#Web Fiction

[qrowscant]

LINK ROT / TRANSMISSION 001 / APRIL 3rd, 2024

Link Rot is a multimedia webserial following those within a research station. Once dedicated to the study and containment of a newly discovered life form, complications arise following its unexpected merge with the station's AI. TRANSMISSION 001 - In which you survive the unthinkable, and the world is worse for it.

General warnings can be found in the 'About' section. Any videos will have flashing warnings if applicable.

additional rambling under the cut

wow!!! it's been (checks archive) almost exactly a year since i originally conceptualized Link Rot, and since then it's grown into a beast of a story i cannot wait to tackle.

currently i'm aiming for updates once every month/month and a half (with occasional vacations to work on bite-sized projects). i'd like to do more, but i have a job and don't want to burn myself out. for now, i will take things slow B) maybe this will change in the future!

i hope you all enjoy reading my story as much as i enjoy creating it. there's a couple of hidden things on the website, so if you find anything fun let me know

and lastly,

take this

[reachartwork]

Samantha "Sam" Small is Philadelphia's own Bloodhound, a 16 year old girl trained by Philly's finest superheroes in the art of kicking asses, investigating crimes, and protecting lives. When she's not on the job, her interests include soccer, women, putting herself in mortal danger, shabbat dinner with her Pop-Pop in Ventnor, and trying desperately to avoid being expelled from high school.

Chum (ACT TWO) is a slice-of-life/action web serial, currently around 1,500,000 words. It has been described as "good enough to spend hours organizing info on it", a "beautiful coming of age story", and "a superhero story to rival Worm".

Intimidated by the vast, horrendous wordcount? I've got great news for you. We just finished Act I (aka the prologue) and available for your consumption is a comprehensive recap that squishes all those pages into a tight 6000-word chapter. If you want to catch right up and hop into the story, now's the best time, besides every other time.

Go read it on Royal Road or Wordpress and consider joining the Chumcord!

[open-sketchbook]

Team Butterfly Forever! (WIP Web Novel)

Okay, now that I'm three chapters into writing it and I've got momentum behind me, I want to properly pitch my WIP writing project to people.

Team Butterfly Forever is a post-magical girl story. In 2004, a young girl named Eve got a magical necklace from a talking cat, transformed into the magnificent Butterfly Ward, met friends like her, fought evil, and defended San Francisco from the sinister Dark Queen. Evil defeated, city saved, happily ever after.

Now it's 2014, and Eve needs to get the Butterfly Knights back together. The only problem is, they're in absolutely no state; it turns out that having to fight evil when you're 14 makes for messed up 24 year olds. Eve will need every scrap of the power of love and (adult) friendship the save the world, and more importantly, save her friends. So cards on the table? This isn't actually Sailor Moon fanfiction, but it's not not Sailor Moon fanfiction. It is very much wearing its inspiration on its sleeve, and the serial numbers have been filed off primarily because I'm looking to do crimes with it.

I'll be up front; it starts in a pretty dark place. This is very much a story about growing up with trauma and what that does to you. But it's also a comedy, a story about healing, and in the finest tradition of magical girls, a story about pressing on anyway because your friends need you.

Also... every single character is queer. So there's that.

I'm currently writing it as fast as I can; there's no set update schedule, but I posted the first segment a month ago and I'm about 1/4th of the way through my projected length. The story has been fully planned ahead of time, so it won't get hung up on where to go next; I'm hoping to have it done around April, but if you start following now you'll be able to see it take shape and speculate along with other readers.

It is being posted on the Sufficient Velocity, an old-school, moderated forum for lovers of sci-fi, fanfic, and interactive fiction. It's a very queer friendly space, and I highly encourage you to check it out. It'll be exclusive there until I have a final print version; I want to add to this community I love instead of spreading this story out across many isolated spaces, and see discussion about it as it happens. You can also follow the story there to be alerted to updates, and there's tons of other fiction being written on the forum all the time!

If you want to see my other work, my forum signature has interactive and traditional fiction I've posted on the site going back to 2017, including first drafts of my previous novels Whispers from the Deep and Lieutenant Fusilier in the Farthest Reaches.

I hope you enjoy!

[fyeahwebnovels]

i have created a webfiction fandom community!

hello all, i have thrown my hat in the tumblr communities open beta ring and created a community for fans (and authors) of web serials, webnovels, and generally any serially published web prose/prose-centric mixed media.

as i said, authors are welcome to join as well, but with caveats: please do not advertise any pay-to-read webfiction in the community, and please do not fight with fans over your work or insert yourself into fan conversations as an authority. basically just keep appropriate artist-fandom boundaries if you're an author, thank you.

the communities beta is still in its earliest stages and not super functional, so you'll need to send me an ask or a DM, or ask in the replies of this post, to join. i have to send out invites manually, but i will approve everyone unless your blog is outright, like, a nazi or terf blog or something. you can also DM my main @valentinedagger if contacting this blog doesn't work (i've had problems with DMs on sideblogs in the past).

