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.

Mirror’s Eye

Eloise wrapped the robe tightly around her and she made her way to the waiting bath. Her steps faltered as she saw movement out the corner of her eye. She’d been assured she wouldn’t be disturbed in Thorne’s quarters. Turning, she realized it was her own reflection that had caused the alarm.

Her breath caught in her throat as she stepped closer to the full body mirror beside the wardrobe. She hadn’t looked at herself in nearly three years. All the mirrors in Janus’ cottage had long oxidized and given her smoky blurred images. The woman standing before her was unknown. Her isolation had toned her thin frame, lightened her hair, and darkened her freckles. Only the bright blue of her eyes convinced her it wasn’t another woman before her.

She leaned closer, her breath fogging the surface. She let the robe slide from her shoulders and pool on the floor around her feet. As the fog dissipated, she traced the line of her subtle curves. Eloise never looked away from the reflection as if to look away meant losing her body.

Her hand paused at scars that had come through hard earned survival. Everything had had to be learned. She had listened to the hunters of her village brag about trapping the meals they provided, but never understood what it entailed until they weren’t there and she had to do it on her own. The deep cut on her forearm was from a snare that had triggered on her while she set it. The gouge on her leg was from a fall trying to bring in a fish trap on the slippery rocks. The gash along her ribs was from a chunk of wood that had splintered at her inexpert ax swing. Even if she tried to forget those years of living alone, her body’s scars would remind her.

Eloise’s legs gave out, and she knelt before her likeness. Her hand touched the smooth surface, trying to confirm there was no trick to the silver glint. Searching her eyes’ image, she tried to understand the expression. Anger? Pride? Hope? She was unsure what she thought of this stranger before her.

She heard the door open behind her followed by Thorne cursing and apologizing, but she didn’t look away, too enraptured to turn away. She felt the floorboards move slightly under his steps and was vaguely aware of his reflection joining hers.

“El? What’s wrong?” he asked as he kneeled beside her, his hand gathered the robe and brought it to her shoulder. Gently, he covered her and pulled her thoughts back to the present.

Her hand dropped from the mirror and she broke the staring contest with herself as she turned to Thorne. “I don’t know who she… who I am anymore.”

“That’s not true,” he whispered, pulling her against his chest, always keeping the robe between his hand and her bare skin. “I’ve never met anyone more self-assured than you. You just haven’t seen yourself in a while.”

Andrea L. Staum is the author of the Dragonchild Lore series, The Attic’s Secret, Rogue’s Kiss, and has contributed to several anthologies. In order to avoid the mundane, she creates worlds and destroys empires in her mind and eventually translates them to the page. She lives in south central Wisconsin with her husband, children, and their overlords…err…cats.

If you enjoyed this drabble you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

The Hunt

The world turns around us, ever-changing and never ceasing. Once upon a time, we remained unchanged.  We secluded ourselves and lived in the space between worlds where humans could not reach us.  Their influence was too strong though and as technology increased, the power of the ancient began to crumble.  We had to adapt to survive.

We left our halls of perpetual autumn and found a home in the modern world.  We are everywhere now.  Our children go to daycare and elementary school.  They play sports alongside human children.  They go to college and intermarry with the others of this world.  We are no longer a community, but just another ethnicity buried in the vast world of minorities.  Only you can’t tell what we are by how we look or what traditions we follow.

It’s why my job is so hard.  Being a Fae in the human world has plenty of problems, but being a cop makes it that much harder.  Humans don’t know about the existence of others like me.  Not just the Fae, but Weres and Witches, Shifters and creatures from nightmares they don’t want to remember.

Tonight is just another night on the watch, but this case keeps pinging something in the back of my mind.  Some memory of times long past intrudes at the tip of my tongue and won’t let up.  It feels purposeful like someone is trying to call me out, but I can’t remember who or why.

“Sean, are we good here?”

My partner, Tony, is a good guy and an even better cop.  His instincts, even without knowing about the other, are dead on.  Like now.

“Yeah.  I don’t need to see anything else here.”

Tony gives me the side-eye, but he doesn’t say anything else.  Sometimes I wonder if he really knows about us.  If he does, it was quick thinking and personal deliberation, nothing someone has said directly.  As I said, he’s good, and he’s seen enough to make anyone wonder.  He misses the bigger things though, like being unwarded around one of the Fae.

