Saga
The Conduit: Chapter 14. Top Story - July 2025.
Anu made it to the bottom of the wall first. The climb hadn’t been as bad as she imagined. It was Jonas who struggled, and he was still only halfway down. As she waited, Anu used her light to get a good look at their surroundings. Things were more amazing than imagined. The entire world they dropped into was something that shouldn’t exist.
By Jason Ray Morton 7 months ago in Chapters
Chapter 1
January 12th 2015 As I lay in the hospital bed listening to the whir of machinery responsible for keeping me alive, I couldn’t help but wonder, why would god program our bodies to register this much pain? I was unable to open my eyes yet but one didn’t need to open their eyes to register pain.
By Siobhan McSweeney7 months ago in Chapters
church perfume
Previous chapters in this series: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 // Thursdays are a wash, but she prefers it that way. Even on the cusp of being a septuagenarian, Ada Lorraine DeShields rises shakily with the sun for what an old friend of hers once called "movement medicine."
By Erin Latham Shea8 months ago in Chapters
The Day My Dog Became My Therapist
It all started on a Tuesday. Now, Tuesdays are usually uneventful. But this particular Tuesday, the universe decided to hit me with a whirlwind of chaos, confusion, and cold leftover lasagna. The morning started with me waking up to the sound of my alarm doing its best to imitate a dying robot. I slapped it into silence, stumbled out of bed, and stepped directly into something cold and squishy.
By shittu adeola8 months ago in Chapters
Every Day Is Theirs: A Heart’s Tribute to Our Parents Beyond One Day
✍️ By: Umair Ali Shah Yousafzai --- 🌸 Introduction: The Problem with “One Day” In an age where love has been reduced to emojis and celebrations are confined to trending hashtags, it’s become common to see people dedicate just one day a year to their parents — usually in the form of a well-edited photo, a generic social media caption, or a short video clip. "Happy Parents’ Day!" they declare, and with that, consider their duty fulfilled. But can one day capture the essence of lifelong sacrifice? Can a Facebook status outweigh a mother’s sleepless nights? Can an Instagram reel compensate for a father’s decades of toil? The answer — spoken by the heart — is a resounding no. Parents are not a seasonal celebration. They are the soul of our lives. They do not deserve a day; they deserve our every day, our every breath, our every success, our every prayer. --- 🕊️ A Love Beyond Comprehension Parental love is not poetic — it is prophetic. The mother’s womb becomes a sanctuary before we even open our eyes. Her body breaks to give us life. Her nights shatter so our dreams can form. Her meals go cold so ours stay warm. She becomes our shadow, our comfort, our shield. And the father? He becomes the silent mountain who absorbs the storm before it reaches us. He ages behind the curtain so we can grow on stage. His shoes wear thin so ours stay new. His pockets empty so our dreams can fill. His hands become rough while ours remain soft. Such love cannot be compared. It cannot be counted, priced, or postponed. It is as eternal as the sky — silent but all-encompassing. --- 🏠 From Cradle to Grave: They Gave Us Everything The truth is simple and painful: the very people who gave us everything, we give them the least. They carried us when we were weak. They taught us to walk, to speak, to eat. They encouraged our smallest achievements and bore our greatest failures. They forgave our rebellion, our rudeness, our rejection. They kept loving even when we didn’t love back. And what did they ask for in return? Nothing — except a little time. A little respect. A little remembrance. And yet, many of us fail even in that. --- 📅 One Day is Not Enough — It’s Almost Insulting Designating one day for parents is, in many ways, an insult wrapped in sentimentality. It suggests that gratitude can be scheduled, that love can be timed, that sacrifice can be acknowledged only when it's convenient. Do parents love only once a year? Do they support us only on Sundays? Do they pray for us only during exam season? No. Their love is relentless, their loyalty unconditional, their prayers eternal. Then how dare we give them just a day? --- 🕯️ Real-Life Reflections: Forgotten Candles of Our Lives Visit an old age home and you will see forgotten candles flickering dimly, waiting for someone to relight their flames. Mothers who once carried their children now carry loneliness. Fathers who once stood tall now sit silently by windows, hoping someone might knock on the door. "I gave him everything," says one mother, staring into her fading memories. "And now he sends money, but not himself." What do we owe them? Not riches. Not luxury. We owe them presence. We owe them honor. We owe them time. And if we fail to pay that debt in life, we will spend the rest of our lives repaying it in guilt. --- 🌙 The Islamic Perspective: A Duty, Not a Favor In Islam, honoring one's parents is not optional. It is second only to worshipping Allah. The Qur’an places “being good to parents” immediately after “worship none but Allah” (Surah Al-Isra, 17:23). > “And lower to them the wing of humility out of mercy and say: ‘My Lord, have mercy upon them as they brought me up [when I was] small.’” — (Qur’an 17:24)
By Umair Ali Shah 8 months ago in Chapters
