“Okay. So I understand how the grizzly ripped your limbs off at the shoulders.”

“A giant robot alone isn’t a viable solution.”

“All the robes carbon date to the Dark Ages?”

It leaves the summoning circle, humanoid and headless.

“It ain’t just routine airship maintenance!” the old engineer laughs. “It’s an adventure!”

“Giant monsters appear in Tokyo, and you kidnap me,” the singer says. “Why?”

Closing the broom closet door, I escape.

Of course, of course!

“Is my human form unconvincing?”

“He’s a jester!”

He stands amid a web of chains and ten-thousand keys.

We look to the stars.

The robots ventured into a polluted world to heal it.

“We’ve got, little chimeras?”

No smell of salt as sails billow in a hot night’s breeze.

I’ve heard red fragment stories: Just one touch. Like magic.

“Can ham roll?” the wizard said. “Roll ham can!”

Her lithe arm embraces him from behind. The other unbinds her hair.

He leaps, scale and wing the color of dark emerald.

“When your king took my gold, he robbed not my treasure...”

I am but a screaming mouth and flailing arm...

“You are kind,” she said, “but no kiss will restore me.”

“Now take this path home, not the goat trail.”

But some days— a once-child enters my menagerie.