This is my first time participating in the Storytime Blog Hop. At the bottom of my story are links to everyone else who is participating in the blog hop. There is a wide range of flash fiction, up to 1,000 words. Never know what you might find to enjoy. Get'em a click!

This piece of flash fiction, at 1,000 words only, may or may not become the opening scene in a future series I am planning. It's not the first intro I've written, but it is the one I currently like most.

The deserted streets showed only the stragglers among us headed toward the mountain. “The Fating came a month early this year.”

My mother winced. “Because he wishes to punish me.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what you did?” I ask her, not for the first time. My whole life I have known two things: Rumplestilskin controls us all and my mother angered him before I was born.

Mother reached over to run her hand down my long blond hair, grasping a few strands in her fingers. “You are the greatest thing I have ever done.”

I rolled my eyes, turning away to continue walking. “That’s what you always say.”

“And it is always true.” Her voice is tinged with sadness and a kind of lost hope.

Looking at the few others, all trudging to receive their so-called Fate from Rumple himself, it seemed that we’d all lost what little hope we had left. The grey and brown of our town, unbroken by the flowers, trees, or curtains in old pictures added to the sense of hopelessness.

The furrowed brows and straight lips of each parent, escorting their sixteen-year-old child to the mountain, were a testament to how Rumple’s rule was meted out.

I had turned sixteen yesterday. My mother claimed the announcement that this year’s fating would occur today was a direct result. “So I have no more time with you,” she had sobbed into her ink stained hands after reading the missive.

For myself, I doubted the decision was anything but arbitrary. How could a newly sixteen year old girl with no skills justify changing the time of the Fating? It was beyond imagination.

As we stood at the base of the mountain, the three story high wooden door yawing open before us, Mother turned to me. “Take this with you.”

She handed me a little bundle of waxed paper folded around too-old cheese. The odor was strong enough to reach my nose before I touched it.

“Ew. No. That stinks.”

Mother forced the crinkled mass into my dress pocket. “Of course it does. It hides it.”

I made to remove the package but her hand on my wrist, griping tight enough to bruise me, caused me to raise my eyes to her.

“I can not tell you what I did. Forbidden. But you will learn soon enough.” Mother moved close, her words rushed and low. “Use what is inside to save yourself.”

Dropping my hand, she stepped back, her eyes blanking as if nothing remiss had occurred. She patted my cheek. “You’re a good daughter, Adora.”

Masking my shock at this sudden change, I nodded dutifully and whispered, “I love you, Mother.”

Mother smiled. Looking at her, I noticed the lack of tears in her eyes. Whatever she had given me, she was paying a price in this moment, possibly our last moment together. Mother was never without emotion except on these rare occasions.

Hugging her quickly, feeling her arms spasm around me, knowing that she was fighting the effects of what bound her, I felt the first real fright for what was coming.

Like all the children before me, I entered the mountain and began the climb to Rumple’s throne room. Unlike the others, I knew he was there due to the absence on Moira, the Fate. Without her to guide and rule, Rumple had enslaved Aesotopia a hundred years ago.

At least that’s what my now dead great-grandmother told me when I was young. Today, more than any other day, I felt her loss keenly. Mother loved me, but it was great-gran who had filled my head with the stories of her youth in the days and years before Moira disappeared.

Rumple looked up from his throne as my name was called. He smiled, jagged teeth showing clearly in the overly bright light that illuminated him. His clothes of deep blood red seemed to glisten in the same sinister way as his beady eyes.

“And thus the disobedient scribe’s daughter comes of age. Did your mother tell you that you, my dear, are the reason for her imprisonment?”
​
My answer showed on my face despite my efforts to hide the affect of his words. His grin widened. “Yes, your father and her best friend, the last sleeping beauty, escaped me because of her. I would have made her replace her friend but,” his eyes narrowed at me menacingly, “for the babe within her.”