[valentinedagger]

book 1 cover art by @staarcaake

Stardust is a queer, semi-experimental web serial that blends space opera, gothic horror, and dystopia into a color-coded mess of neuroses, hallucinations, teen angst, fucked up family relationships, Judaism, gun kinks, political assassinations, extradimensional tentacles, and bad sex. as of May 2024, we're exactly halfway through book 1, and it's a great time to get caught up!

it updates the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month, and you can read it for free here. readers have suggested you might like it if you're a fan of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Homestuck, Battlestar Galactica (2003), The Locked Tomb, Fortiche's Arcane, Starship Troopers, and/or the music of Ada Rook. readers have also referred to it as "tired middle-aged man yaoi," "yuri shonen," and said they "want to chew on July like a squeaky toy."

[elvensemi]

Hey guys hello guess who has a website now.

On ElvenSemi.com you can read all of my webnovels, most of my short stories, and soon, a large portion of my fanfiction!

A lot of things, including all fanfiction, forever are free to the public. This includes, for the first time, the first handful of chapters (about 10k words) of each of my webnovels. There's also summaries and beautiful art! Poke around!

Subscriptions to paid material are still being done through Patreon, just click the orange "log on through patreon" button when you go to log in.

[hypertextdog]

the process of elimination (tpoe)

hi! this is my interactive web fiction project, tpoe ↴

it features six endings, a robust original soundtrack (by myself), and a number of artworks, including the banners visible above and the tpoe ost's album cover, by @notwerewolf. other information (including many content warnings) can be found on my homepage. if interested in checking tpoe out, join the elimi nation discord!

it's an exploration of isolation, control, surveillance, and early 2020's-era internet culture. you play as harry arsigne, a 14-year-old cat artist living ~alone with his overbearing father, scott, in a decommissioned lighthouse in the shoreline town of conder, connecticut. making choices through personality test responses, you'll balance your two hobbies: exchanging personal histories with and seeking questionable guidance from the set of five eccentric criminals scott keeps in his d.i.y. prison cell in the lighthouse basement, and using his surveillance software to monitor the online activity of one wren wayer*, a rather pretentious local high school sophomore and twice attempted gamedev with whom you have an at times overwhelming obsession.

* that says "wren wayer" sorry dark mode users

put short, it's a lot of fun and the product of a lot of work. it's my story-that-you-think-about-all-the-time of six or seven years as a finished product. tpoe is my first ever project of this scale, and if you think you'd be interested in playing (link in header of this post) and maybe spreading the word, i would appreciate it greatly Σ:)!!

[personalmoshiakh]

hey, so— i’ve been ~officially writing a web serial since 2021 (unofficially, since at least 2014). Updates are currently very irregular, but i’m definitely still working on it!

✨🧿 THE BITTER DROP 🧿✨

modern fantasy romance about gay/trans Eastern Bloc Jews, set in a secondary world counterpart of early Soviet communes

The lounge is nearly empty tonight; all the action is downstairs at the grinding workshop — in the basement discotheque; you if I’m to have any hope of pulling, that’s where I ought to go but … ekh, I’m foggy tonight, between the psychosis and the laudanum for the pain what likes to haunt nefilim and the horse pills they made me take at the Mamka — nu okay, I skipped tonight’s dose so I can drink but like, neuroleptics don’t let go that quick — and as the brainfog settles on my thoughts, it turns to hoarfrost and my will seizes up like a rusty hinge.

Lev/Lyubov Morgenshtern, a queeny bigender flamer who’d once been one of the Pale’s youngest-ever ordained rabbonim, has just returned to the Talons Ghetto sovyet — an autonomous workers-and-peasants commune of the kind that directly preceded the Soviet Union (and indeed the thing that the USSR named itself after).

