spinning yarns from heartstrings
Death played spectator to her sport, and she always felt him watching her, but they both knew the thrills she sought were far better temptations than the needle she used to sink into her arm. If Death was going to catch her, she wanted to embrace him like a lover and go down knowing she’d […]
The people gathered around her body, awed and heartbroken, dumbfounded and silent. She’d been their protector and guardian since well before a good many of them were even born. They knew not who felled her, for none was brave enough to confess to committing a crime so dark and heinous the punishment would be far […]
And so she took back Excalibur, descending into the lake once more. She would sleep within the lake, guarding the greatsword until the next worthy king came to claim it, though she knew as she closed her eyes it would be hundreds of lifetimes before she woke again.
“Don’t give up,” Sissy said. She held out her offering to the old forest god, a part of her trembling inside, both in fear and anticipation. Every day, she’d come to encourage the god, to remind him that there were still people who not only believed, but needed for him to be real. He […]
Every day the people in the village brought offerings to the small shrine in hopes of appeasing the god they believed took up residence there. Good favor would mean larger crop yields come harvest, they said. It would mean fewer deaths during the long winters. But Henrietta knew in her soul there was no god at […]
It was the one time each year she could move freely among the children, giving in to her own child-like nature without fear or consequence. No one looked on her in dread because on that night there were far scarier things than Death: monsters and fiends and devils and ghouls. And they were hungry, so […]
He was tired of holding onto it, clutching it in his hand, fingers gripping so tight the bright white edges of it seeped out through the cracks between his knuckles. It wriggled softly against his palm, tickling his skin almost affectionately. At his back, the sounds of an argument that existed long before he was […]
The seven watched the child approach the ancient stone of a great-grandmother she’d only ever heard stories of. Spectral hands bound before them, they knew not what to expect, but they remembered Esmerelda’s promise. One day, her issue would arrive to set them free and the debt between them would be paid. They’d waited […]
It was the only way to sever the master’s ties. Bit by bit, he’d carve himself to pieces and fling them to the far ends of the riverbank until he no longer had arms to saw with.
From the depths of a Hell he’d been destined to rule since birth, Anung Un Rama vowed to write his way out of the role in which he’d been cast.