Challenge #02859-G302: Fae Fascination
The Fates, the Benevolent ones, In olden times mothers used to leave cake and wine so they’d look kindly on a newborn. She was no fool, a neatly sliced black forest cake, a bottle of very good dessert wine and a bag of superfine merino fleece. – Nonn7mouse
Upon bringing a newborn into the house, it is tradition to give a gift to the Fae to prevent the child being stolen, and so that the Benevolent Ones look kindly upon the new life in the home and lands. At this point, it must be noted that they are called “Benevolent Ones” with the same optimism someone calls a growling dog with orange eyebrows “nice doggy”. For almost a hundred years, nobody took it seriously, leaving a cheap bottle of wine and a low-budget cake somewhere within a fungus circle or within a suitably fae nature spot.
The child in the crook of her arm had been born small, born ill, and born at great risk to herself to the point where it was inadvisable to birth any other child. He was healthy enough to be at home, but the doctors insisted she should call the instant anything went wrong. Nobody really believed in the Fair Folk any more. Not seriously. Nevertheless, Lyla reasoned, it was time to pull out the Big Guns.
With her tiny son close to her chest, she cooked the best black forest gateau that she could find. She unearthed a bottle of the finest wine from her uncle’s cellar. That was gift of the kitchen, and gift of the vine… for a good future, one must also include a gift of the field. Well. She wouldn’t be spinning any time soon…
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Every day you’ve dealt with your terrible stepmother and your equally terrible and ugly stepsisters as you’ve done your chores. One day, an invitation to the prince’s ball comes to your late father’s estate. After your late mother’s dress is destroyed, you find an elderly woman in front of you. She waves her wand through the air and suddenly a blue ball gown with glass slippers appear on the bench next to you. She claims you can go to the ball for only a small price. You have to kill the prince.
“No.” I fold my arms, meeting her eyes.
She blinks at me. “No?”
“Not for a silk dress and a night at a party. Only a fool would commit regicide for so low a price.”
The old woman hesitates, and her eyes narrow. “Well. True. Though it would only be regicide if I asked you to kill the king.”
“His heir is close enough, to my mind.”
The old woman rubs her chin thoughtfully. “Aye, that’s fair. But… if the price were better?”
I shrug. “I’ve contemplated murdering my stepmother and her daughters often enough. The only reason I don’t do it is that I’d surely be the first and only suspect. If a murder would truly free me from this misery… I’d certainly be willing to consider it. After careful planning, of course.”
“Indeed. Indeed.” She smiles grimly. “All right, my dear. Shall we plan a murder, then?”
beauty and the beast but reverse, i kiss the love of my life and she turns into a sick fucking monster and it’s awesome
shrek
No, fuck you, post un-cancelled
This is good shit.
A girl is born to loving parents. A king and queen, a noble and his wife, an inventor and his spouse… same story, different versions, and all. are. true. Tragedy strikes the mother– though god, why always the mother? Let it be the father this time. He dies; we need not explain how. The stories never grant their dead women such courtesy.
Her husband dead, the woman remarries. She marries as a clever political maneuver, to keep her throne secure; she marries for new love and the promise that her daughter will have another parent to be loved by; she marries out of desperation for security in a world that grants her little without a ring on her finger.
She is betrayed. The new husband, the step-father, does little to deserve his new titles. He is cruel, he is neglectful, he is absent. Perhaps his wife does not survive, or if she does, she is reduced to a shadow of her old self. This, too, is an old story with many versions.
Then the witch. The woman uncontrolled, the woman powerful, the woman terrible. She comes and she brings fear and magic. The magic is change.
“I give you a gift,” she says, or else, “I curse you.” Perhaps she says, “I curse you,” to the step-father, but to the daughter this is a gift. Words can mean more than one thing; that is their very great power.
“I curse you, girl,” she says. “When you receive true love’s first kiss, you will become a monster. You will be huge and terrible, a threat to all. You will have terror in your face and death in your hands.”
And the girl, she is afraid. But this is not new. She has been afraid for years.
Perhaps she finally flees to the forest, terrified of both her step-father and now herself. She swears off the company of men. Lost and hungry, she thinks she will die, but she is rescued by a company of women with untamed hair and pickaxes in iron-palmed hands. Seven become eight. She finds a home amidst these women. She shares a bed until her own bunk can be built, but by the time the new bed is framed, it isn’t necessary. It’s dangerous for the cursed girl to feel so tenderly towards another person, but this is not a man she is beginning to love, so… surely that’s safe, isn’t it? Surely true love’s kiss exists only between a man and wife; after all, that’s what the stories always said. So one day, she lets herself fall, and they kiss.
Or– perhaps, after the curse, she remains in her home. Cruel as this home and family is, it’s not so simple to just leave. People who say this have never experienced it. She continues to live in the shadows of her own house, flinching at shouts and obeying orders. She scrubs, she cooks, she launders– but in the small private moments, she is gentle still. She feeds the mice and scatters cornmeal for the birds. She coaxes a whipped stray dog to the kitchen doorstep, day by day, giving it food and water and all the time it needs to believe that her hand will not strike it. Slowly, it comes to trust her. The broken tail starts to wag; the sad eyes brighten. And one day, as it lies curled up in her lap in an ash-streaked hearth, the dog lifts its head and timidly licks her cheek.
The curse breaks. The curse breaks. The curse breaks. It always does. It always will. Change is inevitable: that’s the story’s promise.
All this time, the girl has been afraid of becoming a monster. She does not want to hurt others like she has been hurt. But she has been cursed, and now kissed. She grows. She becomes huge, and therefore terrible (isn’t that always the case with women?). She can no longer hide in corners, or be hidden away in locked rooms. She is twice as tall as her step-father, and five times as strong.
