“Are you the witch who turned eleven princes into swans?”
The old woman stared at the figure on the front step of her cottage and considered her options. It was the kind of question usually backed up by a mob with meaningful torches, and the kind of question she tried to avoid.
Coming from a single dusty, tired housewife, it should’ve held no terrors.
“You a cop?”
The housewife twisted the hem of her apron. “No,” she muttered. “I’m a swan.”
A raven croaked somewhere in the woods. Wind whispered in the autumn leaves.
Then: “I think I can guess,” the old woman said slowly. “Husband stole your swan skin and forced you to marry him?”
A nod.
“And you can’t turn back into a swan until you find your skin again.”
A nod.
“But I reckon he’s hidden it, or burned it, or keeps it locked up so you can’t touch it.”
A tiny, miserable nod.
“And then you hear that old Granny Rothbart who lives out in the woods is really a batty old witch whose father taught her how to turn princes into swans,” the old woman sighed. “And you think, ‘Hey, stuff the old skin, I can just turn into a swan again this way.’
“But even if that was true – which I haven’t said if it is or if it isn’t – I’d say that I can only do it to make people miserable. I’m an awful person. I can’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness. I can’t use magic to make you feel better. I only wish I could.”
Another pause. “If I was a witch,” she added.
The housewife chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she drew herself up and, for the first time, looked the old woman in the eyes.
“Can you do it to make my husband miserable?”
The old woman considered her options. Then she pulled the wand out from the umbrella stand by the door. It was long, and silver, and a tiny glass swan with open wings stood perched on the tip.
“I can work with that,” said the witch.
Ellipsus timer feature that tells you how much you wrote in that time is genuinely a game changer. 10 minutes on the timer, guaranteed locked in for those 10 minutes, 250-300 words every time, rinse and repeat however many times I want throughout the day. I feel like I hacked my attention span by imposing a time limit that doesn’t let me get distracted or I’ll lose my made up competition with my previous sprints, but is also not such a long period of time that I’ll get bored or feel overwhelmed.
end of january affirmations
im not doing anything wrong and no one is mad at me
there must be a place for me in this world because here i am
my art doesnt suck
instagram is nothing to me
So I bashed my head into the ceiling fan light fixture in my bedroom and destroyed it (my head is unscathed) and have since replaced it. However. I've decided to turn the mangled remains of that light fixture into a disco solar system, so I'm painting up some disco balls. Mayhem is a VERY big fan of disco balls.











