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Showing posts from January, 2025

Rights

 Once, a woman ran quickly. Her children were strapped to her, the ground thick with snow, and so her gait was slow. This was unfortunate, as she was being chased. And only to be expected. For the woman had some skill with healing magics. This is all to the good when you are healing people of broken limbs and aching heads; and all to ill when the healer offers care for a village's young women, who are better thought as means to ends than ends to be wrapped up in robust health. All is far more ill when such a healer begins to speak her mind. Not long before a village decides that she must leave.     The woman fled through the trees, her feet numb from leaking boots. Whispered words among women had given her a head start. But it was not enough.      The arrows surprised her.       She and her children were being hunted like deer. But she had direction, one last hope.     She saw the cottage, the swirling smoke, blur bef...

A Last Effort

 Once upon a time there was a little girl who was quite ill. Her mother had little money for a cure. Still, she asked various persons of medical persuasion for what help they could offer. Ask is such a tame word. She pleaded. She begged. And was refused.     All other moments were at her daughter's side, wiping her brow, watching the vicious cough that shook her tiny body take toll upon toll.      And in the small moments when her daughter slept, the woman indulged in secret, silent tears, her eyes on the sweet small face that had less and less time for living.     The moon was high on the night before what would be the last for the little girl. The woman knew the signs. Her daughter sleeping, she slipped out of the house, where she wished upon the moon. There was no wish that came in words, nothing that put voice to her futile hope. But a path wandered through the wood next to her house all the same; one, of course, the woman had n...

Of Three Spells

 Once upon a time a witch was allowed enough power to cast three spells. It was only three; no more. Long did she think of what her spells might be. Carefully did she consider the consequences possible and plausible. And then, she cast her spells.     The first made as many wrongs in the world as right as they could be.     The second rid the world of evil wizards.     And the third did her laundry.     Laundry is, after all, very annoying.

The Ageless

 Once upon a time an old woman was pretty certain she looked terribly old. And tired. Aged. She knew it in her mind, in the way things just slipped away from it from time to time. She felt it in her back when she got out of a chair and in her knees as she went for a walk.     She saw it in the mirror. The wrinkles and bags, pockets of age staring back at her.     That said, she never thought about it for very long. Mostly because she had a secret.      And the secret was that she believed, quite strongly, in enchanted forests. In fairies. In witches. In wonder.     In magic.     A belief which had a most curious effect.     People would often stop and stare at her for a moment. This grew more often as her years increased. They would gaze for as long as propriety would allow - an instant, no more - at her star-laden eyes. At her impish grin. Her carefully tipped ears.     Th...

Post-Yuletide Cheer

 The air was harsh, cold, and wet. Not the crisp cold of autumn that whispers scents of cider and possibilities. Not the pre-spring sop whose bearability lies in it's proximity to warmer days ahead. No, this was the kind of cold and wet that crept into the bones and made itself at home, impossible to shake no matter how many cups of tea and fires one surrounded oneself with.     The witch wasn't particularly pleased with the state of the weather. Or the state of the year.      It's all very well when Yuletide comes, all very well to know that the days are growing longer. But the truth is that it exists in the mind no more than as a mere technicality. An infinitesimal stretching of instants that mean little when chill and exhaustion run circles about an old woman.     Which is all to say that it was the time of year when witches got depressed. And this witch in particular was suffering the ill effects of morose sorrow more than she h...