follyglass

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Shadows

“Here,” the bookseller said while flipping to a page, “is the shadow of the first butterfly that flew through the glass castle.” After the customer’s eyebrows raised, the bookseller opened to a green bookmark. A series of minute dark shapes danced across the page, “And this shadow record is from the breath of a Tinley sparrow while it sang. See? You can follow the little notes, the trills,” the bookseller smiled, “more precious than a page by Vivaldi himself.”

The customer eyed all of the little bookmarks woven through the pages, little gems hanging from ribbons of different colors. His expression began to visibly sour when he noticed that the binding was powder blue and embossed with a pattern of kittens. And was that strawberry cupcakes he smelled? Was it coming from the book? While the bookseller flourished her hands over shadow pages of languid tea curls and the long-lost Queen’s Jewel itself, it occurred to the customer that this might all be a joke. He had traveled days for this book. Rearranged the meeting of the Thornblood Society. The bookseller slowly thumbed open a page marked with a lavender ribbon, but before she could begin to explain the shadow marks – this one was really truly interesting – she heard the shop door bells tinkle the customer’s goodbye.

“Gone so soon?” chuckled the bookseller in what silence remained. She carefully straightened the bookmarks and gathered Phoebe Hobbs’ Book of Shadows in her arm. On the way back to the rare books room, her apprentice called after, “I thought you finally had someone that really wanted it?”

It was a common thing, the inquiring, the wanting. Every few years, someone heard about the book and contacted the bookseller. Each time The Bodleian had hired a new rare books curator, they visited. As did the Redwood Athenaeum, and many collectors of rare and exquisite tomes. But still, the Book of Shadows remained. The bookseller shrugged, “If they can’t handle the whimsy of eight-year-old Phoebe Hobbs, they don’t deserve her more powerful spells from when she was seven.”

#cozy fantasy #original writing #follyglass #witchcraft #quick read

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Warning

At first, it was sighted cresting the hill of Kinnon’s farm. It took three days before the RubyGlass lighthouse drifted into the village, advancing slow as fog on currents undetermined. During the day, it was green and opaque and still as stone. At night, it shown red as an alarm, but nobody cared to determine what that danger might be. It was odd, and that was enough warning to keep a distance.

But where some see warning, Jacob saw invitation. As a glassmaker, he knew that red glass often contained gold, and so while the village was locked safely behind doors, he ventured to climb the dangling lighthouse ladder and found his new heart.

#follyglass #cozy fantasy #quick read #original writing

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Much

The sky pressed its azure against the leaves which fluttered light and dark fast fast fast. Each daisy petal blurred bright at her eyes, and while she could remember plenty of happy times in these saturated kind of days, it was too much today. On days like these, it was always hard to find the seam. On days like these all of the rush and color spiked brilliant in her head, leaving no room for anything else–not even her favorite song could pass through it without becoming bitter and warped – everything seeming to scream its joy. She squinted and ran her fingernail against the fairy oak, the sound of the scratch causing runs of shivers at the base of her skull. Eventually, she found the seam (it’s much like where wallpaper joins itself, an almost indistinguishable bump in the overwhelming pattern of what others would consider quite beautiful). And she peeled it back, the whole bright day pulled aside like a curtain, and she stumbled through the gap into the mist and fog of the next day, a peace where she could be quiet as the gray world she needed.

#follyglass #cozy fantasy #creative writing #original writing

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Wisp

Since many animals made her sneeze, and being in want of a companion, she found she could keep a pet cloud. It was scarcely more than a wisp, but it seemed content to live in the niche in her foyer, with a lacquer bowl to nestle in on dreary days, and on sunny days the cloud would feel the rainbow within itself.

#follyglass #cozy fantasy #original fiction #little magic #creative writing

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Dust

For centuries, it was the tradition of the Hellerstern family to be ‘sparkled’ after death, and rested in a place of honor– their family mansion. There, such earthly things as worms could not pulse in their marrow, nor rain fade their bright eyes. There would be no vulgarly baroque caskets lined with lead and silk and shoved into the most common of common things: dirt. Instead, a crystal cabinet cradled their new perfect forms, those of sharply cut diamonds. The light shifting within the jewels seemed to reinforce the notion that Aunt Audalia was somehow still awake, still observing from somewhere in the inner spectrum of her diamond.

Over two centuries, visitors to the mansion gawped at the crystal cases, wondering in whispers about treasure and the measure of greatness. They wondered aloud what a paradise such as this really felt like. ‘Can you imagine?’ they asked each other.

