The wind outside was a constant howl, but the sun would be up in a few hours. Days were calmer, typically. He'd have to climb out of the train tunnel and replace the antenna again if the weather got ... [+]
Freya Morris's story, "You Would Never Believe It," was written for The Phoenix Hotel, located in Yogyakarta, as part of the Bedtime Story Project, a collaboration between Short Edition and MGallery Hotels. To find out more about Freya and this project, visit https://mgallery.short-edition.com/
When Eliana returned to the Phoenix Hotel Yogyakarta that night, she imagined that her grandfather's footsteps on the same floors, in the same hotel, after climbing the same mountain, would have sounded like clapping hands. But her footsteps sounded like she was dragging a lifetime of luggage. She wasn't prepared for failure, and she was not prepared to find a mythical bird perched on the balcony of her room.She ignored it. Her focus was on the pain. She ignored how the bird radiated like fire against the blue dusk. She ignored how it stood, majestic, as if it had been pushed out of the land w