Rumple leaned back in his seat, waiting for me to reply. I said nothing. Too many thoughts swirled and I knew not to trust him. Granted, I’d known to trust my mother only to learn about her biggest secret.

“Hm, the silent type.” Rumple steepled his fingers, his yellowed nails clacking against each other. “Perhaps you shall fill the void.”

My head tilted of its own accord. Rumple’s smile returned. “You can be the last sleeping beauty. I’m sure your mother will,” he sniffed loudly, “adore watching you sleep forever.”

Before I could fully react, guards were pulling me out of the throne room. My shouts were met with harsh, garish laughter from Rumple and stoney silence from the guards.

A large door opened before me and I was forcibly tossed in, tripping over moldy hay and dirty rags. “Let me out. I have the right to see my mother.”

Minutes passed. I yelled into the silence of the mountain dungeons. No one came, if anyone heard.

I sank to my knees, heading hanging forward against the door, sobbing. I banged my fist into the door, yelping in pain. The smell hit my nose, reminding me. The package.

Taking it out, I turned away from the door, least someone be watching. Cleared of cheese, a small round disk lay in my hand.

I felt for a clasp around the edge. Nothing. Squeezing between thumb and finger, it popped open to reveal a mirror.

My reflection looked a mess. Then I saw the words inscribed below.

I'm playing around with a few new book ideas. In an effort to "pick the right one" I am asking for reader feedback. Here is the very rough, first draft of an opening to a story with the working title Fairy Tale Nymph.

“Amira Declan,” the stern voice of Stephan, my assigned lover, called to me. I groaned. No matter how far I ran, and I was in another world, I still heard his voice in my mind, calling me back.
“Ahhh!” I threw the book on to the floor.
Patrice, the intern assigned to help me at the circulation desk, giggled. “That one doesn’t want to be checked back in, does it?”
Her wide eyes, twinkled blue laughter at me. Then she tilted her head up a notch and the twinkles were hidden behind thick frames.
“Glasses are the worst,” I announced, picking up the book. Patrice pushed her’s up her nose. “They do too good a job hiding your eyes.”
Shrugging slightly, like the way one does if they’ve been teased about their glasses a bit too much in the past, Patrice told me that they were fine. “I like to see and read too much to give them up.”
“What about contacts?”
A nasty look flashed across her face. “Not all of us can wear contacts, Amira.”
It took me a moment to place the irritation. “Ah, right.” Humans routinely thought my purple colored irises were the result of contacts. It was better that they think this than know the truth.
The truth being that nymphs have purple eyes. It’s a sign of our magic. A magic I longed to use here but had to do only sparingly to avoid detection.
For, as long as Stephan was calling to me, he had not found me.


“How about drinks tonight?” I asked Patrice as we were closing up the library. It was an early fall six. The sun hovered at the edge of the horizon, casting it’s red and orange rays through the trees. Trees that no longer rustled with fresh, young leaves. Now, with the encroaching cold that crept into your bones, the leaves were crinkly and browned.
Patrice tucked the scarf around her neck, doing her best not to eye me. “Drink? I’m not much into drinking.”
Her eyes were stopped on my unbuttoned coat. I refused to close the lapels. Instead I stretched my neck and threw my arms wide. “Oh, come on. Winter will be here and we’ll be stuck shuffling through icky, wet melting snow to do anything. Let’s enjoy the night.”
The smile, genuine and radiating pure delight in my behavior surprised me. Patrice was an extremely pretty human. Her curves were in all the right places, if not precisely to the current societal standard. The light blonde hair, nearly white, was unusual for an adult. If the human men would see her fairly glow the way I did, they would be after her like moths to a flame.
It was too bad so many of the human males were stupid. I snorted. Patrice flinched.
Holding out a hand to stop her from leaving, I told her, “I was thinking that men are stupid.”
Her shoulders relaxed, sliding lower on her frame, allowing her neck to peek out about that infernal knitted scarf she insisted on wearing.
“Well that’s true.” Grabbing my hand, one of the only times she had ever touched me, she said, “Come on. I know a place down the street we can walk to.”


