Blue Inc. by Junha Lee from Clark's World Magazine, issue 23.

It's harder than you thought, walking from the battle at the end of time and down a street that reeks of entropy and fire and spilled lives

Your eyes aren't dry neither Neither is the alien sky.

Your shoulders ache and your stomach hurts.

Blue woman.

Blue woman.

The chant runs through your head as you limp towards a portal's bright mouth.

You're leaving, but you intend to return.

You have allies yet.

Blue stands for many things at the end of time.

For the forgotten blazing blue stars of eons past, the antithesis of red shift, the

color of uncut veins beneath your skin.

This story is written in blue ink, although you do not know that yet.

Blue is more than a fortunate accident.

Jenny Chang usually writes in black ink or pencil. She's been

snowed in at her mom's house since yesterday and is dodling over physics

homework. Now she's out of lead. The only working pen in the house is blue.

We'll go shopping the instant the roads are clear, her mom says.

Jenny mumbles something about how she hates homework over winter break.

Actually, she isn't displeased.

There's something neatly alien about all those equations copied out in blue ink,

problems in their page numbers.

...