Fae Papercuts

This is for stories. Some of them are mine. My stuff is tagged 'fae papercuts original', and lives over at faepapercuts.com too

[fae-papercuts]

I put my wordsing on a website of my own because that's a thing I can do.

Remember RSS? You can still use that to subscribe to websites that support it, which mine does. Check out feeder.co or similar sites to do just that.

[fox-bright]

Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.

It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.

Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.

I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.

[elena1701a]

These are both great stories, and very hopeful despite the subject matter.

[them-faetale]

So this is one of my favourite authors now.

The Year Without Sunshine has an audio version at the bottom, too, for my fellow story listeners.

She also has a lot of other shorts linked to on her website, as well as books out.

[fae-papercuts]

People who comment on my website may find themselves receiving fae gifts, as a reward for making me do little happy dances because someone liked my weird little stories enough to tell me how it made them feel.

I cannot guarantee anything about the nature of the gifts, when you may receive them, or if you will actually receive anything.

Just know that if you feel you have received a gift after commenting something delightful on my site, you should probably make sure you have used it up before midnight (where applicable) and not tell anyone about it. Except me, you can tell me, and I will grin wryly with the knowledge of your reward.

Unless your gift turns out to be teeth. Then you should bury them immediately. You don't wanna know what happens otherwise, trust me.

Thanks, commenters, you all make my shrivelled little heart burn a little brighter!

[otherwindow]

This is how the golden age of piracy ended.

[otherwindow]

The first mermaid to get tattoos :)

[dragonsateyourtoast]

“we didn’t know any better,” the crewman says, and swallows, presenting the chest to the captain. “what do we do now?”

“kill it,” the captain says, but the ice is melting in his eyes.

“we can’t,” the first mate says desperately, praying she won’t have to fight her captain on this. “we can’t. we - i won’t. we won’t.”

“i know.”

x

“daddy,” she says, floating in a tub of seawater in the hold, “daddy, la-la, la-la-la.”

her voice rings like bells. her accent is strange; her mouth isn’t made for human words. it mesmerises even the hardiest amongst them and she wasn’t even trying. the crew has taken to diving for shellfish near the shorelines for her; she loves them, splitting the shells apart with strength seen in no human toddler, slurping down the slimy molluscs inside and laughing, all plump brown cheeks and needle-sharp teeth. she sometimes splashes them for fun with her smooth, rubbery brown tail. even when they get soaked they laugh. they love her.

“daddy,” she calls again, and he can hear the worry in her voice. the storm rocking the ship is harsh and uncaring, and if they go down, she would be the only survivor.

“don’t worry,” he says, and goes over, sitting next to the tub. the first mate, leaning against the wall, pretends not to notice as he quietly begins to sing.

x

“father,” she says, one day, as she leans on the edge of the dock and the captain sits next to her, “why am I here?”

“your mother abandoned you,” he says, as he always has. “we found you adrift, and couldn’t bear to leave you there.”

she picks at the salt-soaked boards, uncertain. her hair is pulled back in a fluffy black puff, the white linen holding it slipping almost over one of her dark eyes. one of her first tattoos, a many-limbed kraken, curls over her right shoulder and down her arm, delicate tendrils wrapped around her calloused fingertips. “alright,” she says.

x

“why am I really here?” she asks the first mate, watching the sun set over the water in streaks of liquid metal that pooled in the troughs of the waves and glittered on the seafoam.

“we didn’t know any better,” the first mate says, staring into the water. “we didn’t know- we didn’t know anything. we didn’t understand why she fought so viciously to guard her treasure. we could not know she protected something a thousand times more precious than the purest gold.”

she wants to be furious, but she can’t. she already knew the answer, from reading the guilt in her father’s eyes and the empty space in her own history. and she can’t hate her family.

