it feels like floating and a bit like dying

Warm slime puddles thickly around your legs as you kneel before her, as her body emerges from all the tiny cracks in the walls where she’d hidden herself all, welling up from the gaps in the courtyard’s paving stones and the shadows beneath rocks.

A tiny piece of her even emerges from the tight tie holding your hair back, leaving a warm trail down the small of your back as it descends to return to its proper home.

Possession & Bruises

Once, long before, you wondered why the witch–your witch, now–was always covered in bruises, why her skin was forever a tapestry of slowly fading marks, all those purples and yellows hiding the warmth of her skin.

Once, you wondered why.

But then you died.

When you were alive, you had assumed the obvious. She had never cared to cover them, to conceal them, and you couldn’t conceive of her as a being that anyone could hurt without her willing consent; so you assumed it was simply a kink that she didn’t care to keep secret.

Jack-o-lantern & Masked

Every so often a fuss is made about folk dolls, those odd little half-living homunculi; beings of distilled purpose and steady decay, straw and sticks and hollow gourds.

People rediscover them, and wonder why they’re not in wider use.

Listen for a moment and I’ll tell you 🧵

No self-respecting witch would let herself be seen to use one instead of a proper doll, and it’s easy to suppose that that’s the reason. It’s a class signifier, right? A power thing.

Banishment, A Familiar Song

It always sounds the same, that echoing chant, those pounding feet and snarling faces; look, look! See what you have done, see the crimes you have committed against Decency, against the People, against everyone who sought you out to ask for what you offered.

How horrid, how criminal! How dare you.

It’s almost like you wanted to be punished, to be destroyed; almost like you craved the lashing whips of You Are An Acceptable Target and the flensing knives of You Deserve Everything We Do To You.

Herbs, Moult, Amputation

The poultice stings as it presses against her splitting flesh, as the cool liquids inside seep out into the painful heat radiating from her back. She does her best not to scream, not to wince, and her failure is rewarded with a Look, disappointment more potent than any fist.

She buries her face in the bed, hides her tears as the second poultice presses against her shame, against the burning red streaks stretching and tearing her skin as they swell and throb inside the small of her back, as lances of Wrongness skewer her to her bed.

Slimy Stitches

It is understood that ⸤distillation⸣ is a process by which ⸤slimes⸣ maybe be both concentrated and made more amenable to their ⸤purposes⸣. However, this process does not reduce their ⸤curative properties⸣ when applied to a ⸤garden’s components⸣.

Through the application of a ⸤purpose-made object⸣ to a fully ⸤distilled slime⸣ a form of thread may be produced with minimal cost to the surrounding ⸤garden⸣.

Such thread is suitable for lacing through any ⸤damaged components⸣, and noticeably prolongs their ⸤life⸣.

Amulet, Shadows, Growth

By the time you find the secret door you’re almost ready to give up and call it a day (well, a night. Can’t rob the necropolis during the day!). Maybe this tomb was never finished, this mausoleum never occupied.

Maybe it’s just a dead end! A trick. It’s been known to happen.

Besides, your lantern’s starting to sputter, the last refill of oil on your belt hanging with the weight of finality. If you waste it on a dead end then it’ll be weeks until you can scrounge up enough for another attempt, maybe months before you can sneak in again.