bsdtales zine fic preview !
AYYY WADDUP ITS FINALLY GON BE OUT ON FEB BUY N PREORDER THAT SHIT YALL ITS GOOD QUALITY ART AND FANFICTION U WILL NOT REGRET
ANYWAy heres the preview for The Wolf’s Gambit that you might’ve seen in the sample here for @bsdtales’ fractured fairy tales zine
Special special special thank you and kisses to all the people who helped me with the zine and brainstorming thank you kura, sodium, stan, mom, maman catargo, thais! im too lazy to tag accs orz but yall kno who u r thanks a lot my dudes
Once upon a time there was a little girl who was called little Red Riding-Hood, because she was quite small and because she always wore a red cloak with a big red hood to it, which her grandmother had made for her.
A little girl, no more than five, made her way through the dim hallway, bleary eyed and tired from the bout of nightmares that had woken her in the first place. She did not notice the slim figure slipping out of her father’s bedroom until she’d stumbled into its legs. All bleariness gone, she lifted her face to the stranger’s, cut in shadow and moonlight from a window someone had forgotten to draw the curtains over. The figure bent to face level, knees resting in the plush carpet, and in the new light the girl could tell it was a man–perhaps a friend of father’s? He smiled an easy grin, and the girl relaxed; no friend of papa’s would hurt her.
She removed her thumb from her mouth. “Are you papa’s friend?”
“No,” replied the man, still with the same easy smile. He pointed to the framed portrait above them, a hand-painted depiction of a family of five. “Can you tell who are they? Who’s that, to the left?”
“Oh oh–that she’s my elder sister, and the one over there? That’s my second favourite sister, and that’s papa and mama, holding Asako-chan–she’s always crying, but she’s cuter than the others and likes me the best,” the girl’s words were eager, running together in excitement–it was clear she loved to talk about her family.
“And who’s your first favourite sister? Asako?” the stranger gave a playful tug at her braid. “Or do you prefer brothers?”
“Oh no, brothers are horrible. Asako doesn’t play with me a lot, though, so my first favourite is that one over there. She makes dolls for me and plays with me the most.”
“She sounds sweet, Hana.”
“How-how do you know my name?” Hana gaped, eyes wide.
“Oh, I know the names of all the children. I know your favourite sister’s Chiyoko, and your eldest is Hanami. Don’t you know that I live under your beds and basements?”
“So what mama told me–it is true! You don’t look like a monster, though.” the cold fingers of fear had began to grip her one by one. Monsters were cruel, horrendous, and yet the stranger was beautiful, eyes warm and amiable–
The next time he spoke, the stranger’s voice was soft, a silky lull no different from how mama’s was when she had tucked her into bed. “Tell you what, Hana. If you tell anyone that I was here, the monster will know and put Mama and Asako to sleep. You don’t want them asleep forever, do you?”
Hana shook her head in silence, felt her knees knock together as the stranger made to rise. “Go to bed, Hana. Pretend as if I’d never been here, just a little nightmare, off you go.”
So Hana turned her back on the monster and darted into her room, almost tripping over in haste, the last thing she saw out of the corner of her eye a flash of red caught in the moonlight.