“it’s alright,” she says. “i do have a family, anyways. i don’t think i would have liked my other life near as much.”

x

her kraken grows, spreading its tendrils over her torso and arms. she grows too, too large to come on board the ship without being hauled up in a boat from the water. she sings when the storms come and swims before the ship to guide it to safety. she fights off more than one beast of the seas, and gathers a set of scars across her back that she bears with pride. “i don’t mind,” she says, when the captain fusses over her, “now i match all of you.”

the first time their ship is threatened, really threatened, is by another fleet. a friend turned enemy of the first mate. “we shouldn’t fight him,” she says, peering through the spyglass.

“why not?” the mermaid asks.

“he’ll win,” the first mate says.

the mermaid tips her head sideways. Her eyes, dark as the deep waters, gleam in the noon light. “are you sure?” she asks.

x

the enemy fleet surrenders after the flagship is sunk in the night, the anchor ripped off the ship and the planks torn off the hull. the surviving crew, wild-eyed and delirious, whimper and say a sea serpent came from the water and attacked them, say it was longer than the boat and crushed it in its coils. the first mate hears this and has to hide her laughter. the captain apologizes to his daughter for doubting her.

“don’t worry,” she says, with a bright laugh, “it was fun.”

x

the second time, they are pushed by a storm into a royal fleet. they can’t possibly fight them, and they don’t have the time to escape.

“let me up,” the mermaid urges, surfacing starboard and shouting to the crew. “bring me up, quickly, quickly.”

they lower the boat and she piles her sinous form into it, and uses her claws to help the crew pull her up. once on the deck she flops out of the boat and makes her way over to the bow. the crew tries to help but she’s so heavy they can barely lift parts of her.

she crawls up out in front of the rail and wraps her long webbed tail around the prow. the figurehead has served them well so far but they need more right now. she wraps herself around the figurehead and raises her body up into the wind takes a breath of the stinging salt air and sings.

the storm carries her voice on its front to the royal navy. they are enchanted, so stunned by her song that they drop the rigging ropes and let the tillers drift. the pirates sail through the center of the fleet, trailing the storm behind them, and by the time the fleet has managed to regain its senses they are buried in wind and rain and the pirates are gone.

x

she declines guns. instead she carries a harpoon and its launcher, and uses them to board enemy ships, hauling her massive form out of the water to coil on the deck and dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency. her family is feared across all the sea.

x

“you know we are dying,” the captain says, looking down at her.

she floats next to the ship, so massive she could hold it in her arms. her eyes are wise.

“i know,” she says, “i can feel it coming.”

the first mate stands next to the captain. she never had a lover or a child, and neither did he, but to the mermaid they are her parents. she will always love her daughter. the tattoos are graven in dark swirls across the mermaid’s deep brown skin and the flesh of her tail, even spiraling onto the spiked webbing on her spine and face. her hair is still tied back, this time with a sail that could not be patched one last time.

“we love you,” the first mate says simply, looking down. her own tightly coiled black hair falls in to her face; she shakes the locs out of the way and smiles through her tears. the captain pretends he isnt crying either.

“i love you too,” the mermaid says, and reached up to pull the ship down just a bit, just to hold them one last time.

“guard the ship,” the captain says. “you always have but you know they’re lost without you.”

“without you,” the mermaid corrects, with a shrug that makes waves. “what will we do?”

“i don’t know,” the captain says. “but you’ll help them, won’t you?”

“of course i will,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “i will always protect my family.”

x

the captain and the first mate are gone. the ship has a new captain, young and fearless - of the things she can afford to disregard. she fears and loves the ocean, as all captains do. she does not fear the royal fleet. and she does not fear the mermaid.

“you know, i heard stories about you when i was a little girl,” she says, trailing her fingers in the water next to the dock.

the mermaid stares at her with one eye the size of a dinner table. “is that so?” she hums, smirking with teeth sharper than the swords of the entire navy.

“they said you could sink an entire fleet and that you had skin tougher than dragon scales,” the new captain says, grinning right back at the monster who could eat her without a moment’s hesitation. “i always thought they were telling tall tales.”

“and now?”

“they were right,” the new captain says. “how did they ever befriend you?”

the mermaid smiles, fully this time, her dark eyes gleaming under the white linen sail. “they didn’t know any better.”