Lev is fresh off a stint on a psych ward that’d followed a far longer stint living in the tzarist-held half of Svet Dmitrin with a bougie respectability-obsessed ex-boyfriend — he’s got nowhere to sleep, no assurance her old friends, Red Guard and civilian both, would want to see them and the only workable plan she’s got is to find someone willing and soft-hearted to take him home for the night …

… and what luck if their rescuer, a medical necromancer by the name of Anzu Menelikov (Nyura to friends and lovers) is a beautiful trans flamer from a prominent rabbinical family! who better to welcome Lyubov home than a fellow hothouse flower and dedicated scholar? and does it matter if Nyura did anything the White Guard might still bear a grudge about? after all, most of the old Ghetto walls are still safely intact, and it’s not like Reb Doktor Menelikov personally set the Winter Palace on fire, right?

i’d say if you liked the Baru Cormorant series, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Gentlemen of the Road, Fallen London and its associated games, China Miéville’s oeuvre, and Disco Elysium, this’d probably be your thing!

content warnings

(under the cut)

reclaimed homophobic slurs

the narrator has a history of psychiatric institutionalisation

homophobia, transphobia, transmisogyny and antisemitism are environmental hazards in the setting, though by far not the focus

[deathkoala]

I love when things take advantage of unique features of their medium!

[julirites]

here's a link to London, my fic! I'll post here every time it updates but since i just made a tumblr i thought i'd post it now too - it's currently at about 80k words. it's original character madoka fanfic and wait come back

[weaselandfriends]

Web Fiction, Recently Read

Hello! I'm still early into writing the Pokémon story I discussed in a previous post. I've been writing and rewriting certain parts to better grasp some of the characters, so while I do have some completed chapters, I still consider the story in the planning phase. At the same time, I've recently read a few webfics, and thought I'd share some thoughts here.

1. Floornight by Nostalgebraist

Floornight is short but dense, and in terms of its plot, themes, and focus shares many similarities with Almost Nowhere, a later work by the same author that I read and discussed in a previous post.

This work is the Problem Sleuth to Almost Nowhere's Homestuck. At least, reading the two works back-to-back, that was the impression I struggled to shake. I would often encounter an idea in Floornight that I remembered being expanded on in much more detail in Almost Nowhere, and as such it became difficult for me to appreciate Floornight in its own right.

It's a comparison that reminds me of a quote from Roberto Bolaño's 2666:

Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.

An unfair comparison? Certainly. Especially since longer works are not always commensurately ambitious, but instead simply bloated.

Almost Nowhere is ambitious, however, and pushes ideas touched on in Floornight to their limits, which makes reading Floornight afterward a less impressive experience than it otherwise might be. (Nostalgebraist's other work, The Northern Caves, is fundamentally dissimilar from both and thus not victim to the same comparisons.)

That's not to say I disliked Floornight. I was especially fond of the character Hermes Cept, who might be my favorite character in Nostalgebraist's canon. I love characters to whom the reader is introduced from the perspective of another character, giving the reader a certain first impression that is completely decimated when the character is given their own perspective later on. (A lot of Modern Cannibals hinges on this technique.) In Cept's case, what first appears to be an egotistical and incompetent celebrity scientist turns out to have significantly more depth and nuance than the first impression provides. Love it!

Nostalgebraist also shows off some serious writing chops during a certain battle scene near the story's climax. Another reader's longform review of Almost Nowhere comments that the story lets all its major events occur off screen, only to be known to the reader via the reactions of the characters, and to an extent Floornight is similar: Despite a Neon Genesis Evangelion-esque premise of soldiers fighting aliens, there are essentially zero scenes where soldiers fight aliens on screen. The climax changes that, though, and really makes me wonder why Nostalgebraist is so content to let things happen off screen, since he's so good at writing action when it happens.

I've now read all three of Nost's major published works, and there isn't a more exciting web fiction author today, at least that I know of. Can't wait to see where he goes next.

2. Worth the Candle by Alexander Wales

Floornight is a lean 70,000 words. Worth the Candle, an isekai LitRPG, is 1.6 million words.

I started reading this one years ago, but only made it to the second arc before giving up under the sheer immensity of it. The start was slow, and while it was improving steadily, I couldn't see myself wading through something of its size. Compared to Nostalgebraist, Wales' prose is more "serviceable" than exciting, so the value in reading is almost entirely from the plot, characters, and themes rather than the actual line-by-line reading experience. After finishing my own isekai story, Cleveland Quixotic, I decided to take a second stab at it.

Upon the reread, I was more amenable to a story that is simply a fun fantasy romp, and WtC has a strong sense of forward progression despite its length, which avoids the trap most long stories fall into of spinning their wheels without accomplishing anything.

As I got further into it, however, a strong metafictional element increasingly came into play. The conceit of the story is that the protagonist, a tabletop RPG fanatic in his previous life on Earth, has been put into a world eerily similar to the ones he created as a dungeon master. His actions seem to be guided or obstructed by a mysterious, unseen dungeon master with godlike powers, and the story often becomes more about trying to understand and play to the narrative that the dungeon master wants rather than simply brute forcing through challenges one after another.

