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Fiction

Echoes of the Blue Fire

Our ancestors believed the butat-iw were bad omens. They appeared when I was alone—wild orbs of floating blue fire, the size of my Baba’s fist. When in great curiosity I tried to reach for them, they would vanish with a soft hush, only to...

The Weight of Small Things

Fear is at the back of her mind, a shimmering heat in the distance, a glowing ember in the dark. Silently acknowledged but never confronted, because naming might push her off the deep end. But it is there, biding its time, like a...

Something More

BY THIS TIME next year, Teresita could be elsewhere, unmindful of the biting cold. She could see herself walking along a cobblestone path strewn with scattered leaves from maple trees that lined the streets. It would be October, and the foliage would be...

Mawr

“Do we ever win, Mom?” Raniw smiled at the young ginger cat, barely out of kittenhood, who asked the question. “No, Runi, we will never win. Death finds our hooman in different ways. It’s just that the people we seek to protect could be used...

House of Lola

Notwithstanding its idyllic ambiance, Dumaguete City in the early '70s was a cheerful city overflowing with enigmas and desires. Amidst the brackish environs of Escaño Beach, a few kilometers from the city proper, an old house stood. In that rustic 18th-century house, there...

Autumn Song

He was there again tonight. Seated at the last table of the small, dark bar, a lighted cigar in his hand, looking at me intently, almost unmoving. He must be around sixty, a bit on the heavy side, his Caucasian features blurred in...

Random Pickings

WHERE FLOWERS BLOOM

Today is the last Friday of March, and it is stifling hot over here on the island, its jungle mountains overlooking the Pacific seaboard....

Threads of Courage

The night the war reached Cebu, Maria woke to the sound of distant explosions. It was April 1942 and she had just turned fourteen...

Tabuc Suba

Cicadas talk to each other in loud, prolonged streaks of staccato bursts. For a few minutes before sunset, the insects make sound and give...

The beautiful horse

One day my father brought home a beautiful horse. She was the most beautiful white horse anyone in our barrio of Pulong-Masle had ever...