Welcome to this week’s installment of many micro stories, ranging in length from 100 words to 500 words.
With each story we hope to deliver a little whimsy into the lives of our readers.
CHANGELINGS
We’ve never understood why you think we take babies. We have babies of our own, and they are better than yours. More beautiful, more elegant, more magical. Human babies are squalling, messy, smelly things. Our babies’ cries are the songs of nightingales or a symphony of tree branches creaking or the whisper of the wind over the sea. They smell like orange blossoms and lilac and sweet hay.
But you do have something we don’t. We are immortal creatures, timeless and perfect. We do not age. And so, we do not gain wisdom.
Not like your elders do.
It is them we take. Them who we replace with changelings.
We give them food and drink and respect and attention. We dull their aches and learn their deepest secrets. They tell us their stories and we seek their advice. They guide us and help us, who are already so nearly perfect, be even better.
We can copy their bodies perfectly. We understand bodies. But we do not understand their sagacity, cannot comprehend the shapes of their minds and memories, and so our replacements are a poor facsimile of their former selves.
Yes, that is why none of your research has made any difference. Why, after your lifetime of dedication, there is still no cure, no clear cause, no route to prevention.
Yes, we know that you have spent your whole life devoted to finding a cure. Yes, we know that we took your grandfather, then your mother.
Do you wish to see them again? Do you wish to save future generations from the pain you’ve suffered? Of course you do. You have a kind heart.
That is another thing that we cannot understand.
You can help us to build better replacements. Copies whose memories of aging don’t crumple in on themselves, who don’t forget their granddaughters, who don’t become paranoid or vacant or sad.
Why should you help us? You cannot stop us. You are powerless before us. This is your chance to help–well, not your own daughter. Now that you are ours, she will suffer as you did. But maybe your grandson, maybe everyone who comes after. After all, it is not us that our faulty changelings hurt.
You will do it? Yes, we knew you would.
Come, let’s get started.
Jamie Lackey lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their cats. She has had over 200 short stories published in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex Magazine, and Escape Pod. She has a novella and two short story collections available from Air and Nothingness Press, and she’s created six successful crowdfunding campaigns to self-publish a novel, two novellas, a novelette, and three short story collections. In addition to writing, she spends her time reading, playing tabletop RPGs, baking, mushroom hunting, and hiking. You can find her online at www.jamielackey.com.
If you enjoyed this drabble you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.
Iron Faerie Publishing 