At the same time, the protagonist's dead friend from Earth seems to have been transported to the world much earlier. Their narrative was Campbellian in nature, Hero's Journey incarnate, while the protagonist's is much more postmodern and subversive. This leads to some fascinating meditations on the develop of narrative over history; one of my favorite scenes is when a story-obsessed villain believes they can kill the protagonist despite his Chosen One status because it's a postmodern story and the protagonist dying unceremoniously wouldn't be out of place.

My absolute favorite part, however, is the climax. Without spoiling too much, it involves a long delve into a seemingly endless dungeon, where characters and abilities fall away one-by-one until what is left is only a bare, emotional finale. I love climaxes that involve some kind of literal and emotional ascent; I did something similar in Modern Cannibals and Cleveland Quixotic.

In general, it's difficult to finish something so long in such a satisfactory way, which only makes the ending more impressive. I was worried this story would Muv-Luv me. A year ago, I read the famous visual novel Muv-Luv, a sprawling work that begins as a comedy slice of life and ends as a futuristic science fiction war epic. My problem with Muv-Luv wasn't that it was bad; it even had many elements I adored. But its ending, while not terrible, was merely okay, and I ultimately felt like what I got wasn't worth the time investment I put into it. Worth the Candle's ending avoided that entirely, so I can wholeheartedly recommend it despite its length.

3. Cowboy Grak 5: Yet Another Fistful of Obols by Remy (gazemaize)

Lastly, this one is a fanfic of Worth the Candle, posted coincidentally one day after I finished reading. It's by Remy, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation, one of the funniest stories I've ever read. With this fanfic of a webfic, Remy cements themselves as the comedy master of the webfic sphere. I can only hope they start posting stories with more regularity...

I can't say too much about this story without spoiling almost all of Worth the Candle, so I'll keep this brief. If you've already read WtC, then you should read this 100%.

Web fiction is exciting. People are able to write all kinds of insane stuff that would never survive the streamlined mainstream publishing industry of today. I hope to read some more unique webfics and see people continually push the boundaries of what can be done with a story. (Hopefully they're not all 1.6 million words though...)

[antics-pedantic]

WEB FICTION! GETCHER WEB FICTION & WHATNOT HERE!

Presenting @antics-pedantic! Home of ongoing tales and one-shots alike, across offbeat genres and characters!

Regale yourself with all sorts of stories, including but not limited to:

Action-Adventure / Mystery / Suspense!

Comedy [ Zany, Dry, Soggy, Bewildering!]

Larger-Than-Life Thrill & Down-To-Earth Chill!

ABOUT | ASK | STORIES

[open-sketchbook]

I've decided fuck it, I'm writing a magical girl story.

[argusthecat]

I’m realizing one of my favorite small scenes to write is a character asking, completely honestly, if their friends or allies have the capability to do something absurd. What do you mean you don’t have some kind of pyrokinesis? What are you talking about we can’t just hack the bank’s servers? Since when do we not have the ability to get into orbit?

It’s a failing of trust, but in the reverse of the normal direction. Someone has trusted their closest friends, for years, to be able to throw lightning if they really needed to. And now they are finding out they maybe should have trusted a little less, and asked a little earlier.

[kelseyjunemartin]

My prehistoric fantasy web novel is available on Royal Road.

Follow Yuliko and the other young members of her clan as they journey in search of a worthy tribute for the great volcano spirit.

[sparrow-flight]

Story 6: The Ugly Duckling

Once upon a time, there was a mother duck who lived on a farm. She sat on her eggs in her nest all day long. It was lonely, but she must keep her eggs warm until they hatch. Many days later, one yellow duckling finally hatched out! Then another yellow duckling, and then another one again. One by one, all the eggs began to crack. Soon, the mother duck was surrounded by fluffy yellow ducklings. She quacked with joy. Finally, all her babies were here! She counted them before their first swim — one, two, three, four, five, six… Oh no! One large egg was still in the nest. It needed more time and care. So the mother duck sat back down in her nest to keep it warm and safe.

8 January 2007 Winnipeg, Canada

A dark night. A loud night. The landline phone rang and Elmira Golubev picked it up.

“Hello? How can I help you?”

“Эльмира. Эльмира!’

Ingush. She complied with no hesitation. “What’s wrong?”

"The children. Please. Please take care of them."

"Slow down. What's wrong?"

"They're coming. I can't explain now. Please, Elmira. My children. They’re all I have left in life."

"Okay, okay," Elmira stood. She knew the man was not one to talk, and never one to call. "Address?"

The man gutted it out. Elmira plucked a pen from a cup and scrawled his words onto paper.

