Wednesday Briefs. The Faery of Beacon Lake Part 4

My these Wednesdays are rolling around fast. This week I chose the prompt "Fucking haha. Very funny." Maybe it is a little out of character for Owen to say that to his grandmother, but he was very stressed at the time. Aggie let it go graciously - which means he owes her one.

The hush, as complete as it had ever been, seemed to deepen further, and the hair all over Owen’s body crawled and lifted. As before, the world held its breath. Owen held his with her.

Minutes ticked by as Owen scanned the water for any sign of movement. At his back, the black mountains were a looming presence that pressed on his mind.

Was it just his straining mind or was there a faint blue glow deep in the water? Yes.

The glow increased in size and intensity. In its very heart, a darker shape took form.

With a suddenness that startled Owen back a step, the water erupted in a fume that shot ten feet into the air. Owen blinked against the spray, and when he opened his eyes the water was smooth again. Poised on the surface, the boy who’d taken his breath smiled and stole his heart.

Although there was no breeze, the boy’s long, silver hair blew around him, seemingly having life of its own. It was all that protected his modesty. Not that he appeared in any way to be modest. As usual, he was entirely naked and unashamed.

Usually, this was where the vision ended. As soon as he became aware of Owen’s scrutiny, the boy would sink again. The pale blue light would wink out in moments. Owen had been forced to watch from a distance. Tonight, the boy floated closer, almost reaching the bank. Owen gaped, awed by the delicate strength of the candle-straight fey, who glowed with the same pale light that illuminated the water beneath him.

“You have a gift.”

Owen was even more mesmerized, unable to process thoughts or find words, lost in the music that was the fairy’s voice. Cold laughter shocked him like a bucket of iced water poured over his head.

“Foolish human. My gift.” The boy held out his hand, his light voice heavy with command. He watched imperiously down his nose, waiting.

Owen stared blankly for a moment, then shook himself and offered the box. His numb mind struggled to find the words Aggie had taught him. He’d laughed at her when she’d grilled him, making him repeat them over and over. He wasn’t laughing now.

“It…er…it’s…. It’s bread. Well, almost. Unbaked. Dough, I suppose. Maybe. Um. It...it’s…. It represents a…a relationship unformed. L…like ours.”

The fey made no effort to take the box. For a long moment, he observed Owed with his head tilted to one side. Then he laughed. The laughter was mirthless and spiteful.

“Relationship? You presume too much, human.”

Before Owen could say another word, the faery sped backward then disappeared beneath the surface.

“Wait! No!”

It was no good. Not so much as a single ripple remained, and the water was as deep and dark as it had ever been.

“Dammit.” Owen flung the bread into the lake, then stomped off along the path into the pass. Aggie had told him the fey wouldn’t accept the first gift, but even so – the smug little bastard didn’t have to be such a dick about it.

Aggie didn’t look up when he stormed through the door.

“Didn’t go so well then.”

He threw himself into a chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“No.”

Aggie chuckled.

“What?” Owen demanded. “You think it was so funny? Fucking haha. So funny."Owen bit his lip and fumed. His voice was tight, and he had to spit out the words. “He laughed at me. He didn’t just say no, he laughed.”

The mirth dropped from Aggie’s voice and expression. “You’ve no one to blame but yourself. I’ve warned you I don’t know how many times. I told you. The fey folk are different to humans. They might look the same, but they’re made of different stuff. They’ve no time for your foolishness.”

“Is that what you think it is? Foolishness?”

“You know exactly what I think.”

“Yeah.”

Aggie slammed a mug of cocoa on the table in front of him, then stood with her arms folded and lips pursed.

Owen examined the rough grain of the wood under his mug. The table was the heart of the kitchen. Built from one complete oak trunk, it could have seated twenty people. Owen had no idea how it had got through the door, and was half convinced the house had been built around it. Owen had had so many happy times around this table, so many heart breaks were spilled onto it, so many hopes and dreams discusses and explored.

“I know you don’t believe me,” he said, his eyes fixed on the mug, “and that you think I’m under a spell or a glamour, or something. I suppose it’s what I’d think too, if I were you. But it’s not like that. This weird feeling. The… the drive or push or…whatever, was there before I ever saw him. I know in my heart that the… whatever it is, is meant to be.”

