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@feralfae
new substack post!
heya its an apparently weekly essay from your local exiled feral faerie! this one is about the stuffing-sickness, a peculiar condition that arises from remaining in the human world of flesh and time and matter for too long
read it here, and if you like, perhaps grab me a coffee!
new substack post!
some nights ago i dreamed of my death and the aftermath, and wrote about it. all strange things are faerie things if you make it gold and glamorous.
read The Afterward here!
howdy there folks!
I made my first post on my substack today, a little essay about hearts and how faeries deal with having them (we aren’t quite supposed to)!
In the next week I’ll post more, and eventually they’ll go out as email newsletters when I get a decent amount of folks subscribed to the emails. I can’t promise any sort of regularity on posting, it’ll be as the faerie content makes its way out of the coiled green mass of my flesh.
Check it out here if you’re interested, and maybe grab me a coffee if you like it!
What scary firelight stories do the fae tell themselves about other creatures?
When I was smallerthan I am and lived in Faerieland, this is one of the stories they would tellthe little ones, the ones they hadn’t been able to trade away or deftly replace.
In the Other-world, some ancientfolk would murmur, in the land under the sun, in the land of time and allthings that grow and change and are and are and are, there are monsterswho drew iron about themselves just as we draw glamour. They wear it like an exo-skeleton and forgefrom it blades to murder and undo the selves of us. (Iron is organized, it pulls, it tugs,it snags on the fragile signals that constitute our forms and unravels us likea knit sweater.)
One of these iron-folk was calledSir Holth, and he was rumored to be a great and cruel warrior. Sir Holth was known among the sunless folk asthe fae-slayer, Sir Faerie-Bane. For nigh40 years he stalked the forests and the faerie-meadows, the points at which thesunless world touched his. He guardedthese gates and took every faerie life that crossed with his iron blade.
At that point, one of thewithered crones in the corner would pipe up and say some close friend oranother had been killed by this Sir Holth, or Renfidge, or whichever name theteller bestowed for the evening.
Sir Holth (or Renfidge, orwhomever) ultimately died at the gate, his death foretold by a banshee, whom herather rudely murdered shortly before. But as he had died so near a faerie gate, and as his soul was full of bloodyiron and leaden hate, his spirit lingered. They say, and the teller would pause, looking around at the young folkin their audience, taking in, while they still had the room’s attention, thewide-eyes and the knowing, narrowing ones, they say that Sir Holth’s spiritslipped in through the faerie gate, still full of iron and hate. They say his spirit has a bloody blade, thatthe phantom iron of it is still enough to kill a faerie if he gets enoughstrikes in.
Sir Holth haunts the woods, (orthe beaches, or the meadows) the teller says, so beware! Keep bloodstone on yourperson, my good neighbors, for you never know when the fae-slayer might sneakup on you!
They call it the stuffing-sickness. It is what happens when the sun gets inside of you and starts to make you one of her creatures. It’s what happens when the world gets stuck inside the prism of your body, it’s what happens when you start to have a body after all. I never called it that, not for many, many decades. Sun-sickness, I might term it, if I were to call it anything at all.
I was one of the first to come here, to the sunlight lands, to the place of the real and the solid. It wasn’t a choice, not really. They murdered the Spring Queen. They murdered my lover and sat on the throne scorpion-smiling. I would have killed them if I had stayed, and they would have had me un-made, ripped free of my self, my being restored to the ground. I worked so, so very hard to claw my way to selfhood, and I would not have it torn from me. I asked instead if I could scout in the sunlight lands for a while, and wisely the scorpion-ruler humored me.
When I came here, my first sight was the sun, and I was in love, despite having no heart. I felt the seed of it then starting to unfurl like an alder sapling in the spot I called my chest, starting to quaver in the light of this brilliant, all-consuming star. The stuffing-sickness doesn’t always begin with a heart, I must mention. For some, it begins with hands, with blood-vessels, with lungs or eyes or bones. My illness started with my heart. Although I knew I should, I could not pull it out of me while that beautiful light was shining. And so it grew and grew and grew, and all the while the rest of me was growing too, the world winding like vines up my legs.