[redporkpadthai]

She protects her family.

[writing-prompt-s]

Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.

[lyricwritesprose]

The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

I followed the being in the suit.

[phoenixyfriend]

Took me well over a minute to realize "low frequency right angle shape" was Red Cross.

[pyromania2014]

This whole thing is brilliant with translation stuff.

[fae-papercuts]

Punching God simply seemed like the only reasonable response.

I had closed my eyes for the last time, then opened them again to see the big bearded bastard standing there, looking all beneficent and peaceful, smiling like he expected me to be happy about being dead. Just chilling out in front of those huge, obnoxiously ostentatious pearly gates.

So, of course, I punched the smug fucker. I balled up my fists, walked up to him without saying a word, and as he spread his arms in what I think was meant to be a paternal gesture of acceptance, I knocked him right on his holy arse with one solid right hook.

Lying there, holding his jaw, he didn't even look surprised. He just stared up at me, while I shook with rage, sweat beading on my head, which was still bald even here in the afterlife.

"You absolutely atrocious piece of shit," I snarled at his white-robed form, spitting the curses like they would cut him.

"You sadistic, cruel, vicious arsehole," I growled, standing over him still wearing my hospital gown. I could feel the spaces in my flesh where the cannula had been. There was a ghostly sensation of monitors that had been attached to my skin since forever ago, but were now suddenly absent.

I glared at him, eyes blasting rage from beneath an absence of eyebrows. But I wasn't really seeing the ambivalent, bearded face. Instead, her face was burning bright in my mind. Her lovely, loving, youthful face stained with tears I once thought she would run out of, but that hadn't stopped even after however long it had been. Every visit, there had been more tears, and I knew there would be more, so many more, now that I was gone.

God didn't try to get up. He didn't try to argue, or protest. Something in his eyes seemed to accept this. It was almost like he expected it. He stopped rubbing his jaw, looking up at me with a horribly agreeable expression.

"I forgive you," he said, his voice reverberating deep and resonant, like gentle thunder.

"Fuck you, you rotten cunt," I snapped back, pulling back a bare foot and kicking him in the guts with a satisfying thud. I did it again, and again, not stopping until my foot ached from the impacts. He had curled up into a defensive ball by that point, and I took a step back, breathing hard.

As my breath slowed, feeling my lungs working in a way they hadn't for years, I heard a strange sound behind me. Something like a drain emptying, or mud sucking on a shoe as you pull it out of a bog. Turning, I saw a massive hole in the blank white ground. A black abyss, several meters wide, filled at first with nothing but absolute darkness. Then, as I watched, eyes fixed on this perfectly circular hole carved in the smooth floor, a flicker of light began to dance in the bottom of it.

"Please, don't go," came God's voice from behind me. It was softer than before, gently pleading, a protective note at the edges. The resonance, the depth, the authority were still there - but there was something else underneath them that felt oddly wrong. It was so confusing that I thought for a moment it couldn't be him. I turned to face him again, and found him standing on the spot where I had left him curled into a ball, looking just as disgustingly peaceful as before.

"You don't get to ask anything of me, you shitstain," I told him, my brief curiosity fleeing at the sight of his beatific features. "You don't get to ask for anything more from me," I declared, blood boiling as I stepped towards him once more, my fists two burning orbs of rage.

"It's ok now, it's all over, you can rest," he tried to reassure me, voice full of that supernatural authority that I couldn't trust, with a kindness that felt awfully practiced. He raised his hands in a somewhat awkward attempt at a calming gesture.

I stopped. I stopped and stared at him incredulously. I could rest? I could fucking rest?

I looked down at my hospital gown. At the marks on my arms. At the lines that showed the traces of every dose of chemo, every drop of morphine that I had to lower the dosage of every time my family visited, just so I could be something like lucid.

