“Well would you look at that,” says Oncle. “It’s not even full grown.”

The bat raises its white face and stops crying. I think it realises how useless it is. Instead it shivers, shivers so hard I think it’s gonna shiver right out of its skin. You never think of them wearing clothes an boots – they’re just tales to scare children, but the bat is in a neat suit, a worn one, the knees darned, the sleeves an trousers too short, so that its white ankles an bony wrists are on display. It flexes its fingers, an I can see the red weal where the iron touched it.

“Please,” it says when the sharifs light their torches.

The crowd goes still, an the bat knows, you can see on its face, there’s no-one gonna feel sorry for it, child or no. It tries to curl into a ball, but the sharifs just kick it an drag it up to the stake, pulling the chains tight.

It’s gibbering now, calling for its mama. But we just watch as the torches are put to the dry grass, the kindle-sticks.

Black smoke pours over Lander’s common, an tonight they’ll be getting high down on the Wend, trying to forget the babies dead.

“It’ll have a mother,” Oncle says, as the fire light bounces across the faces of the crowd. “Damn stupid, should have used it as bait.” He shakes his head. “Come on, Jek, we’d best leave fore it turns ugly.”

You should post that at ficlets, it’s really good.

The first one was rose-pink, and when Marta found it her mother said, “Perhaps now you’ll keep your hair back proper,” and Marta smiled, her fingers already twisting a braid for the ribbon to hold.

Every day a bough of the apple tree outside her door would be tied with a ribbon; silk and satin, one the blue of a winter sky, one the birght green of the tree-leaves. One was a purple so deep her mother wouldn’t let her wear it.

“They’ll think I stole it from the palace for you,” she said, wrapped a bundle of herbs in it instead. It hung above the sink, the leaves twisting, the dark silk shining, and Marta would scrub the plates and stare at it, watching the color change in the shifting light.

There were soon so many she tied them to the rungs of the little chair in her bedroom, one upon another until it looked like a waiting bride.

That summer the villagers claimed that she bloomed; it was her time, of course, every girl bloomed at that age, but the women remarked one to another that Marta’s eyes were oddly bright, her cheeks too flushed.

“She looks like a Maypole,” muttered Pen the baker’s wife when she was sure Marta’s mother would hear. Marta had taken to wearing two at the end of each braid, one tied on each wrist, one looped at her belt.

“She looks like a tinker,” hissed Meg the butcher’s mother.

“It’s a spell,” said Jan the widow-farrier.

Hannah the jailor’s wife said, “Marta, those ribbons are awful fine for a girl her age.”

“Naturally,” Marta’s mother would say, “her admirer spoils her; many thanks for the second bun, Pen.” She said goodbye to all of them but Jan; Jan was a suspicious sort about anything that wasn’t hammered iron.

Sunday afternoons Tom the cobbler’s son was allowed to walk her home from Mass. One Sunday he said of her rose-pink ribbon, “That’s a fine color,” and she smiled, kissed his cheek, wondered how he had come by gifts like these; wondered if she should wear them in her shoes the next Sunday, the green one on her left foot, a red one on her right.

At home that night, she tied her hair in curls, each with a ribbon, orange and gold and green, blue, red, pink. At first she had only used one to hold back her hair when she slept, but there were so many ribbons now that she had woven a blanket of them; she would sit in her chair on stormy nights and look at her reflection in the window, a watery queen wrapped in a riot of color, resting on a jeweled throne.

Tonight her reflection looked incomplete, and she pulled the rose-pink ribbon from the chair, tied it loosely at her neck. That was better, she decided, much better, and then she was happy enough to blow out the candle, sleep quietly, dream of Tom and his fine gifts.

She would not have slept so well if she had known the fine gifts were not from Tom; that the light from her candle had cast her figure into the dark of the forest; that some colors are too bright for mortal making.

She wouldn’t have slept at all had she known that any ribbon that makes a bow can make a rope, as well.

“I’m going to write the World’s shortest Lovecraftian stor…”

Tentacles burst through the floor around him, hound-like things emerged from the room’s corners, and cultists crashed through the doors and windows. All converged on him, tore him apart while he screamed, and quickly retreated to their respective entry points.

I believe the tentacles got most of him.

I peek deep inside and what do I see?
There’s an unexplored maw peering back at me

I swish my tail and gather my haunch,
then into that darkness I prepare to launch!

The sound makes me twitch and my eyes grow wide
I think I have found the best place to hide

I cannot describe nor can I explain
the hold o’er my curiosity that this thing contains

For no matter its size or its shape or its age
I can’t help but jump into a brown paper bag

The question on my mind today regards clowns. Specifically, this point: Is the red rubber nose gene dominant or recessive? If dominant, why aren’t there more clowns in the world? If recessive, could I be a carrier of this gene? Are my children at risk of being born as clowns?

And is the red rubber nose gene linked to the floppy shoe gene? With proper effort, might we breed whole generations of identically-proportioned clowns? How will we supply them with sufficient numbers of clown cars, given the finite dimensions of these vehicles?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I just have one big, big problem with it.

I’ve been playing D&D since I was six. I have an actual piece of graphite embedded in my hand from a horrible, game-related pencil accident – it is a bona fide RPG injury. I have more dice than I do cooking utensils (and I love to cook!).

So where the heck is my magical transportation into game world, huh?

I guess this is why I write fantasy.