In the first new-moon-dark I found, quite suddenly, that I could not change my form as I was wont to do. Free at last of the captivating sun I tore and tore and ate and ate and ate until I was nothing but Name again. I didn’t expect to, but I felt the loss of my flesh-pieces as keenly as I would a missing scrap of Name. I ate them and made them part of my body once again, but it still didn’t soothe me, and I woke up bone-aching in the sunlight with a sense of shame that had no place in a faerie’s mind.
I wandered far, and far, and far, until I found a forest unfamiliar and dense, like home. My body had been growing, building itself up bit by twining bit, and I let it do so, even when I woke up and the moon was gone and I knew I could, I knew I ought to strip myself down to my Name and nothing else. The heart was the only thing I could not bear to keep, because it pounded an itch-rhythm in my chest if I let it grow too strong.
I tried to go home, once. Faerie gnawed at me and for the first time its teeth in the meat of me was not comforting. I fled to the sunlight lands, to the star-place, to my growing heart.
i’ve been doing my homework on how to break into a writing career and honestly. there’s a Lot that i didn’t know about thats critical to a writing career in this day and age, and on the one hand, its understandable because we’re experiencing a massive cultural shift, but on the other hand, writers who do not have formal training in school or don’t have the connections to learn more via social osmosis end up extremely out of loop and working at a disadvantage.
like, i didnt know about twitter pitch parties!! i didnt know about literary agents and publishers tweeting their manuscript wishlist, in hopes that some poor soul out there has written the book they really want to read and publish!! this isnt some shit you learn about in school! you really need to know the ins and outs of the writing community to be successful!
for anyone interested, here’s what i’ve learned so far in my quest for more writing knowledge:
1. Writer’s Market 2019 is a great place to start– it gives you a list of magazines and journals that you can send your work to depending on the genre as well as lists a shit ton of literary agents that specify what genres they represent, how you can get in contact with them and how they accept query letters. this is a book that updates every year and tbh i only bought it this year so i dont know how critical it is to have an updated version
2. do your research. mostly on literary agents because if you listed on your site that you like to represent fluffy YA novels and some asshole sends you a 80k manuscript about like…gritty viking culture, you will be severely pissed off. always go in finding someone who you know will actually like your work because they’re the ones who will try to advocate for you in getting published.
3. learn how to write a query letter. there are slightly varying formulas to how you can write an effective query letter. you’re also going to want to get feedback on your query letter because its the first thing the literary agent will read and based on how well you do it, it could be the difference between them rejecting you outright and giving your manuscript a quick read
4. unfortunately, you’re gonna want to get a twitter. Twitter is where a lot of literary agents are nowadays, and they host things like twitter pitch parties, where you pitch your manuscript in a few sentences and hashtag it with #Pitmad #Pitdark, some version of pit. a lot of literary agents and publishers will ALSO post their manuscript wishlists, which is just the kind of books they’d like to represent/publish, and they hashtag this with #MSWL (it is NOT for writers to use, only for agents/publishers)
5. connect with other writers, literary agents, publishers at book events. you will absolutely need the connections if you want to get ahead as a writer. thats just kind of the state of the world.
Your Child Baby Is Very Handsome Would Be Shame If Something Were To :) Takes It :)
When I was ten, I choked on a peach pit. It slipped into my windpipe and settled in my left lung. None of the doctors could tell why I didn’t breathe right. None of them believed me when I said the peach tree was growing.
“Plants need soil, sweetie,” the pediatrician told me.
No they don’t, I thought. When I was ten, I believed that every time you swallowed water wrong it went into your lungs and stayed there. I thought the lungs were a little like the womb, slowly filling up with liquid. The perfect place for something to grow.
It’s okay that they didn’t believe me. People still don’t believe me. But when I was ten and I told the doctors a peach tree was growing in my left lung, I was wrong. A peach tree wasn’t growing in my lung. I had felt the moment the pit cracked, had felt something splash into the pool of water at the bottom of my breath. I felt the soft brush of something on my alveoli. Sometimes a sharp pinch, I thought it leaves, spreading branches.
I thought it was a tree until I was twenty and the creature that hatched from the peach pit clawed its way out of the womb of my lung. It didn’t show up on the MRI, whatever it was. But the big hole in my lung did. The woman who did the stitching said she had never seen a tear like that before. I liked her. She told me after the surgery that, in the throes of the anesthetic, I had told her faerie stories. We went out for lunch a couple of times. The creature that hatched from the peach pit sat on my solar plexus and snapped at my heart through my ribcage.