“I’m going there now,” she said. “Are you—”

Click

—

The next day, the large egg started to crack. Out stepped a duckling much, much larger than all the other ducklings. He was not yellow, but dark-grey instead. His beak was black and he walked with a funny wobble. The yellow ducklings pointed and quacked at him. What is that? He cannot be one of us! I have never seen such an ugly duckling! The mother duck scolded the yellow ducklings. Be nice to your brother! So the other ducklings stopped. But when she was gone, they continued pointing and quacking at the Ugly Duckling. You are ugly! You cannot play with us. You walk weird! You cannot keep up with us. One day, one of the yellow ducklings yelled at the Ugly Duckling. You are hideous to look at! Go away! We don’t like you! The yellow ducklings chased the Ugly Duckling, and the Ugly Duckling ran far, far away.

25 February 2010

No one knew if Gavrill Vorobyev was guilty or innocent of “The Walmart Incident". Not the attorneys with irrefutable evidence that he was in two places at once, not the witnesses called to share their contradictory testimonies, and not the press who fed the public with conspiracies. So, Gavrill’s trial ended inconclusively. The judge ruled that the police were to continue their investigation. And for as long as their investigation was unsolved, Gavrill was to be imprisoned over a thousand kilometers away, in Edmonton Institution.

That was three years ago. Elmira had since kept his children under her care in Children’s Hope Foundation, the local orphanage she worked at. Gavrill didn’t want his children to be fostered or adopted, so Elmira kept a constant eye on them instead. She could afford it — if she wasn’t asleep, she was at the orphanage. Sometimes, she was on the administration team. Sometimes, she was a counsellor for the children. Sometimes, she was a tutor. And sometimes, she was a caretaker, like when five-year-old Hygd Vorobyev refused to touch her workbook.

“I don’t want to learn Ingush,” Hygd declared one day, in English.

Hygd and her older siblings, Hrodwyn and Merethel, were in Elmira’s office. Its size allowed the room to be transformed into a small classroom. They were here for their daily Ingush lesson Elmira promised their father.

“Why don’t you?” Elmira replied in Ingush. “I thought you liked learning Ingush. Look, your siblings are doing the same, too.”

“I don’t want to,” Hygd shook her head.

Elmira glanced down at the photocopy of an Ingush textbook. She had modified it to fit her curriculum. Next to it was the Ingush workbook she wrote herself.

She took in a deep breath. “Hygd, it’s Ingush class, so you’re learning Ingush.”

“Why do I need—”

“If you keep speaking English, that means you need to learn more Ingush!”

Hygd frowns. “I want to learn English instead!”

“But your English is perfectly fine. You use it all the time in school!”

“I talk to you and my siblings in Ingush more than I talk to my friends in English. It’s seven days of Ingush and only five days of English. If you don’t teach me, I’ll get worse!”

“If you want to learn English so badly, fine. I can teach it to you. But now, you learn Ingush. Learning Ingush will not make your English worse.”

“No. I don’t want to learn Ingush anymore.”

Elmira furrowed her brows. “If you stop learning Ingush, how can you talk to your father, hm?”

Hygd’s voice quietened. She looked away. “I don’t want to.”

There it was. Elmira’s face softened. She put a gentle hand on Hygd’s back. “Hygd, what happened? Did your friends at school talk about your father again?”

Hygd said nothing at first, but her silence was broken by a quivering lip and a scrunched nose. She nodded, and wet words bubbled out of her mouth. “Cassey is having a birthday party, but her mom doesn’t want me to go. Cassey said it’s because daa’s not a good person. Auntie Elmira, am I not a good person, too?”

Elmira brushed Hygd’s orange hair back. “Oh, Hygd… you are a good person. You are the kindest, sweetest little girl. Your father is a good person, as well.”

“Then why wasn’t I invited?”

“Because Cassey’s mom was wrong. Grown-ups make mistakes all the time, Hygd.”

“Then what about daa?”

Elmira pursed her lips. “Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, but that doesn’t make them bad. Do you believe your father is a good person?”

Hygd nodded.

“Do you believe it with all your heart?”

Hygd sniffled and nodded even harder.

“Then that’s what really matters. Okay, Hygd?”

Hygd nodded again. “But I still don’t want to learn Ingush. I don’t want to be like vosha and jisha-vosha.”

“What’s wrong with Merethel and Hrodwyn?”

“No one wants to talk to vosha because he’s not good at English. Jisha-vosha doesn’t want to talk to other people, and now they don’t have friends.”

Elmira thought for a moment. She offered a smile. “Hygd, do you want to see photos of your father and mother in Ingushetia?”

