#usually i prewrite the entire thing and then by the time im posting I’ve already moved on and find it hard to reconnect to the writing when

[rowanisawriter]

patrochilles / fairy tale AU / complete (40k words)

There is a curse. A destiny, as his mother loves to remind him. A war. An unknown future, somewhere out there in the fighting and killing. But here, there is only the sun and the grass and Achilles’s swift feet. Here, there is Patroclus sitting in the shade. Here, Achilles pulls him closer and puts his arms around him, staining their clothes with charcoal dust from sketched out dreams. Patroclus sinks into him heavily. The sound of their breathing is the only thing they can hear, as though the clearing—their clearing— is a shield hiding them from the rest of the world. “Take me with you,” Patroclus tells him at the same time that Achilles says, “Please come with me.”

In the tiny kingdom of Phthia, a golden prince is cursed with invulnerability except for a vulnerable heel. An exile apprenticed to a shoemaker is commissioned by the palace to create a shoe the prince can fight in.

A fairy tale about a curse, a magical shoe, a war, a doomed hero, an exile, destiny, and love despite everything.