I’ve been writing for a fair number of years now, and one thing I’ve never been able to work up the nerve to do is ask someone if I could write something inspired by something they created. There have been plenty of times I’ve really considered it, but never quite had the nerve or motivation to ask.
One day, relatively recently, a four-line story crossed my Dashboard (let’s just gloss over the fact I was on Tumblr, please). I did what I typically would do: liked it, reblogged it, and moved along. And then it stuck with me. Those four lines rattled around in my brain, a frequent distraction.
So, after a bit of debating on the matter, I messaged caliginosity (who originally posted “the stories fairytales don’t tell”) and asked if I could write a short story based around, and inspired by, their post. Here’s the source material, which can be viewed in its original state here:
The prince fought valiantly.
He slayed the dragon.
The princess cried for days.
She loved that dragon.
— The stories fairytales don’t tell
The short story it inspired ended up a little over nine pages. I’m hoping it did the source material justice. Special thanks, again, to caliginosity for letting me write this (so long as I credited the original work and author, of course). Anyway, without further introduction, here’s “The Forgotten Side to a Fairytale.”
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Phil's Misadventures In Fiction 