Tale #46: (fragment)

There was a woman who lived in the woods. She never cut her hair and it grew long and thick and fast and strong. Over the years it tangled up in the branches of the trees and the strangles of the bushes, and eventually it stretched out in strands across the whole of the forest.

And the woman sat in her chair by the fire and rocked herself back and forth and waited, patiently, for those she might draw near.

_________

Notes:

1. Written August 2014

__________

Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!


Tale #45: The Floating

It was said that if a man could not satisfy his wife on the night of their wedding, she would float away when the morning came and take herself up to the clouds for satisfaction. And with the rain she would return.

__________

Notes:

1. Written July 28th, 2016

__________

Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!


Tale #44: The Falling

A man fell from the skies and landed with a splash in the lake. Two women who were bathing nearby observed this strange event, but did not speak of it to anyone.

Sometimes they would return to the lake to search him out. They showed him great kindness and he never flew again.

__________

1. Written July 28th, 2016

__________

Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!


Tale #43: The Girl In The Bear

In the lands far from here, a forest. In the forest, a cave. In the cave, a bear. In the bear, a girl. In the girl, a heart, and in the dark, it beat, beat, beat.

The bear slept. The girl crept and wriggled and squirmed her way through the bear. She pulled herself up with her hands and pushed herself forward with desperate kicks of her feet, until finally she found herself inside the sleeping bear’s mouth, and almost free.

With a final heave of strength she pushed apart the bear’s jaws and stood there defiant in the great beast’s mouth.

And then, overcome with weariness, she tumbled forward out of the bear and into the dirt and fell asleep against the warmth of the bear’s belly. And all through the night in her dreams she heard the beat, beat, beat of the bear’s huge heart.

In the morning the bear awoke and looked at the tiny thing sleeping beside her, a shapeless lump of gristle and bone, covered head to foot in muck and filth.

And the bear licked the dirt and the blood from the girl’s head and from the girl’s body and watched in wonder as beneath the slow rasps of her tongue her new child began to take shape.

__________

1. Written between July and November 2016
2. The title comes from the wonderful David Hockney illustration The Boy Hidden In A Fish, which I’d misremembered as The Boy in The Fish
3. The bear licking the girl into shape comes from, well, bears licking their children into shape, in medieval bestiaries

__________

Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!


Tale #42: The Bear In The Cage

In a town not far from here they keep a cage in the town square and in the cage the people of the town keep a bear.

Once, perhaps, the bear may have amused the townsfolk, but now? Now they had jobs to go to, places to be, lives to live and loves to love. They had no need for the bear, had no time for idling by and watching this great beast sleep through the day and through the night and through the whole of the winter and into the spring.

The people certainly had no time to wonder the rights and the wrongs of keeping a bear in a cage in the town square. And anyway it had always been there, or one just like it had.

One day a girl came wandering through the town. She was an orphan and free to go wherever she pleased, but always on her own. It was a beautiful spring day and the girl watched the bear as it roused itself from its exceptional slumbers, and as the sun went down and the square emptied itself of people, she approached the cage, ran her hands up and down the bars, and said to the bear, “Are you lonely?”

The bear thought for a while, and said, “I’m not lonely. I’m trapped.”

The girl said, “If I let you out, where would you go?”

The bear said, “Away, away. It would not matter where, as long as I was free.”

The girl said, “If I set you free, would you take me with you?”

The bear said, “Where would you want me to take you?”

“Away, away. It would not matter where, as long as I was not alone,” the girl said. “Will you take me?”

The bear nodded. The girl opened up the gates of the cage (she had learnt a great many things in her time as an orphan, and opening locks was but one of them) and out of the prison the bear stepped. The girl held out her hand to the bear, and the bear licked it.

“Shall we go?” said the girl.

“Okay,” said the bear, and it opened its mouth wide and in one bite swallowed the girl whole. And then out of the square the bear ran, out of the town, away, away, away.

__________

Notes:

1. Written between July and November 2016

__________

Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!