A psychic vigilante who can alter peoples brains with a single touch uses his power to deliver the ultimate punishment upon evil psychopaths: empathy.
as long as they stick to the evil ones, i guess that’s okay by me? probably sucks to be them, though, haha.
fuck, what a terrifying power. imagine if they just went around ‘curing’ people at random. “hey, this person on the bus has the aura of a sociopath, i’d better give them empathy so they don’t do murders.” a couple hours later: a surgeon has a sobbing breakdown in the middle of a tumor removal because oh shit this is a human being we’ve got flayed open here and it feels so wrong.
all proud of themself for ‘fixing’ people, the vigilante leaves devastation in their wake. people with adhd keep taking their usual meds, not knowing why they’ve gotten so excitable lately, and end up addicted to amphetamines. autistics find no joy in their special interests anymore, and don’t know what to do with this terrifying onslaught of metadata in every face and voice, nor why their senses seem so dulled; when they describe their new symptoms to a therapist, the conclusion is early stage schizophrenia, but antipsychotics don’t help.
the vigilante doesn’t realize what they’ve been doing until they try to help their next door neighbor, an elderly woman soldiering along despite a number of deteriorating conditions. they notice she’s got depression too, and think, “well, at least i can help with that part.” one touch, and her brain chemical balance is restored. the dull fog of apathy and executive dysfunction is blown away by winds of clarity and self-direction.
clear-headed for the first time in years, she takes stock of her situation, gets in her car, and drives off a bridge.
the vigilante succumbs to self-doubt, their internal monologue full of melodrama about ‘playing god’ and ‘meddling’ and vows to give up heroing. they remove their glove for one final act: they touch their own head, intending to delete their power. but as soon as they reach for their mind, it becomes apparent: the narcissism that allowed them to think they had the right to change minds by force. what if they just took hold of that and… *pop!*
“oh!” the ex-vigilante says, and starts to laugh and cry at the same time. “i should’ve done that first. why didn’t i do that first?”
several years later, now in posession of a freshly minted psychology degree, the former vigilante begins a new life as a counsellor. on the palm of their power hand, to remind them whenever they take the glove off, is a word tattooed in bold type:
The research mission was a disaster. Of course, they had calculated the probability of failure, and their chief statistician had composed a painstaking report theorizing what problems might arise. A planet such as this, teeming with a variety of sentient life that mostly coexisted peacefully (a conclusion formed after a longer observation period than normal, considering the difficulty the crew had in ascertaining the dominant species – eventually, the species with the greatest number of permanent structures won on a randomized gamble), needed the utmost care in their approach.
But no, no no- this managed to exceed the expectations of even their ship’s computer. At first, they had chosen a hardy zone appropriate for their own survival: bountiful access to the main water source, enough radiation of the correct spectrum to ensure sufficient regeneration should one of them become injured, and cool winds. The last had been the suggestion of Raijla, and after a brief scan of the lower-level atmosphere, considered innocent enough that the little luxury was permitted.
It had proven the main obstacle in their mission. While the conditions remained favourable for a few days – and how long they were on this planet! – it deteriorated after that. The cool winds were a precursor to something stronger, the skies darkening with a burgeoning, far off screech that intercepted communication. Unable to hear their teammates’ increasingly distressed clicking, all of them resorted to using their personal recording devices to devise a back-up strategy.
Being forced to relay messages to each other via the ship’s system was tedious and frustrating, but the geographical mapping system managed to find an alternate shelter. There, they were forced to finally meet the dominant species of the planet, following the nearest group’s path to a semi-sheltered cave. Uncertain of their hosts’ reactions, they kept to themselves; it didn’t last very long, and with trepidation they established their first tenuous line of contact with the alien species.
I would like to share this beautiful passage with all of you, it’s long, but worth it. And I swear to god I didn’t alter any of this.
….
Her long hair, still wet from the shower, had been combed down her back in a wet swath. Hilda was sitting on the floor, her round, wet boobs still wet from the shower’s water. She dried off the water with a towel, which then became wet.
Hilda gasped when she saw a reflection in her bedroom mirror: through the slightly open door, she caught a glimpse of the chiseled abs and square jaw of the mysterious stranger who shared her cabin. She stood and spun around, her breasts swinging heavily with the momentum. She grabbed the door and flung it open, revealing shirtless Torolf (which is seriously his name) quivering with desire in the hallway.
