#short form fiction

[eunuchmoder]

Girl who is imperceptible, uncanny, strange.

Her face disappears when you look at it, distorting into a blur of unfamiliar memories. Her motions make no sense, moving in directions you can't name. She speaks in words you maybe understand, possibly. You think you do, at least.

When you are with her, the frenzied blur of sex and body fluid says all that you both need to hear. but every moment prior and afterwards, she becomes that foggy humanoid presence that you can't parse even if your life depended on it.

She weaves her way into your mind; you remember why you were drawn to her (or why she was drawn to you), but you can't fetch the memory even if you tried. You have a vague memory of her smiling, or laughing, or making intoxicating sounds when your skin connected, and you know it was something you did that invoked this reaction. When you try to recall what you did, though, all you can see in your mind's eye is noise and turbulence.

See, humans are pattern seekers by evolutionary design, so every time you perform an action to her, you add the accompanying reaction to your mental map of her. But the pages of said map are soaked in coffee and bile, tearing to shreds each time you put your pen to it. You try to read it back, tracing your fingers across the same routes and landmarks, but you end in a different location every time, even if all variables are accounted for. Every attempt at navigating her unearthly self is futile and not without a massive margin of error.

Moments of clarity shine through, though, during sex – oases of respite in a desert of unfamiliarity. You see her face, smiling and contorting in pleasure. You feel her heart rate increase in direct correlation. Her hair is unusually soft – you aren't sure if you want to pull it and hear her whine and grunt, or if you want to run your fingers through it gently to really commit that physical sensation to memory. Her eyes, so emotive, speak grand poems in conjunction with her eyelids. You can hear her voice telling you to "keep going," pleading you to continue "just like that," and begging to reach climax. Through the overwhelming storm that is the connection of your flesh (you can feel her flesh for the first time in a while), you can enumerate every single vibration of her vocal cords and what it all means. It's understandable and crystal clear, even if for just an hour or two.

Afterwards, she silently retreats back into the glamer, obscuring every facet of her being and her influence once more.

You ask how it felt.

She replies ████████████, in a voice that is not just flat and devoid of emotion, but somehow entirely lacks tone to begin with.

You ask her if she needs a glass of water or a towel, maybe a shower. She gently coos at you, with a raspy emotion that feels like grit and silk, ◌̶̹̿⃤̶̰̌◷̴̲̒◌̴̞̇⃟̷̫̋

Once again, you can't scrutinise what she's saying anymore. She becomes a formless mass without weight or gravity. Did you do it right? Is she comfortable? Are you impeding on her presence by sharing the same blanket? The infinite questions burn a hole in your chest like white-hot coals placed onto a slab of ice.

There's an allure to her, of course, and you remember it clearly.

But the glamer begins to alter your own memory.

When she came into your life, did you read her face right? Did she even have a face to read? Did you remember that night clearly? Do you remember it at all?

Her otherworldly influence jabs at you, taunting you.

Or maybe it's just you taunting yourself.

It's impossible to tell. She melts your memory, synapse by synapse. You genuinely cannot remember anything about her without it being laid under a dense veneer of suspicion.

Most frustratingly of all, she gets along great with every other one of those formless, nameless humanoid presences that you know... Though you can't remember if those other "people" you see were always like this—like her—or if she's tainted your psyche to the point that everyone becomes unreadable.

Your own face is the only thing you're sure of anymore. But even still, you begin to worry if the expressions you consciously assume are the ones that the formless presences around you are expecting you to make in response to their dim gurgling and sweaty blinks. It's torture. You begin to move your focus from them to yourself. You manually emote so that you don't accidentally smile when you should frown. You watch every syllable that collapses over your lips to make sure they don't misconstrue your joy for entitlement. It's all in vain, though, because you never get a chance to verify if this output is correct. She stares at every part of you at once with an impossible number of eyes. You can't tell what the eyes say in return.

She is eldritch. She is dreamlike. She is unknowable, preternatural, and vague. The fact that you cannot understand a single aspect of her form is stressful.

But the sex was good. I wonder if she's free any time soon? Maybe I should just ask if she could use tone indicators next time.

