Fables and Fairy Tales From Faraway Lands

“I can’t believe you thought a trail of breadcrumbs would save you. I mean, honestly, this is a forest! It’s full of animals. Honestly, the very idea that a dumb shit like you thought you could get the better of me is absurd.”

Gretel hits her in the face with said chair. To be fair to the witch, she takes the chairshot like a champ.

“Ow!”

“Did you know,” says Gretel, “that crows are capable of facial recognition?”

“Eh?” Says the witch, clambering to her feet and pulling a candy cane sledgehammer off the wall. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Not only that,” Gretel continues, “but they can remember both friends and enemies. And they’ll often follow people they remember as friends.”

The two fence with their sugared weapons for a moment, before the witch knocks the chair out of Gretel’s hands.

“Enough with the bird facts! Honestly, this whole attempted escape has been utter clownshoes. Get in the fucking oven!”

She seizes Gretel by the collar. Gretel immediately sandbags, letting her whole body go limp. This eminently practical defense forces the witch to try and deadlift her. Which is hard, as the witch often skips leg day.

“For example,” Gretel says, as the witch struggles and grunts, “if you feed crows a lot of breadcrumbs, they’ll probably start to see you as a friend and follow you in the hope of more food.”

The witch stops. Outside, she hears the thunder of wings.

“They’ll even bring you shiny things they find as presents!” Says Gretel, as a corner of the gingerbread ceiling is suddenly cut away by a large crow with a knife in its mouth.

“Oh shitballs.” Says the witch, as the crows descend. “I hope you know this is a great unkindness.”

They struggled a lot with the books falling off shelves - it was like these tomes had lives of their own and objected to being confined.

The librarian wrote to management and requested an increased budget, just to buy a few tasteful statues (or even just wooden blocks) to keep the recalcitrant books propped up.

Of course, the request was denied. It really was a lean time for these once proud public spaces.

So this librarian went to the darkest recesses of the library and sought out the weirdest, most arcane books from the library’s oldest corners.

They drew out a series of chalk circles, lit many dribbly candles, then spoke some words from the books.

A number of small demons - imps really - appeared in a puff of sulfur.

“All hail the dark wizard!” The chittered. “Praise the brimstone king! The fallen puppeteer! The fiend-wrangler! What dark bidding do you have for us?”

“Shush.” Said the librarian. “This is a library.”

“Sorry…” Whispered the imps, somewhat cowed. “What do you wish of us? What contract would you - the chief of the silence that falls like the sky - make with we creatures of the dark flame?”

“All I want,” Explained the librarian patiently, “Is for you to stand still and silent in your little summoning circles, and prop up the books next to you.”

“...that … that’s all?” The imps asked incredulously.

“That’s it. Now do as I ask please, lest I become displeased and shush you again.”

“We are unworthy to be stretched upon the rack of your shushing! We poor, wretched, unclean things do not deserve even to be wrecked upon the will of your late fees! We shall … shush.”

And from that day on, the library’s books were all kept neatly on their shelves.

I asked the librarian once, if using these petty demons in this fashion was strictly ethical.

To this the librarian only replied:

A #microfiction for folks who feel far apart sometimes…

“When we hugged earlier, our ears were perfectly aligned.” Elendrin said, gruffly, grinding her knotted wizard’s staff into the ground. Feeling her awkwardness, it started trying to put down roots.

“I’m sorry?” Eristeia paused in the delicate act of sharpening her sword on the rare rays of moonlight that lanced through the cloudy sky. “We’re about to go into battle and you’re talking about *ears*?”

Once upon a time, this would have been an easy quest for the Star Knight and the Mages of Forests.

But that was in the old days, when they were young and before they realised they had very different paths to walk.

In that time, Eristeia the Star Knight had climbed the night sky and walked the curved orbital lines of the heavens. She had soaked in the light of far-off systems and this had given her a bright, arcing quality. And while she was a large, well-built woman, there was something about her that always felt light, as if she were a thing of void and distant stellar pinpricks and vast fractal curvature of galaxies.

Meanwhile, Elendrin the Mage of Forests had planted her feet in the earth and closed her eyes and let herself become empty. There she waited until the water of life (which was not really water at all) began its slow process of osmosis into the vessel above it. She had never moved, but she had fought in great slow battles fought across half the planet as forests vied for survival against the various creatures who would churn them up for war.

With such different experiences, was it any wonder these two heroes found it hard to learn how to work together once more? There was a gulf between them that was much greater than communication - though they struggled with words too.

“When we hugged earlier,” Elendrin repeated, taking care to speak each word clearly and slowly with her moss-coated tongue. “our ears were perfectly aligned.”

“I heard you…”

Elendrin’s brow furrowed, the creases adding to her skin’s bark-like quality. She waited for the right words to sprout in her brain. She thought back on the hug, a barely thought-through thing that exploded between them after an encounter with the Long Roads Demon proved to be just this side of lethal.

“When we hugged … I felt connected. Like … our ears would pop when we came apart. Like we vacuum … like seals. Like … old oaks grown into each other until their knots crush together.”

The words wriggled rebelliously in her mouth, but she did her best to let them blossom honestly out of her.

“I think I understand. You’re saying that while we’re different - so different - there are still ways that we fit together? Like the way the land and the sky meet at the horizon, but the rest of them don’t meet and don’t have to; they have their own existence and just meet at the edge of adventure.” Eristeia flung the words in reassuring orbits around Elendrin’s ears and smiled an encouraging, twinkling smile. “Is that it?”

“No. I’m saying that our ears were perfectly aligned.”

Eristeia laughed.

A #microfiction for anyone who needs a cuppa. Who would you share a ‘galactic teabag’ with?