Torolf was ashamed at being caught, but his shame made him even hotter – hotter for sex. He stepped into the room, and his bulging abs accidentally smushed into Hilda’s rich chest.
As Hilda’s buttermilk bosoms squished up against his granite abs, Torolf almost had a dick aneurysm. “Hilda,” Torolf murmured thickly, his throbbing meat wand pressing against Hilda’s warm thighs. “There is a secret I need to not tell you: You are my forbidden desire.”
Hilda had been waiting to hear these words. Her heart was lifted on golden wings and soared toward a radiant sun of perfect joy. She saw herself and Torolf happy together, bathed in the golden light of love. Her snooch got all warm, too.
“Torolf,” Hilda moaned, her lush teats straining with desire. “I need you.” Torolf, coarse abs pulsing softly in the moonlight, stood silently. Hilda looked at him expectantly. “Oh, sorry,” she added. “Torolf, I need you – sexually.”
At hearing those beautiful words, Torolf flexed his rough-hewn abs and Hilda found herself being guided to her soft bed by the sheer force of Torolf’s undulating midsection. She parted her thighs in anticipation, exposing the soft pink petals of her clunge.
Torolf entered her like she was a lottery. His engorged pecker pushed inside her and she felt fulfilled with sexual fulfillment.
Hilda clutched at the bedsheets with lust and ecstasy and her hands. Her spongy love mountains hurled to and fro with each pounding. Her body was like a beautiful flower that was opening and somebody was pushing their dick inside it.
Then Torolf moaned, arched his back, and suffered from dick Parkinson’s. He pumped in all of his hot pearlescent sperms as Hilda spasmed with so many orgasms!
The two lay still for a moment as the stinky scent of lovemaking billowed around the room. Hilda got out of bed, still shimmering with orgasm. She glowed with contentment, like a cat who ate the cream of the crop.
She walked across the room and picked up her towel, still wet with shower water. “Torolf,” she said softly, “there’s something I have to tell you…”
But her bed was empty.
Torolf was gone, escaped out the bedroom window. In the distance, Hilda heard the fading sound of galloping abs.
….
DICK
ANEURYSM
GALLOPING ABS
Who told this lady she could write?
Why did she ever stop?
IT GETS WORSE THE FURTHER IN THE PASSAGE YOU GO OMG
i fukcing lost it at meat wand
How could I NOT share this
IS THIS REAL LIFE
If you need some self-confidence in your writing abilities, read this!
Each and every fanfic I have ever read, including even those written by me, are so, so much better than this hahaha
“HER SNOOCH” “HER CLUNGE”
sandra hill absolutely knew what she was doing, and what she was doing was getting paid by the word while her editor was out sick.
argue about ‘my immortal’ all you want, but never doubt sandra hill wrote this crack migraine on absolute purpose
she may well have been drunk on night train, flipping double birds at the sky in between typing fits, or she may not, but i guarantee there was cackling
I don’t mean to be unkind, but I don’t get how you can claim to “love books” and have a shelf full of Harry Potter and Jodi Picault. Have we created a nation of people who honestly believe that “reading” is one of their hobbies because they own a copy of The DaVinci Code? Where did we go wrong?
Your homework: Burn your books. All of them. If you think they’re good books, then burn everything else you have that you think is good. Don’t give them away, or donate them – that’s just moving the problem on to some other poor bastard.
Now populate your shelves with: William Faulkner; Vladimir Nabokov; Ernest Hemingway; Hunter S. Thompson; Kurt Vonnegut; Nikolai Gogol; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Frank Kafka; and that’s just for starters.
Come back to me for further recommendations when the fog has lifted from your brain.
I’d forgotten about this lovely reply to one of my photos from 7 years ago. Oh, literary snobbery, you haven’t changed much.
I’d forgotten about it too. I hope you’ve developed a love of literature in the last 7 years, or at least burned your copy of The DaVinci Code.
And what have we learned?
Never confuse “snobbery” or “elitism” for having standards. (If you don’t have any standards for yourself, then why should anyone else?)
Never confuse “popular” with “good”. (If every book on your bookshelf appeared on a best-seller list, how do you tell the difference?)
