught Cassidy and if she knew the “secret” of Cassidy’s gifts. Cassidy cleared her throat to let her presence be known and the men turned with guilt ridden looks on their faces. She could see it in their eyes. They knew it was wicked to question a helpless old woman like this. She let an icy glare come over her eyes and in seconds they were gone. The men may envy and despise Cassidy but above all, they were scared of her and her knowledge. She quickly bent down and threw her arms over her mother asking if she was ok. Joanna told her daughter she was fine but looked up at her with a sad smile. Joanna opened her mouth and took a long pause before telling Cassidy that the men visited her brother as well. She demanded to hear the whole story from her mom. Her brother had attended all his years of highschool and landed a successful job as a blacksmith and was raising a happy family. He attempted to remove himself from his familial ties to better fit in with the townspeople. Despite his efforts the men still came for him asking the same questions they had asked Joanna about Cassidy. He rarely caught up with his sister or mother and knew less about their lives than the men seemed to know. He was shocked and felt violated. He knew his family’s beginnings were known by the townspeople, but he had underestimated how much they reminisced on it. When the men left, he went straight to his old home to tell his mother. 

Joanna wasn’t phased by the news. She was old enough to have a clearer memory of when her husband fled town. Her children were too young to realize but for weeks after the townspeople tried to exile their family. They left rotted meat at their doorstep and smeared awful messages along her door, but she was always quick enough to hide it from the kids. After Joanna finished explaining the story she saw the heartbreak in her daughter’s eyes. At the time Joanna didn’t have the heart to tell Cassidy that the townspeople wouldn’t stop there. Cassidy eventually came to realize the people’s persistence on her own. For the next five days the men came relentlessly questioning her and her family. She simply couldn’t take it anymore. Her hands were ice cold when she went to heal others or brew an herbal remedy. The love and care she put into her craft wasn’t there anymore. How could she heal the town when it didn’t want to be healed by her? 

She started to isolate herself more in an attempt to reclaim the fire she had before but she felt too numb. She would go into the market and hear whispers of her name and see fingers pointed her way. One day she overheard someone saying her family must be acquainted with the devil and dark arts. The audacity of the lie caused her to whip her head around and glare at the person. As she stared she noticed ice was slowly forming over his lips freezing them shut. She stopped herself immediately and secluded herself to her home. The last thing she wanted to do was give the people a valid reason to see her as a threat. As her days of solitude proceeded she realized she no longer had a place among the people. She could no longer be their healer with the way they froze her heart, and her gifts could only be used for harm with a hardened heart. 

The idea of leaving her whole life behind was not easy and she began to sob thinking about it. She couldn’t bear to leave her mother to take care of herself and knew her brother wouldn’t take over the responsibility. She also wished to continue their legacy of being healers and loved the reputation she had grown. A reputation she worked years to build and was now destroyed by a week of rumors and critiques to her craft. She couldn’t stand lingering on those thoughts so she focused on her breath. As she inhaled and exhaled her breathing got colder. She let go of her family, her ambitions, and her passion and let herself slip into a numbing feeling. She focused on the freedom she would feel when she left the village for good. Taking her final exhale she let out a chilling breath that she could see clear as day. She proceeded to get up, pack a bag, and leave the house without saying her goodbyes. As she walked into the wilderness she left a trail of frostbitten flora. She accepted that the villagers had their ways and she had hers, but to them she would forever be “The Ice Queen”.

On Stage

Carver Lawson, Special Projects Manager

I am a performer

Under a blinding light

On a stage for all to see.

Sadness and silence never entertains

But it is what I am filled with half the time,

And I’m overly aware of how all the audience members are glaring when I miss a cue or say my line funny,

And I can’t keep up with every costume change meant to please every kind of person

And all the eyes feel like daggers

And the lights are too bright I can’t think

And I can’t remember what steps comes next

And I don’t know if it’s a song or a monologue

And I keep fearing,

That I feel them getting bored of me.