When the last Earth-bound Hellerstern died, and the mansion seemed to sag, Josebal Cutter – the same Cutter family that were the Hellerstern’s longtime servants, the ones who fashioned the diamonds to brilliance – swept all of the jewels into a sack and fled across the dusty fields out of the province. Josebal knew what all of her Cutter ancestors knew: the Hellersterns’ minds were actually mapped into the diamonds, their immortality was shining and brilliant, nearly indestructible.

There was something else Josebal knew. Though she didn’t bear their last name, the Hellersterns were once her family, too. It took longer than she would have liked, but Josebal did find a metalsmith who turned all of the diamonds into a bib necklace for the cost of a sunflower seed. Josebal didn’t flinch when the metalsmith laughed at her for wanting to wear something as useless and common as diamonds. “You know it’s all just sparkly carbon, right?” barked the metalsmith as she walked away, diamonds sliding across her tattered shirt.

The earth’s bones were shifting, great monuments powdered, dust storms ghosted through the rotting-tooth cities. Not all, but much of this was due to the Hellerstern’s shrewd business decisions. Often Josebal thought about what a strange and wicked thing it was that the Hellersterns were powerful enough to wring prosperity from the gardens of the future so that they could guarantee their immortality in their present.

It took Josebal three long years to pull enough information from the immortal diamonds, and another two months to put their clues together and find the family’s hidden paradise of Hellerstern (of course they named it after themselves), where everything was green and golden. The first scent of green caused Josebal rapture. It was a true place, and she could now invite others. That was, of course, after she ground the diamonds down to dust and scattered them across the desert sea.

#follyglass #flash fiction #eat the rich #creative writing #original fiction

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Small

There was a time that I was once too grown for the small things that made me happy. When my starry coat went missing from the laundry line, I thought ‘good, it was too babyish anyway.’ When I left my blue velvet shoes on the porch to dry after running through the rain-splashed daisies –and they disappeared– I thought ‘I had outgrown them, and perhaps it’s too messy to run through daisies anyway.’ When I told my parents that I mistakenly left my flute in the park, I thought ‘what use is learning to play the notes when being an adult means not playing?’

The fox noticed. Small and fire and curious, it peered at me from the hedge, but I made myself look away. I once had so many happy books about foxes, but I realized in my growing that my interests in animals did not matter.

Many years found me occupied by doing things I thought adults should do; putting aside small brilliant things, hiding simple joys from myself, pressing on with more serious matters. It was an asceticism that I thought displayed wisdom. Sometimes, I would see the fox darting between houses, a flash of fire against the expanse of brick suburbia.

It was when I was much older that I happened to find a pair of green velvet shoes in a fancy shop; they fit me. I wondered if it would be too silly, too childish to buy them. Surely, anything that made me happy like that probably wasn’t good for a serious adult to do. I bought them anyway. They sat in my closet, a brief glimpse of joy before I shut them away again since I could find no appropriate occasion to wear them.

Until.

There was a warm cricket-song night, and I slipped them on to walk the white-garden I had carefully cultivated. It was especially lovely at night – my neighbors had told me so over wine I thought too astringent but sipped anyway– the lilies and roses glowing against the blue hour, a perfumed fairy garden. A series of silver notes rose from the daisy field and floated over the peonies. Since nobody was looking, I began to move about, sweeping my arms wide. It was only when I was dancing in my own garden that the fox appeared, wearing a starry coat, and blue velvet shoes, and playing the flute that I had lost.

Together we danced in arabesques and hops and giggles and ate honey and berries and laughed and wore crowns of daisies upon our heads.

I apologized to the small fox for ignoring her. I confessed that I thought it was the grown-up thing to do.

The fox considered me, then asked in what used to be my own childish voice, “and are you grown-up now?”

Yes, I think I finally was.

#flash fiction #cozy fantasy #fox #follyglass

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Hang

“All of the frames in this museum are merely stringent tradition, a mirage that plagues me in its constancy,” sniffed the gallerist eying the carved wood and gilt. No matter how many times she had said it aloud now, the gallerist had yet to encounter a like mind. After all, most people were culturally conditioned regard frames as a mere device in service to what really mattered: the delicacy, the pretty visions made by mixing powdered jewels in oil and swishing them about to mimic light and shadow and magnificent life rendered on a smooth piece of wood or copper. Most often they were portraits of those that were and now were nevermore.

Everyone remembers the cake that’s here and gone, nobody gives notice to the plate, unless it is filthy or cracked.