[wolfawaycamp]

I am humbly requesting LauraMax fluff, maybe including an ever growing number of pets because they keep bringing home strays? Y'all know where to find me if you have any questions 😂

🐰 Someday, Max told himself, he’d learn to say no.

To say no to a pair of sad puppy dog eyes, whether they were Laura’s or those of an actual, literal puppy dog. And Laura didn’t do sad eyes often, that was the thing that really got him about it. It was always a sneak attack when Max’s headstrong, self-assured girlfriend pulled out the big, sad baby blues, batted her eyelashes at him, and actually said, “please?” It was unfair, really, because it worked every single time. It was just giving Max the illusion of choice when he inevitably gave in and let Laura have whatever it was that she wanted.

That was how, across multiple separate occasions, they’d ended up with their current menagerie. Max had known that cohabiting with a veterinary student would expose him to a number of critters, but he hadn’t expected it to turn out quite like this. Certainly, Max hadn’t expected to turn into some kind of creature himself the summer before Laura embarked on her graduate school studies, but with what they now jokingly called ‘Wolf Boy Summer’ squared away (they had to laugh, you see, to keep from crying), the creatures had at least been smaller and more manageable.

They’d moved to San Francisco with only a tiny cage with two tiny mice inside, for their tiny apartment. The mice, which Laura had liberated from a science lab she’d worked a few shifts at in undergrad, were champion puzzle-solvers and cheese-finders named Trillian and Cashew. Max didn’t even get consulted about these guys, given that Laura had lived in her own dorm at the time she’d acquired them, but she did let him name one, which is how Trillian ended up named after a character in The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Laura named Cashew Cashew because that was the flavor of nut milk she was testing that week. (Max thought Cashew was lucky the two mice hadn’t shown up during pea protein milk week.) Laura was “pretty sure” they were both female, until Cashew ended up pregnant and blessed them with baby mice Frankie, Benjy, Ford, Hazel(nut), Almond, Pecan, and Peanut. Max told her this bode poorly for her career in animal care, but Laura took it in stride, saying she’d have to spend more time studying sex differences in mice in the future. They got two larger enclosures and separated everyone out by sex, properly this time, and now Max has to turn the sound up on their white noise machine when he and Laura snuggle up in bed, or else he hears the Galaxy-Nut siblings running in their wheels all night long.

Then, Laura fell in love with a stray cat with a severely matted coat that had been hanging around their doorstep for days, and Max found his loyalty to his mouse family strained. Should they really bring a predator into their happy little home? But Laura was absolutely certain she could make it work, even in the limited space their apartment provided, and the cat really was pitiful-looking. So Max capitulated and the Kearney-Brinly household expanded to include ten mice and one cat.

The pathetic ginger cat, Westley, luckily, turned out to be utterly uninterested in the mice. He got his name because he showed up for the final time on movie night and meowed pitifully through the first half of The Princess Bride (both Laura and Max’s favorite) until they brought him inside. Laura took him the next day to check for a microchip and, finding none, she had the matted orange furball completely shaved. In the middle of winter. And sure, it was a relatively mild San Francisco winter, but Max still thought Wes looked cold.

“I’ve already ordered him a sweater,” Laura said, “but I know you’ve been working on your knitting, maybe you can make him another?”

Max had scoffed at first. Then he’d taken a second look at his pitifully nude cat and stayed up late researching cat sweater patterns. Now Wes has an entire wardrobe of knitwear and Max, Laura, and Wes have matching Christmas sweaters for their Christmas card photos. Max drew Emma for the Hacketteer gift exchange, but he traded with Abi for Dylan and now he’s working on another set for Dylan, Ryan, and Schrödinger. (He knows Ryan will be especially delighted.)

Then it was Max’s turn. He found a large bedraggled dog of indeterminate breed tied to a stop sign in an abandoned parking lot and the dog let him know immediately that Max was his chosen father, riding home with his head in Max’s lap the entire way. Westley liked Laura best anyway, why shouldn’t Max have his own cuddle buddy (you know, other than Laura)? Laura agreed it was only fair, and now Inigo stretches out between them on movie night and he has to get his fill of both scritches and popcorn before he’ll allow them to cuddle with one another.

