Jillian

When Elyria found the black ring, she used it as an escape hatch from her own life, exempting herself from the toils of work & school & embarking on a vacation cruise around the world. She wanted a life worth taking pictures of, like so many others' lives she'd been following online. But after a few months at sea, & stops at more than a dozen tropical destinations, she found herself once again growing just as bored as she'd been at work & at school. She began to feel as if the very palm trees were mocking her, the rolling tides laughing at the flimsiness of her wishes.

Lilith, listening carefully for the next instruction from the black ring…

Starla used to have a black thumb. Then she found the black ring…

Nona, waiting for a bullet train to 198X…

Quinne walked alone in the wilderness, initially in an attempt to forget her troubles—troubles acquired during her previous attempt to not be alone. But the further she wandered, the more she felt she was moving toward something unknown rather than away from anything she knew…

What Saffron missed most about smoking was having a reason to compel her to take smoke breaks. So she started feeding the birds…

Anya, directing a music video on her first night shoot…

Em, paradoxically feeling more than ever like a misfit toy…

Selene, aboard her spaceship, riding the hyperspace zipline…

Ether lived in a liminal space. Though her childhood had been Earth-typical, in her teens she'd begun to "phase out," not mentally (like every other high school student), but physically. From her perspective, her surroundings & everyone in them would disappear, leaving behind a bare scaffolding of wherever she'd started, seeming both under construction & on its last legs simultaneously…