Hygd’s eyes lit up. “Yes, please!”

Elmira smiled. “I will show them after class. You can ask your father about them when we visit him, but you can only do that if you learn Ingush!”

“Mm… okay. Then I want to learn!”

Elmira taught Hygd the language of her family. After that, she took Gavrill’s photo album from the storage room and showed Hygd the memories of her family.

—

A storm began. The Ugly Duckling tried to look for a warm place. He went to a barn, and he went to a house. But no matter where he went, everyone laughed at him. The Ugly Duckling hid inside a bush, cold and wet and alone.

“Hygd? Hygd?! Have you seen Hygd? Do you know where she is?”

It was nighttime. Elmira pushed her way through the sea of children being ushered to sleep. She went from room to room, asking the orphanage staff and the children they tucked into bunk-beds, if they had seen the orange-haired girl. No one had — not her siblings nor her friends. When the orphanage grew quiet with sleep, the orphanage staff joined Elmira’s search. The other staff fanned out through the building, while Elmira checked every room Hygd visited and was last seen at.

"Hygd? Oh, where did that girl go?"

A streak of light caught Elmira’s attention. The door to the storage room was cracked open. Elmira frowned. She sighed and pushed the door. Of course Hygd would be here. As expected, a large suitcase was opened. Spilled open beside it was a thick, old photo album. Curled up near it was Hygd, fast asleep.

Elmira opened her mouth to scold the girl, until she noticed Hygd clutching a photograph to her chest. Slowly, Elmira bunched up her skirt and knelt next to Hygd. She reached and gently opened Hygd’s hand, upturning the photograph.

When the storm ended, the Ugly Duckling found an empty lake. He looked in the water and saw a reflection from above. A flock of large birds flew over him gracefully. Their bodies were pure white and slender. They were the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He kept watching them until the last white bird disappeared. Oh, how he wished to join them! But he was too young and could not fly. And he was too ugly. The beautiful, white birds would never want to fly with an ugly bird.

Elmira looked at the old photograph. Hrodwyn was at the front, beaming. Next to them, Merethel shyly smiled. Their mother — Elmira’s best friend — sat in a chair next to the two children. Her bright smile was unrivalled by her blazing hair of fire. The infant she cradled, Hygd, shared her hair. Behind them, Gavrill stood tall and proud. His toothy grin matched Hrodwyn’s. In each arm, he carried a child — one boy, one girl, both brunettes and both with the same face.

Elmira looked back at Hygd. She sighed, then tapped Hygd’s shoulder.

“...Mm?” Hygd rolled her head.

"Hygd Vorobyev, you should not be here. Come now. Put the photo back where you found it, give me the room key, and go to bed."

The little girl rubbed her eyes and looked at the photograph. Her head drooped. "Sorry..."

“For what?”

“For taking your keys without asking you…”

Elmira’s expression remained stern, but her voice softened. "If you want to look at the photos again, simply ask me. There is no need to be sneaky, yes? You are old enough to ask questions, and I will always let you see photos of your family."

The little girl nodded, her eyes still heavy with sleep. "Okay..."

—

Winter came. The Ugly Duckling had no home. A farmer found him freezing in the cold. Poor thing! So the farmer carried the Ugly Duckling into his house. The Ugly Duckling was glad for the warm fire. But the farmer's children were loud and noisy. Look, a duckling! Let's play with it! Let's chase it around! The poor Ugly Duckling was scared. He ran away from the house into the cold. The Ugly Duckling was alone again. He wobbled on a frozen lake to a cave. It was a place for him to hide, and it would not be as cold inside there. For the rest of the cold winter, the Ugly Duckling stayed there. Oh, how he missed his mother! He hoped she would find him one day.

13 February 2017. Afternoon.

No one knew where Gavrill Vorobyev went. All his children knew was that he was called to work. He packed his bags, changed into his uniform, and hugged the children farewell. Ten minutes later, he was gone.

That was nineteen hours ago. Silence followed his departure among his children. And silence continues to follow twelve-year-old Hygd into her school day. She didn’t talk to her classmates. She didn’t sit with her friends during lunch and recess. She stayed in her homeroom to sit in a corner and draw instead. This is what her homeroom teacher tells Hrodwyn, who dropped their work shift to pick up their younger siblings from school.

"Hygd is, you know, a very bright girl,” her homeroom teacher says, clutching her arms against the frigid cold. “She's very cheerful, she gets along with her classmates very well, and is very talkative. But today… I know she has bad days, but it doesn’t make her withdrawn for the entire day.”