“I know,” Aggie said, her voice tight. “But I still think you’re a damn fool.”

Owen flashed her a rueful smile. “I agree with you.

And now for the rest of our fine flashers

Cia Nordwell

Jon Keys

Julie Lynn Hayes

Undone by M Noel and R Phoenix

Book: Undone
Author(s): Morgan Noel & R. Phoenix
Approximately 122,000 words.


Blurb: 

Leandro is a capricious fae, and he has it all: a glamorous casino as his personal playground, more power than he knows what to do with, and Kol’tso, his pet incubus. When Kol’tso tries to push the boundaries of their relationship and provokes feelings in Bryce, a nosy detective, the arrangement becomes more and more complicated. Kol’tso soon finds out there is a high price to pay for angering one of the fae. He finds himself trapped between his nature as an incubus and his desire for freedom. Leandro and his personal security guard Gideon may just be the only obstacles standing between the incubus and everything he wants.

Buy Link: http://amzn.to/2ndBkpx


Excerpt: 

“What is it, Kol’tso? Did you finally decide you were hungry?” Leandro asked petulantly, stretching out in the tub as though seeing his incubus didn't make him ache in more ways than one. He pointed to his empty glass. “I'll need another if that's what you're after.” His words were met with silence, though there was something dark and dangerous behind the incubus’ eyes that he couldn't place. It looked like anger, terrible anger, and it was in brief moments like this that the slave looked disturbingly fae — and suspiciously like him... If someone didn't know better, they might’ve even been fooled. Leandro wasn’t sure he liked that.

The moment faded, and Kolt looked at the drink in his hand before looking back at the empty glass. Without a word, he stepped closer, right up to the edge of the counter by the tub where he wordlessly exchanged one glass for the other.

“Do you want me here, or should I just go back down?” the incubus asked, his voice quiet, guarded, as if he was expecting bad news.

Leandro didn't know which answer Kol’tso would prefer. “Where do you think your place is, Kolt?” Leandro asked, drinking from the glass before offering it back to the incubus in what he thought was a conciliatory gesture. “Here, at my side? Or somewhere away from me?”

That terrible rage threatened to break through the surface, and he wasn’t sure if it was his own or Kolt’s — and the fact that he had to wonder infuriated him. Kolt needed to remember he was a slave. Perhaps he’d been too lenient…

“Wherever you want me,” Kolt answered flatly. “Which is apparently somewhere way at the bottom of your contact list, after Gideon and even your pet detective,” the incubus added, his bitterness clear as day.

Or perhaps he hadn’t been too lenient. “Oh, Kolt,” Leandro said, his voice softening. He straightened, gently pressing the drink into his incubus’ hand. “I knew that would take only moments. I wanted it out of the way so I could give you all of the attention you deserve.”

“And what do I deserve?” Kolt questioned in turn, bringing the glass up to his lips but not drinking from it.

“My entire focus,” Leandro said, rising. Water slid down his body into the large tub, and he reached out and touched Kolt’s cheek with one wet hand. “No distractions. You and me, Kolt, together.”

“Yeah?” Kolt mused, his eyes narrowing a little. “So lock the door…?”

“Lock it,” Leandro purred, stepping out of the tub. “Shut out the world. No one else exists tonight, my Kol’tso, except the two of us.”


Author Bios & Social Media: 

R. Phoenix


R. Phoenix (code name: Raissa) has an unhealthy fascination with contrasts: light and dark, humor and pain, heroes and villains, order and chaos. She believes love can corrupt, power can redeem and that the best of intentions can cast shadows while the worst can create light. She agrees with those who say that the truth is best told through fiction — even though fiction has to make sense while reality can be utterly baffling.


She loves chatting with readers, though she often awkwardly rambles. No matter how much she tries to keep her bad and often perverted sense of humor in check, it seems to escape at the most inconvenient moments. (Thanks, universe.) Feel free to friend Raissa on Facebook and chat or send her an email!


Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/r.phoenix

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/raissaphoenix/

Twitter: @RaissaPhoenix

Email: raissa(dot)phoenix(at)gmail(dot)com


Morgan Noel


Fluent in sarcasm and double entendre, devourer of cookies and champion pizza consumer. Pantser who doesn't play by the rules. The Kraken has been released, so long and thanks for all the fish!


Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/morgan.noel.71271

Email: authormorgannoel(at)gmail(dot)com

WEDNESDAY BRIEFS: The Fairy Of Beacon Lake Part 3

I didn't get a prompt this week so the brief is free range.

I hope you enjoy.

Hours later, close to midnight, Owen scrambled down the path toward the lake. A low moon lit his path but leeched colour from the world, turning it blue and silver. Owen shivered and pulled his coat closer around his throat. It was late summer but already the nights were turning cold. He clutched the parcel he was holding tight against his chest. He was by no means convinced that the “gift” Aggie had provided would bring anything but scornful laughter, but she’d never let him down before. Three nights, she’d told him. “Three nights. Three gifts. Then we’ll see.”

The lake lay at the foot of a rippled mountain range that staggered around it in a broken semicircle. It was as if some giant had come along when the earth was forming, found it to be whipped and light like mousse and took a spoonful. One side of the rough bowl was steep and almost fluted, while the other, after a slight rise over the lip, swept gently downwards into the valley below. It was over this lip that Owen now strolled, following a well-worn path from the top of the cliff, between two of its ripples where the slope was less rocky and steep. Even so, it was uneasy going for those unused to it, especially at night. Fortunately, Own had wandered the sheep paths all his life and his feet were sure enough to navigate with far less light than the moon provided.

By the time he reached the bank, a strange hush had fallen. It was this that had drawn him here the first time. He’d been walking back from somewhere, Gethin’s probably. It was before they’d both left for uni. It was a shame Gethin had chosen Cambridge. Owen missed his friend, but he had neither the means nor the desire to attend such a prestigious university – or such an English one. He was lucky the course he wanted was available at Swansea, which was not much more than an hour away, giving him plenty of opportunity to come home to see to Aggie.

On the last night before Gethin left, they’d had a going away party in the village hall. He’d gone back to Gethin’s after, and, fair play, he did have a belly-full of cider before he even got there. When everyone else had gone, Gethin had opened a bottle of Penderyn whiskey. It turned out to be his father’s and to say Gethin Snr was displeased would be understatement of the year. By the time Owen staggered along the path over the cliff tops he was as pissed as a parrot.

He hadn’t noticed at first. That silence. There was always sound. The wind. Small things in the grass. Bigger things eating the grass. Sheep that is. There were sheep everywhere. Bloody nuisances. At least they didn’t wander down to the village anymore. He’d been scared out of sleep plenty of times by sheep knocking the lids off the dustbins. Nowadays, the farmers had to fence them in. It was a pain having to climb stiles, but probably for the best, in the end.

That night, there had been no sheep. No owls. No anything.

By the time the silence had reached the place, deep inside his head, that was still functioning at something close to normal, he was at the place where the path diverged. The right fork led down to the lane that ran to his cottage, the other wound down to the lake. He’d hesitated for no more than a moment, before taking the left path. Some strange urgency had overtaken him and he’d sped up, tripping over rocks and almost falling more than once. When he’d reached the lake, he’d felt stupid. Panting hard, with his heart hammering against his ribs, he’d gazed out over the water, waiting to catch his breath. Then he’d seen it; he’d seen him.

There were no islands in the lake, no protruding rocks or stepping stones, yet there he’d been apparently sitting on the surface of the water itself, combing hair that must have been three feet long, 

silver in the moonlight.

At first, Owen had though him to be a mermaid. It had taken a while of breathless voyeurism to discover he was male. It had, in fact, been the point when, as if he’d known Owen was watching, the boy had flowed up to stand on the water. Half-turning he’d stretched upward, then arched his back, giving Owen a perfect view of a long, lean body with a defined musculature and…. Of course he’d looked. He couldn’t help looking. A lovely boy, naked in the moonlight? Where the hell was Owen’s gaze supposed to go? Downwards of course. His cock was perfect.

Owen shivered again. One look was all he’d got before the boy spun and sank into the water. For an instant Owen had been worried, but he’d known all along, in the back of his mind, that this was no ordinary boy. Although he’d tried to blame it on his drunkenness, Owen knew he’d seen a fairy.  Of course, he’d said nothing to anyone. Neither had he told of the sightings he’d had since. Four – no five – times he’d stood just here on the bank and watched the boy rise to sit on an invisible rock and comb his hair. The last few times, the lilting notes of a strange song had floated to Owen on the wind and he’d become entranced, sometimes finding himself alone on the shore with the dawn breaking and no memory of what had happened. Of course, he hadn’t told Aggie that part. She never would have helped him if she’d known he was already under the fairy boy’s spell.