“This is going to be one of those, isn’t it?” Tony asks.

I know what he means.  This isn’t going to be solved easily, especially not on paper.  I swear I spend half of my job trying to explain away other-cases in a way that humans will believe.

“I’m afraid so.”

It’s back.  The tickle at the back of my mind and I spin around to look at the surrounding cityscape.  There’s nothing out of the ordinary to see, nothing that should cause me to hesitate, but I do.  And then I know.

She’s here.

Somewhere in the depths of the city, the queen of the Fae is calling to me.  This is no ordinary crime, and the killer is no mortal creature.  Tonight, I will hunt out my Queen for the first time in two hundred years.  Great Mother have mercy on us all.

Chris Bannor is a science fiction and fantasy writer who lives in Southern California.  Chris learned her love of genre stories from her mother at an early age and has never veered far from that path.  She also enjoys musical theater and road trips with her family but is a general homebody otherwise. 

Visit her at: http://www.ChrisBannor.com  facebook.com/chrisbannorauthor

If you enjoyed this drabble you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2019 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

Homecoming 

One day, as a baby, a subtle difference comes over the child. Growing up, they are aloof, never quite fitting in, yet loved, nonetheless, as children should be.

Then, one day, when the moon is bright and the stars align, they take a sharpened hawthorn wand – iron and steel are unbearable to touch – and do what must be done. Their parents and neighbour’s dead, ritual complete, they can go home at last, to the starlit realm that truly is their home. Down moonlit paths they walk till they find the mound with the green door and knock three times. Home.

DJ Tyrer is the person behind Atlantean Publishing and has been widely published in anthologies and magazines around the world, such as Winter’s Grasp (Fantasia Divinity), Tales of the Black Arts (Hazardous Press), Pagan (Zimbell House), Misunderstood (Wolfsinger), and Sorcery & Sanctity: A Homage to Arthur Machen (Hieroglyphics Press), and issues of Fantasia Divinity, Broadswords and Blasters, and BFS Horizons, and in addition, has a comic horror e-novelette, A Trip to the Middle of the World, available from Alban Lake through Infinite Realms Bookstore. Visit him at: https://djtyrer.blogspot.co.uk/

If you enjoyed this drabble you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2019 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

Idore

Idore. He murmured her name as he dreamed.

She’d left four days ago, and he hadn’t heard from her. Had she taken her spell bag? He couldn’t find it in the cabin.

After a restless sleep, he went outside. The sun was rising; it looked like a nice day. He put on gloves and started digging in the garden.

He heard her voice on the wind–she was back! He looked up at the sky, but to his horror, she was walking.

“Where are your wings?!” he cried.

She shrugged off his concern.

“I don’t need magic to be happy.”

Kelly Matsuura writes diverse YA, fantasy, and literary fiction.

She is the Creator of ‘The Insignia Series’ anthologies (Asian fantasy themed) and has had stories published with Ink & Locket Press, A Murder of Storytellers, Visibility Fiction, and many more.

Kelly lives in Nagoya, Japan with her geeky husband. She loves traveling, knitting, cooking, and of course, reading.

Visit her at: http://www.blackwingsandwhitepaper.com https://www.facebook.com/writerkmatsuura/

If you enjoyed this drabble you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2019 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

The story below is a tiny tale about the element of wind and the mischief of faeries.

Play Date

“You need to apologize to Mistress Wind.”

“She tricked me one time too many.” Dyrfri lay sprawled beneath a cluster of snapdragons and daisies.

“We’re going to shrivel into dried husks if she doesn’t break this heat. You make her laugh. Please, Dyrfri,” pleaded a pixie with wings the color of breaking dawn.

Grumbling, he hauled himself upright using the nearest green stem.

“I’m sorry, Mistress. Please come out and play,” he beseeched.

Wind tickled the flowers, making their petals dance. Cries of joy turned to howls of outrage as she whipped the pixies into the air like dandelion fluff.

When not daydreaming about plot lines and characters Andra Dill practices yoga, reads voraciously, and drinks too much coffee. She loves road trips and going off on wild tangents. Andra writes in multiple genres—including but not limited to—urban fantasy, steamy romance, paranormal romance, and horror.