—

“What is a galactic teabag, anyway?” Asked Trel-5. “It sounds like a sex move.”

Ada laughed so hard she spat tea through her nose. Not that it was really ‘tea’, but rather the reconstituted caffeine-malt that was the closest the ship could currently manage.

It was weirdly acrid in her nostrils.

“What?” Trel-5 continued, her temple fronds flaring in slight embarrassment. “It kind of does?”

Ada bunched up her command sash and wiped the teas from her eyes and 'tea’ from her nose.

“It’s an old Terran saying, from the NASA days, before they were folded into the navy.” She said, keeping one eye on the wide observation window.

Behind them, the nebula gently expanded, puffing itself up like a blowfish. Ada hoped it wouldn’t prove to be poisonous like one, but this had been an unpredictable patch of space since the Grandmother Star had shined her last and gone supernova.

“So … what does it mean?” Trel-5 leaned in close, her big dark eyes spread impossibly wide to eat up every morsel of the words playing out on Ada’s lips.

“This was back before synth boxes were a thing, right, so no 3D-printed nearly-pizzas or NATO-standard milky caffeine malt.” She raised her mug with a wry smile. “If you wanted something, you had to vacuum pack it and bring it with you or grow it in the hydroponics bay, if you had such luxury.”

“Ah. Our species perhaps had it easier in that case, our crews always carried their sustenance with them.” Trel-5 leaned in closer as if someone might overhear them. “Though you still had to deal with a closed emotional eco-system. Eating the same muffled resentment and low-level wonder for years at a time wasn’t always … healthy. But, go on, you were telling me about teabags…”

“So, on long missions - as you might imagine - caffeine was at a premium. Only so much coffee concentrate was considered 'essential’ - which, frankly, seems like a gross sentient rights violation to me - and teabags weren’t exactly the most efficient caffeine vector. But you’d usually be able to find some on a satellite or space station if you were lucky. A lot of the time, though, they were from tea plants grown as part of an experiment.”

“Ah, and these were the 'galactic teabags’?”

“Orginally. But it came about that any teabag you found in space was a 'galactic’. A piece of home that had seen the stars. A great treasure to be shared only in greatest trouble or triumph.”

“So if you call someone a 'galactic teabag’ you call them a great treasure?” Trel-5’s skin had taken on a rich purple glow, a smile ghosting her lips as she tasted the emotional timbre of this idea.

“Kind of? There’s more to it than that.” Ada clicked her tongue as she aligned the ideas in her head. “As they were so rare, actually using a 'galactic’ was a big deal. You’d only use it when you needed it and if the person you shared it with was worth it. The kind of conversation it felt like you might not get through without it?”

“I have had those, yes.”

“Well, if you say of someone now: "they’re a galactic teabag kind of friend”, it’s like you’re saying they’re someone you’d trust to have that conversation with. To help you work through hard truths, while reminding you the galaxy can still be soft and that it still loves you. That the galaxy is big and scary, but it will still share a cuppa with you.“

"That sounds like a good kind of friend to have.”

“The best.”

There was a brief pause as both looked out the observation window for a while, watching the young nebula try on different clouds of colour.

Then Ada added:

“It’s also a sex thing.” This time it was Trel-5’s turn to burst out laughing, specks of purple bursting from her cheeks and filling the air with a faint whiff of an emotion that was something like love and something like wonder, tinged with pain. Something hard, but wrapped carefully.

“You know the navy. Never could leave a good innuendo well enough alone.”

They laughed for a long time. When they were done, Trel-5 said, quietly:

“You may not believe this. But I actually do have a single teabag.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Ada wasn’t sure if her outrage was mocking or genuine.

“I suppose that, without really knowing why, I was saving it to share with "a real galactic teabag friend.” Trel-5’s fronds flared a little again. “Would you maybe like to come back to my quarters and share it now?”

Fun fact: I wrote this #microfiction on the way to one of my partner’s houses and when I arrived: she was in a fox onesie. I’m a little scared…

When Netta was little and first coming into her powers, her mother told her:

“Little Netta, don’t you ever turn into a fox. For they are clever, tricksy spirits and you might never find your way back.”

At this, Netta would puff out her round,rosy cheeks and give her mother a very side-eyed stare.

“Okay, mama. I won’t. But I bet I could find my way back, because I am tricksy too and I would be a very fetching fox.”

And Netta’s mother would turn into a very stern animal then, usually an owl or a hound or a donkey, and would say:

“Promise me, Netta, promise me you will never turn into a fox. For when you take a shape, you borrow its soul. And *their* souls are like labyrinths and I don’t want to lose you.”

“I promise.” Netta would always say, unable to side-eye such a stern-yet-caring face. “I will never turn into a fox.”

…

When Netta turned 16, she immediately turned into a fox.

In her defence, she had a very good reason. A dear friend of hers had made a bad bargain with a forest spirit been stolen away to a local sett.

Netta had had to turn into a fox to infiltrate the sett and steal them back.

But also: she had really really wanted to. And, perhaps, she had jumped at the chance a *bit* quickly…

When it came time to turn back, she found that (despite her mother’s warning) it was very easy to navigate the twists and turns of her shape and find her way back to her own flesh.

Sure, there were some twists and turns finding the way through the shapes between fox and human. And perhaps the soul roads were a little more windy and thorn-filled than usual.

But her bargain with the Wayfinder held and she felt the horseshoe (that she had forged with her mother when she was six) calling her home to her centre.

Once back in her skin, she washed her face and scrubbed the last of the sett-grime from her.

Two bright fox’s eyes stared back at her.

“Hello.” Her reflection said. “We’re going to have such fun together.”

In fairness to the fox (whose soul now rode along with Netta’s), they did have a *lot* of fun.