Fairy Stories & Other Tales

 Once, a woman traveled. She had a pocket full of magic dust, for safe keeping until the time came when she would need it. All the same, when she saw a need, she sprinkled a minute portion.    The lands through which she moved were varied. In the countryside, there was little need for magic dust - the seasons' needs offered no time to think of it. And in the villages, there was not much more need of the dust - people were either happy with the company they kept or happy to discuss the alternative at length, which kept everyone busy.     The people in the cities took the dust. But it did little good. People there had too much money, and not enough. Regardless the side on which one fell, more was always wanted. The dust, the woman knew, was largely wasted.     After she had seen quite a lot, the woman sprinkled all the remaining dust over a large city. Perhaps - though it was a small perhaps - it would do some good. No matter. As the dust was gone, ...

 The sorcerer was bitter, and with good reason, having lost his wife and child. The culprit had been time, not fate, which seems to suffer from whims and prophesies and a peculiar sense of duty. Time simply carries on, tearing down along its way, strangely making everything more beautiful.      It will come as no surprise that the sorcerer cast blame where it could not possibly be affixed. Witches have a way of getting into the middle of this sort of blame. It's not a talent; more of an occupational hazard. This witch had been the one to tend the boy and his mother.     There would have been a spell. A complicated, carefully crafted one, designed to torment its victim until the end of her days. And yet, the witch did not hide in that way some do - the ones that have a tendency to fail escaping the notice of those with a tendency to tyrannous practices. She stepped into the forefront of his grief, for no other reason than that he might not be alone.   ...

 When the girl came into her own, it was not a withering subtle thing. It was strength and mischief and fierceness - all beauty.       The source was everything, like any kind of bloom, with magnanimous worms, warmth and wetted cold, bees. For her, a balance of love and fear, both conquered. The wander encouraged. The critical eye unyielding, except sometimes. All as painstakingly nurtured as though she were one of those flowers burst out of seeming nothingness, though most of it done through circumstance and fortitude.      Forged by some chance and all miracle, she bloomed.         

 Once upon a time there was a woman who could see the future. She couldn't hear it, nor understand what it was she saw, and it wasn't a pleasant gift. As a young woman she had tried to change what it was she saw, as though she had somehow divined it for the purpose of undoing it. But her glimpses of the future were not sought after. And nothing about the future offered a clarity sufficient enough within which one could successfully meddle.      The future came in waves. In dreams, day and night. In moments - thoughts floating across the backs of her eyes where such knowledge seemed to arrive. As a middle-aged woman, it became an agony. By then she had recognized the futility of trying to change what it was she saw, and so she sat with it. She stewed. And did not enjoy her middle years.     Which is, over course, no way to live.      In rebellion, she began to treat the glimpses of future as story - story that had no proper beginning, nor nece...