Learn to accept criticism, especially from people who have no investment in whether you take their advice or not. (If you find it difficult to accept criticism, you’re missing out on many opportunities to improve. Here are my book reviews. I might have got it all wrong. Please feel free to reblog any of them with any criticism you may have – let’s get a conversation going! I’ve also started a blog of simplified classics called Pretend You’ve Read. Please feel free to criticise anything you feel I got wrong there, too. Why not? Hone your reader’s instincts.)
Keep pushing forward. (Otherwise, what are you doing with your life?)
Always try to be a better version of yourself. (ditto)
Put your energy into creating things, making things and helping people, not into destroying things, taking things apart or trashing people. (I made that post with the sole intention of improving your life. I wasn’t try to upset you or make you feel bad or come across as “snobbery”. I was trying to help you understand what literature is, what it can do, and how you can cut yourself off a slice of that crazy action.)
A great way to learn to be a better version of yourself is to read literature. (I assume you understand this better than you did seven years ago. At least, I hope so!)
All from that one little post I reblogged from you 7 years ago.
Let’s be friends!
Well actually, my career in publishing and the book industry – which I hadn’t yet begun when I posted this – is down to my passion for all books, whether they’re deemed to be “literature” or not. The book industry is not sustained by holding onto the novels of dead white men, but by recognising that there are gems in all genres, and valuing all readers.
I personally love children’s books and YA. But I also ran a successful Classic Challenge for five years. (Don’t think that was anything to do with you, dear reader).
I have not moved on from Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events (maybe Dan Brown, but hey, it was seven years ago) and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami
William Faulkner; Vladimir Nabokov; Ernest Hemingway; Hunter S.
Thompson; Kurt Vonnegut; Nikolai Gogol; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Frank Kafka.
Wow. White guys. So many white guys. They are the one true coming of all literature.
Wow. This guy. Telling OP that all her interests are trash and that she should burn them so she could learn about real literature. Then, seven years later, telling her he was doing it to improve her life.
This whole set of interactions is so new and different. It’s almost like it hasn’t happened a billion times in the last day. Wow.
Good grief. What a tool.
Don’t you know all good arguments start with “burn that book”?
Frank Kafka.
Frank.
The day someone tells me to burn books of any kind is the day I know that they are a moron who believes in censorship of individual taste and of FUN. The day that person only recommends books that are on any school syllabus and doesn’t branch out beyond them underscores the point with fifteen exclamation marks.
Probably my favorite is the fact that OP had 2 obvious Richard Dawkins books (The Selfish Gene and The Greatest Show on Earth) indicating a wide and well-nourished range of interests – from evolutionary biology to young adult fantasy to women’s fiction. (and how satisfying and beautiful is her bookshelf!!) I mean, the cure for a balanced literary diet is not “apply a small wodge of tedious historical men’s fiction following the same themes.”
Meanwhile, her self-appointed critic literally just has a list of dead white American/Russian men who wrote Gritty Literary Fiction About Sad Stuff during a narrow period of history. THEY’RE NOT EVEN THE PRETENTIOUS CLASSICS! THEY’RE NOT EVEN THE OBSCURE FARE!
I am actually a lot more accepting about people being snotty about Classics ™ because I accept that they’ve gone so deep that they probably don’t realize how much they need to decompress – they have lost their adaptations to surface life and normal human interaction, like those deepwater fish that you have to bring up slowly in your net, or they’ll burst. But imagine bringing yourself to be snobby about angsty men’s fiction written between 1800 and 2000.
(Also, Frank Kafka. We shouldn’t laugh)
the day i let go of the Dead White Men School of Worthwhile Fiction was the day i began to truly live as a writer.
i’ve read all of those things Judgy McCriticpants thinks are the only real books. some were brilliant, some were okay, some were disappointing. i’ve also read most of the things on OP’s shelf. same spread of quality. funny thing – being the beloved darling of the establishment doesn’t make you a better or worse writer than the ones who get relegated to the ‘girl stuff’ and ‘kid stuff’ pile. it just makes you more famous.
even that’s not really true anymore. the wheels of academia grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine, and as the literary establishment gradually wakes up to its own shameful obsession with bygone fuckboys, it embraces a wider array of authors and genres every year.
