Tales of the Fairy and Holes in the Plot

Branches, branches. Branches everywhere. It always begins this way. Branches. Or brambles. A briar. Thick and encroaching. A breakable portent of evil. Though it can be eradicated with a hacksaw. And the girl is asleep, the story says. Covered by a curse. Doomed.

    The girl thought about these odd things as she lay on her bed at the top of the castle's tallest tower, drowsy and in and out of sleep. The castle was covered in branches and briars and brambles, and other bushy things that bore down on passersby. She was hiding in her bed. Just in case someone decided to play the rescuer. She couldn't remember the end of the stories, but surely no one would look for her here. Not in her bedroom. That would be rude.

   She was glad the sorceress had forgotten about fog. No one ever gets cursed with fog. The sorceresses always forgot about fog. The thing about fog, she thought, was that in the story, the fog is already there, misty, glomming onto the atmosphere to set the stage. It doesn't just appear because the death has already happened. And usually it got there by murder.

    That was a cheering thought.

    Yes, she'd rather have the brambles and the branches and the briar

    After all, she could always hack them up.

    When she was good and ready.

    After she was done resting.

    You couldn't hack up fog.

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