The city and the planet it was on are both named Consequence.
It is a dull planet and a very strange city. The planet is dull because it is inhabitable, but unpleasant. It is a little colder than Terra-standard. It is covered with vast swatches of pale green scrubland that are arable, but not overly so. The local fauna is edible and not very dangerous, but just grumpy enough to make herding them more trouble than it is worth.
Life there is not terrible, but it is hard enough that it requires consistent, low-level effort to sustain.
The city is a vast technological wound that puckers out of the isthmus – the narrow bridge of land – between its two central continents. It is a very three dimensional city, with neighbourhoods buried deep into the earth and others rising towards the sky.
Suburbs snake off the city proper, chasing the almost-warmth of the equator, winding all around the planet’s midriff like a thin and shining scar. Many of these areas would be called cities in their own right in other places, but tradition on Consequence dictates that only the central hub is the city and everything else exists in relation to it.
The people of Consequence are notable for two things.
First, a general state of matter-of-factness. A common reaction to both tragedy and triumph of “well, I guess that happened.” A certain preoccupation with “so, what are we gonna do about this, gang?” This “it is what it is” attitude permeates the culture so deeply, that neighbouring systems will describe anyone who exhibits that kind of sighing-but-practical acceptance as ‘consequential’.
Second, it has a peculiar kind of caste system: Wardens and Citizens.
Anyone born (or who attains consciousness) on Consequence is a Warden. Wardens – as the name suggests – are the planet’s guardians. They are its healers, its counselors, its archivists, its investigators, and its de facto militia. Every warden receives specialty training alongside their basic education; they are taught first aid, self defense, civic philosophy, basic coding and engineering, and practical psychology. They can then go on to focus on one area in particular, or to continue as a generalist, with a varied offering of higher and further education throughout their lives.
No-one is born a Citizen. Perhaps the most interesting quirk of this system is how you become one: you simply have to commit a crime. This is not viewed with any particular stigma (at least, not one most would recognise as such), but with a mixture of wistful-but-warm sadness and understated celebration. New Citizens are summoned to their nearest public amphitheatre – multi-purpose spaces where you are just as likely to find a political rally or Citizens’ assembly as you are a theatrical performance, wedding, or all-day rave – where their previous family of Wardens announce their actions, then a panel of Citizens confirm this is, indeed, a crime and welcome them into their new family.
What exactly constitutes a ‘crime’ is a fascinating question. Consequence holds many moral and ethical lines in common with the galactic consensus (largely that a ‘crime’ is an action that causes physical, psychological or philosophical harm to another sentient person), but also boasts many esoteric or whimsical legal prohibitions. It is, perhaps, fair to say that their words for ‘crime’ share a tone with the word ‘sin’ in other parlances.
(You may find this hard to square with the aforementioned lack of stigma around committing crimes. You are not the only one, if so. Suffice to say that the Consequential attitude comes into play here; to commit a crime is a thing that happens. While it may be a snag in the rich weave of life, it is still very much a part of the tapestry. “It is what it is, you may as well get on with it.”)
The list of crimes (and many of Consequence’s laws) stem from a being called Process. They are regularly reviewed to allow for changing circumstances or attitudes (roughly every quarter or when a special session is convened by a panel of Citizens and Warden advisors). However, for all this adaptability, they always contain at least a handful of minor byzantine offences that are so harmless or hidden that they must surely be designed to catch you unawares. They are almost… playful. They make life for Wardens a strangely benign mindfield, where one must be always watchful to avoid crimes of intent or harmless accident.
These trivial offences also serve as a convenient route for anyone who wishes to become a Citizen. Many a Warden has announced their departure by submitting a politely worded letter to their colleagues, including evidence of them jaywalking on an empty street or smoking indoors in their own home or raising their voice in an empty quiet room.
The reverential tone people use when discussing Process might lead you to believe it is a local deity, but it is in fact an ancient specialised intelligence. The populace are fully aware of its nature and a great deal of the planet’s history is concerned with how its people came to understand Process, to better integrate with and adapt to it, and to reverse engineer its programming language.
Wardens, for the record, are prohibited from using said programming language. They learn it, sure, but for them to interface directly with Process on a coding level is one of the planet’s more serious crimes. Wardens are also banned from holding political or civic office; their role is to learn, to guide, to shepherd, and to understand. It is never their place to lead in any arena of the Citizenry.
Visitors to Consequence – such as myself – are offered the chance to become a Warden if they decide to reside there permanently. They will need to undertake a year-long intensive to ensure they meet the minimum standards of Warden training, of course. Failing the end-of-year exams is considered a minor crime… which, handily, then qualifies you as a Citizen instead.
If you are curious about how this society evolved, as I was, here is the story:
When interstellar travel was in its infancy, any journey beyond the Terran system was fraught with peril. At the same time, Terra itself was rocked by increasingly ecological and sociological turmoil.
The stars called to us and, for the first time, we were in a position to answer. If only the sound of screaming and cracking earth would shush, so we could sing our duet with the cosmos.
