Hallo, Aro: Allosexual Aro Flash Fiction
(As this project now encompasses twenty stories, I thought I'd celebrate with a master post.)
Is it "aay-romantic" or "arrow-mantic"? What if she hears "I’m a romantic" instead of "I’m aromantic"? What if she says "isn’t that just friendship" or "that can’t be real" or, worst of all, "I’m looking for something more"?
Hallo, Aro is a series of flash fiction stories about allosexual aromantic characters navigating friendship, sexual attraction, aromanticism and the weight of amatonormative expectation.
Contains: Dragons, a duchess's daughter, an autistic who collects pride merch, odd voyages into creative non-fiction, werewolves and gods, hunters of witches and the fae, the power in aromantic discovery, and lots of allo-aro feels and experiences.
Plus many trans, multisexual and sapphic aros!
Unspoken
How do you tell the person you like about the relationship you want when it requires a language nobody speaks?
Leaving
You leave a trail of people behind you, the cruel and curious and stubborn, until you find someone who understands the word aromantic.
Friendship
All Eliza wants is to partner a dragon’s handmaiden without risking romantic complications–but her dragon has something just as valuable to offer.
Lucky
The only way Piper can survive his workplace's fumbling attempts at aro acceptance is to make a game of it.
Attraction
Eliza can’t help fearing that her interest in another girl is best explained by a word she doesn’t wish applied to her: romance.
Existence
How do you come to terms with your path through life when nobody said the word that describes you?
Neuronormative
What does aromanticism mean to an autistic who cannot distinguish it from alloromanticism?
Loveless
When Paide ein Iteme says the words “I don’t love”, he doesn’t just refer to romantic relationships.
Monstrous
You submit, obediently, to their chains and collars … until you start to wonder what it is about your beast’s nature that requires the loving to demand such restrictions.
Pressure, Side One
When aromantics speak of the social pressures that weight our existence, sex negativity seldom comes first to mind.
Pressure, Side Two
Even in a city wrought to display our proud green, many things are shaded purple.
Abrasive
Spending Midsummer night with a pretty man shouldn’t be a problem for Suki … except for everybody else’s romantic expectations.
Question
When people ask about your love life, it demonstrates their acceptance of your queerness. What does it mean, as an aromantic, when they show no interest at all?
Antagonist
Cai likes women, casual sex and an absence of long-term relationships. None which would be a problem if said women didn’t see this as proof of his becoming the enemy...
Witch
The forest road promises you the chance of a world beyond marriage’s expectation … but the witch waiting by the roadside offers up queerer, stranger proofs of validity.
Hunter
The Citadel assumes that Prudence obediently searches for the sorcerer potentate’s missing twin … but she has her own reasons to hunt the Ring’s witches.
Pillar
When fog creeps and moon fades, the desperate seek out gods few dare name … but even gods struggle to witness the cruel consequences of their people’s amatonormativity.
Tomorrow
Stories speak of heroes’ sexual escapades on the night before they risk their lives, but Darius doesn’t dread death as much as he does the complications of surviving to see the day after tomorrow.
Steel
When a needlewoman agrees to run away with her fae lover, their fairy-tale ending has little to do with happily-ever-after.
Future
Helping Sala choose an outfit to attract men's attention seems an exercise in absurdity. Yet when Sala asks Daisy about her romantic dreams, the answer just might change her future.