“Hon,” Max told Laura, who was sitting at her desk with Westley perched on her shoulder like a pirate’s parrot, “you know I love all our kids, but we really cannot have any more animals in this apartment. We might actually get evicted.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more, honey,” Laura replied, and Max had thought that would be the end of their animal acquisition. He could admit that was pretty naive of him.

The next day, Laura had a list of rental houses for them to visit a little further from the city. Sure, she’d have a longer commute to her classes, and Max would to his job, but wouldn’t it be worth it for the ‘kids’ to have more space? Max couldn’t exactly argue with that, so they moved into a two-bed, two-bath with a small fenced yard.

And that was where Max was, cutting up a salad for dinner, when there was a knock at the door. Max answered to find Laura on their doorstep holding the saddest-looking beagle Max had ever seen, her own face mimicking its hangdog expression perfectly. They were both whimpering. “She was released from the surgical program at school and needed a home, I said we’d take her on a trial basis but baaaabe, just look at this faaaace.”

He sighed, but couldn’t help smiling a little, both at the wriggling dog and at his girlfriend. Her big pretend sad eyes, her genuinely huge heart.

Someday Max would learn to say no. But today was not that day.

[stellanslashgeode]

Hell yeah! Writing short form really well is such a powerful skill. You have to get in, set a scene, destroy your audience, then get out. It's practically a heist.

a lot of fic rec lists focus heavily on long fics but here’s a shoutout to short fics they give so much snack-size joy i hate how writing short form is sometimes looked down upon it has its own challenges and deserves so much more respect and love because a well executed short fic can ruin your life in 20 minutes

[rhythmicreverie]

Once an Earthling, now a cosmic bard, I soared through galaxies far and wide, unraveling tales of alien encounters and interstellar travel. Unbeknownst, my hidden talent bloomed, transcending time and space, weaving verses that echoed across the cosmos. The universe was my muse, my voice, a celestial symphony in rich text and minimal formatting.

[microsff]

Treasure hunters

The derelict is enormous, a galaxy-class carrier ship from centuries ago. The captain brings it up on the holoscreen, our ship a tiny dot beside it.

"There are still people there," the client says. "Descendants of the surviving crew, fallen to barbarism."

"Why didn't they leave?" the captain asks.

"That ship carried fighters. Small and nimble, without hyperjump capability. In this system, there are no inhabited planets or stations. With the carrier's engines dead, they couldn't leave."

"And our target?"

"In the main hangar, they bury their kings under large mounds built from debris and fighter parts."

"And?"

"They bury them with treasure," the client says.

The captain frowns. "Like, things they have found in the ship? Do you know what kind of things? Maybe we could try to avoid the people there and look around for-"

"No!" The client shakes his head. "That's just stuff. But what's in the mounds, that's treasure!"

The captain nods. Can't argue with that logic.

[aftergloom]

The Ghastling Lamplight Nightscript

(I would love to add Shadows & Tall Trees and Shimmer, but both publications are now defunct. You can still get back issues, however. Have high hopes for the forthcoming Chthonic Matter from the editor of Nightscript as well.)

Amazon fucks everyone over again

some of you may recall Neil Clarke's blog post on the deluge of AI-generated spam that has hit Clarkesworld Magazine's submissions queue.

well, Clarkesworld and other short fiction magazines like it are about to get another swift kick in the dick: Amazon is discontinuing their magazine subscription service (and replacing it with a new service that pays creators much, much less). of the very little money made in the short fiction market, most of it was coming from Amazon.

as Clarke points out in his editorial on the subject, "While there are plenty of people happily reading, listening to, and writing short fiction, a very disappointingly small percentage of those same people are actively paying for it."

short fiction is not dead. the existence of subreddits like r/NoSleep and blogs like @writing-prompt-s proves that. if you value these stories and you want to help writers get paid for their work, please consider checking out (and subscribing to) some of the following publications:

Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Apex Magazine

Asimov's Science Fiction

Clarkesworld Magazine

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Fantasy Magazine

Nightmare Magazine

many of these publications charge less than $5 USD per month for subscriptions, so if you've just dropped Netflix and have an extra $10/month lying around, you can instead support two fiction magazines full of interesting, original, well-written stories.