Despite the effort to keep the conversation out of earshot, Hygd hears it all, even through her earmuffs. She hears Hrodwyn mumble something about adjusting to family matters, then hears her homeroom teacher ask if her father will come to school events and meetings. Hrodwyn says he will, and that they’ll translate for him.

Hygd can hear her homeroom teacher force a smile. “I look forward to seeing him.”

The walk from school to home takes a bit over the usual twenty minutes, thanks to unshovelled snow and frozen pavements. Hrodwyn breaks the silence in Ingush. “Hygd, how are you feeling?”

Hygd kicks blue road salt. “I’m fine…”

Hrodwyn takes her gloved hand and squeezes it. “Don’t worry about daa. He’ll be fine.”

Merethel, who has been walking with his hands in his pockets, plucks his earphone out of his ear. “Yeah, he’ll be fine. It’s not the first time he has done something like this.”

“It’s not?” Hygd looks up.

“Mmhm,” Hrodwyn nods. “He used to be in a rebel army in Ingushetia. I think that’s why he was hired in the first place”

“Really?”

“Mmhm,” Hrodwyn nods again. “I don’t remember a lot of it, but I remember that when we were still living there, he sometimes left home to fight. That’s what naana said, at least. So I’m sure daa will be safe.”

A dry scoff from Merethel. “I wasn’t thinking about that, but okay.”

Hrodwyn tilts their head. “Then what were you thinking of?”

“Daa leaving,” Merethel’s hands slip back into his pockets. “It used to happen all the time when we first moved to Canada. We barely saw him. He’d be gone before we went to bed. He’d tell you to put us into bed.”

“That’s because he had to work, Merethel. He had two jobs.”

“I know! I’m just saying,” Merethel smiles, his tone light and innocent.

Hygd’s gaze lowers. “I don’t remember that.”

“Of course you don’t,” Merethel says. “You were, like, three. That’s why I’m telling you now. He’d leave at night and come back when we were asleep. Then we’d have to wake up super early because he had to wake up super early for his job, too. He’d drop us off at school, pick us up later, stay for a while, and then disappear at night again.”

Hygd straightens up. “What’s wrong with that? Daa was just working really hard.”

“I never said there was anything wrong with that. The real problem isn’t him leaving or him dying. The real problem is when he comes home. Don’t tell me you forgot what he was like, jisha-vosha,” he looks at Hrodwyn. “If he came home from a regular job like that, what will he be like when he comes home from this job?”

Hygd furrows her brows. “What are you talking about?”

Merethel looks down at her. “Daa was scary, Hygd.”

“No he wasn’t. He was never scary!”

“Oh, yeah? What do you remember about him before he came back from prison, huh?”

Hygd presses her lips tight together. She thinks about the photographs in the album. “He was nice…”

“Ha! You don’t remember what he was really like! That’s fine, obviously. You were too young — lucky for you. Frankly, I’m surprised that he came back from prison all fine and friendly, but let’s give him a few months on this job and see how he turns out, shall we?”

“Merethel!” Hrodwyn glares at him. “If you’re as smart as your mouth, you know you’re being unfair to daa right now.”

“I’m not making up anything, am I?” Merethel raises his hands. “I’m just pointing out what has happened before. It’s for Hygd’s sake, so she won’t be so disappointed.”

Hygd’s nose scrunches. “Well, I don’t believe you. Daa is a good person! He even got you eyeliner! You’re just stupid!”

“No, you’re stupid! You’re the one believing things without any facts-OW! What the hell?!”

Hygd punches Merethel’s arm. Before Hrodwyn can say anything, she grabs her backpack’s straps and races down the street, clambering through snow.

—

Spring came, and summer passed. The Ugly Duckling struggled to live. He did not only struggle with surviving the harsh winter, but he also struggled with being alone. Oh, how lonesome loneliness was! How lonesome it was to be ugly and unloved! When the leaves started to change colours again, the Ugly Duckling heard strong wings flapping. The beautiful, white birds have returned. Seeing them reminded him of how ugly and lonely he was. He could not bear to live with that anymore. He leaves the cave and throws himself at the beautiful birds, even though he knows they will hate him. It is better to be killed by such beautiful birds than to live a life of ugliness!

By the time Hrodwyn and Merethel arrive home, Hgyd’s boots are in the boot tray, her coat is hanging by the front door, and she herself is curled up in her bed, facing the wall, with a small owl plush to her chest — the plush she swears she remembers her father giving to her in Canada. 

Swathed in her blanket, she listens to Hrodwyn scold Merethel from the living room. Merethel eventually sighs and opens the bedroom door.

“Hygd? I’m sorry…”

Hygd stays still and says nothing.

