In today's featured Editor Pick: After a long winter alone, a man returns to the island that has always felt more intimate than any human relationship. Among its toppled trees and exposed roots, something seems to recognize him. It's Take Him by Joe Koch. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured editor Pick: Every magical community has a taboo. Pierraux has just stumbled into theirs. It's Everybody Does Something About the Weather But Nobody Talks about It by Rodrigo Culagovski. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: She has orchestrated every detail of their final conversation. Except the ache of actually having it. It's Bitter Tea by Christine Hanolsy. read it for free at gavagai.com

The cargo is tea. The destination is a glittering city. Between them lies a desert filled with heat and strange visions. It's Brewed Tea on Cold Desert Nights by Rachel A. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: Some monuments are built from memory. Others demand a higher price. It's Age Cannot Wither Her by H. Marin. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: On the evening she meets her father for the first time, an unexpected conversation gives her the courage to step through the door. It's Eddie's Ink by Hannah Noreen Gamble. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Surreal Sunday featured Editor Pick: The kitchen is crawling with roaches. The cupboards are nearly empty. And beyond the window, something enormous is moving through the sky. It's With Hungry Mouths and Beating Wings by Dana Marie Vickerson. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: Most travelers know better than to follow a raccoon into an airport access hatch. Knowing better, though is not quite the same as deciding not to do it. It's The In-Between Places of Terminal C by Barbara A. Barnett. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Surreal Sunday featured Editor pick: In the desert beyond Sad Hill, Aggie Moss is determined to make herself useful, even if she has to lie, bluff and bleed for the chance. It's Moss and Sharps Are Partners, Conditionally by C.H. Pearce. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: The dare is simple. Cross the white rocks, steal three stones, and be back before anyone notices. But the farther Archer walks, the less certain he is that he’s still in the same camp. It's Past the White Rocks by Fatal Serendipity! Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: A maker tries to turn grief into something beautiful through thin strands and careful heat. What returns through the work is more fragile than she expects. It's Wiggle All Happy from Risa Wolf. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Editor Pick: A dark folklore tale following a cursed river woman whose beauty has destroyed men for centuries. Freed into a strange new world, she finds herself drawn toward a hunger older than death. It's Do Not Walk Near the River by Noor Lovelace! Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Surreal Sunday Editor Pick: A woman inherits a relative's house and a magic 8-ball that is way too eager to offer advice. It's the darkly comic Jill's Junk Drawer Journal by Angelique Fawns! Read it at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: The apocalypse was supposed to separate the saints from the sinners. But when it comes, it seems to choose at random. It's Numbers Count Deliverance from Yelena Crane! Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: At the end of the world, one scientist looks to the stars while the other turns her attention back toward Earth. It's Last Ones on This Earth by Y.M. Pang! Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Surreal Sunday Editor Pick, code does more than execute instructions; it preserves traces of the people who wrote it and the dark choices they made. It's Perpetual Death by Tash J. Sutter. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Editor Pick: By day, Sylana offers teas and salves. By night, she feeds the earth one drop at a time. It's The Making and Unmaking of a Witch by Celia Winter! Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Editor Pick: In 17th-century Delft, a boy raised among artists and merchants discovers that the most vivid forms of expression are not always made with paint. It's The Veil by Kelsey Hutton! Read it for free at gavagai.com

Happy Saturday! Reminder that even with our hiatus we still have this month's Gavagai 1000 going strong! US$50 is on the line for the community-voted favorite, so make sure to throw your hat in the ring for June's short fiction prompt: "rift!" gavagai.com/g1000 #WritingCommunity #WriterSky

In today's Surreal Sunday Editor Pick: Rejections have a way of getting under a writer's skin. One struggling author discovers that some opportunities arrive with far more strings attached than expected. It's Obituary of the Writer by Brandon Case! Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: A bittersweet and magical piece that examines the difference between being loved and believing you deserve it. It's Witness to Bad things by Vivian M. Liu. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Editor Pick: A lonely college student discovers that some kinds of hunger are harder to survive than others. A fluorescent-lit story about intimacy and never being alone again. It's Cerebellion by Ray Chanteur. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Surreal Sunday featured Editor Pick: A woman lingers at the edges of a famous painting in this atmospheric story of memory and reinvention. It's Blue Period, Rest by Liz Levin. read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Editor Pick: A catastrophic fire leaves Dr. Renata Warren stranded aboard a dying spaceship with only one escape pod remaining. As systems fail around her, survival begins to demand choices no one should have to make. It's Expendable Me by P.A. Cornell. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Surreal Sunday: Burned out by the publishing industry and another rejection, Odette enters a hotel elevator expecting nothing more than sleep. Instead, each floor peels away another layer of reality. It's An Interminable Liminal Space by Colleen Anderson. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today's Editor Pick: In the near future, a grieving parent is called to a corporate office to make an irreversible decision under impossible circumstances. An intimate science fiction story about the fragility of identity. It's Contra Captcha by Michael Wen. Read it for free at gavagai.com

In today’s Editor Pick: Alista was taught only mirrors could open portals between worlds. But when a vine opens one instead, she discovers not every soul is meant to find itself in reflection alone. Read “Your Image in the World and the World in Your Image” by Jenna Hanchey for free: gavagai.com

In today's featured Editor Pick: He entered her life like a figure from an old Gothic nightmare. It would take her far too long to realize the horror was real. It's Universal Lover by Patrick Barb.

In today's Editor Pick: When their parents vanish overnight, two sisters follow the forest path they’ve been warned about all their lives. But the deeper they go, the less the rules they grew up with seem to apply. It's Bargains for Wildlings by Meagan Regina Thomas. Read it for free at gavagai.com

For today's Surreal Sunday Editor Pick: Her brother didn’t go missing—he grew. And she’s been tending the forest ever since. It's Life and Death of an Arborist by Katja Rammer. Read it for free at gavagai.com