#Lake Lewisia
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Almost anything could go feral, if it was canny enough to survive the process of abandonment and capable of hardening a heart that might otherwise be broken by the fall from domestication. Feral furniture, left on curbs and street corners or fallen from moving vehicles along the highway, had been interbreeding in herds for years. In vacant lots or along overgrown shoulders, one might spot something with an assortment of shelves and legs, roll tops or coat hooks on the big stags, passing headlights glinting off mismatched drawer pulls that regarded humans with the angry suspicion of the once-loved.
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Russian Wilderness
Klamath National Forest, California
My second day backpacking the Russian Wilderness started as a short plan, but couldn't stay that way. I added on a cross country hike to a little peak to see a hidden lake before starting. I added on a cross country hike to the biggest peak in the Wilderness after the hike.
#hiking#nature#landscape#travel#hike#outside#California#mountains#peak bagging#Russian Wilderness#Russian Peak#Klamath National Forest#KlamathNF#newt#Siskiyou County#hike California#lake#wildflowers#Lewisia#backpacking
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Her immunity to magic became clear after a fateful encounter with a basilisk as a toddler that left her entirely undamaged and clutching a rather put-out mythic serpent unaccustomed to small hands petting its cockscomb. It was not generalized invulnerability, as attested to by the number of scars and scabs that marked her knees and palms as she grew up, but instead a kind of benign blindspot on the part of the universe. The rescued kelpies, and black shucks, and mothmen cluttered up the backyard and the bedroom with their habitats, and soft beds, and enrichment toys while she nursed them back from broken wings and extracted fangs.
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Did you forget to put your garden to bed for winter, safe under layers of mulch or wrapped up in protective burlap? Your garden may now be overly tired and cranky, like anyone kept up too late, and may be throwing tantrums (and windfall apples or other harvest leftovers). It can be difficult to get gardens to settle down to rest at this point, no matter how exhausted they are, and you may need to reach out for professional help that can provide thick layers of straw and soothing lullabies to coax them into their winter sleep.
#fiction#microfiction#magical realism#winter#gardening#Lake Lewisia#demifiction#community events calendar
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Is there a lie that you are tired of telling, sick of crafting and holding up with your own hands, but you don't know how to let it go, now that you've allowed other things to grow up around it? The abandoned well at the end of Foxglove Lane is always hungry and it specializes in eating falsehoods, lies, and fibs that are spoken one final time into its column of dark and damp. Please, only outright lies: half-truths and artful misdirection are the equivalents of diet food for the abandoned well, and no one wants to subsist on that.
#fiction#microfiction#magical realism#lies#secrets#architecture#Lake Lewisia#community events calendar#demifiction
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The Temples of Winding and Unwinding were not rival sects, given to territorial wars or political clashes through their histories, but partners in an endless dance. They typically operated out of the same community buildings, trading off days for services and responsibilities, their calendars a ballet of scheduling. Even their adherents tended to shift allegiance over time, called in some life stages to the dismantling of things into useful parts and in others to the piecing together of parts into cohesive wholes.
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"If I cut them from the list," Leslie asked around a mouthful of delicate butter pastry and curd, "how long should I wait before offering them a job at the bakery?" The other judges laughed quietly, similarly occupied with considering the next applicant's offering. "I mean, I don't want to be tacky, but patisserie doesn't wait for social conventions."
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Today, remember to honor the invisible work and those who do it, who so often go without the compensation of wages or praise. Someone makes sure you have a lunch to take to school or work, clean clothes to wear, and regularly renewed protective charms on your bedroom window, if you're not doing it yourself. It may be a parent, a spouse, a benevolent haunting, a house brownie, or an intermittently corporeal intrusion of your parallel universe self, and whoever it is deserves your recognition and support.
#fiction#microfiction#magical realism#work#gratitude#Lake Lewisia#community events calendar#demifiction
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“What do you MEAN I’m mortal,” he wailed, attempting to thrash like a child throwing a tantrum, only to be stymied by the other boy’s grip around his bleeding arm. For all the kindness shown by quickly staunching his bleeding with a handkerchief, the boy’s tone was decidedly less tender when he asked, “Is this your first visit to the planet, or what?” The minor god, who had cut his arm while falling from his home dimension and was only beginning the grasp the true extent of his banishment, sniffed and whined, “Yes.”
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The herder held their crook up in thanks to the driver who had patiently waited for them and their flock to make it through the intersection. The trouble with both herd animals and wandering spirits was that they tended to cling to their habits harder than most, and little things like the passage of time or traffic did not interest them in the slightest. Herding ghost sheep, however worthwhile the promise of their delicate and fluffy ephemeral fleeces was, tended to thus be an exercise in both repetition and situational awareness for any shepherd trying to keep them.
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“In my day,” his father complained, “you had to be willing to commit to slicing your palm with a ritual dagger for this sort of thing.” The teen nodded absently, concentration on the little sterile lancet he pressed to his finger just long enough to make a fat bead of blood well up. His father might not have considered him grown enough for blood pacts, but the teen thought that it took another kind of maturity to move on from pointless pain and valorized suffering to prove oneself.
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In our efforts to set all our clocks forward an hour for Daylight Savings Time, we seem to have overshot the mark by a decade or two. While we work on returning all impacted people and regions to the correct time period, we encourage you to enjoy the novel foods, music, shows, and fashion of this future. Though the temptation will be strong to seek out your future self for, shall we say, financial insights, remember that time streams are easily disrupted and unpredictable, so you may find it more fulfilling to collect experiences than lottery numbers while here.
#fiction#microfiction#magical realism#time#exploration#Lake Lewisia#demifiction#community events calendar
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Both proud members of the Society for Retired Knights and Swordspeople, both ancient beyond reckoning, both gleefully nosy, the two old rivals set aside their differences to defeat a great foe: weed clearing. The community garden had suffered a serious invasion of shackleweed, which had spent the summer choking the rest of the plants, and so they traded in swords and lances for hoes and pruning shears. The worst carnage was done to old joints and stiff muscles, though, as the two stubbornly refused to be the first to weary and call for a break, until several grandchildren and pets had to be deployed as distractions.
#fiction#microfiction#magical realism#gardening#rivalry#Lake Lewisia#Society for Retired Knights and Swordspeople
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It was a rare occurrence, as most summoning rituals were elaborate and exacting, hardly the sort of thing to be accomplished by anything short of heroic will. But there were a few entities (either very young and unsophisticated, or very old and simple in the same way the fundamental laws of the universe were simple) who answered to little more than their names. So now and then, when a baby’s babbling coalesced into a first word, the word they landed on was a name, and soon more than just their parents would be cooing over them with pride.
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The advent of Spring brings with it the arrival of a variety of songbirds to enliven the mornings. Thrillingly, local ornithologists insist these new arrivals are very new: they appear to have followed us home through the time anomaly earlier, hailing from points much more distant than we visited ourselves. Even more pleasingly, at least two species identified are also very old, previously (our previously, that is) classified as extinct, suggesting we can look forward to either rediscovery or resurrection events someday.
#fiction#microfiction#magical realism#birds#spring#time#Lake Lewisia#demifiction#community events calendar
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Before the haze of smoke had cleared from the circle, there was a voice saying, “Oh, oh gosh, I’m sorry, I’ve never done this before.” Though enclosed within numerous protective wards and bound to obey the will of its summoner, the demon looked more inclined to stand awkwardly in a corner at parties than orchestrate occult orgies or bend reality to create kings out of peasants. “I’m really more of a ‘last demon in the back row of the ravening horde’ type, you know?”
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