Love determines how long you live, some people are in their hundreds, but some don’t even live to be 20.

It shouldn’t take ten years to set up a date with the woman who loves you.

The thought doesn’t show on Tasoula’s face. The night hums around her, the fairy lights draped over the patio blending in with the fireflies teasing at the edges of the wine bar’s glow. It’s a waste to come here at night. During the day the vineyard stretches out below the hilltop restaurant and the trellis’ hugging the walkway up glow with morning glories.

Technically, the woman she’s waiting for has given Tasoula decades of lifespan already. Is it really a crime for her to waste just one of them?

Tasoula leans back in her garden chair. Her reservation had been for a table inside at noon but, as the hours dragged by, she’d been shuffled outside to make room for guests whose dates actually showed up. She’s not the easy sort to move, so there’s a half-empty bottle of complimentary wine on the wrought iron table. She’s pressed to the edge of the patio, right against the cedar fence separating the seating area from the sudden drop into darkness. They’d been very attentive until the dinner rush came in. Then she’d been forgotten, fading into the shadow until not even the most senior server looked her way any longer.

As usual, it’s not until Tasoula is forgotten that Margot shows up.

// BRING THE WOLVES DOWN // a short story about a village that believes wolves instead of women

RAINN offers a 24-hour hotline that helps 500+ sexual assault survivors every day. The organization fights to change the policies that deny justice to victims of sexual violence. You can donate at https://donate.rainn.org/

We write the next part of this story. And there are things big and small we can do to make it better than the first part. It starts with supporting survivors.

Link here: https://shorteststory.com/index.php?date=2018-10-06

RAINN = Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network

You’ve been sentenced to 400 years for multiple murders. It’s been 399 years and your jailers are starting to get nervous.

I was twenty… twenty-five, I think?… when I was sentenced. Four hundred years was a length of time I couldn’t even imagine. It was a length of time I don’t think anyone could imagine, even the judge. It was just a big showy number that let everyone know I’d never see the light of day again. The mages who cast the spells were dramatic about it, practically shouting the part about ‘until death claims you, or four hundred years hath passed, forsooth, thou shalt be imprisoned here’. They don’t waste that kind of magic on most prisoners, but I was special.

The Slayer, they called me then. The Monster of Sentan. I’d killed nineteen people… I remember that number because I was so furious that they stopped me so close to my goal of twenty-one. And I didn’t just kill ordinary people, no, but the Chosen of the Gods. The Great and Good. They were terrified of me. So they locked me away, to die forgotten.

It had been a little less than a hundred years when the king died without heir, and a civil war tore the country apart. When the fighting was all over, the losers were dragged down to the deepest cells under the castle, and the new king and his soldiers stopped and stared at me. “Who… who is this?” he asked, frowning. “Some victim of the usurper?”

People like cooks and jailers and scrubbers don’t change as easily as kings. The same man who’d been bringing me my meals since there was still brown in his hair and beard shuffled forward, hunched and grey now. “No, yer majesty,” he said humbly. “That be a special prisoner, from before the old king died.”

“Special? Special how?” He frowned, moving closer to my cell. “The old king died more than ten years ago. This woman must have been a child then. What could she have done to - “

“Don’t get too close, yer majesty,” the old man said sharply. “That’s the Monster of Sentan… an’ she bites.”

That was true. I do bite.

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Deep Water Prompt #2604

Everyone warns me the Bone Beach is not what it sounds like. They say there’s no point in visiting, that no one understands it’s strange name.

The lyrics of ‘The Ocean Burial’ can be found here.

The Bone Beach is a long way from anywhere. It’s always cold there, even in summer, they say. There’s a road to it, but no-one knows why.

Most people go there, once. For a dare, or for curiosity, or to prove that there’s nothing there. And everyone says there’s nothing there. It’s just a scrap of a beach, with a chilly breeze blowing, no reason for the name.

And yet no-one ever goes back. Even in the hottest summer days, when the chill should be tempting, no-one ever goes there twice.  

I’d already noticed that when I gave in to curiosity. I knew something was strange. In the end, that’s why I went. I wanted to know what could have that effect on so many people. After all, nobody seems to have been hurt by visiting it, even if they don’t want to go back.