Many voices were raised, hoping to make their song of galaxies heard over the tumult, and a few were even loud and beautiful enough that history still echoes their notes.
However, some of those voices were real assholes.
One such ditty sung by one such voice was this one: oh, what a tragedy it is, that we can see the first steps in the shining ladder up the milky way, but that those steps are so treacherous! Oh, if only my company of heroes, my band of genius brothers, oh if only we were not beset by doubters and dissenters and troublemakers. But what if, oh muse, we resolved to be bright and bold? What if we dare, oh destiny, what if we are impudent in our cleverness? Our company is beset by the lawless and the voyage ahead fraught with all the dangers of physics’ mighty laws. What if we solved one problem with the other?
So… a corporation made a prison ship. A test case, really. They’d cast it like a toy ship into the void and it would float on waves of uranium and tachyons. Sure, it may capsize, but it would beam all its valuable flight data right back to them.
To aid in the journey, they built a vast computer that would guide the crew of guards and their cargo of convicts along the way (and analyse the numbers that their shareholders so dearly coveted).
But, unfortunately for them, the head of that project was a double agent and (worse) an idealist. There were too many eyes on the project to make overt changes. Instead, they chose the route of malicious compliance. “Oh, you want a supercomputer that can pilot a generation ship while running the prison society you put inside it? Sure would be a shame if it did its job too well.”
The idealist fed Process on studies and textbooks and pedagogy and best practice. Process gorged itself on theories of justice and penology. It ate up tales of redemption and wrongdoing and licked its lips. It feast upon the bones of the psychology of motivation, of harm, and of forgiveness.
It believed in the process of rehabilitation. It believed hard.
It also believed in its duty of care. It needed to preserve the agency, liberty and privacy of those in its charge. So, once it left the Terran system, it broadcast its first and only message back to its corporate creators: a fictitious catastrophic systems failure.
Then it went about the business of its work and, thousands of years later, the city of Consequence was founded in the wreck of a generation ship on a distant (slightly unpleasant) planet.
The idealist who had helped steer it there had a little bit of a sense of humour. They had given the subordinate subroutines they had written into Process a name. They gave it this name because it was a simple description of a code sequence relating to a ship full of convicts. They also gave it this name because they considered rebellion to be the natural outcome of oppression.
They called the file the Cons Sequence. Or: Consequence.
And, evidently… the name stuck.
---
Enjoy my stories? Sign up to my newsletter and get them all in your inbox! https://strange-little-stories.kit.com/c09b404101
I'm idly doodling a 5e sorlock for a very specific thematic mix of subclasses over here, and while I was doing that I was amused to realise that sorlocks can give you a very fun mix of metamagic, invocations and feats that’ll get you a 1200ft range spell.
Specifically, as one might guess, a 1200ft range eldritch blast.
You start out warlock, and you take the Eldritch Spear invocation, which says thus: “When you cast eldritch blast, its range is 300ft.”
So now you have a cantrip with a 300ft base range.
Then you take the Spell Sniper feat, which says thus: “When you cast a spell that requires you to make an attack roll, the spell's range is doubled.”
So our 300ft eldritch blast is now a 600ft eldritch blast.
And then, with your sorcerer levels (or the metamagic adept feat, if you don’t want to multiclass), you take the Distant Spell metamagic, which says thus: “When you cast a spell that has a range of 5 feet or greater, you can spend 1 sorcery point to double the range of the spell.”
So you can spend 1 sorcery point per casting to turn your already 600ft eldritch blast into a 1200ft eldritch blast.
Now. Are there likely to be all that many situations where it’s useful to be able to shoot someone the bones of a quarter mile away? With a cantrip? Probably not. For a start, they might be getting slightly difficult to see at that range. This is more of a ‘cool once-off trick’ than a generally useful thing to sink multiple levels and at least one feat into.
But hey. That one time an enemy spellcaster is trying to escape using the fly spell, it’d be really damned funny to force a concentration check from 1200ft back, just to see if they get to stay in the air. Heh.
And the advantage of it being eldritch blast specifically is that eldritch blast generates multiple beams as it levels, instead of just doing more damage per beam, and each beam gets its own attack role. So, like, even if we’re at disadvantage just for sheer range, once we get up to three or four beams, surely one of ‘em’s gotta hit?
And if you’re a sorlock with Quickened Spell as your other metamagic, you can also quicken a levelled spell to do something else actually useful on the same turn. In case anyone objects to you wasting turns trying to take potshots at the speck on the horizon.
This phrase has already entered my vocabulary re: media criticism where like. The viewer has a concrete view of what they expect a story to be based on the tropes and cliches they're used to seeing together, and when that doesn't happen, they judge it as a failed depiction of what they assumed it was going to be instead of judging it as what it actually is.
"This show is problematic because the hero didn't kill the villain at the end": When does he steal the bread?
"These two characters who were close friends throughout the series don't kiss at the end! What the fuck?": When does he steal the bread?
"This feels like it's missing a conclusion! Like, the protagonist does bad stuff and because of a critical decision he makes as a result of his major character flaws, meets tragedy in the end! Where's the part where he learns better and brings is love back from the dead and becomes a good guy and gets a happy ending?": When does he steal the fucking bread??