The gallerist thumbed the pendant at her collar, a small silver capsule that housed a gilded splinter; it was what remained of a work by Wm. Goodricke.

One day, she would find another frame by Wm. Goodricke, that bastard.

Ages ago, those that crossed the ocean did so with portraits of their loved ones. Since passage was prohibitively expensive for a whole family, there was one chosen to safeguard their surname, and then paintings were made and frames were carved. It wasn’t a cheap bit of magic at all, but it saved room and feeding. Shipwrecks and fire were fervently discussed. Children were calmed with cakes laced with laudanum. The painter worked their oils in a bid for the most realistic rendering down to the wife’s wry smile and the son’s plaid coat. When the painting was complete, the framer bound them so as to constrain their comings and goings… unframed portraits would awaken whenever they so chose, but a ship was not the place to reawaken. The one trusted family member carried them aboard, silent, careful.

On the new shores the frames were split and a family could spring forth groggy– but whole– from a painting to begin a new life away from what troubled them.

For many, this was a blessing.

But even the most benign of tools are found to be weapons by those that figure out how to wield them thusly.

The fearful Jack Westbury, known around The Ditches as Hollow-Eyed Jack, was eventually captured. The justice sentenced him to be painted, and so a rather glum-looking forest scene was painted, and Jack was placed behind a particularly crooked and particularly dead tree. The framer that bound the painting even signed his work: Wm. Goodricke. Many rejoiced. It was a punishment that required little of the taxpayers’ or crown’s money, and was not as distasteful as the crowd-pleasing tortures; surely, this was a kinder way to mete out justice.

More grotesque cases were found to be fit for The Painting, and eventually there were enough to fill out a gallery. Wallpapered in damask with tasseled curtains, this jail held no danger of stench or violence, and so many paid coin to witness not only the criminals themselves, but also to wonder at the skills of the artists and to see the rare but celebrated frame-breaking and freeing of those who had served their time. Most gallery-goers nibbled on thyme cakes and sipped ginger fizzes while guessing at crimes.

One-by-one more galleries were added, and people like the dishonest baker (guilty of padding his breadloaves with sawdust) found themselves hanging in gold among the crowds’ hush. Many took pleasure in the portrait of a rather ugly dog that nipped at people’s heels, relieved they could stroll Cotton Lane without being chased after. A father who had sent their eight-year-old son off with a tin of tea and a kiss in the morning had found his son the next day in the galleries, staring blankly from a lovely lake scene, for the crime of approaching the queen’s swans. The guards sternly reminded him that there were to be no outbursts in the gallery, lest he wanted to stand the same shore as little Henry.

Among the cruel jokes, there arose mutterings about justice, about liberty. A plan was enacted under the belief that cruelty of the system would not reach for the gloved hands of a group of lovely young women.

So, the gallerist and what she would come to think of as her sisters protested. They too, were hanged, bound by a frame crafted by the magic of Wm. Goodricke.

It was then that the public realized a wrong word, might cause them to spend more time in the galleries than they meant to, and so the galleries became vacant. Without the public funding, they closed. A fire took the records, and the nobles – eager to own the rare, the curious – exchanged anonymous money for paintings. Hollow-Eyed Jack was said to reside above the fireplace at a castle in Luxembourg. The baker was spotted at an auction.

Over decades, some frames cracked. Some were simply removed for cleaning or in exchange for something more fashionable, and those that were painted were set blinking out into a world that they knew nothing of. But they were free.

Through luck, the gallerist had found and freed the boy only three years ago. She helped him to learn the ways of the new world, even though she herself was stumbled daily by things that the modern folk found commonplace. And now she spent too many weekends of her young one-hundred-and-twenty year life searching for what might remain of her sisters in little shamble shops and museums and estate sales so that she might do them justice.

#original fiction #flash fiction #art fiction #follyglass

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Center

Those that fight their way into the center of the silver labyrinth will be rewarded with a pomegranate, its plump garnet seeds shining, a treasure for heroes. But those that ask the minotaur kindly will be shown the pomegranate, and the glass-tea sphinxes, and the argent mermaids, and all of the wonders that have found refuge there. Perhaps you might find respite there, too?

#labyrinth #cozy fantasy #quick read #minotaur #original writing

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Moon

On days of the full moon, I’m sure to be inside at home. It’s the blessing my goblin-mother made for me: only when the full moon’s crystalline light brushes against the threshold of my home can I leave and receive the gifts. So, I’m careful.

