...So love is a major thing then, not just in February where we find ourselves at the moment, but in all times and places to all people. It’s a huge, looming presence in life if you’ve got it, and perhaps even more so if you don’t got it. Its presence or absence makes and breaks us. Its forms mold us from swaddling-clothes to winding-sheets, and if there has to be one influence that stands out in our lives above and beyond (and over and under and in-between) all others, we vote for Love.

Our Æon Thirteen authors have also voted for it, and we say well done to them. We love it when people agree with us.

Jeffe Kennedy – whose first fiction sale this is – leads off this lovely Æon issue with a story of love all too human in “Pearl.”