Follow her on Twitter @aedill, on Instagram andradillauthor, and  www.facebook.com/andradillauthor

 

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.

The story below puts a new spin on the element of fire, giving it life in an unexpected way.

Catching Fire

The gasoline can is heavy in my hands as I lug it into the abandoned house on Scott Street. No one’s lived here since I was a little girl. My best friend and I used to sneak in and bum cigarettes from the squatters who sought refuge within these walls.

It’s the perfect place for what I need to do.

Wading through a sea of broken beer bottles and discarded drug paraphernalia, I make my way to a room in the back. An old piss-stained mattress lies half hidden beneath a mound of fetid trash.

I pop off the gas cap and douse the bed with a generous amount of its contents. The strong, heady odor of gasoline invades my nostrils and I suck it in greedily. I feel the pull of the tough, leathery skin around my mouth as a smile stretches my face. Giddy with excitement, I twirl in circles, the sharp fumes intoxicating.

It’s been six months since I last saw him in the fire that ravaged my flesh. Six long months of lying in the hospital, dreaming of his fiery touch.

From my pocket come the matches, and with one smooth strike, I light three. Tossing them on the bed, I’m at once rewarded with a large whoosh of heat as it ignites.

My heart pounds with anticipation as the fire expands, crawls across the moldy floor. It licks the legs of a rickety armoire, likes the taste, and devours it. Leaping flames caress the walls, leaving sooty black kisses behind.

Feasting hungrily, smoke fills the room, burning my throat and lungs. My stinging eyes scan the flames in desperate search of the Fire Man.

In my hospital delirium, I cried for him often, the man I’d summoned with the strike of a match. I’d tried so long, setting fire after fire, with nothing to show for it but smoke. It was when I learned the secret that he finally showed himself to me. When I offered myself to the flames I created; when I let myself burn.

Now, the fire roars before me, and I drop to my knees, coughing on acrid smoke. Outside, I hear the dreaded wail of sirens in the street.

No! They can’t take him away from me again!

I look about wildly, gasping for breath, and – there! – I see him, taking shape. He materializes slowly; tall, muscular body shifting with the movement of flame. His eyes burn red like two hot coals, while flames flicker on his head in place of hair.

Spellbound, I watch as his naked form solidifies. Fiery. Bright. Magnificent.

I climb to my feet, and like the Red Sea, the fire parts between us. He opens his arms and I run and leap, the flames crowding us in. My sizzling skin smokes beneath his touch while his lava tongue melts my lips. Clinging to him, my body sparks, then rapidly ignites.

And together, we merge into a single bright flame and disappear in the lusty fire.

Amber M. Simpson is a nighttime fiction writer with a penchant for dark and fantasy.  She has had publications with Fantasia Divinity Magazine and Black Hare Press. She divides her creative time (when she’s not procrastinating) between writing a mystery/horror novel, working on a medieval fantasy series, and coming up with new ideas for short stories. Above all, she enjoys being a mom to her two greatest creations, Max and Liam, who keep her feet on the ground even while her head is in the clouds.

To learn more, visit: https://ambermsimpson.wordpress.com.

 

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.

The story below while drabble sized tells a story about internal struggles and Faeries.

Aelfwine

Aelfwine threw back her hood, and looked around in horror. The forest clearing was littered with corpses. Elves, faeries, dryads, and nymphs, broken and bent, mangled beyond recognition.

“Leave now, sister,” said Braelynn, standing amidst the carnage, and channelling the blood she had spilt. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Is this how far you’ve fallen?” said Faelynn, deflecting the bolt aimed at her heart as she stepped forward.

“We cannot let the demons win. There was no other way!”

“Yes,” said Faelynn, tears streaming down her cheeks as she decapitated her sister with a spell. “Yes, there was, Braelynn.”

Umair Mirxa lives and writes in Karachi, Pakistan. His first published story, ‘Awareness’, appeared on Spillwords Press. He has since had stories accepted for publication in anthologies from Zombie Pirate Publishing, Blood Song Books, Fantasia Divinity Magazine and Publishing, Black Hare Press, Iron Faerie Publishing, and Clarendon House Publications. He is a massive J.R.R. Tolkien fan, and loves everything to do with fantasy and mythology. He enjoys football, history, music, movies, TV shows, and comic books, and wishes with all his heart that dragons were real.