I drove along the narrow road, and people were right, it was strange. Nobody had ever seen anyone working on it, and yet it was in good repair. No branches stretched across it, there were no cracks or potholes… it was a good road.

It stayed good, all the way to the beach… and I mean all the way. It just ran up to the edge of the sand and stopped dead. No parking spot, just a clean ending, as if the road had been cut off with a knife. Beside the road there was an old sign, wood weathered grey, with ‘BONE BEACH’ marked on it in clear capitals that didn’t look quite… right. They looked as if they’d been written - carved, I suppose - by someone who wasn’t very familiar with English lettering, the shapes subtly distorted. Or by someone who wanted anyone who approached good and unsettled before they ever set foot on the beach.

I stepped out onto the beach cautiously, and I felt the chill. It wasn’t creepy, exactly - there was a cool breeze off the water, I could feel it, and the beach itself was shaded by the cliff. No ghostly fingers or suddenly seeing my breath, or anything like that. It was chilly, though.

The sand was white and fine under my feet. It should be a nice place, even with all the rocks around it and the shadow of the cliffs. I couldn’t see anything to explain the reluctance everyone had to coming back… yet.

But I wanted to know. So I found a place to sit, where I could lean against a rock, and put my headphones in. I started an audiobook - The Fellowship Of The Ring, something I know well enough to let it fade into the background - and took out my notebook to start writing down all my observations.

I don’t know how long I’d been sitting there when it started, and that was strange too, because I’d been checking the time pretty regularly. But when the blurring started, I couldn’t remember what the time had been last time I checked.

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We helped quite a few guys with Super Strength get into the construction business. I know this one Veterinarian who can speak with animals. Not everyone with superpowers wants to be out there fighting crime or robbing banks. That’s where our Job Placement Agency comes in.

Sam was really unclear on what was going on. Up to now, things had gone according to plan, but…

Super-powers kicked in? Yeah, that’d gone well. Okay, being the Empress Of All Canines wasn’t, like, the best superpower, but she’d always liked dogs. Being able to talk to them and get them to do things was pretty neat.

Create superhero identity? Check. She’d made a costume, collected up some tough dogs to be her team, and set out to Do Some Good.

Get the attention of the big superheroes? That had… well, it had started well. She’d stopped a few robberies and stuff, and then she’d seen Guarde fighting some bad guys and weighed in and…

… and two of her dogs had been killed. And it had hurt, and they’d called for her to save them, and she hadn’t been able to. It had all suddenly been so real, and she’d started to cry.

And once it was over, Guarde had dragged her halfway across the city to this shabby old building, and started banging on a door labeled ‘NO ADMITTANCE’.

Guarde sighed and pressed a cracked button on an old intercom, which looked like it should have stopped working at least twenty years ago. “Come on, I know there’s someone in there,” she said crossly. “Get your asses out here.”

Above their heads, a security camera panned down to examine them.

After another minute, the door opened, and a walking stereotype stood there, glaring. She was, like, THE grouchy old office lady, from the old-lady grey curls to the sagging cardigan to the glasses on a chain to the sour expression with a cigarette hanging out of it. Even her voice, when she spoke, sounded exactly like Sam would have guessed it would, hoarse and raspy. “Can’t you read the sign? No admittance. Especially not for your kind.” She sneered, and took a drag on the cigarette. “Get lost.”

Guarde pushed Sam forward. “Kid needs the Agency.”

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The Late Traveller

I should have known, of course.

A little old hotel in the middle of nowhere, with a creaking wooden sign instead of neon? Red flag.

A hollow-eyed, weary-looking young woman at the desk who seemed hesitant to let me get a room? Red flag.

A picturesquely old-fashioned room with a patchwork quilt on the bed that smells a little too musty? HUGE red flag.

Only they’re actually not. Not the first two, anyway. I travel a lot. There are a lot more seems-haunted old-house-turned-traveller’s-rest places than most people think, and in my experience most night auditors are hollow-eyed, faintly eldritch, and disinclined to let someone check in just before dawn.

Of course, the patchwork quilt should have been a dead giveaway. Tired 80s decor and a chenille bedspread? Entirely normal. Patchwork quilt and nineteenth century charm for less than $100 a night? Sus. Very sus. Should have warned me then and there.

