Day Fifteen, First Moon, Hunting Year Five Hundred and Four
There are witches in the wood. That's what they keep telling me. But all I see are blackberry bushes and oak trees. The berries are in-season right now. Every few days, I fill my apron with fruit on the way home from the schoolhouse. Mama scolds me for spending so much time next to the wood, but I think she secretly likes it because she bakes them into pies and breads, and they taste wonderful. She ties up a fresh pocket of herbs and tucks it under my shirt every morning just to be safe, because she knows I'll go to the edge of the wood even if she tells me not to.
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I'm back! Oh wow, am I tired. Chronic illness is a bi*ch sometimes. We aren't at this place in the story yet, but I do try to build some elements of living with chronic illness and disability into this story. It's a form of representation that can be hard to find sometimes - especially from the perspective of the person with the disability. (It's so much more common to see disability written from a caregiver's perspective which can either demonize the disabled character, show the audience how good they have it, or as a form of wisdom or inspiration.) I'm trying to use this story to speak as authentically as possible and to work through some of these thoughts as I write.
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The Wood
FantasyLike every other girl in her village, Kyla has been taught to ward off curses with the right concoction of herbs, but when a new plague falls upon the village, the elders begin to hunt for the witch who caused it. Kyla becomes the next target after...