"I don't want to fucking rest, you turd," I growled, eyes snapping back up to glare daggers into that wrinkled face and benevolent expression. "I want to rip your damned legs off and beat you to death with them," I shouted, voice cracking from my bubbling emotions. I moved towards him again, fingers flexing as a part of me wondered if God could bleed.

He held out his arms as though to keep me away, but I batted them aside and smashed my fist into his nose. I wasn't sure if the crunch came from him or my knuckles, but I didn't care. He didn't go down this time, only stumbled back a little. So I grabbed his stupid robe and pulled us together again, bringing his face back into hard contact with my fist. I could feel my face contorting into a bestial snarl, punching him over and over again, until I felt a wave of rage and horror and despair tear itself free from my aching chest, and I let out a scream like nothing I'd ever heard before.

It felt like my throat ripped asunder as I cried out, releasing my grip and dropping to my knees, tears flowing down my face as all that I had held onto for so long finally overcame me. There, at the gates of heaven, I wept like I had never wept in all my life.

I don't know how long I sobbed for.

When I breathed in deep, sucking up all those feelings and drawing myself back together, ragged and worn though every edge of me was, I felt his hand resting gently on my shoulder.

"It's ok now," he said, soft and kind once again. Like he understood. As though he could ever possibly understand.

I shook him off my shoulder and stood up. I stumbled forward at first, but I managed it on the second try. I wasn't used to using my legs any more, and that initial surge of rage had subsided into something that couldn't quite keep me from noticing how my body felt ill-fitting.

"It's never going to be ok again, you flaccid prick," I told him, the embers of my rage still burning behind my reddened eyes. "It will never be ok for her ever, ever again. How the fuck can you say that? How the absolute shit can you have the gall to tell me it's ok, when she had to watch her mother die when she was just twelve years old? When she had to watch me fucking waste away in agony, she had to watch me become a little less myself with every visit, while she tried to go school and do well on unending exams, and deal with everything else kids have to fucking deal with already?"

I felt tears still running down my cheeks, but slower now. My eyes were sore. I couldn't look at him any more. I couldn't look at the lie of his compassionate face for even a second longer. So I turned and looked down at the yawning chasm in the floor again.

A warm light flickered there in the darkness, and I walked with unsteady steps to the edge of it. I lowered myself onto my knees and looked down, peering past the brilliant whiteness of this place into a very different space.

The light was flickering fire. Looking straight down I could see a dry, rocky road extending away from me, leading to a huge pair of iron gates that stood wide open. They didn't look like they could even close any more, they were so rusted. It was clear no-one was spending their time making sure the gates could keep anyone in, or out.

Beyond them, the darkness ended. Warm light glowed from fires that burned everywhere. Huge bonfires, little campfires, massive blazes in the distance that I couldn't see the source of. And all around them, were people.

People huddled around each pyre, in great crowds. They were indistinct, as was the sound of them that reached my ears. There were so many I couldn't possibly count, gathered in groups and wandering between them in ones and twos. So, so many people. Huddled around for warmth and comfort, collected in crowds that moved gently back and forth like a glittering ocean.

"Please, don't. You don't have to. I forgive you," came that gentle voice me from behind me, rising above the growing din of conversation that spilled up out of the hole.

With a sudden flash of revelation, I realised what I had missed in his voice. I realised what note I hadn't registered through the fog of my anger.

He was scared.

I turned to look over my shoulders, and scanned his face. I looked hard at the lines that creased there, and he seemed to realise I had seen something different in them. Something about him changed. Maybe it was how he was standing, or a little detail of his expression I couldn't put my finger on, but there was something desperate about God.

I looked past him, eyes narrowing. I looked again at the pearly gates of heaven, taking in the sight properly for the first time. I looked at the ornate details, the great banks of clouds on either side. I looked at how they were very firmly closed.

I looked past them. Past the vertical bars wrapped in golden filigrees, up to the rolling hills, the green pastures, the white lights shining from the brilliant blue sky.

I saw what wasn't there. Not one person. Not a single one.

"Won't you forgive me, too?" he asked, his voice tiny, pleading. There he was, all alone, the little man who made it all, begging for someone to forgive him. To forgive him for everything. Literally, for every single thing.