It gave up on that eventually and decided the meat of my leg was more interesting. It gnawed through the ball at the crown of my right femur and made a nest there. I carved my cane myself. The top of it I made look like the creature’s head, or how I imagined its head looked. Eyes like a cat, face like a bird. Sharp spines. The palm of my hand smothered that face, day after day. It couldn’t know I had done this, but each time its careless claws sliced through a ligament or tendon it felt like retribution.
When I was thirty it was big enough to dismantle my ribs. It dove past the heart and burrowed into my long-abused left lung. I swallowed water until I felt like I was drowning. It scrabbled at the sides of my ribs, tried to find purchase on my bronchioles. It drowned. I laughed, and red water came bubbling out of my mouth. I laughed as I spit up its body, as I hunched over the slop sink letting my lung drain all the way dry.
for @tenderbeasts’ monster pack prompts; 4. Burrowing
“Who are you, this time?” her lover asks, and she throws her head back laughing, lifts her lover’s hand, presses slightly parted lips to the place where the heel of their palm meets the line of their wrist.
“Angrboda,” she says. She has been Medusa, Echidna, Geryon, the Minotaur, the Banshee, Mab.
“Of course, my love.” Her lover bows, the long sweep of their hair brushing the floor, melding into the soft fur of the rugs. They have never seen her without a monster’s name, and she loves them for that.
“Who are you tonight?” she asks. Between the two of them, there’s nary a name they haven’t heard.
“Maasim. The wrist of Hercules.” Their lover looks at them fondly as the starlight makes fissures in their skin.
They burn her, they always do, but when another star has risen the monster-name is dropped, another slid like a shift into its place. Their skin heals in the shadow of sunlight and all is made whole again. In the dark of un-being, Angrboda is re-made. As long as she and the star are in love, there might be some use of it, in future days.
for @tenderbeasts’ monster pack prompts; 3. The woman clothed in monsters
“Oren!” He runs to the great stag, wraps his arms around the animal’s neck. The stag’s body is leaking, flowers and seeds pouring from the gashes along his side. Around them, the woods are on fire. Oren sighs, turns his head to breathe into the boy’s hair.
“I am going to die,” the great stag says. “Climb on my back. I will make you safe before I fall.”
The boy tangles his fingers in the great stag’s fur. He shakes his head. Sobs. A gentle sunflower grows up underneath him, vaulting him gently onto Oren’s back. He rests there limply. The wounds on Oren’s side tear further. The gush of wildflowers is silent. It leaves a trail like blood, all roses and red poppies, as they tear through the flaming wood.
People with torches are waiting at the edge of the forest. The great stag skids to a halt, slides the unconscious boy gently off his back. The men raise their crossbows. The boy slips into wakefulness at the dull thud of the first bolt. He cries, and someone holds him back, presses his face into a throng of skirts, hushes him softly. The great stag stands still. Flowers surround him, a grounded, bloody halo. Green tendrils shove the bolts from his shuddering body. When there are no more bolts, the great stag takes a knee, rises again. He looks sadly into the eyes of the gathered people. Blinks. Nods. Turns. Leaps over a burning branch. Is gone.
The forest grows back twice as beautiful. In the spring, a young man’s daughter spots the great doe. “I am going to die,” the doe tells her, sweetly.
“Why?” she asks.
“Sometimes the woods must be burned.”
for @tenderbeasts’ monster pack prompts; 2. Forgiven
It has been growing since she ate the heart. Blood woke it up, dripping down into the green and glowing hollow behind her ribs. The roots of it are wrapped around her floating ribs. She supposes she should be thankful it isn’t an ivy that would crawl across her lungs and sink into the flesh of her breath. It is growing more slowly than it should. It is waiting, still, as she had waited ever since she was born, ever since the flowers ate her heart and planted something in its place. It is almost a relief when one of them takes her back into the forest. Her mind wanders, trying desperately to remember, something important, something just out of reach. Her head fills up with leaves, the memories she seeks hoisted to higher branches, grey matter hanging like entrails. On the word “grow,” the sapling uncoils like a spring, up from her chest, through her throat. Her head snaps back with a sound like a creaking branch. It stretches toward the sun. She feels the roots uncoil from her ribs and stretch down, ripping through the meat of her, searching for the soil. By the time they sink through her feet like soccer cleats she has lost all sensation. In the only mercy they have ever shown her, the tree is quick to grow around her body.
