Well I must say when I found this forum, I never thought it would turn (quite so quickly) into such a happy literary arena for me - I'm considering, though, whether it is right for me to echo EB by putting more non-erotic fiction up here or whether it should have its own space, or be disallowed altogether ('get your own place' style). Perhaps I should put it up for a vote just as the poetry sections were. I'll see.

Anyway: I rediscovered this today. I can barely, barely remember writing it. But I have decided to put it up for feedback because, being what/who I am, it does actually have lots of lovely over/undertones and possibilities, and as it stands it could go just anywhere... it really doesn't have a plot attached to it yet (broad brush would be an over-statement). Just an idea. Hope you're familiar with the female triad. Sorry I havn't quite worked out how to do the paragraph spacing properly in this editor.

Are you intrigued?

Thanks!
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Chrysalis


The latch rattled momentarily and then the door slammed open, denting the wall and letting in a hackle-raising howl of wind. Leering faces and pointed noses seemed to peep out from the whirl of leaves and water by which this master of gales manifested itself. A sodden Anne-Marie-Flax flew through the gap, petticoats all a-fluster, and yelled,

“Give me a hand, then!” as she pulled frantically at the door to try to force it closed.

Her sister and her mother made no attempt to help her, but pulled their shawls around their shoulders and leant closer in to the fire. Anne-Marie-Flax grappled the door shut with much grunting and whimpering, finally leaning her ample rear full against it to cut out the last few, furious fingers of wind that still tried to pry their way in.

“It’s the world gone mad out there!” she panted, wringing the rain out of her wrap as she rested up against the damaged planks. “Great trees gone, houses flown, and all the livestock wherever you care to imagine, I don’t know how we’ll ever get the fowl back, really I don’t.“

“They’ll come when they’re called.” Chrysalis said calmly over her shoulder. “They always do.”

Anne-Marie-Flax wailed, “But they’ll all be drowned or blown into the next county, Chrys, I swear! And, oh! The poor folk with their houses gone –“

“Badly built. Ours is safe. So.” Chrysalis leant forward and poked the fire with an air of finality, scowling her disapproval of the outside world into it. Anne-Marie-Flax opened her plump mouth to continue, but was now interrupted by a screech from her mother.

“It’s a judgement! It’s the end of time and of all things, they’ve brought the judgement down upon us and the waters will rise to cover the ends of the earth! Ooooooh, wail for the pity of it, cry for the shame, weep for –“

Chrysalis brought the poker crashing down on the arm of the old woman’s chair, just missing her crabbed fingers. She treated her to a formidable glare.

“Shut up, Mother. You are a stupid old crone and Anne-Marie-Flax is a feeble ball of blubber. It is not a judgement, no-one has done anything and the world is not about to end. It’s just a bit of bad weather.” She turned her splendid head towards her sister, whose face was crumpling. “And don’t you start blubbing. Get out of those wet things and we’ll eat. I’ve cooked.”

Having subdued her family, Chrysalis leant back in her chair with a regal air, and stared into the flames with a Mona Lisa smile twitching around her lips. The cat jumped onto her lap and she stroked it thoughtfully, wiggling her toes through the holes in her grey stockings. Her mother muttered and grumbled to herself, twitching her long grey eyebrows at her elder daughter, but too cowed to speak out. Anne-Marie-Flax kicked her boots off in a temper and thumped into the bedroom to change.

She thumped back a few minutes later and laid the table with a great deal of clattering and banging. She pulled back her chair viciously so that it screeched against the tiled floor, and then sat down hard, hitting the table with her knees so that the cups fell over. Chrysalis entirely ignored her until she was sat quietly, then graciously gathered the cat onto the floor and took the pot from above the fire.

“What is it?” Anne-Marie-Flax could never stay angry in the face of food.
“Stew.”
“Oh. I thought we might have something else today.”
“Why?”
“Well – that’s all we’ve eaten for a month. Just stew.”
“That’s all there is. If you don’t like it, you cook.” Chrysalis ladled out three dish-fulls and, disappointed though she was, Anne-Marie-Flax finished hers in no time, and helped herself twice more before the others had finished their first serving.
“It’s just as well,” Chrysalis observed dryly, “that we don’t keep pigs. We’d have no fodder to give them.”
Her sister was too content now to be upset. She was a jolly, good-natured creature, strong and round. She worked hard, doing all the heavy work that was needed around without a man’s help. But she felt that she deserved to eat, and that cooking was not too great a burden for Chrysalis to bear. She pushed herself back from the table and leant her hands on her belly.

“If we kept pigs, we’d have something to eat other than stew, if you knew how to cook anything else.”

Chrysalis simply ignored her, since this was probably an argument that she could not win honourably. She was quite content with life as it was, and had no intention of goading her sister to rebellion. She decided to change the subject.

“This weather, now. We could do well out of it.”

Her mother, always keen to make a profit, pointed her little black eyes at her proud girl, blinking rapidly. Anne-Marie-Flax prompted,

“What do you mean?”

Chrysalis liked an audience, so she took her time gathering their attention. She straightened her back and languorously drew her hands through her long, thick, wavy black hair. The light seemed to concentrate itself around her, casting the rest of the room into shadows. She stretched and yawned and smiled. The others, familiar with her ways, waited.

“We-e-e-e-ell,” she purred, writhing slightly, her tongue flickering against her lips. “The poor folk are frightened, aren’t they? Oh, there are plenty of them that think like my mother does. A judgement, and other such foolery. And if they don’t think it yet, it’d be easy enough to persuade them, wouldn’t it? And then… they’d want to be saved, wouldn’t they?”

Her mother hawked at her impatiently. Chrysalis flared her nose and tossed her head at her, for spoiling the atmosphere that she had been weaving.

“Between us, we can control the feeble creatures entirely, and get anything we want from them. Firstly, the old crone will go out and preach dread to them, to get them into a proper terror of the dire things to come. Then, when they’re all terrified enough, the piglet can tell them all that she knows who can save them. And when the whole country is panicked to its full, they’ll beg her to take them to the saviour, which is me. And I shall save them!”

She slapped the table and sat back triumphant, looking from one to the other for approval. Her mother and sister were not too forth coming with it, though. Her mother, firstly, pointed out that she had no desire to go out and preach in this weather. Her sister, annoyingly practical, pointed out that everyone knew them and wouldn’t believe Chrysalis could help them anyway.

“Hah!” snapped Chrysalis. “That’s all you know! Everyone knows you, you dumpling, and they talk to you well enough. But they don’t know me. They see and watch me from afar. They leer at me, and they whisper about me, but they don’t talk to me. The women think that I use potions to bewitch their men - as if I needed potions. The fools. And our mother – look at her! Have you ever met a better witch? Of course you havn’t, she is perfect, from her crooked nose to her pointed shoes, from her shaggy eyebrows to her gnarled pointing fingers! She cackles. The children run away from her. And you are our perfect fool, child, our innocent. We are the perfect three. We can do anything.”