Carrie Emberlyn |work| Access

The mother, flustered, hushed the child and pushed the cart away. But Carrie just smiled. It wasn't an insult. It was a fact.

She didn't just feel happy. She felt incandescent . carrie emberlyn

“You’ve been trying to put yourself out your whole life, haven’t you?” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was a recognition. The mother, flustered, hushed the child and pushed

“Oh,” he said, softly. As if he had just solved a puzzle he’d been working on for a long time. “So that’s what that is.” It was a fact

She fell in love with him in the stacks of a university library. He was showing her a book on lichen— yes, lichen —and he was so animated, so unapologetically excited about the symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an alga, that she felt a warmth spread from her chest. She looked down. A strand of her hair, the one above her left ear, had curled into a perfect, glowing question mark. She quickly tucked it behind her ear, her heart hammering.

Leo stood there, perfectly still. His face wasn't scared. It was… reverent. He looked at the faint, fading glow in her hair, then at her wide, terrified eyes.