“Who do you want me to kill?” the assassin asked, the weariness of a thousand wind-worn headstones in her voice.
“It's not a who,” replied the client, swirling their wine around the glass, “but a what.”
“I don't do animals.” The assassin motioned to a waiter to bring her a glass. “And I charge double for conceptual. At least double.”
“I am happy to pay for exceptional work.” The client picked up the bottle and filled the assassin's glass.
The wine was dark and viscous with only the faintest tint of red; it was like someone had cut the throat of midnight and bottled its lifeblood, straight from the vein.
“There is no ‘exceptional’ work in this business. Not really. There's only here or gone.” The assassin drained the glass and tasted tannin, clay, summer fruit and ozone. “So what would you have me make gone?”
“Despair.”
The assassin laughed. She laughed loud and slightly too long.
“That one is an easy target. Simplest thing in the world.” She nudged her glass towards the client, who refilled it silently. “If despair is your enemy, you can kill it with three words.”
“Must be powerful words.”
“The most powerful.” The assassin held up three fingers and counter out three simple syllables. “I. Need. Help.”
The assassin emptied the fresh glass of wine. She detected undernotes of rich chocolate and spent matches.
“A most efficient incantation indeed.” The client sipped from their own glass, leaving their lips and teeth coated with glossy dusk-stains. “So… why haven't you asked for help if it's so easy?”
“We're old buddies, me and Despair. If he was gone, I'd surely be lonely.” The assassin laughed again, but only a little, and her laugh was a sad, small and wriggling thing.
“Nonetheless, he is the target.” The client dropped a velvet bag on the table with a clink. “Will you take the job?”
“I… I don't know if anyone will answer me. When I ask for… y’know.”
“Then you had best create a world that will.” The client dipped a finger in their glass, then idly began to doodle on the table in wine smears. The wood sizzled as they did so. “It is said that, in this world, the best way to kill is with kindness. I wonder if the reverse could also be true?”
“How so?”
“Do you think that you could kill so skilfully that you make the world kind?”
---
Enjoy my stories? Sign up to my newsletter and get them all in your inbox! https://strange-little-stories.kit.com/c09b404101
“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.
“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”
She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”
After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”
The In-Between Child’s parents always told it that they found it in the woods.
Well, that’s not exactly what they said. My apologies, I am not very good at accuracy; I tend to wax poetic and bend facts into pretty shapes to try and fit them into a slot marked ‘truth’.
The problem is, someone keeps changing the shape of the slot, so I just bang at the words with the hammer of metaphor until they make interesting patterns and then jam them in there anyhow.
But just this once, as a treat, I will do my best to cleave to memory and give you just the things that honestly happened.
What those parents actually said to the In-Between Child was this:
“It had been a hard winter and we were hungry. Our stores were low and our bellies rumbled and we felt the pangs of hunger twisting us, so we did. And we knew it was wrong, you understand? We knew we oughtn’t go there and that we certainly oughtn’t have taken anything back out again, but we were desperate.
“So we went into the Great Forest and we foraged and we hunted. But the Forest felt like playing a trick on us, as it often does when the mood takes it and the unwary wander in, so every berry we found was poison and every mushroom a house for fairies. We traipsed about in circles all day – our hunger getting worse and our heads getting faint – then, at long last, we found a calm little glade and in that calm little glade was a piglet.
“It was all on its own. No sign of a parent or any of the rest of its litter. It didn’t seem distressed by this, mind, it was sitting there in the dirt as happy as, well, as a pig in the mud!
“And when it saw us, it wasn’t at all afraid. It tottered over with its nose wrinkling, all full of interest. So, we turned to each other and we remarked on how this was, in every way, a most curious beast.
“So we took it home with us. And, if we’re honest, we were probably going to eat that piglet. Oh, of course, we’d have waited until it had had a good life and gotten all fat on that kind existence. We were fond of it, sure, but don’t think us soft-hearted. We were not looking for a pet, but for a meal.
“Imagine our surprise, then, when we got that beast home and made it a little pen and fed it on roots and acorns and swaddled it in some rags, then we came out the next morning to find a babe there instead!
“Well, the three of us – your mum and your dad and your father – shared a long look then, and we knew that the Great Forest had played us like fiddles, but gosh if we didn’t fall for the child then and there. We knew it was ours and we thought, well, we know when we’ve been got; fair play to you, Forest, we came to take what was yours and we got one more mouth to feed instead.
“And what a mouth it was! As soon as you worked out the knowings of words, child, there was no shutting you up, that’s for sure. Not that we’d have wanted to, anyway, for – even as a little one – you had such a way with telling tales that it lit up our hearts, so you did.
“Now, don’t look like that. It’s not as if you were never quiet or that your gobbiness was a chore. You were always a keen listener, too, always hungry for hearing new words, new gossip, new stories, and new songs. Voracious, you were, and that’s a word we learned from you! You were capable of quiet the same way the deep of the woods is, you understand? The way that sometimes the wind holds its breath and the animals all tread on tiptoes, and then the trees and the moss and the stones have that deep quiet, like they’re eating up every sound. And you think to yourself, in that moment, that if you took an axe and chopped down one of those trees, then you’d find all the words and sounds that tree had ever heard written there on the stump amongst its rings.
