Fairy Stories & Other Tales

 Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in a small house amongst many other houses in the middle of a city that contained many other people. And she was lonely.     One day she felt the breeze toss her hair, and on it she caught the scent of an ocean breeze.     On a whim, she packed up all she had and moved to a cottage by the sea.     She lived in a small cottage amongst a few other cottages on a coast that contained a few other people.     And there she was happy.

Once upon a time there was a king who sat on a wooden throne and whispered to the birds that came to crowd and circle round his head.   He was not a usual kind of king, like those who ruled with boundaries and whose subjects were the people who lived within.   He was the Forest King.   And his wooden throne was made from a living tree who desired to grow her shape into a chair to fit him.   And when he whispered to the birds, he was speaking to his advisors who flew about the forest as his eyes and ears.             He did not stay on the throne long or often, for his birds could come to him wherever he was.   Thus, he could roam the forest himself, and in this way he remained close to those he served.             So it was that one day while he walked about his forest he happened upon a small meadow where two centaurs stood ready to engage in what promised to be an epic battle.   Hate bled from their eyes.   Anger seethed from their mouths in breaths and curses.   And deadly swo

 Once upon a time there was a man who made paper crowns for the gods.  The gods thought nothing of such paltry offerings until he died.  For there was no one to make paper crowns then. So the gods made their own paper crowns. And told themselves that the flimsy nature of so strong a symbol was only to keep them humble. And the world was better for it.

 Once upon a time there was a dark path that ran through the woods. Because, aren't all paths that run through the woods dark? Also, there was a mushroom ring. Obviously. But it was benign. What was important was the cottage. Well, it was almost a cottage. Really, it was just a few tens of roof shingles and a re-built chimney short of a cottage.     Not that the witch who lived in it cared.     She was easy going that way.     Actually, she was easy going the way society said it wasn't possible for a woman to be easy going. The kind of woman who didn't run her finger along the shelf of another woman's house to look for dust. The kind of woman that didn't have a closet full of clothes — she just had the one set. The kind of woman who didn't charge for healing when the patient's ribs were on the protruding side of things.     Hence the dilapidated cottage.     She might not have cared, but she did mind . A bit. You know, the way people mind being poor and ostr

 There was, of course, a library at the edge of the universe. It was built to fit the space. That space, for the moment, was infinite. But it was the kind of infinite that was smaller than other kinds of infinite — both space and libraries are funny that way.     This library had an agenda. Most do. But this one's was more specific than most. It wanted to hold all the books in the universe, whether they liked it or not. And it got the books by poking and prodding the universe in all kinds of different ways, until it gave up the literary ghost. Well, all the literary ghosts.     So. There sat a library at the edge of space that housed all the books in the universe. It mostly sat, anyway. Sometimes it stood. Occasionally it stretched a bit. And on two occasions, yawns were recorded as galaxies doing a funny little seismic shift.     It might yawn again. In an eon or two.     Because it is waiting.     It's been waiting for an infinite amount of time. One of the smaller infinites