i read all the classics, but i wrote pulp, and i was disappointed in myself. why couldn’t i aspire to The Great American Novel? no one would ever respect me if i kept writing slam-bang action, especially with queers in it! but there came a time when i took a step back and thought, no, you know what, the one i need respect from is myself. i write what i enjoy, and it’s okay to pour all my skill and inspiration into that, because it’s what i goddamn well want to do.
it started as an act of defiance. before long i realized it was actually just common sense. the illusion of Real Literature is only that – an illusion. hype that believes itself.
oh, and for the record, and keeping in mind that i have in fact read every damn one of the books you’re Supposed To Read: the best writing i have ever seen is in fanfiction.
i’m not exaggerating.
on an almost daily basis, i find fanfiction that shames hemingway with its powerful simplicity, or joyce with its experimental creativity, or kerouac with its joyful freedom, or tolkein with its intricate worldbuilding, or – really, name anyone and i could rec you a fanfic that does their thing better. and you know what? most of these writers are women or queer men. the literary world still sees them (us) as alien, but they (we) are no less skilled for all that.
tl;dr: farenheit 451 here can take his snooty nose and shove it up his clenched ass. he doesn’t have the faintest damn clue what he’s talking about.
I have read Fancy Literature, and yes, some of it is fucking amazing. Also some of it is… not really.
There are a whole lot of literary “greats” who were not any better at telling you about the human condition than Terry Pratchett. And yeah, I will absolutely state that Nabokov is a fucking brilliant writer. But you know what? So’s Ursula K. LeGuin. I think her best Russian Novel is in the same class as the best Russian novels by, say, actual Russian novelists. And honestly, some of the “great” writers are mediocre writers who happened to catch a particular thing of interest or importance.
I also want to point out a thing: You can’t understand anything literary in isolation. You really can’t. If you want to understand a thing, you must have experience with other things as well. If reading Harry Potter doesn’t improve your understanding of, and appreciation of, great literature? You don’t understand the great literature yet. And vise versa. If you don’t understand Harry Potter better after reading Nabokov, you don’t really understand Harry Potter or Nabokov.
I don’t mean to be unkind, but I don’t get how you can claim to “love books” and have a shelf full of Harry Potter and Jodi Picault. Have we created a nation of people who honestly believe that “reading” is one of their hobbies because they own a copy of The DaVinci Code? Where did we go wrong?
Your homework: Burn your books. All of them. If you think they’re good books, then burn everything else you have that you think is good. Don’t give them away, or donate them – that’s just moving the problem on to some other poor bastard.
Now populate your shelves with: William Faulkner; Vladimir Nabokov; Ernest Hemingway; Hunter S. Thompson; Kurt Vonnegut; Nikolai Gogol; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Frank Kafka; and that’s just for starters.
Come back to me for further recommendations when the fog has lifted from your brain.
I’d forgotten about this lovely reply to one of my photos from 7 years ago. Oh, literary snobbery, you haven’t changed much.
I’d forgotten about it too. I hope you’ve developed a love of literature in the last 7 years, or at least burned your copy of The DaVinci Code.
And what have we learned?
Never confuse “snobbery” or “elitism” for having standards. (If you don’t have any standards for yourself, then why should anyone else?)
Never confuse “popular” with “good”. (If every book on your bookshelf appeared on a best-seller list, how do you tell the difference?)
Learn to accept criticism, especially from people who have no investment in whether you take their advice or not. (If you find it difficult to accept criticism, you’re missing out on many opportunities to improve. Here are my book reviews. I might have got it all wrong. Please feel free to reblog any of them with any criticism you may have – let’s get a conversation going! I’ve also started a blog of simplified classics called Pretend You’ve Read. Please feel free to criticise anything you feel I got wrong there, too. Why not? Hone your reader’s instincts.)
Keep pushing forward. (Otherwise, what are you doing with your life?)
Always try to be a better version of yourself. (ditto)
Put your energy into creating things, making things and helping people, not into destroying things, taking things apart or trashing people. (I made that post with the sole intention of improving your life. I wasn’t try to upset you or make you feel bad or come across as “snobbery”. I was trying to help you understand what literature is, what it can do, and how you can cut yourself off a slice of that crazy action.)
