Caewen went at him with her sword, but though she landed two good swipes, the armour the creature wore was too thick or too spellwoven. The blade glanced off and the Boggart batted Caewen aside with one hand. She tripped and fell. The creature would have put a foot of iron-like claws through her throat…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #79
They stood together at the mouth of the ivy-tunnels. The ceiling was looped by vines like thick old grey muscle. A few stabs of light shot into the space, but it was otherwise dark. “Shall we light torches, leastways?” asked Fleat. “No. That would draw boggarts and scarle to us. And the light of a…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #78
It was morning. The twisting little road started to gather carved pillars and gates. Caewen, who was walking first, kept batting at lines of spiderwebs, frowning as she did. “No one’s been along this path recently, and maybe not for a long time. The webs attest to that.” Dapplegrim had been sniffing the ground behind…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #76
Athairdrost had been walking in the Gardens of Night and Fireglow. All around him the luminescence of drifting firefly lights, and the soft glow of ancient twisted fungi lit up the gloom-dark woods. The trees here had vast, thick, reddish leaves to catch the bare few rays of light that reached them. Farther north there…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #75
A heron the colour of sea-foam raised its eyes, and launched into the sky. Its voice, when it spoke to the air and the earth was the mingling of ghost-songs and distant memories of herons that had been alive a thousand years ago. It circled over remnants and ruins: places that had once teemed with…
On Nature and Fantasy
Hi everyone. This is another of my little micro-essays, put out into the wild. Not sure how many more I’ll do. This is really just me pontificating with the hope of stoking some discussion. There is also an audio version, if you’d rather listen to that. ON NATURE AND FANTASY For me personally, nature has…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #74
They talked for a while, bit not about anything in particular. What to cook for dinner from their meagre supplies. Whether the path they were on might traverse the mountains, or whether it might end abruptly, and what to do in either case. As the darkness flowed down over the mountains, and crept across the…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #73
The boy watched for a while. The wind was whistling high and sharp, and it tore the words from Caewen’s lips as she spoke. Although the boy’s hearing had retained most of its sharpness since the poisoning, he still couldn’t make out much of the conversation. But stranger than this, he could make out none…
The Liminal Fantasy
Audio for those who’d rather listen I think most people can agree that there is a usually a dividing line between fiction and non-fiction, and that this line is mostly to do with the perspective of the writer. Does the writer believe what they are writing is real in a tangible and epistemological sense? Yes:…
A Charm for the Nameless Child #72
The path did not go by a straight route at all. It switched back and forth, and dove in and out of buttresses of rock that jutted from the cliffs like outthrust bows of ships, or walls, or the askew bones of giants. The way had clearly been cut and carved to make progress easier,…