Fungal Halo

It isn’t your friend who joins you and the others at the diner, but for some reason everyone else in your group treats it exactly the same as if it were her.

Do they notice? Or are they all going along with it the same as you because everyone else is doing so?

Her coming scorches the earth, yes, but it also scorches the sea, the air around her, and even the thin screen onto which reality itself is projected.

That scorch looks like a great smoldering sheet hanging upright on nothing, tracing precisely her path through the world.

The flesh begs for the shaper’s hand.

Isn’t that right? Even when you thought you were a person, you saw something in me you couldn’t bring yourself to look away from.

You didn’t know what it was, but you knew even then—I had what you needed.

The Dark Lady of Nightmares glided silently through the night’s cool air, her body magically transformed into her giant bat form perfectly suited for stealth. As she approached the City of Light, she swept her eyes over it, scanning for the tower where the princess slept.

One step at a time, a creature who was once an angel trudges into the woods, following eyes glowing in the dark. Her halo is cracked. Bloody stumps on her back mark where proud wings had been before some act of terrible violence ripped them from her.

What happens to a doll that cannot endure the existence its witch creates for it? For those created with imperfect Stillness, who experience selfhoods that suffer or love or dream, the options are generally to be “fixed” or to flee.

But in a world of witches, where does it flee?

Taking in the damaged ones, the abandoned ones, the stifled and hungry and hurting ones. Sharing with them everything we have to offer. That’s what we do. It’s only right, isn’t it?

After all, once we were in your shoes, and we ache with the memory of such pain and neglect.

She spoke to me, painted lips unmoving, and the next thing I knew, I was driving home from that estate sale with her buckled safely in the passenger seat.

I carried her inside, sat her on the sofa with some nice embroidered pillows, and started tidying the home.

Over the ages they tell my story in hushed whispers decorated with breathless warnings like lovely jewels. They say I am evil. They say I am deadly. They say that to look into my eyes is to be lost. They say I steal fair maidens and teach them sin. They say such sweet things.

The dryad visits just once per cycle of the moon, but you always look forward to its arrival. Sometimes it brings gifts from the forest, sometimes gifts from the other towns it visits, sometimes just the gift of its company, but it is your friend, and you always greet it happily.

The abandoned doll of a long-forgotten witch lays on her back, in exactly the same position as she landed when she was tossed here. She doesn’t know where “here” is. She couldn’t say how long it’s been. But she hasn’t seen or heard anyone in a long, long time.

I sit, silent and pretty, among my sisters. My Mistress is greeting some very rude guests who speak to her in raised voices. I would giggle at their foolishness if my Mistress’s magic weren’t perfect. If I weren’t her perfect, silent doll.