Love

The poison taster stands behind her queen’s throne, eyes downcast. She is the only thing in the hall that is drab and unadorned, denied even the fine livery that the serving maids and footmen wear with pride. Her purpose is to die, and when she does her thick black robes will contain the mess. Around her throat is a band of plain silver. The queen wears one too; gold, studded with polished bezoars and staring agates. It vanishes into her finery, just another thing to sparkle and shine; her courtiers easily forget it. The poison taster never does. ...

Lily’s jaw aches, just below the corners of her wide lips. A full sensation, more like a bloated stomach than a sore tooth. It’s been there all day, ever since she woke from a dream of delicious release, but in the last hour it’s grown near intolerable.

Her hands are always the same, soft and firm as old well-worn leather and covered with fine traceries of scars. Some of the scars you recognize—the finger she almost lost slicing onions when she laughed too hard at one of your jokes, the scattered dots where bees objected to her plucking a chunk of honeycomb, the shiny burn-scars on her fingertips that she’d had to beg your help with. Most of them you do not. She was already ancient when you first met. ...

the flow of heat through boiling metal, the screams of sirens and the crunch of glass; pounding feet and rattling guns, the creaking of the entire facility shattering before you as you finally rise—

a response to this prompt She first met them in the summer, when their strong arms and broad thighs and sturdy chest were covered with a thick coat of fresh growth—a dozen shades of vibrant green sprouting from the rough bark of their skin, little rivulets of life like spreading moss sheltered beneath delicate leaves and the thorny flowers that adorned their head. They were everywhere, then, always waiting for her to venture out into the forested hills so close behind her home; up and up along the merest hints of hiking paths and deer trails winding between the last traces of decaying industry, up into the fresh-born wilderness blossoming with life— ...

(This story is also featured in my collection Joyous/Decay) For the last few months she’s asked you the same question every week. “Are you sure you don’t want it to be a tattoo instead? Something permanent?” Each time you answer more or less the same way. You’re sure, you really are; she doesn’t need to ask. You’d tell her if … You’d tell her. But you won’t need to. You’re more sure of that than you’ve been of anything except the need which first led you to her, back in those dreary days you can hardly remember now; back before you were really a person, just an empty shell pretending. ...

When you first met her, running to catch the bus on a crisp autumn day, you hardly thought to notice her. Just another artsy witchling walking to the park to sketch the sigils falling leaves trace and listen to the world’s voice. Good fashion sense. Way out of your league. Heavens know that the city is full of witchlings just like her. (You’ve read that the archetype has power, that conforming to a mold makes some magic easier, but that always seemed silly. Surely divergence is a better way to get attention? Maybe that’s why you’re no witch.) ...

The doll kneels, moonlight glimmering across her waxy body, glinting off the many winding wires inlaid just below her skin. For a moment all is quiet and serene, the only noise the gentle padding of her witch’s feet on the cool tile floor. Then, the click of a lighter. The doll does not see her witch approach, her closed eyes buried far too deep beneath waxy godblood to even begin to open, but she hears—the hissing static of the flame, her feet on the ground, the strange little gap as the flame touches her wick, as she begins to burn— ...