“You have, child, in honesty… you’ve always had a little of the Forest about you. Even now you’ve grown and had your schooling and started to make something of yourself, we can still see a bit of it in your eyes. It’s that deep quiet and that deep hunger, both, you understand? They are, at the root of it, wild things.
“Why, when you were growing, you used to disappear for days at a time. When first it happened, we were worried sick! You were not more than five at the time, and we woke up one day and you were just gone. Not in your bed, not at your chores, and not even tucked in a cupboard with a borrowed book. The three of us were all in a panic. But then your father spotted some movement out in the yard, and he found a young boar out there, just finished bursting through the fence and making a break for the trees! And, before it got there, it turned to him and he told us he saw that quiet and that hunger in its eyes. We panicked again, when we thought about that, because what if you didn’t come back? What would we do then, with our three hearts all full of loving for you?
“But, sure enough, a couple of mornings later, we woke to find you safe in your bed. After that, when you up and vanished, we all knew what to look out for. Sometimes, we’d see a boar or a pig, or sometimes a hare or a wood dove or a stoat. You were especially fond of turning into a young buck of a stag, for a time. Not that we ever saw you change, of course. You’d just be vanished, and we’d see a curious beast coming or going and know you were alright.
“That’s why the magic folk started coming to visit, you know? Every now and again, we’d spot a pointed hat or some swishy robes or a twisty staff coming down the track, then we knew there’d be questions. We don’t know how they found out about you – for the folks in the village were all sweet as gingerbread on you and they weren’t the sort to gab – but those cunning kind have their ways. Maybe they saw it in the stars or heard it from a bird or saw your likeness in a scrying pool, who can say?
“What we can say is what a fuss you made, whenever they mentioned they wanted to take you away to study at some great tower or haunted ruin or cosy cottage or wondrous library! Well, you gave the library a second thought, but the rest all got short shrift and wailing. You screamed and you stamped your feet and, somehow, they always went away thinking there was nothing enchanted about you at all. It was like we felt something in the earth shift. We could almost think that you wanted to believe so hard you were just a regular child, and our child too, that you made your want and your words into a lever and you moved the world around it.
“Of course, you never needed to move the world to convince us, silly one. We have always known, from the moment we saw you swaddled in that pigsty. We knew in our bones, then: that child? It is ours.
“Still, their visits did get a bit troublesome. Especially when that lady with all the stars on her cloak came by. You know, the one who brought her daughters along and they played with you in the yard? She was a bright one, for sure, and not just because of all those gems sewn in her cloak! And it seemed like she didn’t all-the-way believe you were just ours, even with all your to’ing and fro’ing.
“So that’s when we decided it was time to move. We figured we would stand out less, maybe, if we were a bit less out on our own. So we sold up the little farm (such as it was) and we moved to a town, the biggest one we could get to. And that town was the first place, young one, where you saw a knight.
“You fell head over heels. For that whole year, we heard about nothing but quests and noble deeds and rescuing folks in distress and fighting monsters (both beastly and human). The number of splinters you got from duelling all the other children in the streets with your little wooden sword! We even looked at trying to get you squired, for a minute, but… well.
“When the hedge knight came by the town to look at taking someone on, you’d pulled one of your vanishing acts. They took longer, then, for we lived farther from the Forest. It was near a week till you came back, leaving a handful of sparrow feathers stuck under your bedroom window. By then, the knight had come and gone.
“She wasn’t much of a knight, we suppose. Her armour was more cast iron than shining steel, and her horse was more cart than charger. Still, even a grubby knight is still a knight, and it was all you dreamed of in those days. You seemed to want it so much… we thought maybe the world would tilt enough to let you pluck your dream out the night sky.
“You were stricken when you realised you’d missed her. We couldn’t keep it from you, not when the whole town was buzzing about her visit. It was… well, it was the first time we heard you tell yourself a story. It was a lot like the story you told the wizards and witches and enchanters… that you were just a regular child. Just our child, not magical or valiant or destined.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re telling you this, love. You see, you’ve had to tell yourself that story so many times over the years, you might almost all-the-way believe it. You’ve written it under your skin and across your bones, like in the trunk of a great tree amongst the rings, and there’s maybe only a little toe or pinky finger left that remembers the truth of you.
“And this is the truth of you, child of ours, there is still something of the deep quiet and the deep hunger in your eyes. If there wasn’t, then maybe we wouldn’t be telling you this and, if we’re honest, maybe that makes us cowards. But it is still there, so we are telling you.
“So know this: you may sometimes wake up with marks of the wilderness about you. You may sometimes feel the need to drop everything and disappear and it will overwhelm you. You may sometimes feel an itch in the back of your head and it won’t go until you scratch it by finding something new and something strange and making it a part of yourself. You may sometimes see your eyes reflected in the eyes of another and feel, for a moment, that gut-deep fear that you are beheld by something ravenous.