With a sigh, Owen clutched the box containing Aggie’s gift tighter to his chest. What if it didn’t work? What if it did?

Now's the time to head off and find out what the other flashers are offering this week

Cia Nordwell

Carol Pedroso

Julie Lynn Hayes

WEDNESDAY BRIEFS The Fairy of Beacon Lake Part 2

It was hard to choose a prompt this week. I really wanted to use this one

because it's just so spectacularly amazing. However, it doesn't really go with what I wanted to say and is definitely not right for my fairy. However, Cernunnos is a Celtic pagan god and both Owen and Aggie are pagan, so it tenuously fits. However, given I've only just come back I figure tenuously might not be enough so instead I chose "How many times do I have to tell you?" which fits much better.

I hope you enjoy.

“Gran, please. You’ve got to help me. Tell me what to do; how to get him to notice me.”

“He’s noticed you, boy. You can be sure of that.”

“Alright then, not notice. Pay attention. How do I make him pay attention to me?”

“Make him? You’d be a fine one to make the fey do anything. A better man than me, for sure.”

“Gran.” Owen ground his teeth.  His grandmother never gave a straight answer to questions like this, and she wouldn’t be pushed. Pleading and cajoling would get him nowhere. Taking a breath, he modulated his voice. “Okay, I don’t want to make him do anything, but I….”

Owen paused. Time to choose his words carefully. Any suggestion of love would be met with humiliating derision. Aggie Morton didn’t pull her punches and made no secret of the fact she thought love was nothing but a cruel illusion.

Sitting astride a wooden, kitchen chair, he watched for a while as his grandmother went about making their evening meal. He’d long ago stopped trying to persuade her to modernize her home and she still cooked over an open fire on a long, black-lead stove. At least she had electricity now and he’d made sure she had electric heaters to keep warm if she wasn’t up to chopping wood. She had a freezer, too, and a microwave, but she kept both in the shed, along with the heaters, still in their boxes.

Bending to sip from a wooden spoon bigger than his hand, out of a cauldron that might well have weighed more than his nine-year-old sister, she was positively witchy. Not that she’d admit to being a witch. She preferred “wise woman” and swore that all her potions, remedies and good advice were nothing more than “knowing the way the world works”. She was a no-nonsense person with no times for such things as magic and love. Dreams, on the other hand, she was much in favour of. When Owen had chosen to do a Creative Writing Degree rather than the Business course his father was pushing for, it was Aggie who had taken his side, insisting that words had power and learning to
wield them well could get a young man a long way in the world.

Time to draw from the well and find some words.

“I know you think the fey are dangerous and I agree with you, I really do. I’ve seen enough over the years, and learned from you to be on my guard. I won’t take anything at face value and I know all the rules about not following music or light, not eating or drinking and never going to sleep in a fairy circle. I won’t get lured into anything or fooled by glamour.”

“Seems like you already have been.”

Agatha put down her spoon and tilted Owen’s face up. He met her gaze calmly. “Hmpf. You’ve been lucky so far. I don’t see no sign of enchantment on you. But be careful. There’s more than one way to put a spell on a man, and I’ll bet that boy knows them all.”

Owen dropped his head, long strands of vibrant blue hair falling forward to curtain him. He tapped his fingers against the scrubbed wood of the kitchen table. “You know I won’t give up. I’ll figure it out somehow, with or without your help. I just want to do it right.”

“How many times do I have to tell you there is no right way to court a fairy,” Agatha snapped. “Fey and human don’t mix. Never have; never will. No relationship I’ve ever heard of has brought anything but tears in the end.”

“A lot of relationships bring tears, Gran. That’s why I’m here, remember?”

“Yes, and I thought you’d have learned your lesson.” Agatha dunked the spoon and stirred rather more aggressively than the recipe warranted.

“What lesson? That love is bad for you?” He huffed. “I suppose it is. When it goes wrong. I just haven’t had much luck finding the right person.”

“The right person? Seems to me you’ve done your best to find the wrong ones.”

Owen shrugged. “I can’t argue with you there.”