Another sigh, but not one of frustration. “I mean it, Hygd. I’m sorry. That was unfair and mean of me to say to you.”

“...I’m sorry for calling you stupid, too.”

She hears Merethel step closer. “It’s fine. I deserved that. But don’t make it a habit.”

A hint of a smile grows on Hygd’s lips. She forces it away. “You should say sorry to daa, too. He doesn’t deserve what you said.”

“Well, he isn’t here, is he?”

“That’s besides the point!” Hygd finally moves. She sits up to frown at Merethel from her upper bunk. “It’s still mean.”

Merethel opens his mouth, then changes his mind. “Okay, whatever. Believe what you want, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Hygd shrinks beneath her blanket. She curls back up in her bed. 

“...Jisha-vosha’s  going to order pizza for dinner, by the way,” Merethel starts. “What do you want? Cheese pizza, as usual?”

“Yeah, sure. Thanks,” Hygd mumbles.

Merethel leaves. Hrodwyn enters to check in on Hygd afterwards. They comfort her to the best of their abilities with their strong face and gentle words. But Hygd knows that there’s only one thing that can comfort her now.

When Hrodwyn leaves the bedroom, when the background noise of TV chatter begins, Hygd slips out to go into the adjacent bedroom — her father’s room. Standing by a wall is the same, familiar suitcase. She lowers it, opens it, and sits on the floor across it. The suitcase is mostly empty — most of its possessions have been moved to dressers and shelves. But what she hoped to find remains in the suitcase’s hollow shell: the family photo album, sitting dejected amid dark and dust.

Album in hand, she returns to her bedroom as silently as she left it. She climbs into her bed, nestles herself into her cove of pillows and blankets, and opens the album.

Hygd has long memorised the order of photographs in this album, but she still finds comfort in its predictability and its familiar faces. First, there are photographs of domed buildings, street markets, and green parks. These backdrops eventually feature people: there’s daa, there’s Auntie Elmira, and there’s Her. Next are photographs of her much-younger father. They are all candid, except for the one of him lying in bed with a thick book in hand. He looks straight at the camera, extremely bored.

Hygd grins. It’s one of her favourite pictures of her father, and it’s one of her earliest memories of him — his gentle smile when Hygd showed him the photograph, his soft laugh as he told the story behind it. And the warmth he exuded only shone brighter when Hygd showed him photographs from the album’s next section.

Instead of chasing him, the white birds welcomed and accepted him. What a surprise! How could this be?

Hygd’s eyes always linger on this section. It contains multiple photographs of a figure with Hygd’s orange hair and Hygd’s large eyes. In one photograph, She writes at a desk. In another, She’s curled up with a book. Hygd’s favourite is one where She looks straight at Hygd and blows a kiss at her.

The Ugly Duckling looked at his reflection in the water. His reflection looked like one of the beautiful white birds. Why was this white bird so close to him? He jumped back. The reflection jumped back, too. He stretched his neck, and the reflection of the white bird stretched its long neck, too.

Hygd carefully traces Her face. She wonders if she will sound like Her.

She continues going through the old photo album. There are more photographs of her father, Her, and the life they once lived. Hygd immerses herself in these pockets of time, imagining the sepia-tinted rooms making up the four walls she spent her days in, trying to steal the memories of the smiling faces that existed long before she did.

But the more she tries, the more she claws a hole in herself. There were still so many faces she didn’t know, so many names she was never told, even if they once shared her blood. But her older siblings and her father know them all. Jisha-vosha, vosha, daa: they all got to talk to these people and hug them and hold their hands. They know all about little things that made memories of these people come to life. Hygd doesn’t. She never will. Not if Hrodwyn keeps saying she’s too young to know some things about their family. Not if Merethel keeps telling things that she believes, with all her heart, are wrong.

But even if they do tell her everything one day, will she feel the same way as her family did in the photographs?

The beautiful white birds asked why the Ugly Duckling wasn't joining them. Stay with us, they said! Finally, the Ugly Duckling realised what happened. He was no longer a big, grey duckling who walked strangely. He had become a beautiful white bird. He had become a swan!

The last photograph in the album is the one Hygd looks at most. There are many family pictures in the album, but there is only one with Hygd. She was an infant, and she was sitting in Her lap. After that, nothing.

Hygd lies down. She closes the photo album. She hugs it, wraps her blanket around her tight, and imagines her family embracing her to sleep.

The Once-Ugly Duckling played with the beautiful swans. They swam together and ate together. He had never been so happy! Soon, the sky became cold and dark. It was time to leave. The flock flew to the sky, and the Once-Ugly Duckling spread his wings to join his new family. The End

---

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