I returned to the apartment building where Daro and Anzali and I had lived before we went down to the sea. It had not changed in the way buildings change-- its paint was the same color, it seemed no more or less weatherbeaten than before. The railing on the 3rd floor balcony still sagged. But it had changed in the way homes change, because it wasn' ( Read more... )

Surely you have heard a similar tale before, almost but not entirely like this one, of the queen who sought the perfect wife for her son, the crown prince.

The queen had ruled the land alone since the death of her husband. She was praised for her wisdom and her benevolence toward her people. But she was no longer young, and it was time to make sure ( Read more... )

With rings of light surrounding me, with rings of darkness covering me, I dance. Perfectly and long I dance the firedance. There is no fire in my veins, there are no flames around my body, but I see nothing. Hear nothing but the throbbing of the music, feel nothing but my body and the hard ground under my feet, I dance.

Hands catch me, lead me away ( Read more... )

The sky was dark and clouded, no stars in the sky, and a general impression of pale pink and orange overlaid on the gray and black, light pollution from the streetlights reflecting off the clouds. A pale, lanky man with light brown hair parked his car on the street and went to the door of one of the townhouses, climbing up a short flight of stairs ( Read more... )

They called him Alyn Ysmai, the White-Haired Boy. In the village he came from, it was said he had fallen from the sky as a child, carried on a shooting star. His skin was white as the clouds, and his hair as white as the Moon, and his eyes the golden color of wild animals. From earliest days, it was said that the Lady of the Moon had marked him for ( Read more... )

She managed to pull herself together by dinnertime, which was good, because the others were engaged in analyzing the data she, Chaudhry, and Sokolov had collected with the cameras and the various EM detectors. The general consensus, unfortunately, was that they had no idea what the angel had done to get as far as it had. From what they could see ( Read more... )

The angel showed up three days after Riyana Delgado started working at the site of the anomaly.

Given the nature of the anomaly, it was possible the entity was an alien, or some kind of supernatural thing like a spirit. But it was obvious to Riyana what the entity was the moment it spoke. In an impossible voice that was simultaneously unbearably ( Read more... )

Moriy was on her way home by the cornfield path, when a voice hailed her. "Mage-ap! Mage-ap Moriy!"

She turned, and saw a man from the village running toward her. "Ranni! What's happened?"

He reached her, slightly out of breath. "We've been having a problem with Kethrie raids. They've stolen the crops from Wana's field and from Jumin's before we ( Read more... )

Inspired by this story. Also by a number of well-known myths, but the central concept comes from magic-and-moonlit-wings‘s story.

This falls into the category I call “altered tales”, which are retellings of fairy and folk tales and myths that are... not quite canonical.

Surely you have heard a similar tale before, of the mother who went to the ( Read more... )