Aggie sighed and set down the spoon again. She laid a hand on Owen’s shoulder. He glanced up. Her gaze was grave. “I thought we were going to lose you this time, boy.”

Owen shivered and nodded. “There were times where I thought so, too.”

“Haven’t you had enough to be done with love for a while?”

He closed his hand over hers and rested his cheek against her arm. She moved in to embrace him as she always did when he was hurt or sad. Her earthy scent surrounded him, wrapping him in safety and stability.

“That’s the point. It stopped being love a long time ago.”

“And you really want to be so quick to jump back in? This isn’t love either, you know.”

“I know. Not yet, but I have a feeling it could be.”

“A feeling eh? I know those kinds of feelings, and they rarely lead to good decisions.”

Owen twisted to gaze up at her. “Probably not, but I’ve always got you to pull me out of the lake if he tries to drown me.”

Aggie glared at him for a moment, then her rosy cheeks dimpled. “Oh, very well. I’ll help you. I never could say no to that smile. On your head be it, mind. I’ll pull your body out of the lake, but I’ll do nothing to mend your heart when he breaks it. That’s a consequence you have to work through all on your own.”

“I don’t think he’ll break my heart.”

“Oh, he will. Maybe not for a very long time, but he will in the end. They always do.”

Now's the time to head off and find out what the other flashers are offering this week

Cia Nordwell

Carol Pedroso

Jon Keys

Julie Lynn Hayes

Review of Misdemeanour and Hard Times by C F White

Buy Link

Buy Link

MISDEMEANOUR BLURB

Book one in the Responsible Adult serial

Love isn’t always responsible

After his mother tragically dies and his deadbeat father goes off the rails, nineteen-year-old Micky is left to care for his disabled little brother, Flynn.

Juggling college, a dead-end job and Flynn’s special needs means Micky has to put his bad-boy past behind him and be the responsible adult to keep his brother out of care. He doesn’t have time for anything else in his life.

Until he meets Dan…


MISDEMEANOUR REVIEW

Micky was a bad boy. Who knows all he got up to, but some of it, at least, wasn’t legal.

That was before his mother died and he kicked his drunken, abusive father out of the house to take care of his young brother, Fynn. Fynn suffers from Williams Syndrome, a rare condition that causes some physical and developmental problems that makes Flynn overly social, trusting and a challenge to bring up.

The authorities are not happy about the situation at all, and Micky struggles to stay one step ahead of them. Time is running out as no one really believes he has adult supervision any longer. Micky is terrified that his past will preclude him from caring for Flynn if they’re caught

There are some amazing touches that hit you right in the feels, such as the post box the boys have in their garden where Flynn posts letters to his mother. Micky tells him their mother comes in the night to read them and if he’s asleep she kisses him goodnight.

The characters are so real that by the end of the book it was almost as if I knew them personally.
Micky is certainly no angel, neither does he pretend to be.

Dan, a harassed store manager and Micky’s boss knows about his background but cares for him anyway, even though his faith is strained sometimes. He’s a solid, well adjusted person whose life is turned upside down by Micky and Flynn, but he hangs in there and helps Micky to learn how to adult, and tried to convince him that being an adult sometimes involves making hard decisions.

Flynn is just Flynn. There’s no one like him. He’s utterly adorable and I loved the heck out of him.
He trusts his brother implicitly, and he trusts everyone else almost as much. He’s so vulnerable and loving you find yourself holding your breath every time something threatens the home Micky has made for and with him.

The author calls the story gritty, and I suppose it is, but in a warm way and even when bad things happen there’s a warmth to them.

I did some research on Williams Syndrome and the author really knows her stuff. Like autism, it’s a bundle of possible symptoms that present differently in each person, with certain uniform characteristics. It is also known as Elfin Face Syndrome, which I think is perfect for Flynn who is such an innocent, affectionate, faery-like creature.

I warn you, this book ends in a cliffhanger. The title of the next book “Hard Time” might give you a clue as to what that is. Thankfully, I’m moving on to the next one immediately and I suggest you have the second book ready.

This is a wonderful, warm book with a high level of realism, and yes, a grittiness that spotlights a difficult life and someone struggling with an almost intolerable situation. However, there is humour, kindness and enduring love throughout that makes it a challenging but rewarding read.

HARD TIME BLURB

Book two in the Responsible Adult series

Love isn't always responsible.