(feel free to reblog with your own favorite publications!)

[fishofthewoods]

Oh my god I woke up this morning and my Stardew Valley meta post had almost 150 notes????? Hello?????????? Anyways I started writing this last night because @moon-is-pretty-tonight left nice tags on the original so thank you so much!!

We know from the starting scenes of the game that the farmer's grandfather loved Stardew Valley. So why did he leave? Pelican Town is a good place to grow old; George and Evelyn are just fine. It's a fine place to raise a kid, but maybe he just wanted to raise his child closer to real schools and other children.

Or maybe, just maybe, he understood.

Was there a day when he was in his thirties where he looked at his friends and realized they weren't like him? That he could run faster than them, work longer, explore deeper into the hidden places of the valley?

Was there a day when he went to the wizard to ask him for help, for knowledge if nothing else? Did he learn then that his family was different? Special? Chosen? And how did he react? He couldn't possibly raise a child in the valley if they would be as strange and fey as him. He had to leave. There was no other way.

But years later, on his deathbed, did he regret that choice?

Is that why he gave the farmer the letter?

Is that why they went back home?

When the farmer steps off the bus that first day, the valley is still on the cusp of winter, just barely tipping over into spring. The flowers are starting to bloom, but a chill still hangs in the air. As soon as the farmer's boots touch the soil there's a change. The air gets warmer. The trees get greener. Not by too much, not all at once, but it changes.

The junimos watch the farmer as they do their work. They're new to farming, but take to it with frightening speed; their first batch of crops is perfect. None of the townsfolk tell them that parsnips don't normally grow in less than a week, that cauliflowers don't grow to be ten feet tall, that fairies don't visit when the sun goes down and grow potatoes and beans and tulips overnight. The junimos talk amongst themselves in their strange, wild language, and agree: this is the one. They're back. The valley recognizes its own, even when they've left for a generation. The farmers have come home.

Things change fast in the valley. The community center, empty and decrepit for so many years, is rejuvenated. (Lewis says it was abandoned only a few weeks after the farmer's grandfather left. Strange coincidence, he says, that it both came and went with the farmer's family.) The mines and the quarry, similarly abandoned, are explored for the first time in ages. The town becomes cleaner, brighter, more vibrant, happier.

And it is happier. Not just the environment, but the people. It's the talk of the town for weeks when Haley does her first closet purge. Leah's art show in the town square is a huge success. Shane's smiling for the first time since he moved to the valley. All of them, when asked, say it's all thanks to the farmer.

People love to ask why Lewis didn't fix the community center on his own. Why Willy never repaired the boat to ginger island. Why Abigail or Marlon never went down to fix the elevator in the mines, or why Clint didn't fix the minecarts.

But isn't it so much more interesting to ask how those things were there in the first place? How they got so broken down? If the stories the townspeople tell are true, the valley was once a beautiful place, flourishing and full of life; why did that change? When did it change?

Was it when the farmer's grandfather, the locus of the valley, its chosen representative, left town?

And if so, what happens when the farmer comes back?

[gideonisms]

I think a short story book club would be such a fun idea. We don't always have the time or energy to read a book per week but it's easier to fit a short story in and short fiction is a really cool form of writing that doesn't always get appreciated as much. And it's easier for me to like a short genre piece for what it is because there's never time for me to be bored

[possamble]

Question to a fanfic writer: do you think that, in Marcille’s research ways *And* her love for romance novels… would result in her writing some in-universe fanfics of her own? Like, maybe she hypes herself up on something and get disappointed, or maybe she finds some character decision isn’t as ideal as she thinks it could be? Or it’s as simple as she wants to play around with the characters and see what happens?