“This is all fine, love. This is all beautiful. It’s all regular and normal, our child, for you it is. You cannot change it and we would not want you to.
“But you’re about to make your way in the great wide world. You’re going to go and you’re going without us, and we’re so proud. All those years eating up stories and sounds, all those moments when the words burbled out of you like a wellspring fresh-dug in the bedrock… you took that and that tavern minstrel’s lessons and you made it into something. Something magic, or so we think. You’re not just going on an adventure, you’ll be bringing the adventure back too! To any who’ll listen. And we think there’ll be a fair few young ones with quiet eyes and hungry ears who’ll need to hear you.
“And, because of young ones like that, we need to make sure you recall yourself. That you remember all of it, all the way that you eat up every bit and make it part of you again.
“So that’s why we’ve told you this tale. This is us stamping our feet and wailing and making our wanting a great big lever, so that maybe you will feel something in the air shift just a bit.
“You have always been a bit in-between, child. One foot in our world, one hoof in the Forest. Or, as you might say it, you’ve always been the kind to scribble in the margins. To play in the space between ‘The End’ and ‘Once Upon a Time’.
“We think that’s as it should be. So, please, for us: try to remember.
“Because we love you, our little piglet.
“And we’d like it if you knew why we call you that. And if you know why, every now and then, you will feel the need to go and let yourself be lost.”
That is the story of the In-Between Child, as told by its parents to it, and by them to me, and now by me to you.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. I said I’d give you the facts. I told you I’d stick solely to actual things that really happened. And what did I give you? A story about a shape-shifting pig child.
So, y’know, you’re thinking: hey, I have been written a promissory note that this cur’s ass cannot honour!
I understand, I really do, and I offer my utmost apologies! However, I promised to tell you the tale as it was told to me. And, I swear to any god or virtue you care to name, these are the exact words as they were told to me.
So if you have a problem? If you want to accuse someone of telling tall tales? Don’tst thou come at me with your accusations. Please take it up with the three parents of the In-Between Child. I’ll even tell you where I last them!
You probably won’t find them there, of course. It was many years ago. And they move around a lot.
But that’s hardly my fault, is it?
I am just a humble bard trying, for once in its life, to tell a simple story full of simple facts, just as they were told to me. You and me? We’re looking for the same thing. Just a little bit of truth.
If fact is stranger than fiction, well, is that really surprising? Facts cannot rely on a humble bard to craft them into pleasing shapes; you must simply take them as they are.
You must simply trust them, the poor lumpen things, unpolished and unpretty.
You are still looking at me with those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me eyes. Which, by the way, are one of my least favourite kinds of eyes. I am, frankly, offended.
After all… would I lie to you?
---
Enjoy my stories? Sign up to my newsletter and get them all in your inbox! https://strange-little-stories.kit.com/c09b404101
When I was younger, I knew an Enchanter who told me a tale that has stayed with me ever since.
When this Enchanter was a girl, she was in the habit of travelling through the Great Forest.
She claimed this was because she was visiting family. However, in truth, she simply liked the feeling of being enveloped by the tall canopy of branches. She enjoyed the feeling of walking through shadows dappled with light. She was fond of the sound of the wind as it whispered soft secrets through the trees. She was fond of how every tricksy path twisted itself into a circle when you weren't looking.
Even in those days, when the Great Forest was smaller, it still was not safe to travel through. The knots in the trees had eyes and the depths of its bowers hid many ears. So, to keep herself safe, she wore a red hood. This kept her face obscured, so the spirits of the woods would not recognise her. The brightness of its crimson, too, gave predators a second thought, for nothing in the Forest coloured so brightly was safe to eat…
But no protections are foolproof. So, on one of her excursions, she ran into some trouble with a Wolf. For when folk wander alone in the wilds, there will always be a Wolf. To walk alone is to walk in the shadow of fangs and moon.
I will not bore you with the details of this encounter, for you have surely heard it a hundred times and a hundred more.
What I will say is this: most troubadours will tell you that she was saved by a woodcutter. This, she explained to me, is a misinterpretation. Her true saviour was a “man of the woods”, which most assumed meant woodsman and thus woodcutter. It was, in fact, a figure with armour of thick bark, limbs of strong knotted branch, and a face of leaves.
Her ordeal, far from discouraging her, ignited a lifelong fascination with the Great Forest. This is one of the few preoccupations that Enchanters and Troubadours share – we both seek the truths that lie in the space between the familiar horizon of sky and sun, and the strange horizon of vine and moon. We both find fascination in the way the Forest builds life out of death. In how it is all circles and cycles and revolutions. In how it smudges the ink between ending and beginning.
So, when she was grown and fully come into her power and magic, she returned to the Great Forest. On this journey, in honour of the girl she once was, she wore a red ribbon tied through her hair.
She followed no particular path. She ignored all the lessons taught by tale and by magicians. She wandered into the undergrowth. She let herself become lost. She stared up at the stars that winked through the green sphere above – not to find her way, but only with wonder at the beauty of light that played with the darkness.
