XandI
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With her left eye open the smallest of slithers, she sees the fake logs glowing before her, their glow illuminating the room, yet not bright enough to penetrate the nooks and crannies where darkness holds sway. The heat blasting from the heater continues to prick her face. Squinting, she realises she’s been crying, and the Read more
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Her eyes are clamped tight. She daren’t open them because when she does, it means she’ll be back in the land of the living, and although the fox and the fairground are long gone, she doesn’t want to give them up. Not just yet, anyhow. Opening them will also mean having to confront the source Read more
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Although the image is gone, the feeling remains. An uneasy feeling. One that lingers like the adult smell she can’t quite place. She knows she’s smelt it before; she’d bet her life on it, and yet she can’t say from where. It’s not unpleasant, as such. There’s a part of her that even wishes for Read more
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At first, she’s not aware of the smell. Not consciously, anyhow. She’s too busy grinning in her bubble of nothing, but then, ever so slightly, she gets the faintest whiff of it. It’s barely there, like the faded scent of perfume on a scarf, sprayed weeks before on the neck of her mother. She’s not Read more
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The stillness doesn’t last long. Perhaps only as long as a fraction of a second. However long it is, Gretchen doesn’t seem to notice or care. Like the now long-dead gods drifting on their backs in the bubble of nothingness when everything was nothing and all that would ever be was waiting to blossom like Read more
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Initially, she can’t quite comprehend it. Well, she does, but she doesn’t. She’s touching the fox, and yet the fox is her. It’s simple, really, and yet all she can do is shake her head and frown the same way she does whenever her parents try to make her eat her greens. Squinting like a Read more
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Brushing away the curls of hair stuck to her forehead, Gretchen blinks at the moon as the steam from the fox’s mouth swallows her tiny body. It feels like she’s floating in a bathtub of milk or a pocketful of cotton wool. Maybe even cotton candy. Licking her lips at the thought of sticking her Read more
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Through the legs of the horses and over the backs of the bumbling badgers, the fox frees himself from the slippery clutches of the muddy rivers wrapping around his feet. Leaping high into the air, it’s as if the laws of gravity don’t apply to him, and like a helium balloon, he rises over the Read more
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There’s a chance the static might’ve come from the bolts of lightning shooting into the ground, their electric arms spraying the sweat of gods over the organic circus below. Then again, it might also have been the product of a generator powering the many rides of the funfair as it buzzes unseen like bees in Read more
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Holding tightly onto the neck of the fox the same way she does her father when he gives her piggybacks around the living room of their apartment, she kicks her feet and screeches like a banshee. The fox is bewildered yet not disturbed, for the little girl has given him the energy to keep going—her Read more
