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.

YSBRYLLAND

The only way to reach Ysbrylland is through a gate: an empty, inviting eye of polished stone. Anyone can go — no passport required — but the gate finds you, wherever you are, and not the other way round.

Everything is alive in Ysbrylland. The animated colours of a vast, mesmeric spectrum are all visible to you. When it rains, the droplets wave and somersault. The buildings tilt their faces, open their windows and drink. When it storms, the thunder sings its name with a chorus from the clouds. The teeming ground conveys you through talking woods, past nodding, spell-chanting towers.

The place decides when you leave.

You’ll be gulping down the fragrant explosions of its air, cupping the humming pearls of its sunlight in your hands, and you’ll arrive home to a blank dawn, empty-handed. No souvenirs. Earth will be dead and stale to you. Ugly and inert.

You can only visit once. The gate never finds you again. If you see it winking at you one evening at dusk — the gate appears only when the earthly light is fading — ignore it. Pass right on by. Turn back the way you came. Escape the compulsive, nocturnal search for Ysbrylland, your flashlight in your trembling fingers, through cities, jungles, across deserts, half-way up mountains. Spare yourself a hopeless wandering to find the blissful place that has spoilt and rejected you, and a convulsing heart, gone septic with grief.

Reitha Pattison has studied and taught literature, and worked as a bookseller, editor, and book rights agent. She has published poetry, essays, and translations, and Tinne, her first graphic novel about a robot who discovers alchemy, can be read online (Instagram: re.pattison). Keeping with the alchemical theme, she is working on her first fantasy trilogy about kobolds.

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.

DEEP WITHIN THE NATIONAL FOREST

Dev dug a deep hole, removing shovel-fulls of rich loam mixed with rocks and clay, then buried Leon. Given this remote location, his body would never be found.

As he prepared to leave, though, Dev thought he heard a faint sound, glanced over his shoulder, and flinched.

Leon was climbing out of the ground, and soon stood there, staring silently at his killer. The soil beneath the dead man churned as worms, larvae, and millipedes poured out. They slithered up his body, covering him head-to-toe.

Aghast, Dev turned and fled as fast as he could. But Leon tackled him from behind, knocking him to the ground.

More creatures emerged from the earth by the dozens, then the hundreds. They swarmed Dev, who thrashed around wildly, then vanished into the ground.

Now nothing remained of either man, not even bones.

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

AVAILABLE HERE!