In my defense, I was really tired. I’d been driving for two nights and a day, I was exhausted, all my car snacks were gone, and I just wanted to close my eyes and get horizontal. I handed over some cash, stumbled upstairs, made sure the blinds were down, and passed out.

I didn’t wake up until late afternoon, and I felt like shit on a shingle when I did. It took me a couple of attempts to put on my pants and stumble out of the room to look for some sustenance. My expectations weren’t high, but most places at least have coffee-making facilities, and in a pinch a cup of coffee and chugging all the available milk will keep me going for a while. There might even be some of those little packages of cookies, which usually give me an upset stomach but are better than nothing.

There wasn’t a coffee station. What there was was a vending machine with a buzzing, flickering light inside it that made the dusty snacks look even less appealing than they already did.

I was debating whether to risk a can of soda of unknown brand and vintage - sugar and caffeine don’t readily go bad, and I was starving - when I heard a little cough behind me. “Are you a guest, dear?” the old woman said when I turned around to blink at her. She was thin and tottering, faded-looking, and while there weren’t actually cobwebs on her, she looked as if there should be.

“Yes. Is there a kitchen or something where I can get some food from this century?”

Her eyes flicked away. “There’s a diner,” she told me. “Not far down the road. You should try there. I’m afraid the facilities here aren’t what they once were.” She sighed deeply.

Belatedly, my sense for the uncanny started to tingle. “So I should check out and keep moving, huh?”

“Yes, dear. If you can,” she added, and she glanced over her shoulder. “Before sunset.”

Aha.

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The Seven Daughters Of The Cailleach Foraoise

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a great forest with trees so tall that they shut out the sky, and it was always dark in that place. A single road passed through it, one side to the other, and no wise traveler ever ventured off that road.

In the forest to the east of the road there was a great hill, with a tower on it, and in that tower there lived a wizard. He was solitary and ill-tempered, but if someone in trouble came to him humbly and begged his aid, he did not usually refuse.

In the forest to the west of the road - or so it was said, for it was not visible as the hill and tower were - there was a great dark hollow with a house at the bottom of it, where the forest witch, the Cailleach Foraoise, lived with her seven daughters. She was ill-natured and dangerous, but still, she had been known to give aid to those willing to pay her price.

It happened that the king of the land had grown cruel and dangerous, and he taxed his people to starvation, he poisoned their land and slew any who displeased him. He slew even his own sons, when they defied him, and all went in terror of him. This king had three nephews, the sons of his sister, and they saw that soon they would be in danger from him as well, so they fled his castle by night, and took the road through the dark forest.

When they reached the river that ran through the heart of the forest, they stopped and took counsel of each other. They must do all that they could to save the kingdom and its people, that they agreed, but they debated what that was until the youngest spoke.

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You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches.

I think I’d have minded less if I’d committed a truly heinous crime. Something that warranted death. Or even if I was the kind of person who would enjoy flinging a last defiance at my execution.

It was all just a show, anyway. They did it every year. They brought out a selection of criminals, and the Sorcerer who ruled us showed his power by bringing about their deaths by magic. Just to show, every year, what happened to anyone who crossed him.

There was a time, probably, when the people he executed really were rebels or assassins. In latter days he had to take what the dungeons offered. I was dragged up in chains between a pickpocket, sobbing in terror, and a man who’d killed another man in a brawl. There were few criminals of any note, by then. So instead of choosing the wickedest criminals, they chose based on appearance. The man who’d been in the brawl had a face like a clenched fist, and looked like a ruffian. The pickpocket, aging and with hands beginning to tremble, was a different kind of example. As was I.

“There aren’t many pretty ones, this year,” the man who chose me had said, examining me. “But this one will do. Not young, but not old, a woman, well-favoured enough for the gallows… what was her crime?”

The warder shrugged. “She tried to kill one of the sheriffs.”

The man looked down at me and I shrugged. “I hit him with a washing stick, because he tried to extort money from me, and he was a baby about it.” I refused to treat this as anything but pathetic, even after my sentencing. “I didn’t even break any bones.”

“Treason, then,” the man said, nodding. “Attacking the servants of the law. That will look well on the list. Send her.”

I had been debating ever since what to choose. Something quick? Something painless? I considered demanding that I suffer the attack I supposedly made on the sheriff, but then I realized the Sorcerer would only give me what the man had said I was going to do, and that was not a pleasant way to die. I had all but decided on something swift and relatively painless. Beheading with the sharpest of blades sounded good. It would be quick. 