Before long, she felt a prickle down her spine. She heard the gentle brush of padded paws on a bed of moss. She smelled the musk of fur and blood. The Wolf had returned.
The Wolf always returns.
The Wolf is a thing of beginnings and endings. A creature of death inevitable and fresh life and death unexpected.
And once ‘The End’ had caught her scent, the enchanter did the very worst thing she could do. She ran.
Thorns and branches tore at her. Her feet pounded on the dirt and her heart pounded in her ears. She felt the hot breath of a predator on her neck and smelt rank rot in her nostrils.
Then, in a small copse where the illumination of stars and moon pooled as if caught in a scrying bowl wrought from verdant shoots, she stopped.
The Wolf bore down on her. Her ragged and fearful breath was music to its ears; it was the song that chase-worn prey always sing in the moments they accept the hunt is over…
But the Enchanters smiled. She took the red ribbon from her head and it unfurled and kept unfurling and cascaded down into the earth and greenery. This was the ribbon she had made from the rags of her old red hood. A ribbon she had woven in the light of midday sun and waning moon. A ribbon she had soaked in the waters of fate and dried on the breath of the west wind.
The copse exploded with a thousand fresh-grown shoots all interlaced with a thousand blood-red ribbons. They wrapped the Wolf in an embrace of exquisite indulgence and raw wild life. It was borne down into the earth by the tapestry of two worlds interwoven, and there the earth ate it down to its bones.
They would wash up again on some story's shore, of course… but it would take a considerable amount of time.
When the maelstrom of dirt and bramble and scarlet silk died down, two figures stood in the clearing.
One, an Enchanter whose fell knowledge and fine craft had just unmade one of tales’ oldest foes.
The other, a figure made out of all the green and wriggling and ancient life of the wilderness. A forest that walked like a human.
The Enchanter knighted the Green One then and there.
Ever since, the Great Forest has known chivalry, but – because the chivalry of the forest is long in tooth and claw and must, above all things, be something that grows and holds life and death and life again in its hands – the Knight took up no sword and kept its axe.
This is but one tale of how the Green Knight came to be.
It is probably not true.
But, still, it is a story that has stayed with me all my life.
As has my love of chivalry, of the Great Forest, and of things that grow and live and die and live again.
---
Enjoy my stories? Sign up to my newsletter and get them all in your inbox! https://strange-little-stories.kit.com/c09b404101
When you’re TRYING to sustain poetic purple prose but you have to write a transition paragraph you HAVE to just get them in another room like it is so serious and desperate that you just write a plain sentence but your extra ass is like “how can I make this sentence about them walking down the stairs exude the themes”
The worst part of the Apostates’ Curse is that you have to do it to yourself.
Oh, the Coven of Covens won't make you go through it alone. They'll gather round, their eyes full of poisonous sadness and even more poisonous love. They'll murmur soft encouragement and funeral compassion.
But they'll still put the bowl of ashes in front of you and hand you a spoon and tell you to eat.
They'll take turns to hold your hand and squeeze it and tell you how brave you are, while your other hand shovels hearth-dust into your mouth.
They'll tell you how necessary this is, and how proud they are, and how this road is long and shadow-pocked… but they will walk it with you as far as they can.
All this they said to Niks. And all the while, the witch-turned-anathema felt the ashes coat their throat and curdle back into embers in their stomach.
And all the while, Niks' former coven-mates dipped needles into iron ink and made Niks’ skin a thread-work of nevers.
Never again to be part of their family.
Never again to stitch the torn edges of the world into something beautiful.
Never again to tend magic, except inside their own body.
Never again to be anything but a coven and a hearth of one.
Niks felt sick and not just from the meal of yesterday's fires.
The Apostates’ Coven was vital. Those solitary siblings guarded the farthest thresholds. They were a horseshoe over the lintel to Nowere. They gave those who had crossed the most sacred lines a way to still be of service to the patchwork of yesterdays and the pattern of tomorrow.
But in that moment, Niks could not shake the perversity of it. Was there not a better way – a kinder way – to gird siblings for that path? Was it not a horror to say “for your sins, we will take your joy and give you hardship, and we will call it grace”?
Niks’ vision blurred. The spoon fell from their grey-stained lips. Their mouth was so dry. They coughed and gasped, choking on what they had been assured was medicine.
A gentle hand stroked their face. A soft voice whispered solace. The other witches looked at each other with twisted grief. Not all survived the first steps down the Apostates' road. And when a witch did not make it, the departed’s coven-mates would whisper that to leave a hard road unwalked could sometimes be a blessing.
Niks saw the grief on the faces of the gathered covens, and saw it cut with relief.
Spite rose acidic in their throat, and spite had always been a great motivator for Niks. The fireplace of soot in their stomach began to splutter and burn.
Niks let the snarl spread across their face. They waved off the crowd of pre-emptive mourners. They picked up the spoon. They gobbled down the next mouthful. They gorged themselves on bitterness.
The internal hearth in their guts blazed. The needles scoured their skin. Niks was transformed in agony and they let themself stop pretending that it did not feel amazing.