After Micky O’Neill is remanded in custody for breaching his court order, his already tempestuous relationship with Dan Peters is tested to the limits.

Having to battle their way through a court case that could end with Micky in jail, social workers breaking up the family home and the return of Micky’s deadbeat father, it seems everything is set to destroy their relationship before it even has the chance to start.

With such high stakes involved, not just for Micky but for once-burned, twice-shy Dan, they both have to learn that falling in love isn’t always responsible.

HARD TIME REVIEW

Continuing on from Misdemeanour this book can’t be read as a standalone. Mickey, the reforming bad boy, hit rock bottom when arrested for breaching a restraining order (justifiably, I thought). At the beginning of this book, Mickey gets out of prison but he’s lost his brother, Flynn when Social Services finally caught up with them.

By a stroke of luck, Dan’s parents are foster carers, albeit retired and they are able to take Flynn, at least temporarily.

Things look up for a while, but it’s not for Mickey to have things too easy. His father makes a comeback and steals everything he owns. In an attempt to get them back, Mickey finds himself in trouble again.

The author has an amazing ability to lull you into a cosy sense of false security, before dumping a bucket of “Oh my God no” on your head. Mickey is tested at every turn and cosy domestic scenes are interspersed with much darker events. At no time are you allowed to get too comfortable and I love this.

Throughout all his trials, Dan remains a steady influence but Mickey still finds it impossible to say “I love you”, and his lack of commitment is the one thing most likely to blow them apart. That and his temper.

The workings and attitudes of social services and the courts are accurately if somewhat optimistically, represented and add to the gritty realism that pervades the books. While everything has a satisfactory outcome, it certainly wasn’t an easy one.

As usual, Flynn provides light relief with his pure innocence and truly beautiful personality. It was heart-breaking to see the author deal with the kind of bigotry children with disabilities far too often face.

When the first book ended in a cliffhanger, this one most certainly does not. The upbeat tone and sense of real hope for the future is as beautiful as the scenery and I felt as if I was coming home at last after a long, hard journey.


These two books were not easy to read, but the rewards were enormous. If you want your heartstrings tugged, torn and played like a finely tuned instrument then these are the books for you. You won’t be sorry.

Wednesday Briefs The Faery Of Beacon Lake

It's been a while, but I'm finally back in the saddle and working on my first Wednesday Brief in a very long time.

I'm not going into details of why I've been awol, let's suffice it to say that I'm writing again, I'm back and I'm hoping 2018 will be the best year yet for my writing.

To celebrate my new start, I'm starting a new story that is based on an old Welsh legend and is set very close to where I live. It only very loosely follows the legend but at least I'm supplied with a ready made story arc and I get to write about two things I love - Wales and faeries.

So, without further ado let's get into the story. It is introduced by a lady we'll get to know and love as the story progresses. Listen to her, she speaks a lot of sense.

Ancient medieval manuscripts tell the story of The Physicians of Myddfai and the lady who rose from the waters of Llyn-Y-Fan-Fach (Translated as Lake of the Small Beacon) which lies nestled in the Black Mountains near Brecon in South Wales. The story is well known in Wales, first appearing in The Red Book of Hergest and later absorbed into the quintessential collection of Welsh Folklore, The Mabinogion.

This is not that story. In this story it is not a lady who rises from the lake. It  is not set in Myddfai, nor on the banks of Llyn-Y-Fan-Fach, but an imaginary place that is reminiscent of both but infinitely more pronounceable.  

Prologue

Agatha

That fool of a boy had got himself mixed up with faeries. I’ve dragged him out of his fair share of scrapes over the years, sometimes by the ear, but I’m not sure I can get him out of this one.

You don’t mess with faeries. I don’t know how many times I’ve told him that. They’re not human and don’t take the trouble to try – not unless they want something, and that never turns out well for the human involved.

It’s not so much that you can’t trust the fey folk, but more that they don’t trust you. Too many, humans are the enemy. You came tearing into fey lands, taking what suited you,  and destroying the rest, and the fey didn’t take too kindly to that.

In the very beginning, human and fey lived side-by-side. If not in harmony, then at least in peace. That was before the warriors came from across the seas and took whatever they wanted, calling it their own. That’s the difference, see? Fey take care of the land: humans think they can own it. How can you own a living thing? Living things own themselves, otherwise that’s slavery but you’ve done your fair share of that over the years, too.