“The Peacock?” I stared at a dark brown door sandwiched between chipped brick walls that showed a large degree of missing mortar. “This place looks ready to fall down.”
It was also teaming with pheromones. Male pheromones. The kind that remind me what I truly am, what I was born for: pleasure of an intense physical kind.
“Trust me, it’s totally different inside.” Patrice pushed the door open, leading the way into a bar lit by low LEDs. The mode was not the cattle hustle that I had come to associate with most bars in the area.
This place fairly throbbed with a sense of much more than a one-night stand. People who came here knew each other.
“Hey, Patrice!” The bartender called to her. “I got your favorite in. Come grab a seat.”
 I sniffed the air. The beer and pheromones had hidden it. That quiet scent of a community. This place was filled with families!
Nerves feeling drawn toward their breaking points, I followed Patrice to a spot at the bar. “Hey, Nick! This is Amira. She works at the library with me.”
Nick, the bartender, flashed me a smile and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Shaking his, doing my best to keep my reactions to this bar that was not normal at bay, I replied, “Like wise.”
“So, Nick’s my brother. He owns the bar,” Patrice announced.
Nick nodded and sent a wave toward someone behind us. “Whatever you’re drinking, I’ve got you covered.”
I pointed at Patrice. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Nick snorted. “You’ll be rethinking that.”


“Milk and Irish cream.” Now I was the one shaking my head. “Your drink of choice is milk with Irish cream?”
Patrice grinned, the smile showing off all of her amazingness. “I’m a bookworm at heart.”
I sniffed, turning my nose up at her. “You’re more than that.”
The smile wavered, her lips flattening for a brief moment, before she said, “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
“Good. I meant it that way.”
I’d been in this little town for barely a month. While it was a good place to hide, the longer I was here, the more people I met. Meeting people always led to trouble for me.
“Here’s my boyfriend.”
A guy who would be cursed with pre-mature balding and not know how to carrying himself because of it walked up. “Patti.” He bussed her cheek, barely noticing that she wished to be kissed.
His eyes were fixed on me. On my open coat. “Who’s this?”
Patrice sent a frown my way. It was happening. “Jim, this is Amira, my colleague at the library.”
Jim moved too close for a hand shake. “Hey there.”
I stepped away, leaving my drink on the bar. “Patrice, I’ve got to get going. Thanks for showing me this place. See you tomorrow?”
Patrice glanced at Jim, who was scowling at me and my refusal to accept him. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”
I waved at Nick when I reached the door. Nodding toward his sister, I got Nick to head toward them. Patrice had her hand on Jim’s arm, clearly trying to keep him from leaving.
I slipped out the door hoping Jim wouldn’t be the ass I knew he was. For Patrice’s sake, not for his.


I heard the grunting sound of him, hurrying after me all too soon. “Damn. I really hate human males,” I muttered. My mind challenged me, reminding that I hated being controlled by anyone, even my own kind, even more.
Jim was pounding down the sidewalk, headed straight toward me. I had to decide fast how to deal with him. Kill him outright or simply scare and harm? Both were risky, on more than one level.
As his extra fleshy hand reached for me, I whipped around, sending my bent knee directly into his engorged crotch. He crumpled with a whimpered hiss of pain.
I paced around his collapsed body. “You’re such a loser.” The words snapped from me, fueling a rage that had less to do with him and everything to do with Stephan.
“Patrice is better than you will ever deserve and you, you pathetic whelp of a man, are too stupid to see anything over than her boobs.”
I leveled a foot into his backside, making sure it contacted his testiciles. “Human males are such frail mates for their women. Your bodies decay so fast.”
 “What are you jabbering on about, you stupid bi…”
Jim’s mouth filled with blood. This may have been a result of my foot striking him in the face.
I leaned down close to him. His eyes, yet again because he really personified idiocy, fixated on my clevage. “What’s your favorite fairy tale?”
He licked his lips. “The snow queen,” he panted, the noise grossing me out. I felt pity for Patrice that this wastrel was probably the best she had ever had.
Closing my eyes, I pulled the anger and disappointment into me, let it flow through my veins. “I’ll make sure Patrice doesn’t miss you for long.”
“Wha?”
The word froze along with his heart at a single touch. “Winter came early for you, Jim.”