She is powerful.
“My, what big hands you have,” the woodswoman whispers, marvelling, her pickaxe-callused fingers wrapped around the girl’s. “What strong arms you have. What long legs you have. I’ve never seen a gem as wonderful and unique as you.”
“Kill the beast!” shouts the step-father, who tripped over the stray dog in the courtyard– and his daughter roars “NO,” rising over the garden wall from where she has been sitting all afternoon feeding her birds and mice. She was afraid of her strength with their fragile bodies in her hands, but now in her rage all she feels is brave.
As the witch said, it is true that her face brings terror to those who look on it. At least, to those who look on it when she is enraged. An angry giant is terrifying to most, but especially to those who have earned her wrath. The only sad thing about this is that the girl had to be made dangerous before her tormentors finally learned respect for her rage and fear.
She stays in the forest, or she goes to the forest. One way or another, the cursed girl ends up there, in the wild, outside of society. Forests are places of power, of un-making and re-making, of disruption and interruption, where rules change and queer things are common. All the stories say this. Forests are for witches, and giant women, and all other monsters.
“She steals babies,” people whisper in town. (But the truth is that it’s not stealing if desperate mothers leave their babies in the forest loam, swaddled against the cold as well as they can be, with notes begging for their protection. Please, I cannot care for this child. Please, he’ll kill her. Please, nobody can know. Please, she’s my firstborn. Please take her like you took the whipped dog, the half-drowned cats, the beaten horse.)
“She kills huntsmen!” people cry in town. (But the truth is that these men were hunting women, runaways and lost girls, or the woodswomen of the mine. Eight have become ten, fourteen, twenty-five. The cursed girl has learned to swing both a pickaxe and a club the size of a tree. She will not let harm come to the new family she has found.)
“She is a beast!” people howl in town. “She has hard, rough skin like scales! She has hair all over! She has a hooked nose! She is dusky, brown, black as night! She is lustful, she is angry, she is unrepentant!” (The truth is, these are not things that make someone a monster.)
The girl knows now that the curse is a gift. Words can mean more than one thing; that is their very great power. Words are magic, and magic is change, and change– thank goodness– is inevitable.
(via dragonsatmidnight)
Challenge #02807-G250: The True Story
I ask you not as emperor, but as a father. I do not demand you become her protector, I humbly request that you become her friend. – Anon Guest
You know the story of the Lindwyrm. Or rather, you think you know it. You know the most of it. Stories change with each teller. Some add. Some subtract. Names are lost, times and places blur until all that’s left is the phrase, Once upon a time…
By then, almost all of the truth is gone. It’s true that there was a ruler. It’s true that he and his bride could not conceive. It’s true that they sought out a magical solution. It’s true about the flowers, and the Empress eating both of them. It’s true that she was warned not to do that.
The son they desired was bonny and strong, and his twin was just as fearsome as the legends say. The Lindwyrm did not slither away into the forest and become a wild thing. No. The Empress was more sensible and sensitive than that. She raised the monster as she would any other child. Loved and sheltered and protected. The world, after all, was full of knives and misunderstanding.
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Challenge #02466-F276: One Game Round
“I won’t let you harm this child!”
“It’s not even your kin, why would you protect him?”
“His mom will whoop my ass if I don’t.” – Anon Guest
Of all the occupations in Human history, childcare has to be among one of the least respected. It is expected to be easy. It is not. Especially when the child being cared for is not one’s own. Especially when that child has a fae-wrought destiny.
For those unfamiliar with the Fae, they are most definitely not the tinkly, sparkly, little children in leotards with butterfly wings. There are insectoid features about them. That’s how you know they’re interfering. By the pricking in your thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
There’s just something about human thumbs that makes them want to poke. Nobody’s figured out why and the Fae don’t involve themselves in civil discussion. If they involve themselves in any kind of discussion, it’s only to discover what you’ve got and figure out how they can get it. The Fae are the opposite of ‘nice’ in every conceivable way. Which is why Lonnie is wracking her brains to try and figure out how to get herself and little Dae safely home out of Tyrnanog without any significant loss of time, life, limb, or teeth.
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Challenge #02346-F156: Darby O'Gill Sends His Regards
Dear InterNutter,
Since you have blessed us with all your lovely writings of the many wondrous worlds you have created while juggling life, kids and painful weather phenomenon I would like to give you something to enjoy reading instead of writing about. Although it’s not mine to give, please enjoy it.
Thank you! – Amberfox
[AN: the text in this link is way too long to transcribe, so please read it in a new tab or something. I’ll just get on with the tale]
The Irish dreamed of Little People, the fair folk, and the Gentry. The Danes imagined Nisse, the Household spirits who lived in between spaces and occasionally made things vanish. Mary Norton conjured the Borrowers, who lived in small spaces and only took small things that may never be missed.
Many cultures have come up with smaller people who live in our unused or unseen spaces. You can imagine Humanity’s collective shock when they discovered the truth. It was Humans who were the small folk. Even the tallest of Humans would have trouble reaching the average alien’s knee, should they stand on the same surface together. Life is a peril at that scale, and only the bravest and the most nimble went out into space with the others.
Those who went, adapted well. They took up residence in the spaces between. They took advantage of the neglected things. Many rode on alien shoulders, some with the invention of a form of saddle, others by clinging to whatever there was to grab. Some peoples made sure there was accommodations. Runways, stairs, ladders added into the architecture. Humans, in return, provided new meaning to miniaturisation.
[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for a link to the rest of this story, and details on how to support this artist. Or visit steemit (dot) com (slash at) internutter for the stories at their freshest]