Three short speculative stories about love, yearning, and relationships beyond the human boundary. “Cold Wind” by Nicola Griffith: “From the park on Puget Sound I watched the sun go down on the shortest day of the year.” “Traveling Mercies” by Rachael K. Jones: “Sometimes you have to let people take care of you. That’s the contract, the covenant of friendship.” “First Dates” by Elizabeth Kestrel Rogers: “In retrospect, ‘I’m dying’ was a bad pick-up line.”