I took a deep breath.

"Go fuck yourself, shithead," I said, as I pushed myself forward into the darkness, towards the constellations of campfires, and all the people who came before me.

They were waiting for me, smiling.

[them-faetale]

I'm going to be at Eastercon next weekend. Tis the UKs biggest regular literary SFF convention, and I'm looking forward to catching up with some of my fellow nerds there. If you're going, and see me (I will have Fae Papercuts on my badge, along with my actual name) then make sure to tell me you like my shoelaces so I know where you know me from.

[fae-papercuts]

I'll be there tomorrow! Looking forward to seeing old friends, nerding out and getting inspired!

[them-faetale]

I'm going to be at Eastercon next weekend. Tis the UKs biggest regular literary SFF convention, and I'm looking forward to catching up with some of my fellow nerds there. If you're going, and see me (I will have Fae Papercuts on my badge, along with my actual name) then make sure to tell me you like my shoelaces so I know where you know me from.

[fae-papercuts]

Oh hey, look, I did another recording! Thought it would be good if I did one of my own, and I really like this one.

Please enjoy my reading of "Still A Monster", a story about what happens when you decide you simply have to ask Medusa about herself

It's too big for Tumblr, so I have to start putting files on my website. On the positive side, it means you can download them as mp3s and keep them forever. On the negative side, I don't know if my website is prepared for streaming reasonably large files to many people at once, so let's find out if it falls over. You can read the text while you listen along, too.

[them-faetale]

If it gives you feels, you have to tell me. Thems the rules.

[zegollygosh]

Absolutely excellent! I did get the feels (though I didn't get to experience the story until now) and it's a wonderful story. Absolutely gutted by the twist. Excellent work!

[fae-papercuts]

Yesss, I thrive on giving people the feels 😁

[fae-papercuts]

Oh hey, look, I did another recording! Thought it would be good if I did one of my own, and I really like this one.

Please enjoy my reading of "Still A Monster", a story about what happens when you decide you simply have to ask Medusa about herself

It's too big for Tumblr, so I have to start putting files on my website. On the positive side, it means you can download them as mp3s and keep them forever. On the negative side, I don't know if my website is prepared for streaming reasonably large files to many people at once, so let's find out if it falls over. You can read the text while you listen along, too.

[fae-papercuts]

Oh hey, look, I did another recording! Thought it would be good if I did one of my own, and I really like this one.

Please enjoy my reading of "Still A Monster", a story about what happens when you decide you simply have to ask Medusa about herself

It's too big for Tumblr, so I have to start putting files on my website. On the positive side, it means you can download them as mp3s and keep them forever. On the negative side, I don't know if my website is prepared for streaming reasonably large files to many people at once, so let's find out if it falls over. You can read the text while you listen along, too.

[fae-papercuts]

I was thinking I would turn my website into a static site to save on the overhead of running a dynamic one, and just found some bloody delightful comments from lovely people on my stories! 🥹💜 Thank you so much, kind people!

So I'll be leaving it as a dynamic site, but I am gonna look at moving to hosting that's a bit less of a faff.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Cinderella rewrite where Cinderella’s father is an unusually successful fisherman due to his secret friendships with the shy and mysterious mermaids, successful enough to attract a moderately wealthy and ambitious bride with two daughters. Once he dies, her stepmother, determined to make sure her daughters inherit the fishing business as dowries by marrying before Cinderella, forbids her from going out on the fishing boats or into town and makes sure she spends as much of her time as possible doing drudgework, hauling offal and cleaning fish. When the Prince’s ball comes around, an important occasion for young women to make good connections, the stepmother forbids her from going, telling her that she needs to get the latest salmon catch gutted and ready for sale instead.

