Children throw their bodies into darkness, daring each other, further, surfing steel, blurring through tunnels, daring their bodies, further, further towards somewhere that is nowhere but feels like something, their lives linear, their stories circular, their bodies just a small vantage point in time and space. Beyond their outstretched hands is the beginning of everything else that has ever and will have ever existed, bodies pleading. Adrenaline rushing through their luminous veins. If only someone had told them of still water and brine. How iron rusts and blood is red. Further, further. How alive they feel as the despair for the world swells inside them, their hearts, their chests. How oaths and myths are nothing in the face of death. How joy and grief in their bodies, further, shaking, further, gentle, further was brilliance enough.

Mizuki is a writer from Japan, currently living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with her half moon and two very spoiled farm dogs. Her writing has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash Frog, Your Impossible Voice, The Citron Review, HAD, and is forthcoming at Does It Have Pockets and other places. Mizuki was the winner of The SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction 2025 and was shortlisted for the 31st Bath Flash Fiction Award. Find her online at mizukiwrites.carrd.co and on BlueSky.