My skin was on fire. Using magic, the sign of my people, created an aching need for a pyhscial fulfillment. The kind I had reveled in with Stephan.
“I feel you,” his voice sounded in my head.
“I know,” I whispered back into the darkness enveloping the street and my path back to the library.
Most humans think of magic as something that builds up and is released. It isn’t. Magic, the kind that nymphs possess, grows stronger and more demanding with each use. It never disapates.
Every use of magic requires a physical release to keep it from consuming you. It’s why nymphs are mated for life at our birth. Since we’re born straight from the water in adult form, we learn to use and control our magic together.
The bond is incredibly intense. Breaking away from Stephan and our realm had taken more magic than any nymph had previously tried to hold within them.
I had used ten human males in a matter of hours to decrease the internal potency. To this day I thanked this world for frat houses and beer.
Beer.
That’s where I needed to go. A place that sold beer. But not back to the Peacock. I paused in mid-step.
Or maybe going back would solve two problems.


“He followed you, didn’t he?” Patrice was on me the second I crossed the threshold. Anger, embarrassment, and an ego wound too deep to heal blazed from her.
I nodded. “He did. I cracked his nuts for you.”
She stopped in sudden shock, her expression caught between that moment when you meant to yell but need to laugh. Her cheeks softened, the lips twisting upwards in the slightest bit. “You did?”
I took my coat off, draping it on a hook near the door. Straightening my outfit, I replied, “Yeah, I did. I think you should officially break up with him.”
Her lips, pursed. “I think I already did. Though…”
“If I hadn’t come back, you’d be hating me now.”
I got a firm nod. “Yeah.”
I waved my hand toward the bar. “Well, I’m a little ramped up and could use another drink. What you say about us celebrating your newly single state?”
We sat at the bar. This time I ordered a double shot of tequila for both of us. 
Three double shots later, I leaned toward Patrice, using her presence to keep my ass on the stool. “We’re going to find you a great guy,” I promised her.
“Damn right we are!”
We tossed back the shots, screamed as the fire blazed a trail down our throats, and slammed the shot glasses on to the bar.
“You two are having way too much fun,” Nick smiled at me, adding a wink and a thank you when Patrice looked away.
“We’re just getting started,” I told him, holding up the shot he’d just filled before downing it and demanding another.
A soft male voice, one that rung earnest and kind, asked, “Can I buy you a drink?”
I looked to my left only to realize he was asking Patrice. “Yes, you can,” I told him, pushing Patrice off the stool and into his arms.
His eyes gleamed with happiness, excited over his good luck. He was perfect for Patrice.
She looked nervously at me. I whispered, “He’s the one. Go.”
And, as if I were the parent, she did. They were holding hands and talking up a storm at a nearby table less than five minutes later.
“You need to find someone too,” his voice sounded inside me. I wanted him inside me in a very different way. He laughed. “You’re the one who put this distance between us.”
I groaned. “Can I help?” a preppy blonde who probably went to the college in town asked.
I looked him up and down like a lolly pop I couldn’t wait to suck on. Smiling, “Yes, I think you can.” 


The preppy blonde was good for a single hand job in the alley. “These men are not worthy of you,” Stephan’s voice taunted me.
“It took the edge off,” I groused back at him.
“Barely. I’m still rock hard.”
Into my mind flared the sight of him holding himself and stroking in front of a mirror. “Find another.”
I growled in lust. “I plan to.”