A great way to learn to be a better version of yourself is to read literature. (I assume you understand this better than you did seven years ago. At least, I hope so!)
All from that one little post I reblogged from you 7 years ago.
Let’s be friends!
Well actually, my career in publishing and the book industry – which I hadn’t yet begun when I posted this – is down to my passion for all books, whether they’re deemed to be “literature” or not. The book industry is not sustained by holding onto the novels of dead white men, but by recognising that there are gems in all genres, and valuing all readers.
I personally love children’s books and YA. But I also ran a successful Classic Challenge for five years. (Don’t think that was anything to do with you, dear reader).
I have not moved on from Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events (maybe Dan Brown, but hey, it was seven years ago) and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami
William Faulkner; Vladimir Nabokov; Ernest Hemingway; Hunter S.
Thompson; Kurt Vonnegut; Nikolai Gogol; Fyodor Dostoevsky; Frank Kafka.
Wow. White guys. So many white guys. They are the one true coming of all literature.
Wow. This guy. Telling OP that all her interests are trash and that she should burn them so she could learn about real literature. Then, seven years later, telling her he was doing it to improve her life.
This whole set of interactions is so new and different. It’s almost like it hasn’t happened a billion times in the last day. Wow.
Good grief. What a tool.
Don’t you know all good arguments start with “burn that book”?
Frank Kafka.
Frank.
The day someone tells me to burn books of any kind is the day I know that they are a moron who believes in censorship of individual taste and of FUN. The day that person only recommends books that are on any school syllabus and doesn’t branch out beyond them underscores the point with fifteen exclamation marks.
Probably my favorite is the fact that OP had 2 obvious Richard Dawkins books (The Selfish Gene and The Greatest Show on Earth) indicating a wide and well-nourished range of interests – from evolutionary biology to young adult fantasy to women’s fiction. (and how satisfying and beautiful is her bookshelf!!) I mean, the cure for a balanced literary diet is not “apply a small wodge of tedious historical men’s fiction following the same themes.”
Meanwhile, her self-appointed critic literally just has a list of dead white American/Russian men who wrote Gritty Literary Fiction About Sad Stuff during a narrow period of history. THEY’RE NOT EVEN THE PRETENTIOUS CLASSICS! THEY’RE NOT EVEN THE OBSCURE FARE!
I am actually a lot more accepting about people being snotty about Classics ™ because I accept that they’ve gone so deep that they probably don’t realize how much they need to decompress – they have lost their adaptations to surface life and normal human interaction, like those deepwater fish that you have to bring up slowly in your net, or they’ll burst. But imagine bringing yourself to be snobby about angsty men’s fiction written between 1800 and 2000.
(Also, Frank Kafka. We shouldn’t laugh)
the day i let go of the Dead White Men School of Worthwhile Fiction was the day i began to truly live as a writer.
i’ve read all of those things Judgy McCriticpants thinks are the only real books. some were brilliant, some were okay, some were disappointing. i’ve also read most of the things on OP’s shelf. same spread of quality. funny thing – being the beloved darling of the establishment doesn’t make you a better or worse writer than the ones who get relegated to the ‘girl stuff’ and ‘kid stuff’ pile. it just makes you more famous.
even that’s not really true anymore. the wheels of academia grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine, and as the literary establishment gradually wakes up to its own shameful obsession with bygone fuckboys, it embraces a wider array of authors and genres every year.
i read all the classics, but i wrote pulp, and i was disappointed in myself. why couldn’t i aspire to The Great American Novel? no one would ever respect me if i kept writing slam-bang action, especially with queers in it! but there came a time when i took a step back and thought, no, you know what, the one i need respect from is myself. i write what i enjoy, and it’s okay to pour all my skill and inspiration into that, because it’s what i goddamn well want to do.
it started as an act of defiance. before long i realized it was actually just common sense. the illusion of Real Literature is only that – an illusion. hype that believes itself.
oh, and for the record, and keeping in mind that i have in fact read every damn one of the books you’re Supposed To Read: the best writing i have ever seen is in fanfiction.
i’m not exaggerating.
on an almost daily basis, i find fanfiction that shames hemingway with its powerful simplicity, or joyce with its experimental creativity, or kerouac with its joyful freedom, or tolkein with its intricate worldbuilding, or – really, name anyone and i could rec you a fanfic that does their thing better. and you know what? most of these writers are women or queer men. the literary world still sees them (us) as alien, but they (we) are no less skilled for all that.
tl;dr: farenheit 451 here can take his snooty nose and shove it up his clenched ass. he doesn’t have the faintest damn clue what he’s talking about.