I can’t help but imagine a scenario where she’s struggling with some romantic trouble irl and she’s struggling with deciding on what to do, but then the answer slaps itself upside her head when she rediscovers her fanfics and how she LITERALLY made a character or two do the exact romantic decision she needs to do? It would so silly but yet I can’t help but find it so charming. Hell, just the imagery of her writing romance fanfics of her own At All is just… delightful to me hehehe.

you know I've been rotating this in my head since I saw it this morning and. I went through a wild journey of opinions before I realized... Marcille wouldn't think about fanfiction like we think about it. In the modern age, yeah, she'd be a complete tumblrina -- but we're talking about a 17th century-ish fantasy setting.

Writing before the digital age was a physical commitment to investing ink and paper into your thoughts -- and this is even before mass production can make pens and notebooks kind of whatever to buy and use on a regular basis. I'm sure the situation wasn't dire, but I really can't see Marcille, perfect honor student, using her allotted supply of stationery at the academy on super frivolous things.

Fanfiction has been normalized incredibly fast in the past few decades. Think about now normal and popular D&D is nowadays compared to how much people looked down on it 20-30 years ago. Fanfiction was a freakass nerd thing to do until relatively recent history, something that was even considered offensive to the original creators.

Remember, we've already seen Marcille react to adaptations with disgust. She's kind of a hater and an elitist fan. She also considers herself a Reputable Academic. In a setting where a digitized culture hasn't reframed fanfiction as an act of appreciation and creativity, she would absoluuuuuuuutely think that fanfiction was complete loser shit.

If she did write anything about her favourite books... She'd. She'd be one of those assholes who writes huge scathing reviews of Dal Clan translations into Common. She'd be the fantasy equivalent of those Weebs/Japanese elitists on twitter tearing through every single localization choice in anime and JRPGs and being so so annoying about it.

If we're being charitable, we could say she'd be able to appreciate non-faithful translation choices that still do a good job of carrying over the original spirit of what was said. But I think we also have to acknowledge the possibility that, at her worst, she'd really really be like those guys who were malding about the Unicorn Overlord localizations so hard the (correction: Final Fantasy Tactics Creator, not the Unicorn Overlord devs) had to step forward and ratio them. (The silver lining is that she'd never get published in the arts review newspapers/journals that she submits her essays to. those poor editors just have to deal with her being persistent.)

[fionnemrys]

I’d like to add Clarkesworld to the list of recommended reading. It publishes some of the most incredible short form speculative fiction out there today.

Read Project Hail Mary cause you said it had the most influence on TTOU. I've never read anything like it (except your story, of course.) Would you ever make a book rec list? Doesn't have to be sci fi exclusively.

The best thing you can do for yourself as a reader of genre fiction is go to whatever used bookstores you can find and search specifically for books from this series:

and purchase and read any of them that you can find. It's called the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and every issue will contain at least one story that permanently alters your brain chemistry.

Aside from that, I'd recommend The Martian by Andy Weir (the Project Hail Mary guy), the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, and anything you can find by Philip K Dick or Neal Stephenson. I'd also recommend a couple of CJ Cherryh's works: 40,000 in Gehenna, and Serpent's Reach. Probably worth reading Serpent's Reach first if you can, but it's not that important, they're not sequels of each other although they are in the same universe.

The series that's had the most influence on me as a writer is of course Animorphs by KA Applegate, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be for an adult reader who doesn't have nostalgia to rely on. Also Tamora Pierce's books, all of them, it's worth picking up those if you like fantasy.

[eunuchmoder]

Honestly, falling from heaven wasn't even that bad! The loss of divine grace and the separation from my sisters sucks, yeah, but you can find earthly replacements for those things! They'll do the job just fine until you can atone for your sins and re-enter the kingdom of heaven.

Like the silence! It's been so long since I heard any prayers, either directed to me or to the heavens in general. My head used to be a choir of pleas and begging, but now it's so empty I started having my own thoughts.

My girlfriend is lovely, though. She helped find an earthly replacement for that too! She set up a shrine in her apartment for me so that people can come and pray for guidance and assistance, only instead of going to heaven where my sisters remain, it goes through the walls and into my bedroom.

It's nice to lay in bed late at night with my ear against the wall, hearing the prayers again. It makes me feel whole. Like I'm back home.

