A former wildlife biologist and science communicator, S. L. lives between the highlands of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada and Silicon Valley in California, where the fairytales of our past meet the imaginings of our future in her mind. Once upon a time, she was the mother of a large, interspecies family of twenty. For over a decade she published two columns, “Family Tails” and “Paws for Reflection,” with her veterinarian husband, both celebrating the bond between humans and their nonhuman family members. Now she spends her days exploring new vistas with her husband or pondering the cosmos with her two remaining feline kids. With themes of love, duty, and identity, her writings today often ask what happens when compassion meets power.