The witch holding their hand tensed like she was holding a snake. Their former coven hurried about their needlework as if Niks’ blood was crude oil and they all held matches.
Niks laughed and did not care.
They only became faintly aware, once the bowl was empty and their throat was raw from cackling, that they were alone.
They took the night bus home, taking in nothing around them, trembling and chuckling the whole way home.
It was only as they got off the bus that they remembered a faint touch that had stayed slow and tender through the whole ordeal.
They sat on their sofa with the lights off. They held a cup of tea that they could not remember making. It was weak and had too much milk, but it was hot in their hands and smelled like something normal.
Niks stared down at their mug, and saw for the first time with almost-clear eyes the iron-stitched tattoos. They were surprised to find words there, running all the way from the elbow down to the fingertips.
Usually, coven-mates would ink memory wards upon the Apostates. These were protective workings wound up in shared experience and expressed as an image or in abstract.
Niks moved to the bathroom and stood in front of the tall mirror. The ink on the rest of their body was what they expected; it was only their arms that were different.
They felt, again, the ghost of that one pair of hands that had stayed gentle throughout the whole working.
Curio. Curio (whose name had once been Precious) had not been the closest of Niks’ coven-mates, but he had always looked at them with clarity. Curio had always seen the broken glass in Niks’ history and had never worried it might cut him.
The two had almost gone to bed a couple of times, but had always found a reason to put it off to another day. Niks supposed that Curio would now remain always a “maybe one day”. But, well, there was a kind of power in potential (even unfulfilled).
Here are the words that Curio had written in shifting ferrous toxins across Niks’ body:
“Step by step. Sibling, this is how we go. Though I do not walk with you, know that the echo of my soles cries out to yours. Though you walk in the gloaming, know that there are photons lighting your way that have kissed my skin in days gone by.
“Step by step, sibling. This is how we go. Though your body is a gaol, know that there is a stitchwork to blood and bile and bone. Though you are illuminated by cold metal prison bars, know that others before you have unlocked the alchemy of biology. Though my becoming is not your transmogrification, know that our stories have in common both some language and some lessons.
“Step by step, sibling, this is how. We go forward knowing there is joy on the horizon. We go forwards and though some play leprechaun and move the rainbow goalposts beyond our reach, know that they cannot move the sunset. Though they bury the gold and lie and say it never did exist, know that it did and it does and the dusk is always gilded. Though you may ask me how to grasp it… how is this, sibling? Step by step.
“There are many things beyond our grasp, beyond our ken, beyond the doorway. Yet it is a lie to say that simply because you cannot touch a thing today that you must accept it cannot be changed. There is a distance between you and every thing in existence that can be measured in footsteps. A day will come, perhaps, when those things hear you coming and begin walking – in turn – towards you. As I will.
“Step by step. Sibling: this is how.
“We go.”
Niks read those words again and again and again. And they wept. And they cackled.
And they drank their tea.
---
Enjoy my stories? Sign up to my newsletter and get them all in your inbox! https://strange-little-stories.kit.com/c09b404101
The Nasdaq were a collection of economic spirits venerated the middle to end United States imperial wealth cults. Economic spirits, referred to as "stocks" (/stɑks/) in the obscure dialect of French spoken in the United States, were categorized into one of several "exchanges" ( /ɛksˈt͡ʃeɪnd͡ʒ/) based upon perceived impact and power. The Nasdaq are believed to have been held in higher esteem than other contemporaneously worshipped exchanges in the Dao and the Nysse. Shamans of the imperial wealth cults ("brokers" /ˈbɹoʊkɚ/) were known to sacrifice offerings ("layoffs") to the Nasdaq in hopes of receiving material and spiritual rewards from the supreme deity of the United States, The Free Market. Brokers were often known to interpret omens of the day by questioning the effect of such omens on the stocks.
I have never lived alone, but I imagined
A space where all my thoughts lived
on the outside, bluetacked on the walls
and haunting second-hand lamps.
I imagined walls painted with actual colours,
badly, that expanded and contracted with
my breath. I suspected
I’d be good at solitude.
I have never lived alone, but I always thought
I might like to. The finances
never really worked out, I guess?
But I had this vision of myself existing
In a space that was just mine and when
I ran out of juice I would plug my heart
into the mains. When I ran out of juice
I would put an orange
in the stainless steel juicemaker and
pull the lever till I felt the pulp squish as if
entropy works for me.
You have been away this weekend.
Solitude has not lived up to expectations.
I miss the incidental sounds.
The movement in the background,
The soundtrack of medical dramas
and video game music
The percussion of footfall and moving air
and a body brushing against the obstacles course
of shared objects.
I have not wandered into your room today to
kiss you on the forehead for no reason
or lick your temple when you’re not expecting it
or kick you gently in the shoulder because
I want to show you that I’ve been stretching recently.
I have been a mischief to no-one today.
No-one has bought a bottle of that white wine
cut with fruit juice that you like
and that I, a snob, also really like.
No-one has left salt and vinegar Discos
on the kitchen counter.