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In The End, Victory

I think we all know that I spend a lot of time thinking about tropes.

It’s happened a million times.

It will happen a million more.

Darkness and light, they call it. But that’s not it. That’s never been it.  

I never thought about it like this before.

We grew up as ordinary people, with the simple understanding of good and evil that children have. And then…

And then…

Then it got more complicated, like it always does. When you get older, you see the complicated under the simple. You learn that there are no easy answers, and realize how badly you want them. Especially when bad things happen. And terrible things are happening now.

I love my sister. I have always loved her. But she wants the answers to be easy so badly. She’s clinging to the idea that there’s a right solution, an easy answer, a simple way to make all this suffering end. Hers, and mine, and others’. And I know, deep down, that she’s wrong.

We tried over and over to persuade each other, with pleas and coaxings, with reason, with angry words. Our arguments got louder, and harsher. We both sought out others, the friends and strangers who agreed with us, who told us we were right, and our sister was wrong. I want to believe that I’m right, but we’ve never opposed each other before. As long as she believes in her path as truly as I believe in mine, how can either of us be quite free of doubt?

I know she had doubts too. I know it because of how hard she swears she doesn’t, this last time, of how passionately she insists that her way is right, with the fervour that means she’s trying to convince herself as well as me. How angry she gets with me when I argue back. We end the argument screaming at each other across the room, and this time the words are bitter-edged, final words, words we can never forget, perhaps never forgive. This is our last attempt to reach out to each other, I know it even as it ends. It’s over now.

And in that one moment of time, I feel it. A certainty that is more and less than a memory, the knowledge that it would always have come to this. That it always has, and always will. I don’t know if she feels it too, and I don’t know if I’ll remember it a moment from now, but I know. I know that some part of what we are is as eternal as the wind or the sun, the flow of the tide and the shadows of mountains.

I look at my sister across the room. Across the battlefield. Across throne rooms and deserts and bloody stones, across broken promises and nightmares and reconciliations full of regret. Across thousands of echoes, and eons of time.

The good one. The bad one.

Darkness. Light.

It’s never been a matter of good and evil. Of darkness or of light. What we are, what we have always been, is war and peace. The fight, and the negotiation. The open hand, and the closed fist.

And sometimes it’s the peacemaker and the warmonger, and sometimes it’s the freedom fighter and the collaborator, and sometimes one of us dies, and sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s neither. Sometimes we can forgive each other, and sometimes we always loved each other. Sometimes we’re brothers or sisters, and sometimes we’re enemies from the beginning.

But it always comes down to this. The two of us, facing each other. And we both believe we’re right.

One of us is wrong.

There’s only one way to find out who.

But I don’t have to hate her, and she doesn’t have to hate me. We are two possible answers to a thousand, a million problems, including this one. It doesn’t matter, in the end, which of us is right.

One of us will be.

And we will end this.

Note: Originally inspired by Faith and Buffy, but also a reference to Thor and Loki, Caramon and Raistlin, Peter and Edmund, Emerson and Sethos, and all the others who have faced ‘the enemy in the mirror, the friend across the field’.

Deep Water Prompt #2350

My lantern is not a trap, glowing softly on the dark forest floor. You should pick it up and take it. I am begging you to take it.

Author’s note: It’s been a long time since I tried my hand at a true New Fairy Tale, so here’s one I wrote especially to post on my birthday. It has its roots in a book of Chinese stories I read as a child, with some threads from Russian and Korean fairy tales woven in, and a little bit of Kubo And The Two Strings found its way in as well. No appropriation is intended, as always, only an attempt to create stories that extend outside the Very European Fairy Tale Mold. 

Comments, reblogs, tags and other appreciation make great birthday gifts. I just mention it. ;) @deepwaterwritingprompts, thanks as always.

The Three Lanterns

There was no darkness like the darkness of that forest. The huge trees spread out their branches and broad leaves so that no hint of light could reach the ground. During the day, it was gloomy and dim. During the night, it was darker than the deepest cave.

But the road was smooth and level, and there were no bandits. Some said that that was because even bandits feared the place. Others that the forest did not permit them to enter.

