This story was originally posted to Twitter on May 7, 2022. It is the end of a story, written out of order. Today the two of them are nestled up in the boughs of a vast tree, one of the few around to weather the flood unscathed. Beneath them the water swirls and dances, unsure of what it is and unsure of what it wants to be and as hungry as the tide ever is, but up here they’re safe. ...
This story was originally posted to Twitter on April 28, 2022. There’s a mildly embarrassing shelf tucked away in the back of the supermarket, past the jars of pickled spells and the bottles of five-hour-Stillness. It’s part of the store you’ve always been dimly aware of, but why would you ever need to buy some freeze-dried Purpose? Well, today you have a reason. You don’t linger in front of it, just grab the first vacuum-sealed bag that looks right and try not to meet the cashier’s eye as their hands blur through scanning it and all your other groceries. ...
The willows’ leaves hang heavy and low, a cascade of crimson tears soaking up the lake’s polluted water, planted by some long-ago witch to decorate a pathway through her estate; but she is long gone now, and her gardens have dwindled to be nothing more than a park. It is a good park, mind, sometimes called one of the city’s shining jewels (though only by poets and brochures); on most days it’s full of picnickers and joggers, stray students playing games on the lawns and witchlings praying for luck at the tomb hidden on the north bank. ...
The city is full of ruins, though few last long—waves of construction, of revitalization, flow through it like water, like the flexing of some unseen beast. The city’s blood flows in cranes and trucks and trains, in the brutality of gentrification and the decay that follows. Trash dolls and harpies run before the wave, and feral angels slide through the cracks; but witches always find a way to protect their places, all those strangely preserved houses scattered through the hills, those otherworldly relics. Even after their deaths, they remain. ...