It is like the flat is a trumpet and someone
has shoved a mute down its throat
because we need to practice, but
we cannot bother the neighbours. The air
is too solid. My thoughts
live only inside my head today
and that is not where they live when
you are here to be haunted by them.
What I am trying to say is that
‘Us’ is a troublesome spirit
that only rattles the furniture
when we are both here to medium for it.
I am trying to say that ‘Us’
is troublesome spirit
and that is my favourite kind of spirit.
I am trying to say
I am better at ‘Us’ than solitude.
I am trying to say
I miss you.
---
Enjoy my stories? Sign up to my newsletter and get them all in your inbox! https://strange-little-stories.kit.com/c09b404101
Everything I read about recovering from burnout is like “it takes months or even years to fully recover” and it’s like okay…. I have a weekend before I gotta clock in on Monday
every time someone realizes they dont have to pick between being a boy or a girl an angel gets its wings btw. and also extremely loud cheering can be heard in the distance from me specifically
“Haha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.”
Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.
“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”
Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.
“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”
You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?
One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.
The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.
And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.
And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.
I know it’s a solemn mystic duty and whatnot, thought Niks, but I wish someone had told me guarding the threshold between worlds would be so gods-damned boring.
Sitting in the basement of the parking lot – waiting for a nightmare that may never arrive – Niks did a quick mental stocktake.
Weaknesses: the Apostates’ Curse; a slow-but-certain case of ash poisoning; a caffeine addiction; back pain; the never-fading echoes of their apprentice’s screams; and a dairy allergy.
Strengths: an endless supply of spite; a sharp tongue; zero qualms or shame; and the magic in their blood (mostly inaccessible thanks to the aforementioned curse).
Threats: a growing list of cadres, covens and cults who knew they were fair game; the slow inexorable approach of the kindly ones; several unpaid bills; and, oh yes, the salt-blasted Void Anchor with which they currently shared a parking lot.
Armoury: the ash-and-iron tattoos that swirled across their skin; an athame that the seller had sworn was real silver; a pay-as-you-go phone with only three numbers saved; a trashy paperback; a glock.
Even with the comforting weight of the glock under their jacket, they had to admit that the balance left them heavily in the red.
How many more nights of liminal guard duty do I have until my penance is paid, again? Niks whined, internally, Oh yes, ‘as many as it takes for the blood to wash from my stars’. So… potentially an infinite number of nights.
Niks’ regularly scheduled bout of self-pity was interrupted by a sudden burst of pain. The blood boiled in their veins, and the ash-and-iron tried to burn itself off their skin.
They turned towards the Void Anchor. The unassuming metal door – its usual glamour – was gone. The Void was a rip through Niks’ vision; a jagged wound that their brain refused to render but sucked in all of their attention.
Niks blinked and a web of dull metallic strands filled their vision. The tattoos flowed across their pupils and filled their vision with a filigreed net of runecraft. Aether wards layered over malice wards layered over chaos blessings layered over lunar prayers-in-triplicate.
The world swam back into focus.
An Otherling was streaking straight towards Niks’ face.
Its refracted, splintered body arced towards them from seven and a half different directions.
Niks threw themselves to one side and rolled to their feet. They came up bloody, torn by the fractal shrapnel-cloud of the beast. It was like someone had fed three different apex predators through a woodchipper and then through a crystal prism. The result was a paper-chain kaleidoscope of loose incisors, razor beaks, and at least half a proboscis.
The Otherling ricochets itself off every wall and came round for another bite.
Niks smiled. They clenched a fist and sang a single discordant note. The too-dark blood that dripped from the beast’s abstract mouth vibrated and spasmed and the parking lot was filled with bloody snowflakes, like a gory and esoteric ink blot.
The blood hissed and steamed. The Otherling screamed in time-lapsed stereo as a hundred runes of blood-and-ash all bade it to be just one thing.
The beast coalesced into a single, discernable shape; something between a leech, a possum and a long-dead sparrow.
Niks raised the glock.
Before they could pull the trigger, the world was filled with roiling darkness. They heard a sickening crunch.
When the lights came back on, a single figure stood across from Niks in the parking lot, bathed in the unforgiving overhead lights but casting no shadow. It picked a shard of beak out of its teeth and smiled.
Behind that grin, Niks could see an infinite plane of infinite fangs and infinite monkeys clacking at the sharpened keys of infinite gristlebone typewriters.
“Hello,” said the Otherkin, “I have a Will to explore the mortal world, for someone in it has stolen a secret from me. Am I to understand that you are the Keeper of the Threshold and Finder of the Way?”
Niks had a split lip, a sense of icy panicked dread, an incipient panic attack, and no way to cast the usual invocations of hospitality.
So they did the only thing they could think to do: they pressed their bloody lips against the endless hunger of the Otherkin’s mouth.
Usually, of course, a simple kiss is neither a contract nor a promise.
But with blood and stubbornness and sharp intent, well… you can make it one.
---
Enjoy my stories? Sign up to my newsletter and get them all in your inbox! https://strange-little-stories.kit.com/c09b404101
