Aneira and Her Consorts

The following is the second in a series of art-flash fiction collaborative pieces that I am doing with the talented Tara Larsen Chang.

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This will be the longest night.

The cats accompany the princess on the journey back. They are her constant companions into the darkness, and their breath promises frostbite. Blood-on-snow. She is unconcerned, for their fur is her bedding and the wilderness her chamber, at least until she reaches the ice castle once more.

You have caught her attention, though, human child. You, with your Ray Ban outlet mittened hands and cherry-red nose. You crashed between the trees and through the hedges, searching out mistletoe, the woods ringing with merry laughter.

But the sounds of the other children have faded into the distance and before you… before you unfolds a world, crystal-gleaming. A place where the ice queen reigns in a holly crown, her slippered feet resting on slumbering bears.

They’ve need of a jester.

Can you sing? Will you dance?

Step inside this world; you will leave no footprints here.