Your boyfriend is three goblins in a trench coat.
They don’t know you know. Tok wrote you a poem. Gorp remembers your birthday. Fleem holds your hand while you fall asleep.
Your boyfriend is three goblins in a trenchcoat. And it might take all three of them to be up to the task
It once rained for three to six times longer than humans have existed as a species.
Werewolves had a serious renaissance when they realized they could put a zipper on the ol’ wolf skin
She felt the scar where her ring had once been. Devils liked making deals for the power they granted.
She’d been traded in one such deal.
Her divorce had been extremely final. She’d given him the finger and he’d kept it.
But at least now she was free.
The Horned Crown of the Tornado Siren. Its lamenting song warns of the coming storms.
Not a watch.
Not a warning.
Not a threat.
The knight’s blade finally pierced the dragon’s skull, and it crumbled to dust.
No, not dust. Sand.
And there, by the water’s edge. A boy with a bucket, a shovel, and a dangerous look in his eye.
“Hey buddy. Grow a pair! Grow a pair of beautiful wings!
Turn into a bird.”
It takes one to know one
It takes two to find one
It takes three to kill one
Plants grown in vorpalene soil itch with foul intent. Thorny wheat and razor oats grow here.
In this purple country, everything that grows, stalks
The soil here is dark purple in color. A testament to the land’s sordid past, that leaden vorpalite might be so highly concentrated as to turn its mud and dust deeply bruised violet
The kids were excited. They’d seen the camera truck driving past last week, updating the street view of the neighborhood.
She’d pulled up the map. She knew he was leaving. But it was still strange to see this side of him—to see the regret as he pulled away for the last time
King and crown.
King and crown.
Princes are born, age and die. But the king is eternal. All who wear the crown are the king.
Or rather, the crown is the king. It matters little whose head labors under its weight
Picnic Pete looked at his timer. “I’m sorry, but these eggs have a very precise marination and I’ll be devastated if they’re not perfect.”
The porcine sentry shook its trident again, but without conviction
“I’ll share.” Pete smiled enticingly
Trident touched floor. “Ajitama?” It asked, hopefully
Feet thunder past you in the dark, an athleticism that is intense and precise and mindless.
You make a note of the car’s license plate.
Someone has agitated the Runalong
He turned off the alarm on the first beep. It was early, but he felt good. Well rested! He’d gone to bed at a reasonable hour the night before.
It turns out the key to a good night’s sleep was deciding your dreams were fake and replacing time wasted chasing them with a healthy eight hours of sleep
The doors burst open and the mob rushed in. “This castle is full of monsters! Werewolves and vampires and hunchbacks!”
The music screeches to a stop. One of the werewolves pats Igor’s hand protectively.
A vampire snatches the glasses off a villager’s nose. “Look out! It’s a monster with MYOPIA!”
It is suspected by some to be related to the impossible visions reported by sailors, of horrifying sea-muensters, cheesecloth-rigged ships sailing inverted in the sky, mighty Roqueforts clinging to clouds, their cheesebrick-crenelated towers reaching nearly to the horizon: The legendary Feta Morgana
“Victor! I don’t think we can be friends any more.”
Victor lowered the brain, stunned. He didn’t know his Assistant thought they were friends. Or that Igor might even be capable of having a friend.
He realized with shame that he did not really even consider the man to be human.
The Mad Bleu is a sentient cheese of the Cold Forests. An emissary and extension of the penicillin fungal networks that allows the forest to communicate.
You’ll smell it before you see it.
You’ll need to taste it to understand.
“How exciting it is to travel.”
He thought, curling up in his hammock.
“How wonderful it is to be home.”
It was good to be in his own bed.
He stared for a moment, understanding dawning on his face.
“Oh. ”
He turned back to find the door closed behind him. “You know that moment when something you couldn’t understand suddenly clicks into place?”
He tried the knob. “Well I finally figured it out.”
Urgently.
“Why I should be scared.”
Lava chicken
Lava chicken: it’s spicy
A polyglottal strix has been stalking you.
You hear it muttering to itself, alternating languages as it struggles to catch your scent.
The wise man smiled apologetically. “I could not bring the mountain to you, so—“
He was interrupted by a catastrophic boom.
“I could.” Said the golemacher.
“It should be here soon.”
Wasn’t there three?
Shrines are often marked by growths of hiderangeas, huge stands of dark flowers that absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity to run the shrine’s defenses.
If you follow the creek south from Main Street, there’s a dungeon under the Park Lane bridge.
Until 1997 it could be opened with the Song Of Secrets, but local cuckoo birds learned the melody and now it can only be opened with the Magepie Key.
A man, a ghost, and a tiny haunted house
Abner regarded the tiny Thesean House with its pulsing ghost lights.
The children of the forest must never leave its borders. If they do, they’ll die.
Yessir, outside the borders of the forest they barely last seventy or eighty years
The M727 Donor Buzzard hovers over the battlefield, seeking organs to harvest for infusions. Although technically medics, they’re universally hated and attacked for the morbid display of medical cannibalism.