Outside, the forest has pulled the sun into the trees and threads of gold are being spun among the branches, and that is my cue to check the satchel to make sure I have everything I need; the candles, the seal, the bell, and the notebook. I consider a second and add a bottle of morning-glory sparkle and a loaf of thyme bread for Mizzerlin, then I press my nose back against the cold glass of my front door, and fidget as the gold fades and is overtaken by a lavender blue band of twilight.

The moon, it is too slow for my patience, and as soon as its creamy crystalline light touches my doorstep, I am running barefoot pearl-rabbit-quick through the snow East-North-West-South-East-North-West-South-East-North around my home until I finally find the Eath direction and the hidden side of my little home reveals itself.

My feet are barely chilled as I open the door to the goblin’s hidden library of moonlight books.

#flash fiction #original writing #follyglass #cozy fantasy #library #book love #fairytale #goblincore

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Proof

Born to parents on either side of the split, it was normal for Mem Pitchwick to traverse the boundary once every half-year, exactly on the half-year, no more, no less. It was a pity, though, that none of the other six-year-olds believed him when he said his other mothers were fairies. Everyone else had already said that their parents were dragons or owls or wizards…and he believed them. Why couldn’t they believe him?

They said it was just a game.

“But my other mothers really are fairies,” he protested.

Through pinched mouths they accused Mem of lies. They said he had no proof. They turned away from him, leaving him alone in the whispering shade of the pines.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to, but that evening after school Mem clambered up into the linen closet and found the unassuming box where the crystal doorknob was kept. His mother Audra was cooking noodle supper in the kitchen and barely noticed when he slipped by her and headed out the back door towards the copse of willows. That’s when he turned the doorknob and turned the world into his other home. Mem knew he had to be careful, because Mothers Ilna and Fris would make a fuss if they spotted him. But he was quick and clever. He ducked beneath the redfeather fern and found the library, where he grabbed his favorite volume of fairyrhymes – complete with moon-ash paintings and written in the pemman hand – and found his way back to his human home just in time for supper.

Surely, the other children would believe him when he showed them the fairyrhyme book signed ‘To our sweet boy Mem, with love from Mother Ilna, Mother Audra, and Mother Fris.’ His belly full of warm supper, his heart filled with the love of his mothers, and satisfied with his cleverness, Mem fell to downy sleep.

In the morning the sight of his book smote his heart. He had been told time and again that there was a limit to fairy, that things change ‘going beyond the twixt,’ but he didn’t really understand what that meant. Sadly, it was illustrated on his shelf; a few pages remaining of his book in a pile of shining dragonfly wings. His mother Audra sighed when she came into his room, “Oh, honey, you know you can’t go into Fairy until it’s time,” she pulled him against her and continued in a comforting voice, “you’ll have to stay home for today.”

But he didn’t want to stay home. He still had a few pages to prove to the other children that he did have fairy parents.

So, when Mother Audra had left for the daily shopping, he changed quickly into his corduroys and shirt (which was a struggle when one’s trying to be quick quick), and clutching the remaining pages, he ran down the lane to his school. He forced his feet to move as fast as they could, though his body hurt in a weird sort of way he had never felt before. Even still, the pages began to brittle in the earth sun, and from the corner of his eye he could see the iridescence spiking into blues and greens…just like dragonfly wings. By the time he reached the empty schoolyard, the pages had all changed. Little Mem clutched the wings in his hands and sobbed. Nobody would ever believe him now, and it felt, in a way, that who he really was had been flashed away like the blue on the dragonfly wing.

He stuffed the wings into his pockets and slumped into the cool blue grass at the foot of the pines. Perhaps his fairy mothers could change it all back? He fervently wished they could. After all, he did not know the ways of things. His mothers could not live together. His fairy books could not weather the earth sun. At only six, Mem was learning what it was to be twixt, to be iridescent: nobody would ever believe in his beautiful life unless they saw it in the right light.

Mem’s classmates found him there still when it was time for recess. They gathered warily, and stood around him in a loose circle, staring, calling each other over in hushed whispers, until one of them timidly asked, “Mem…have you always had wings on your back?”

#cozy fantasy #flash fiction #follyglass #quick read #writeblr #fairytale

[follyglass]

It was night. I expressed my regrets that there was only one teacup, but she eagerly grabbed it from my hand and assured me that it was perfect. I did not know the proper ways of things, and social rules vexed me. Would a glass bottle have been better? Before I could ask, she pressed on.

