Welcome to Lake Lewisia

As the summer sizzled onward into a series of blistering days and merciless nights, the last remaining cultivators of match fruits began to harvest another year’s crop, clad in fireproof gloves and armed with non-sparking tools. Slightly spicy, slightly sour, the thin skin and minimal flesh of the match fruit (technically classified as a drupe) was no culinary delight, a brief fad in the 1700s notwithstanding, but they were spectacularly flammable when dried. On short, stiff stems, they lived up to their name and were a waterproof fire-starting method that had saved many adventurers during damp winters.

With its tall weeds, half-obliterated paths, and tumbled-down climbing frames, the feral park was a child's dream and an anxious parent's nightmare. It was kept that way deliberately--or more accurately, it was unkept that way, in a willful act of benign neglect--to provide children with a necessary access point to danger, mystery, and secrecy. It was watched, to satisfy certain minimum standards of child mortality, by the sorts of creatures whom children would find agreeable to encounter, even if they were technically spies as well.

Visitors to Rocky Head Beach this summer may have seen recording crews from our local radio station, barefoot and wielding boom mics along the waterline. Radio Free Lewisia KL∞R 104.2 will be broadcasting Shanty Hour, a new series on sea folk music that captures the musical traditions of local mermaids, selkies, and others. Listeners are advised to remain on dry land and avoid both the beach and the lakefront while listening, as these songs may stir up strong feelings of wanderlust, a thirst for adventure, and a conviction that one knows how to tie complex rigging knots despite having no previous sailing experience.

Within the let’s eat genre of podcasts and video channels, the Forbidden Fruits team had something of a corner on the market for exotic foods. Having already endured backgrounds of fae abduction, curses, and year-and-a-day servitude pacts, everyone from hosts to editor to researchers had established immunity to fairy food’s more well-known hazards. So apart from the dangers of obtaining the food in the first place--the midnight fairy fort raids, the crossroads visits, the haunted u-pick orchards--they ate freely their golden apples, flower wine, and cheese and ice cream from fairy cattle.

One might have missed the bird entirely, mistaking it for just another twist of cracked, sun-bleached deadwood on the half-fallen tree. Or one might have assumed it was an adaptation to its preferred haunts, growing plumage in the same palette and pattern as the outlook over a field of mousey morsels. Rarely, one might know on sight a reforester hawk, also known as a deadwood phoenix, whose nesting habits began with assembling a skeletal tree, which would hatch into new growth along with the bird's eggs.

A recent meme on social media, prompting users to list the loot drops that appear when they are defeated in imaginary combat, has had some troubling consequences here in Lewisia. As a reminder, while there are plenty of hobbyist groups for various forms of armed and unarmed combat, it is not considered acceptable to challenge others unprompted to duels in the street. This is true even if they have stated, in person or online, that they are full of delicious candy or will drop rare trading cards when bested in battle, and such comments should be taken as enticement to mischief.

Her friends had all seen her fall into the river, pulled under by the weight of her armor, and even if they had not presumed her dead, they had no way of following her where she had really gone. It would have been easiest to stay on her side of the portal, pretend she had died until maybe it would be true in some sense. Instead, she strapped on her armor, rusty though it was, and stomped back through the portal, defiantly alive and determined to keep her friends that way too.

It was surprisingly easy to keep the entity alive, once he realized that there was more to novelty than just whatever new trinket money could buy. It hungered for newness, and so he fed it sentences never before spoken, grammatically sound and nutritionally complete nonsense. He kept records of every sentence meal he gave his otherworldly companion, which years later would be gloriously misunderstood by the poetry world and published to great acclaim.

The agricultural science and necromancy departments at the community college have spent the summer in the teaching gardens, cultivating the new Resurrection pepper variety. An offshoot of the Carolina Reaper, this pepper is fatally hot to the living but has been tested as capable of reviving the recently dead with only minimal tissue damage to the areas exposed during force feeding. Due to the use of live human tasters as part of the normal testing process, it is not currently possible to assign a Scoville Heat Unit rating to the Resurrection pepper, but those working on the project are hopeful that individuals brought back from the dead may be able to help with future rating methods.

The VPN service came highly recommended, but the location list still gave him pause, populated with city names he did not recognize and no countries whatsoever. But he selected one and went on with his browsing, thinking no more about it until the ads started to change. In the midst of his podcasts and streaming videos, he now heard about at-home cauldron conditioning services and restaurants catering to those on a strictly dream-based diet, all piped in from somewhere that started to sound rather appealing.

When she heard that hungry ghosts had tiny mouths that would never let them satisfy their bellies, she suggested milkshakes with straws. When told the etymology of “tantalizing,” she asked if someone couldn’t have simply hand-fed Tantalus the fruit that always slipped beyond his reach. If the metaphors and morals underpinning such legends were lost on her, she maintained that the collaborative remedies to suffering were equally lost on those around her.

Lewisia will be observing Mapless Mondays for August, a program brought to you by unknown forces and the survey corps. During this time, street names will be unknowable, building numbers will become invisible, and GPS will tonelessly inform you there is an unspecified road condition ahead. The library has set up informative displays on other methods of wayfinding, and local shops and restaurants are prepared for the increase in foot traffic from those hopelessly turned around in normally familiar spaces.

The old world was littered with the uncomfortable, unyielding edges of glass slippers and glass caskets, always intended to preserve their user just as they were without room for growth or change. The glass throne, likewise, looked for a ruler who was light and still and careful enough not to shiver the delicate panes of the construction that both gave them power and rendered them powerless. But she thundered through her quest, big and loud and well-appointed with steel-toed boots that had been properly broken in before her journey ever started, and destroying it was as much about an errant kick as it was about a deliberate liberation of the kingdom.

Kim pulled up short as he walked into the candy kitchen, confronted with the image of his partner with the long gray beard of an ancient and venerable sort, and asked, “Was there another accident with the preservatives?” With a rueful smile half-covered by beard, Jamil pulled at the edges of the facial hair, revealing it was only a fake one hooked around his ears, as he said, “The candy beard is kind of a work in progress.” Then he took a large and fuzzy bite from the end of his beard, which did not so much dissolve like cotton candy as crackle apart like facial puff pastry threads, making a tremendous, if tasty, mess.

The Community Cryptid Count approaches, so make sure you are ready to help contribute to scientific research and learn about the environment around you while reporting through our easy-to-use app or website. There is still time to pick up a starter kit for first-time counters, which has information on how to spot cryptids in your environment, along with helpful tools like binoculars, lightweight camouflage hides, and night vision cameras. Remember, while feeding stations and water sources can be a great way to attract all kinds of wildlife to your backyard, do not use traps or lures that can harm cryptids or disrupt their normal habits and range.

Periodically, scientific papers were written on the changes to taxonomy, driven by advances in genetic testing or imaging or asking locals about their environments, that saw plants and animals shuffled around like so many chairs at an over-large and fractious family reunion. Like palms going to stand with their grassy cousins instead of true trees despite outward appearances, like jellyfish and guinea pigs, familiar creatures sometimes informed us that they had been something else all along, and we had to rewrite our story of the world. Sometimes, we were those creatures, revealing ourselves at last to those willing to look.

“Are you sure grimoires are allowed to have glittery unicorn stickers?” she asked, poking at the spiral notebook with one fingernail. Before she could flip open the ratty cover and see whatever spells had been inscribed on the wide-ruled paper within, her guide slapped her hand away. “There are few more dedicated to the potential of magic than a middle school girl, nor many as vengeful, and neither fact is contraindicated by a love of sparkly stickers.”