Outside on the cliffs, the avalanche had buried the besieging army. Inside the castle, the hero let the snow-maidens strip him bare, bathe him in roses, towel and powder him dry. They led him to the Ice Queen’s bedchamber. She was smaller than she’d looked on the battlements. The […]
flash fiction
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The fog rolled in from the sea, choking the cliff and the castle. It covered the boat by the hewn stair. Boats never came to this island. The men on the continent’s shore said the hippogriff had flown five times and roosted presently at the castle. It was death to visit […]
They hung her from the cliff-yawning walls, in a metal cage. If she had been a prisoner of war, they would have hung her on the outside above the gates, to starve over the conquered city and have her eyes picked away; instead they hung her at the throat of […]
The torches flared pink, orange, green, teal, blue. Colours maddened by rogue alchemists and their powders. The sand churned under countless feet. Bodies limned in mad firelights. Pulsing. The drums were hide and they drove like whips. Steel instruments wailed like spirits. The woman with foxfire eyes threw back her […]
I could smell her body from across the raging waters: her fearful heart pumping rich sweet blood; the bitter odour of a delicate sweat; the tangy iron of the manacles that held her, with its creeping rust and the way it stank of the anger of those who had shackled […]
~ Block by block, up the tower, hand over hand, his hands are on the stones. Toes nosing into footholds, and his muscles ache nicely with the push and pull of the climb. There is a slice of moon over the tower like a satisfied grin, like the satisfaction he’s […]