We don't have many visitors, though, so often it's just her prayers I hear. Actually, it's only hers. She doesn't often have company around. I wish I could hear more of you all. I wish I could sleep in the rafters of the church, or the hospital's waiting room. That would be lovely! But my girlfriend doesn't like that. She tells me I'd be refusing to listen to her. It'd be abandonment to let her prayers go unheard.

And I can't do that to her, no way! My divine duty ended the moment I was thrown down to earth, but if I keep on doing it, hopefully He will forgive me for my sins and let me come back home!

On top of that, I'd be giving up my last connection to being an angel. I don't want to be the one who sets my own descension in stone. That's just silly.

I'll just stay here, chained to the bed, waiting for that time of the day where she prays to me!

I can live off that, surely!

[aimfor-theheart]

sci fi and fantasy genres are really for minorities and while i’m not surprised white cishet men in particular have dominated and claimed those genres as theirs, it’s so like….frustrating watching them butcher the genres again and again. ceaselessly. without an ounce of self awareness.

[alexbraindump]

To Know - Introduction

[word count: 375]

I dreamed I was one of them not too long ago. I could stand on two legs without getting tired, I had hands with those horrible, spindly digits. Thinking was easier. My brain was like a supercomputer. Best of all, I could speak! But… I didn't know how. My mouth would move in the motions I recognized, but no words would come. Silence.

Lots of them were walking by outside. But I was behind a set of bars. I'd move my digits along the bars and try so hard to pry them away - but my body simply wasn't capable. I tried getting their attention with my words, but they didn't exist. I tried to scream for them, but that didn't exist either. They kept walking. Nobody stopped to look at me. They just walked on those same two legs I'd possessed.

When I woke up, it took a moment to adapt again. Four legs, four paws, hardly opposable fingers. That's what was comfortable. But it felt lacking then, after feeling what they all had. The Doctor took me for my evaluation of the day. He was surprised that I'd dreamed at all. Even more so when he learned what of. They gave me a lot more food that night for those findings. It was nice.

And then I dreamed of it again. They'd called it an evaluator when they heard that. I didn't know her, but she asked me so many questions. It was hard to find the words for it on my communication tablet. Questions about some 'human condition?' I just wanted to stop thinking about it. But 'no' wasn't an answer.

They gave me even more food that night. It felt like cardboard against my tongue after that. And it was never the same, especially not after I had the same dream again. They brought the evaluator back, and soon enough I wasn't seeing the Doctor anymore. I don't know where he went. Sometimes I'd see him walk past my cage in the morning. But he wouldn't look at me anymore. It felt like I was in the dream again. Only the evaluator saw me after that. She never even told me her name. All she did was ask questions I couldn't answer.

[cymorilcinnamonroll]

The Witchfather

A campfire burns like sin, crackling spitting embers onto the cold grave soil. I am huddled in wind-worn rags of brown, rough cloth, pale and starved, making pottage soup over this treacherous flame. I live in a shanty in the midst of the harrowing woods, in a little hollow by a small boulder which I use to reflect heat, sitting between stone and fire. I am a witch (of course I am a witch) but one who was never accepted by her village, and so lives in her castaway dreams.

The night is bitter winter, November bordering on December, and suddenly the shadows on the cliff face dance like bodies burning. I see witches at stakes, I see witches at Sabbats, I see witches carousing with demons. I watch the nighttime play with trepidation, knowing the calling card of the Witchfather if ever I saw him: Black Sam, Black Sam, Black Sam.

The sparks begin to form wisps of women that tango together in Traveler skirts. Red eyes form out of the fire, and suddenly standing burning in the roaring campfire is the Witchfather. His deer skulled face protrudes in smoky shadow, antlers raising up like swords piercing the sky, an old wood staff with a ruby at the helm at hand. Sam wears a cowl, robe, and hood pulled over him to obscure the blazes in his eye, and his fine olive hands offer me a leather grimoire.

"It's been a while, witch daughter," Sam rasps, a bone voice like sin and honey, and I shudder at the eldritch horror of it as tentacles of darkness writhe over the flame. His Lovecraftian appendage reaching out to caress my cheek and wipe away a small tear. "Why are you in these woods, alone?"