I wish I’d appreciated more when I was younger and involved in the fanfic world how something can be “bad writing” in the sense that it doesn’t work as a piece of literature, but good in what it’s doing for the writer.
Especially (but not only) for very young writers, fiction can be a badly needed escape or a way to work through their own problems in metaphor. A girl who feels invisible and unloved in the real world can write a version of herself that’s a half-unicorn half-faerie princess with every magic power simultaneously, and whether it’s narratively strong or not, it means something to her that she can be that princess in her story. A person who has no other outlet for their sexuality can write awful “lol, what even is anatomy” porn as part of the process of feeling out what they want and who they are. A boy who’s afraid to express softness and vulnerability in the real world can write unbearably melodramatic and glurgey hurt/comfort fic, and find in it the tenderness that’s inside him.
And 99% of these stories will be awful and unreadable and embarrassing, just as 99% of therapy session transcripts wouldn’t make good one-act plays. But that’s okay. They serve a purpose beyond conventional literature, and while you may not necessarily want to read them, you should still respect that purpose.
I believe this is the final ‘because fuck this’ fill! I’d like to thank everyone again for their generosity and their patience as I slowly worked through these. I did my best to keep the prompts very organized, but it’s absolutely possible a prompt fell through the cracks, especially in the case of people who had multiple prompts, so if you have an outstanding prompt please let me know!
This is for the prompt: Georgie POV of the 12 hours before and 12 hours after Robbie catches him cheating.
This ended up being the twelve minutes before and twelve seconds after, because that alone ended up being over 500 words. Reconstructing that 24 hours would be extremely, extremely long, were I to do it justice, so I tried to do justice to a smaller stretch of time.
date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.
The first time she lets the redhead take her home, she’s diligent about hiding her cloak. She folds it carefully against tears and rips and abrasions, and hides it in a sea cave whose entrance is concealed by the tide.
She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.
“Mind me, Niahm. Never let them find your cloak.”
The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.
So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.
Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.
The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.
She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.
When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.
She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.
And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.
The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.
“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.
“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.
She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”
A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.
Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”
She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”
The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”
It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.
The ninth time, she hangs her cloak by the door, draped in careful dappled folds next to a drying oilskin jacket.
Selkies aren’t like most of the Gentry. They belong to the sea and earth, echoing a discordant blend of beastial instinct and humanity, a strange mix that humans have difficulty understanding and makes them very uncomfortable. More importantly, selkies have an extreme vulnerability, like a target painted on their backs, and while that target is well protected and small and very hard to hit, if a human manages to land a bullseye some poor selkie will be dragged off, forever a captive separated from home. No matter how hard they try to hide their pelts, they are still animal enough to be easily distracted and forgetful, and all it takes is one mistake. The only thing that can save them after that is the intervention of another human. So unlike other fair folk, they appreciate kind, helpful humans a great deal.
Although it was rare, more boys at Elsewhere have managed to steal a selkie girl’s pelt than you would think. For all that selkies were wild and disconcerting, some humans are sadistic and possessive enough to capture one for her extreme beauty alone.
There are also humans who find this practice disgusting and horrifying to the degree that they refuse to allow it to continue.
There is a very quiet, secretive club on campus called the WSP. Outsiders don’t know what they do. They don’t hold many meetings, communicating and organising almost exclusively through a group text. There are many members, all kinds of different people. They wait, and watch, and act with quick and quiet efficiency. The full name of their organisation is Women for Selkie Protection.
When they return a pelt to a captive girl and walk her back to wherever she wants to go, their eyes do not fill with pity, but with barely contained rage. They do not do anything to the boys responsible. They do not need to. A few days after one returns a girl’s freedom, she might pass a beautiful girl with dark, knowing eyes and too sharp teeth, their eyes meeting, mouths twisting twist into gleeful, ferocious grins. She might quietly whisper “Sister,” as she passes. The beautiful girl might whisper it back.
just moving along like everyone else 