Cinderella’s mermaid godmother calls upon her people to clean the fish and gifts her a dress and shoes of shimmering fish scales that wreathe her in rainbows under the moonlight. She makes an impression on the Prince at the ball so strong that he immediately falls in love with her, and when she’s forced to flee before her stepmother notices her (no masquerade mask or dancing rainbows will disguise her from her own family at close range), the Prince is left with only a delicate fish leather slipper left on the front steps to try to find her again.

He goes around the houses, seeking the owner of the slipper, but Cinderella is once again working in the fish sheds. He stepmother, desperate and determined and having found Cinderella’s other shoe that very morning, realises what has happened and takes a knife to the feet of her prettiest daughter, telling the prince that she suffered an injury that very morning but those are definitely her shoes, see, here’s the other one, and they still fit.

The daughter is pretty and witty and charming, and while the Prince doesn’t feel the same spark and instant sense of connection that he did at the party, he reasons that she’s overwhelmed and in pain and once she’s healed, all will be well. There are no birds to whisper of blood in the shoe – the Prince has seen the bandaged feet already – and the daughter slips on the shoes (the only shoes she has that will fit her, now,) and accompanies him to the palace.

But the stepmother is no doctor, and by the time the Prince gets her to the palace doctors, it’s too late – his beloved has contracted an infection in her feet from the shoe leather, made unclean in its travels. She will survive – it is an infection of a common filth of fish and birds, one that the doctors have potions for for the occasions where dangerously cooked food causes outbreaks – but in her raving, she confesses the whole scheme to the Prince who, furious, returns to the village to find the girl he truly fell in love with, the girl hidden from him.

“Oh, yeah, the fish cleaner,” the villagers shrug. “We don’t see her around very much, she’s probably in the sheds. Her family calls her Salmonella.”

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#now I’m just sad abt the daughter with her fucked up feet 

Contains: suicidal ideation, attempted suicide

The infection brought on a high fever, and the damage was permanent. Her mother’s knife took her ability to walk without pain. The fever took her voice.

It hadn’t been her plan. She hadn’t wanted to do it. But her mother, with her sharp eyes and her sharp knife, had explained to her once again that behind her stepsister’s kindly smile was a ruthless heiress who wanted to take everything the family had and leave the rest of them destitute. “You have a duty to protect this family,” her mother explained. “Your father gave his life to protect us from invaders. I gave my heart and my future to protect us from poverty. Will you not do the same?”

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[fae-papercuts]

Wow, lots of people liked that last one, huh? Many thanks to the bloody talented @caffeinewitchcraft for writing it and sharing my recording!

Well, here goes another one, rather more serious, and with yet more of an attempt on my part to clean up the audio.

Visit Original Link

Length: ~10 minutes

Link to the text is here, because Tumblr is refusing to let me upload the audio as a reblog for some fucking reason.

Reblog by @caffeinewitchcraft

💬 33  🔁 4210  ❤️ 9216 · when you disappear, the sound doesn’t come back. the combatants stand on the battle field feeling naked despite the

I am gonna need to either learn more breath discipline or find a faster way to clean up breath sounds… should probably get a proper pop shield, too…

[caffeinewitchcraft]

“A debt to the fae must always be paid,” the old man said. His eyes glistened with tears as he looked to the full moon overhead. “And the cost is always severe.”

There were murmurs from the others around the fire. Men and women who gathered to hear the wise man speak knew the reality of what he said intimately.

“I owe all my gold,” one man said.

“Then you must remove the gold from your vaults and strip every filigree from your home,” the wise one said.

“I owe my blood,” one woman said.

“Then your blood must be spilled within a fairy ring,” the wise one said.

“My debt is to be paid in flesh,” another attendee cried.

“Then your flesh you must divest—“

“Bullshit. Propaganda!” a woman called from the tree line. She pointed a finger at each person in turn. “You’re buying into it by even entertaining the idea of paying them back.”

“I have lived many years,” the wise old man said, “and every debt I attempted to evade came back many time worse.”

“Sounds like you weren’t fast enough,” the woman said, stepping out into the light. The sweat on her forehead glimmered in the moonlight like morning dew. She jerked a thumb towards her chest. “Me? I’m fast as fuck. I’ve been outrunning my debts for years.”