greneknyght, for @tenderbeasts’ monster pack prompts; 1. What grows where it shouldn’t (via greneknyght)
some fae facts from lore
‘fae’ range from anything like goblins and imps to the little pixies with the wings that everyone associated with fairies to the seven-foot tall members of the royal courts. some even consider the banshee to be fae. (also trolls, gnomes, elves, djinn, dwarves, leprechauns, will-o-wisps, etc.)
some think the fae are evil, some think they are fallen angels, but most are considered to be a chaotic neutral force. some might call this ‘whimsically evil.’
honey makes them drunk.
iron poisons them, as it does many magical beings.
some were-creatures were probably just fae in disguise, since fae can assume any form.
they sometimes lure humans with music that makes them want to follow and dance. they have to dance for what feels like a year and a day but it actually only seconds.
true names of the fae have power over them. they often use aliases when dealing with non-fae.
some people are gifted with fae sight, which allows them to see the fae and also sometimes peeks into the future through their dreams.
cats hate the fae, and the fae hate them back.
iron horseshoes over the door can act as a fae deterrent.
they sometimes kidnap human children and leave their own children or elderly behind. these are called changelings.
fae are generous with gifts, especially for polite people, but prefer gifts in return.
that being said, better to avoid accepting gifts. you probably don’t have enough to pay them back. by saying ‘thank you,’ you acknowledge that a gift was given and that you now owe something in return. being indebted to the fae = bad time
fae can’t lie, but truth and honesty aren’t always the same.
asking for a favor will cause offense. make it seem like it’s their idea to help you.
most things offend them, actually.
some fae can smell a lie. there’s no way of knowing which ones unless they tell you.
fae use ‘glamour’ to hide their appearance or habitations around humans. ‘glamour’ can be gifted for use by humans.
it’s better for fae to have half-breed children than no children at all, so relationshops with humans are fine. it just rarely works out fine for the human.
i long to have the same personal self-esteem and confidence in my opinions as the person who maintains a website for the sole purpose of ranking their favorite poems about fairies
the link is here and no there’s no metric given or anything. it’s just a list of all the poems this one person knows about fairies, listed in order of personal preference. one of the poets in the “poor” category is john keats
From @normal-horoscopes
otherworldy times in nature:
when flowers begin to bloom
the leaves starting to change color
the sunrise spreading light on the earth
fields whispering to the wind
a dandelion seed gliding along a breeze
the smell of roses in a garden
𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐘 𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐒 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈
sentences from amrit brar’s shitty horoscopes series. you may adjust as needed.
BOOK I: SUCH TERRIBLE THINGS
❛ holy fucking shit. just. holy shit. what the fuck. ❜
❛ nobody really knows the nuances of what you get up to in your spare time, and honestly they’re probably better off that way. ❜
❛ busy yourself with the affairs of the living, for once.. ❜
❛ the answer is no. ❜
❛ ohhh boy. you. fuck you. yes, you specifically. ❜
❛ delete your search history. ❜
❛ please practice blinking as others can be unsettled by your inhuman ability to maintain an unbreakable stare during casual conversation. ❜
❛ what did you ever do to deserve this? in all probability, something terrible. ❜
❛ you are a crayon. get out of the toolbox. ❜
❛ none will love the butcher. don’t take it too personally. ❜
❛ some relationships, like warts, can be handled with the tactful application of liquid nitrogen. ❜
❛ take a long shower. wash your hair. wash the clothes you were wearing. wash the memories from your mind and body. ❜
BOOK II: ANGER
❛ frostbite is considerably difficult to heal from. ❜
❛ there is poetry in brutal efficiency. ❜
❛ HELLFIRE HELLFIRE HELLIRE. ❜