As she dumped powders into porcelain, her brow furrowed. When she asked for an unspoken wish, I gave my breath to her cupped palm, which she then upturned over the teacup. I could not tell if her squint meant that something had gone wrong – Had something gone wrong? Was it the teacup? Was it me? – I held my breath.

She thought, then exhaled slowly over the little cup.

After a satisfied nod, handed the teacup back to me, with the instruction to “Flick the rim.”

I peered into it and only saw lavender powder with a sparkling swirl run through it. No water, no tea. A puzzle. But I did as she said and flicked the rim, which set the powder to fizzing bright as sparklers, growing like little fireworks into the dark. I marveled at the color and light growing, blooming into shapes of bells and clustered stars. I had never seen such magic, and tried not to blink for fear that I would miss something.

It occurred to me that I should try my best to remember this moment, this buzzing jewel-bright sensation, to keep the glow in my memory and in my heart for as long as I could.

“I can’t believe nobody’s given you flowers before,” she said, smiling.

#quick read #cozy fantasy #follyglass #flash fiction

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Sharp

trigger warning: knives

He dreamt –was it a dream, or was it only tomorrow? – that the knives hung in the air. He slid his body sideways around them, fearful of the edges, a movement that seemed natural and almost like dancing, something that seemed practiced, though he could not remember practicing. Beyond the distant ridge there came a voice remarkably like his and it said only that ‘at the core of all of the blades lie pieces of your heart.’

How long had it been like this?

The landscape itself seemed beyond time, austere…. A nether.

For the first time – was it the first time? – he decided that this world –his world – should be soft, and so it was. The question nipped at him, still – was this the first time? – and he decided that the answer didn’t matter. If he dreamt of the knives again, he would think and soften them again…and again…and again…until the world he dreamt was soft and the knives were only a passing thought, inconsequential like the wisp of a cloud on the horizon.

#follyglass #quick read #be kind to yourself

[follyglass]

Follyglass : House

It was Lilzy’s idea, the dollhouse. She volunteered to build it with a room for each of us if we agreed to furnish it in any way we wanted. There ended up being fourteen rooms, and once the project got going, it only took us three days to finish it since this was the first time any of us had ever been able to decorate as we pleased. Paul painted big yellow stars across the ultramarine of his bedroom. Oris covered everything in the salon in pearly taffeta, even the chandeliers. It was our dream house, whimsical and serious and true to what we deeply wished for, a jewelbox of longing and hope that we drank champagne over. So, it was a surprise when Lilzy came back the next morning toting a dirty shovel. She had buried it, but she wouldn’t say where.

We found out after the rise of the Pink Moon; the house had been planted in the north meadow. It rose, just like the moon, big and luminous like a wish, and it had space for everyone.

“We just have to fill it up with our grand lives,” said Lilzy.

#cozy fantasy #quick read #writeblr #follyglass #full moon

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Rest

It stood to reason that if he had to sleep, Janniver’s shadow must also be in need of rest. After all, his shadow accompanied him in all manner of adventures (the tea pirate excursion, the carousel labyrinth), and had even answered the minotaur’s riddle in the November cemetery. So, after full moon nights when a shadow is sharpest and lively, Janniver would encourage his shadow to take his bed, and there the shadow would curl fuzzily while Janniver whispered poetry.

#follyglass #cozy fantasy #quick read #writeblr

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Restoration

The examples in the shop window are of a bust (formerly cracked), a statue (now sporting rich colors worthy of kingdoms), and a once-green copper lion… now shining. Nobody knows the name of the proprietor, nor can they remember a pale face peering from the darkened interior. And nobody can rightly remember passing through its doors since it always seems to be locked up tight. Most passersby would be forgiven for believing that the little shop on Mystic Street repairs antiques, but those of us who have been in need of its services saw the semblance of the urn on the sign to the urns carved into the slates of Sleepy Hollow.

#follyglass figment #flash fiction #writeblr #quick read

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Goat

If you find yourself traveling across the misty meadows, watch for the goats. Not the ones lazily munching or dreaming, but the ones with flowers hanging from their heads and horns and faces: the dasiy-eyed ones, the ones that only face the sun. If you let them, they’ll sing to you all of the good things that will happen in your life, leaving you bereft of spontaneous moments of joy.

#follyglass #writeblr #quick read #creative writing

[follyglass]

Follyglass : Given

The moth-faced being held out their hand to the girl. A green star as bright and glittering as the emerald in the prince’s ring hovered above the palm. An offering. The girl shook her head ‘no’, and simply gave the moth-faced being the ribbon from her hair.

#follyglass #cozy fantasy #quick read #writeblr