This story is part of the Indie Ink Fund Portals worldbuilding challenge.

The Challenge

“This month, we are building a world together.
Portals is a month long worldbuilding challenge hosted by Indie Ink Fund.
Writers and artists are invited to explore what happens when mysterious portals begin appearing across the globe.” Indie Ink Fund

This magical world was inspired by the incomparable Aoife Casey and her magical Flower Faerie creations. She offered a couple of her beautiful pieces for the Spring issue of Moonlight & Mulch, and decided that I needed a custom Faerie of my own. I am absolutely honored to be given such a gift.

During our email correspondence, a few ideas got tossed around, and this idea was the one we both saw potential in. So, with the wonderful inspiration of her stunning artwork, I present to you, “A Land of Liminal Faeries: A tale from the in-between”

Reporting from Oralville: A trip to the dentist.

A letter from the neurons of my brain.

Welcome to the Thirteenth Door. There are twelve doors we pass through without question; The ones marked Childhood, Belonging, Grief, Becoming. Doors we are pushed through. Doors we are pulled through. But the thirteenth door is different. It waits quietly at the edge of memory, behind dream-speak and breathless silence, hidden in the curl of smoke or the soft unraveling of who you thought you were. This is the door you do not find until you are ready to listen. These are ghost stories for the living; not tales of terror, but of remembering. They are the echoes of unlived lives, the voices of the selves you left behind, the fireside confessions of beings made of myth and marrow. Some are haunting. Some are healing. All are true, in the way shadow-truth always is. So, sit by the fire. Let the stories speak. And if you hear a door creak open behind you… don’t be afraid.

You’ve been here before.