‘Course you don’t call it slavery anymore, do you? You think you make your own choices in complete freedom. Humans really are fools.

For a human, Owen’s about as good are you’ll get. He’s got his head screwed on the right way, but he’s a dreamer all the same. I ask you, what boy of going-on-twenty spends all his time wandering around in the middle of the night on the mountainside? How he hasn’t broken his back, I don’t know. 

That’s what moonlight does for you, see? Makes you into fools. That’s because moonlight is magic, or to be more precise the moon-dust within the moonlight is magic. A good lungful of that is plenty to have a grown man acting like a five-year-old. Many a foolish deed were done after a night of dancing under the moonlight.

Some as knows the right ways can make real magic on the nights when the moon is full and hangs over the lake like the dug of the Mother herself. With a good suckling of moon-dust in your belly, a man could almost think himself invincible. Or even…in love.

Ah love. The most powerful magic of all. It can make a man of a boy, a child of a man and a damn 

fool of them all. Love magic is powerful stuff. Magic love? That’s a whole new ball game, and that fool boy can’t even see the park.

Falling in love with anyone is bad enough; falling for a fairy is nigh on the most stupid thing a man can do. What about a woman? Read your history. The stories of a woman drawn off the path by a pretty fey boy are rare.

Mind you, that’s exactly what’s set our Owen’s blood afire – a pretty fey boy. Not that I’ve seen him, but it’s rare a fey is ordinary. Ugly or beautiful but never in between. A people born and raised on the extremes. Afraid of the in between? Perhaps. But they’ve good cause to be.

I told that boy not to go wandering around near the lake in the moonlight. Lakes are doorways, see. Lakes and mirrors both, like caves and wild places. They are the in between, where two worlds touch and folk foolish enough can be lured from one side to the other. At least Owen came back to tell of it.

It’s rare nowadays for the fey to steal someone away. There was a time when no mother would settle for the night without setting iron in her baby’s cradle, lest the fair folk come in the night and steal them away, leaving a changeling in their place. Now, the fey can’t get near. If not iron, there is cold concrete and glass, poisons in the air and everywhere eyes watching.

In places like this, though, in the heart of Wales, where the old stories are still half believed, the fey have a few places where they can still pass through their gates and do no end of harm if they can get away with it. Here, the mists come down so fast and the winds blow so hard that sometimes people wander onto the mountains or down to the water, and are never seen again. Or, if they do manage to wander out, they are forever changed.  

Here, it’s still possible to meet a fairy, but if you do best beware because the fey don’t like what you’ve done to our beloved Mother Earth and we’ve no reason to play fair.

Now visit the rest of the flashers this week for some wonderful stories.

Cia Nordwell

Carol Pedroso

Johayan

Nephy Hart

Julie Lynn Hayes

NOW AUDIO: Pricks and Pragmatism J L Merrow

PRICKS AND PRAGMATISM
SOUTHAMPTON STORIES #1

AMAZON / AUDIBLE

Kicked out by his father at age sixteen, English student Luke Corbin’s used to trading on his looks and charm to keep a roof over his head until he can make it big as a journalist. He goes for men with money, power and looks, in that order, and he doesn’t let emotions get in the way. But when his lover tells him it’s over, Luke finds himself homeless—just as his final exams are looming.

Moving in with geeky chemical engineer Russell may be a step down for him, but Luke can’t afford to be choosy. Fully prepared to put out as usual, Luke’s confused and frustrated when Russell refuses to take advantage of him—and even more so when he finds out Russell’s saving himself for someone special.

The more time he spends with the shy, honourable man, the more Luke finds himself bowled over by Russell’s sweetness and integrity. But just as he’s coming to terms with his own wish to be that special guy for Russell, Luke has to face facts: he’s fallen for the one man he can’t seem to charm.

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AS a not-quite-a-new-year-resolution, I decided that I wanted 2018 to be a year when I became more proactive, stop whining about how bad I am at promotion and actually tried to be better. There were spurts in 2017 but I got discouraged too easily, I hope that by going into this with the intention of learning rather than knowing what I'm doing, I'll fare better.

One of my aims is to write at least two or three blog posts on one of my blogs or my website every week. So far so good. We'll see,

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