But it was safe enough, if you followed the rules. Kept to the path. Harmed nothing. Took nothing. Showed respect. And, above all, so long as you did not stop. To make a camp within the forest was dangerous.

Ju had travelled through the forest several times. He was a travelling peddler, carrying pretty trifles and useful items to small villages off the beaten track, so poor that he was not worth the bother of robbing except for the most desperate of bandits, but surviving well enough. He was familiar with this road, and when night fell he had lit his lantern and continued to walk, leading his two laden ponies. It was a long day’s travel, at walking pace, but there would be a campsite on the other side that he would reach by moonrise.

He was perhaps an hour from the edge of the forest when he saw a light between the trees, in the distance.

He had never seen a light in this forest before, save on the path. “Some fool has tried to make a camp here,” he told the ponies. He often talked to them, having no other company. “Or perhaps wandered off the road and become lost.”

He hesitated, but he was a young man with a kind heart. He carefully tied the ponies to the branch of a dead tree fallen by the road, then faced the forest and bowed. “Please excuse my intrusion,” he said as politely as he knew how, “but I think the person whose light I see must be in trouble. I will go and see, and then come back to the road. Please forgive me if I offend.”

He paused, waiting to see if the forest would indicate approval or disapproval. It didn’t make any especially alarming noises, or throw down a fallen branch in his path, so he decided that he was not to be immediately smote for his insolence. He picked up his lantern again, and began to walk towards the other light.

As he approached the light, he called out. “Hello? Are you a traveller? You should not leave the road, it is not safe.”

But there was no answer, and when he reached the light – not so far from the road, he could still see the glimmer of the second lantern set on one of the ponies’ packs – there was no-one there at all. Only a lantern, a hand-lantern like his own, set on a stone in the middle of a small clearing.

It was a small, ordinary thing, but something about it chilled him. It was… wrong, in all ways wrong. He hadn’t seen another traveller on the road all the time he was in the forest, nor any sign that anyone had passed that way for days past. Even if he had, why would someone leave a lantern burning in this place? In the middle of the forest, like a strange offering? Surely it must be a trap, and he remembered the warnings that one must never take anything from the forest. He stepped back. “My apologies,” he said, trying not to sound nervous. “I will go back – “

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Ten Thousand Braids Of Human Hair

No-one ever knows what to expect from the ritual of adulthood before it happens. We know that we are separated, the boys from the girls. We know that what happens is very important. And we know that sometimes, it changes people in a way that’s impossible to explain.

And of course, we know that part of the ritual is cutting off our braids. All the little girls envy the girls with their short hair, newly made women, and I suppose the boys do, too. I’ve seen new-made men posing and preening just as much as the girls do, showing off to the younger boys whose braids are still long.

For some, it’s the only time in their lives that they cut their hair. Others go back again, at some important time. When someone dies, sometimes, or when a child is coming. Times with meaning for them.

I remember how excited I was, when all the girls and boys born in that year were gathered together on midsummer day. There was feasting, and dancing, and casting of bones and reading of fortunes. Then, at sunset, we were divided, the girls from the boys, and led up into the hills.

They led us into a cave, and a wise woman wrapped in a white shawl sat and explained the women’s mysteries to us. That was, for me, something of a let-down. I already knew most of it, from my mother and sisters, and helping with animals on the farm. The woman saw me yawn, and smiled, showing only a few worn teeth. “You already know,” she said, in her cracked old voice. “Yes, many of you already know. But some will not, and you must all know before you go on. For to truly understand what is asked of you there, you must understand the cycle of life and death.”

When she was done, and had answered all the questions the girls had who hadn’t known, she brought us together and led us through a low passage that was as dark as the darkest night. “Each girl, take hold of the hand of the girl before and the girl behind,” she said firmly, taking the hand of the first girl in line. “Walk together in trust, and be not afraid.”

It was strange, that walk in the darkness. Frightening, mysterious, and yet reassuring too, to feel the hands of my friends clasped in mine, to know we made a chain of trust behind our guide. It seemed to go on for a long time, and yet it couldn’t have been too long, for the hill wasn’t so large, and we came out in a great cavern still inside it. And what we saw there… that more than made up for the disappointing beginning.