The wise one gaped. “That’s not— you can’t—“ he turned to his audience. “She is speaking lies.”

His audience hesitated.

“I would personally like to avoid being divested of my flesh,” one attendee offered hesitantly.

There were murmurs of agreement.

“Then stretch up, bud,” the woman said over the wise one’s protests. “We’re running tonight.”

The wise one stared as his audience fled into the night. “Y-you’ll all die!”

“Not me,” the woman howled from deep within the woods. “I’m fast as fuck, boiiiiiii!”

[fae-papercuts]

Visit Original Link

I wanted something short and fun to warm up with today, and so you all get to experience by first attempt at doing some proper post-processing - oh, and using mic distance for a fun effect at the end there.

@caffeinewitchcraft - thanks for giving me permission to record your stories! Hopefully this will be the first of many!

Oh, it's only 2 and a half minutes long, btw

[caffeinewitchcraft]

I am crying both from honor and laughter. Thank you so much! You have an amazing voice

I also took a look at their website and they have some awesome flash fiction on it, including a Sci-fi piece in the "humans are space orcs" category but in the softest, most human way. It's here (X) !

[fae-papercuts]

Aw, thank you so much, I'm so glad you like it! I've read this and a bunch of your stories to one of my partners, so I have a load more I intend to record. I really enjoy your take on the fae, and all the trope-subversion you do in your Chosen One pieces!

And you like my lil autism human space orcs piece! 😊 Aaaaa, so lovely, thank you!

[caffeinewitchcraft]

“A debt to the fae must always be paid,” the old man said. His eyes glistened with tears as he looked to the full moon overhead. “And the cost is always severe.”

There were murmurs from the others around the fire. Men and women who gathered to hear the wise man speak knew the reality of what he said intimately.

“I owe all my gold,” one man said.

“Then you must remove the gold from your vaults and strip every filigree from your home,” the wise one said.

“I owe my blood,” one woman said.

“Then your blood must be spilled within a fairy ring,” the wise one said.

“My debt is to be paid in flesh,” another attendee cried.

“Then your flesh you must divest—“

“Bullshit. Propaganda!” a woman called from the tree line. She pointed a finger at each person in turn. “You’re buying into it by even entertaining the idea of paying them back.”

“I have lived many years,” the wise old man said, “and every debt I attempted to evade came back many time worse.”

“Sounds like you weren’t fast enough,” the woman said, stepping out into the light. The sweat on her forehead glimmered in the moonlight like morning dew. She jerked a thumb towards her chest. “Me? I’m fast as fuck. I’ve been outrunning my debts for years.”

The wise one gaped. “That’s not— you can’t—“ he turned to his audience. “She is speaking lies.”

His audience hesitated.

“I would personally like to avoid being divested of my flesh,” one attendee offered hesitantly.

There were murmurs of agreement.

“Then stretch up, bud,” the woman said over the wise one’s protests. “We’re running tonight.”

The wise one stared as his audience fled into the night. “Y-you’ll all die!”

“Not me,” the woman howled from deep within the woods. “I’m fast as fuck, boiiiiiii!”

[fae-papercuts]

Visit Original Link

I wanted something short and fun to warm up with today, and so you all get to experience by first attempt at doing some proper post-processing - oh, and using mic distance for a fun effect at the end there.

@caffeinewitchcraft - thanks for giving me permission to record your stories! Hopefully this will be the first of many!

Oh, it's only 2 and a half minutes long, btw

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I wrote another short story and this one is very short so it is definitely normal. It has no space to be weird.

How to escape the well

[fae-papercuts]

Visit Original Link

I did a lil dramatic reading of this extremely normal story because I got a new mic and I plan on having fun reading my stories and any others that take my fancy.

(I could not find a reference on how to pronounce your name, Derin, so apologies if it's wrong!)

Now I'm gonna go to bed before I get tempted to immediately do the Copy <|> Paste trilogy, or Isolation Hysteria, or Original Sin...