"Ma and pa died in the plague, and my village cast me out thinking me a Plague Mary," I whisper, beginning to cry. "They said I had brought a curse to their village, a witch and fey enchantress that breathes misfortune wherever she goes."

"Tell me, witch daughter," Sam murmurs like a snake rattle, "would you come with me and be my bride? This world is full of sorrow, but in my realm - in my kingdom of darkness, we drink fine red wine, eat red meat, and live bloody and true. I would make you my bride, witch daughter, if only you shall give me some pottage soup."

I smile at the thought. He has always been tender with me. "What use have you for a bride, oh Black Sam?" I say through muffled weeping, clutching my tattered white skirts and gathering my courage. "You may have all the soup you like, but I cannot promise it will be very good. I have not had the heart to cook well in ages, and sleeping out here in the woods is draining the very lifeblood from me. I will not last the night."

His ruby eyes dazzle. "True, you are more bones than flesh, your skin anemic like lead powder, and your heart is full of remorse." He shapeshifts into a man with ebon hair, olive flesh, brown cat’s eyes and still the same terrifying robe, but his voice is low and base, a man's – not bone, not wind, not a rood. 

It makes me feel less alone, this display of companionship he gives me.

I offer Sam a dull wooden bowl with cracks full of the wild herb stew I have brewed. I sigh as he takes it, his talons black. 

"You will last the night, and many starry abodes turning in the stratosphere more, my dear. You are ever, eternally beautiful, witch daughter. All you need is love, a home, a kingdom to call your own, a broom to ride, and a sorcerer king to wipe your sorrows away. Let me make you my bride, if the pottage is true."

“I would like that Sam, I would like that very much.”

He winks. His lashes are so much like black lace and poetry. His cheekbones and jaw could cut glass. But there is softness about him, and age in his endless eyes – a worn, loving look only the God of Death could offer.

Sam pulls a hollowed bone spoon from his pockets and samples the pottage, his fangs agleam in the fire and moonlight. "Ah, divine, made with witchcraft true!" He whispers the fine silk words like a siphon, then smiles. "Simple yet as powerful as a rich man's steak. Pottage is worth a birthright, after all."

"Like Jacob and Esau..." I murmur, bravely collecting my skirts and going across to the other side of the fire to lean against Black Sam's arms. He puts a veiled hand around me and squeezes tight. This small display of affection sets off a dam in my chest, and tears waterfall out.

"When I found you in the woods at seventeen, and you claimed me, Witchfather, I did not know this path would be so heartless, cruel, and hard. I should have been a cook. I should have been a wife. I should have been a wetnurse. Anything, anything but witch!"

"You will cook my food. You will be my wife. You will nurse our children, cambions though they may be, but sure to grow like Agrat bat Mahalath and Merlin alike. You are strong, you are kind, and you love like nature does, mistress mine the Goddess is. You are as much Goddess as I am God, and your village may deny you, but I will only love you fiercely, Magdalena Bittern, with all my black magic indeed."

He kisses me then, with black pepper lips, and his roving tongue stakes out a claim in my mouth. It is full of passion, and I return it with vigor, I am so hungry, so starved and ill, but the edge of death awakens a deep need in me, and so I kiss Black Sam, and soon we are undressed, and making love like two ghosts in the night. I cry out to the hills and hollows as I come like rain, and afterwards, spent in his pale arms, against his muscled chest, I cry more, but he licks my tears away like white wine on a wolfen tongue, then wraps me up in his cloak and carries me off to the mountains.

And we fade into the night, into the Underworld, become one with the hills and harrows.

And I am made his Queen.

"You don't have far to go girl -"

"You don't have

much

at

all."

[discoidal]

i just finished penance by eliza clark and i have thoughts that can only be communicated out loud in person through speech with an accompanying slideshow of pics of me in maxi skirts from 5th to 10th grade

[mariocki]

The Cheap Detective (1978)

"Mr. Peckinpaugh? You look startled."

"Oh, no, it's just that, uh, you look like fourteen other dames that was here the other night."

"Yes, I know. They were my sister."

"Well, that explains the resemblance."

"Not to me. She was adopted."

"Yeah, well, so am I, but I don't look like your sister either."