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The Warning

[No prompt for this one, just my ongoing frustration with Tyrants And Generals who get dire warnings from seers, prophets or priests, and then a) DO NOT LISTEN, and b) kill the only reliable seer/prophet in the area because, you know, THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY THAT THEY WILL HAVE MORE QUESTIONS LATER]

The king approached the dungeon, his heart racing. He had consulted other seers, but they had all proved to be charlatans. This one was supposed to be different. This one had convinced even his most trusted captain that she was genuine. This time, he would learn his future.

The figure sat on a small stool, wrapped in a cloak against the cell’s chill. Her head was down, and he couldn’t see her face. Cadan, the captain, prodded her with the butt of a spear. “Seer! The king stands before you! Rise and show respect!”

“No. I am bruised, and I am tired, and I do not wish to.” The voice sent a chill down the king’s spine. He had not known a mortal voice could hold such weariness. She sounded as if a thousand years weighed on her too heavily to bear.

Cadan raised the spear again, but the king waved him away. “Enough, enough. I come, in a way, as a supplicant. We must be civil, at least.”

“I would find the change pleasant,” that weary voice said, and she lifted her head and pushed back her hood. Under it had been concealed dark hair cropped short, and the thin face of a girl surely not more than thirteen. It shocked him, to see that child’s face, after hearing that voice… and then he looked into her eyes, and he shivered. The eyes were even wearier than the voice, bitter and tired and hopeless. “I so rarely meet with civility,” she said, looking up at him with those terrifying eyes.

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In The Interim

I must have read at least a dozen variations on the ‘ancient and forgotten order of something or other is revived by the Chosen One and some ancient mentor or something’ story, in which ancient relics or fortresses or holy places usually play a significant part. I’ve often wondered what happens to them in the interim, while their orders are scattered and their existence forgotten. I’m always fascinated by the generally elided parts of a story - what happens after the evil empire collapses, or while the dystopia is setting in, or the time between the fall and rise of the order of something or other.

Also, you know, I play Dragon Age. Skyhold is… inspiring.

—

There is an ancient fortress that waits in the mountains for the day when its people will return. Dust covers the floors, and many of the ancient statues have fallen.

I do not know what the fortress waits for. Was it an order of scholars? There was a library, with shelves full of scrolls and books. They are ancient and fragile now, so I never enter the room except to light a fire to dry the air, now and then.

It could have been an order of warriors. There are rooms full of ancient weapons. I know what a sword is, though I have never seen swords shaped like this. There are blades on long poles, like some strange mating of an axe and a spear, and other things I cannot name. What is not too rusted, I oil and tend.

Perhaps it was a religious order. There are many statues, and one motif that repeats often, a woman holding a lamp in one hand and a flower or leafy plant in the other. There are statues of her, and paintings on the walls, and even a mosaic of stones in one of the courtyards. I dust the statues and the paintings, and sweep the mosaic. In the room that seems to be a shrine, I keep a light burning on the altar, as the signs tell me others have done before me.

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The Farthest Fuelling Station

Does anyone remember that post about space fuelling stops, because I haven’t seen it in ages, can’t find it, and it is ABSOLUTELY the inspiration for this.

Interstellar exploration is, when you get right down to it, no different from travel by steam, or even horse. The real limit isn’t in the power of the engines or the size of the vehicle, it’s in the supply lines. It’s in the fuel.

Fuelling stations are fortresses. Synocrystal is the most precious substance in existence. This moonlet, orbiting a dead planet that circles a minor sun, is more heavily armed than many whole settled planets. And it’s an important post, because this is one of the stations where synocrystal is actually synthesized, not just stored. There aren’t many places it’s even marginally safe to do that, given how the stuff reacts to… well, everything. When I think of how the Ancestors used to fuss over the dangers of nuclear fusion engines, and how much more dangerous synocrystal is, I can’t help but laugh.

We’re a pragmatic species. Given a choice between using an insanely dangerous fuel-source, or being limited to our own solar system by slower-than-light travel, we barely hesitated.

This particular refuel started out badly. My fuelling hours are clearly posted on the beacon. So is the notice that out-of-hours fuelling requires a prior appointment. I’ll make exceptions for the couriers, sometimes, because they don’t always get enough notice to make an appointment and because they’re usually so appreciative, but that’s my business. I’m entitled to an uninterrupted sleep-shift, like any other sentient.

