fiction - brigits_flame - grain

[hwango]

Well, children, it seems that I'm supposed to mind you for a while, which can only mean that you are all being punished or that someone has extremely poor judgment. You asked for me? Poor judgment it is, then.

Wait, don’t tell me - you want another story about fairies. Don't you children already know everything you need to know about fairies? What do they teach you in school these days? Oh, I see - you're just very ghoulish little children. Very well.

Once, long ago and far from this land, there lived a fairy by the name of Aurelian Thistlekin. Aurelian was a fairy of no particular importance in fairy society, and he lived in a modest castle made of amber and porcelain above a rather lovely waterfall in the middle of nowhere. Well, the unfashionable northern edge of Nowhere, actually.

As you all know, fairies as a race have a natural talent for any number of things – woodcraft, glassware, nightmares, and so on. However, it’s not uncommon for individual fairies to have their own particular affinity for some other activity. Knitting, perhaps, or crafting musical instruments that when played produce those barely audible sounds you hear in the dead of night that make you certain that there is someone lurking just outside your window or creeping across your room.

Aurelian had a talent for baking.

He baked tiny loaves of bread that when shared between exactly two people would make them fall in love with each other. He baked pies that could make a person forget who they were. He once baked a wedding cake that transformed each of the guests into cherry trees. Stuff like that.

One afternoon he decided it was time to try out a new recipe. Something extra special. And so he went out and cleared a perfectly circular plot of land, casually razing a grove of lovely old cherry trees that had previously occupied the spot.

He harrowed the earth with a plow made from an ogre king’s skull, and once the soil was ready he sowed some seeds by the cold light of a full moon. He watered the seeds with the tears shed by young lovers who had been spurned by their first loves, and he fertilized the field with the blood of – well, you get the general idea.

It wasn’t long before the field bore him tiny seedlings, each as black as the night –

What? No, it wasn’t a full moon anymore by that point, so the night and the seedlings were both very black.

Anyway, the seedlings grew into stalks of wheat that were practically indistinguishable from ordinary wheat if you discounted their unusual coloring, or the fact that they rustled and shifted even when there was no wind and that when there was wind, the wheat would writhe and twist and moan.

In time the wheat was ready for the harvest, and Aurelian went out into his field under the light of yet another full moon with a scythe whose blade was forged from metal that had once been coins paid to men to purchase the murders of other men. Then he ground the grain into flour with a millstone hewn from a block of stone from a mausoleum, though it screamed all the while. The grain screamed, I mean. The millstone merely wept softly.

What? I skipped threshing? Well, I’m sure whatever he used to thresh the grain it was also something horrible. Probably the winnowing was sinister as well. I think you get the idea, though.

Once the flour was ready he took some and mixed it with a basilisk’s egg, milk from a black unicorn, cinnamon, a pinch of salt, and some blueberries he stole from a neighbor. He heated his oven with wood from a gallows, and he baked the mixture into a dozen of the most perfectly-shaped muffins you’ve ever seen.

Then, of course, there was nothing left to do but try one.

It was perfect.

Afterwards, no one was foolish enough to try one of the other eleven. Not even mold or animals would touch them, and to this day they look as fresh and delicious as they did the day Aurelian baked them.

The lesson to be learned here is not to let a fairy cater your wedding unless you want your guests transformed into trees. And that if you have unspeakable power and a twisted mind, boredom and free time can be dangerous things.

Now, it’s getting late, and I’m hungry. Why don’t you children go find us something to eat. I think I smell someone baking muffins.