Quotas traumatizing children
Ten-year-old Elizabeth with her mother
ICE needs to leave
Two hearts
Detained, in custody
No pictures
Other students
Held at the same facility
Source: “5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and father return to Minnesota from ICE facility in Texas,” AP News, February 1, 2026
“They are not dead.” Karin sounded as tired as the grasses had. “But they are dying. Tell me, Liza, do you believe that spring will come?”
Why ask me? I was no plant mage. “The adults in my town believe it.” They believed in spite of the gray trees and the gray skies, the failed crops and the too-long winter.
“So it is with the human adults in my town as well.” Karin held a hand out to the falling snow as we walked on. Snowflakes melted against her skin. “Yet I have never heard the trees so quiet. They yearn for darkness, and some have given way to it. Others slip into sleep, accepting that they may never wake. I am told this is the way of your world. It is not the way of mine. I have never known a forest that was not green. What do you believe?”
–Faerie Winter
My stories are often quite chatty, telling me what they want to be, what they’re meant to be. But this story is silent, at least about this, as if to say, “This time, you have to choose, not me.”
Anyway, my first “Are You Listening” draw for 2026 was The Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice.”
Make of that what you will.