But this wasn’t a courier. This was a big ship, a trader… one of the private company traders, at that. I know they have to register incredibly detailed plans, in case of damaged or delayed cargoes, so they had absolutely no excuse for showing up in the middle of my sleep cycle and blaring alerts at me.  

I dragged myself out of my bunk, ignoring Pepper and Choi’s protests, and went over to the console. There’s one in my private quarters for situations like this, and I reluctantly leave it active on the outside chance that it actually is an emergency. Even as I got there, the contact alert blared again, and I toggled ‘audio only’. “This had better be life or fucking death,” I said, over whatever form greeting they were spitting out. “The posted hours are really damned clear.”

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The Teachings Of The Mothers

So I saw ‘Black Widow’ yesterday. As usual, in any narrative I’m really enjoying, the point came when I started wondering 'how would I have written this?’ and 'how could I twist this trope into something new?’

So here’s the story that came to me, the maybe-future of the Widows who hate people who hurt children.

—  

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Everyone knows the Grim Reaper, the personification of Death. You are the supernatural personification of the other certainty in life: Taxes

Gods are not born of belief. That is a fallacy. Gods are shaped by belief, altered by it, even strengthened by it, but it does not make them. Belief creates, but what it creates is not gods but… personifications, perhaps.

Death is the first and the oldest of us. When people learned to fear death, to see not only a cessation of life but a destruction of being, Death came into existence.

Death, my gentle brother, is an answer to the deepest longing of the human heart. “I am afraid. I do not want to die alone.” That thought was felt before it could be spoken, before speech was conceived. Humans longed for a comforting presence, when they died, not chill oblivion. Death offers it, and leads them on.

I, too, predate speech – Speech, or Language, is a flitting, fickle creature, born of the desire to communicate, mercurial and yet constant, like the air itself. But I am not like her. I have had many names, but what I am does not change.

Fairness, perhaps, was my first name. Long before sounds became words, the thought of fairness existed. It is not fair. It should be fair. I came into being the first time a hungry member of a troop was fed by one who had hunted well, the first time a weaker hunter was robbed by a strong one.

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Everyday walking home you see a mannequin staring down at you from a house window. One day it’s holding a sign that says ‘help me’ and the next day PLEASE. The owner of the home drives up and you look up to see the mannequin gone. You decide to investigate.

This is one of my Upbeat Horror pieces, so trigger warnings for all the usual things - sex-related creepiness, violence, bad magic, monsters and murder. Child harm and murder, too, but only mentioned, not shown.

The Mannequins In The Windows

It takes a lot, around here,  to make anyone question the weird behaviour of their neighbours. It’s one of those places… a once-nice area that’s going downhill, with a mix of die-hard respectables holding on, and students, and people looking for low rent, and… well, the usual things. Nobody cares about how things look much, anymore. Nobody questions what flag you put up, or if you’ve got a caravan semi-permanently parked in your driveway, or an art installation made of car parts, or a car doing duty as an art installation.

Around here, weird isn’t noticed much.

But the mannequins were really weird.

It was a house, not apartments or town-houses, with a little yard and all. And it was nicer than most of them, these days. Old, but still looked after. The guy still mows the lawn on the weekends and even hoses down the driveway now and then. He lives alone, which I get – if you can afford to, who wouldn’t? But the mannequins were so weird.

The first one had showed up a few months ago – a young blonde woman. It was a really nice one… vintage, with a carefully modelled and painted face, real eyelashes and hair, the works. Almost uncanny valley quality. I saw it sometimes through the windows, standing in a graceful pose, looking down and off to one side in that demure way they used to use a lot. He changed its clothes pretty regularly, and I wondered a little why. Mr Nine-To-Five didn’t look like the type, somehow, to play dolly dress up in his off hours.

The next one was a kid, a girl. One of those apple-cheeked, twinkly cherubs, with golden curls and inset blue eyes that’s just that tiny bit too cute. It started showing up, too, usually in the same room as the woman, like he was setting up little dioramas every morning before work. Mom watching the kid play, or sitting on the couch with it, or whatever. That’s when I started really paying attention. I had no idea what was going on with this guy, but I could appreciate the quality of the performance, if you know what I mean. The scenarios started to get more elaborate, and I looked in at the windows every time I went past.

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