❛ people would take your raging far more seriously if you weren’t crying the entire time. ❜
❛ what made you so vindictive? ❜
❛ some bodies may be temples, but all are ruins at your feet. ❜
❛ your contempt will always taste like grief. ❜
❛ in the process your body is subsumed piece by piece. ❜
❛ you are the bone-deep fury of an abscessed tooth. ❜
❛ you are notorious for rubbing salt in the wound. cheap vodka in the wound. battery acid in the wound! ❜
❛ vehicular arson is not the answer. ❜
❛ hate is a verb. ❜
BOOK III: PETTY EXISTENTIAL CRISES
❛ the sooner you accept your impending expiration, the sooner you can stop trying to swallow the sun. ❜
❛ embrace the inevitable. snuggle with the inevitable. take the inevitable out to a nice, candle-lit dinner. ❜
❛ there are forces outside of your control. most of them don’t care for you. ❜
❛ when it all goes to hell just remember it’s what’s inside that counts (though many would not find you very appetizing). ❜
❛ not all things have significance, which is scary. the things you overlooked tend to have the most, which is scarier. ❜
❛ your teeth are only porcelain, your ribcage simply glass. like all delicate things, they can know no permanence. ❜
❛ in time you’ll learn that “just” and “right” only mean the same thing when they’re coming from very specific people. please don’t cry. ❜
❛ you may not want to change, but the world is unforgiving and will do it for you anyway. ❜
❛ sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places (what the fuck is it going between your teeth). ❜
❛ nothing can stay. ❜
❛ you can put all the flowers in your mouth that you fucking want, but dying is dying and rot is rot. ❜
❛ loneliness is the fracture that never heals quite right. ❜
BOOK IV: RESOLUTIONS
❛ lay them to rest. ❜
❛ they are there, hovering nervously. you will watch the skies. you will wait. ❜
❛ eat the other. ❜
❛ there will be scrapes and sutures: viciousness and victory. ❜
❛ no loose ends. ❜
❛ a cacophony of awe and joy and terror. ❜
❛ an eye for an eye. a tooth for a tooth. a knife for the ribs. ❜
❛ you will not be swayed by the morally destitute. ❜
❛ decay will feed the bloom. ❜
❛ devour death like crows, for all the feathers between your teeth. ❜
❛ twisting/screaming/uncompromising. every inch. every iota. ❜
❛ once, answers were found in mouths, bathtubs, and bottles. this time around, get inventive. ❜
BOOK VI: AFTER THE FALL
❛ lies you have told yourself: your humanity is the largest burden you will bear. ❜
❛ decorating your meltdowns is all well and good, but a trainwreck is a trainwreck and it might be time to get a paramedic. ❜
❛ they tell you “there i nothing to fear but fear itself,” but you have seen yourself in the mirror. ❜
❛ you may have been gutted but you mouth is soft, your tongue is silver, and your teeth are gemstones cut to size. ❜
❛ it’s less like biting off more than you can chew, and more like dislocating your jaw. ❜
❛ even spectres can tire. ❜
❛ seeing yourself for who you really are would be great if you knew where to start looking. ❜
❛ it pays to kill with kindness when you’re your own worst enemy. ❜
❛ you’re only armed to the teeth because you’re more brittle than you’d care to admit. ❜
❛ your ego cannot afford cremation or caskets. ❜
❛ frequent tastes of your own medicine can get poisonous real quick. ❜
❛ self reflection is important! whether you like what you see is up for debate. whether it can be contained in a dark basement is another matter entirely. ❜
BOOK VII: MAGICK
❛ you are a quiet god, and your hunger is cavernous. ❜
❛ at times your body is simply a prison laid in gold. ❜
❛ death, dust, party, repeat. ❜
❛ devour the monsters and you can call any place home. ❜
❛ you’re only as lucky as your expectations are low. ❜
❛ worse than having too many secrets is having no secrets at all. ❜
❛ if seeing is believing you might be in some trouble. ❜
❛ suspend belief. expel fear. throw reason into a frigid cell, never to be seen again. ❜
❛ killing the monsters is the easy bit. it’s finding them that’s the hard part. ❜
❛ there exists a tipping point between gods and monsters. ❜
❛ a mouthful of ashes bested by a life of smoke and mirrors. ❜
❛ what’s to be gained from the keeping the heaviest of treasures behind your teeth? ❜
