#eelgrass by tori curtis

[nellasbookplanet]

While I enjoy romantic imodna and would celebrate with the rest of you were they to become canon, my preference leans toward platonic, largely because we so rarely get to see relationships this deeply intense and all-encompassing as platonic. A character's significant other, their life partner, their Person, is almost always also their romantic partner.

But you know what’s even rarer? Romantic and platonic being portrayed side by side, co-existing and equally important, because you can love and share your life with more than one person. Most of the time, the characters have to choose. Vex and Vax split to live with their romantic partners long before Vax's untimely end. Caleb and Veth separate to different cities. The narrative forces Yasha and Molly apart.

Imogen and Laudna are each other’s People. But they have also talked about attraction toward other's in the past (and more recently, Laudna's crush on Ira). What would it look like if one or both of them got romantically involved with someone else, but without letting it change their connection? Could we see something almost like a polyamorous relationship, with one romantic life partner and one platonic, where they are never made to choose one over the other?

So many stories and fan-metas uplift the romantic as superior. The few that don’t instead uplift the platonic. But they don’t need to be pitted against each other. You can have more than one important person in your life. I'd love to see that portrayed.

[bee-fabulous]

moodboard:

@sapphicliterature ‘s November read

Eelgrass by Tori Curtis

[stupidlytender]

@sapphicliterature‘s november read

eelgrass by tori curtis

[duine-aiteach]

Irish LGBT+ Content

These lists include LGBT pieces set in Ireland, LGBT pieces with Irish main characters, LGBT pieces as Gaeilge, and LGBT pieces created by Irish people, often they overlap but not always. Feel free to suggest things I ought to add or offer corrections for mistakes I've made.

Please note that the inclusion on this list does not mean I recommend the piece in question - I am familiar with only a few.

Where possible links lead to RTÉ player, TG4 player, YouTube or official sites. Not all links lead to pieces that are available to watch at the time of posting.

Television:

Eipic (2016) [gay, as G]

Derry Girls [lesbian]

Ros na Rún [soap, as G]

Fair City [soap, trans m briefly]

6Degrees [mlm, NI]

Film:

The Crying Game (1992)

Cowboys and Angels (2003)

The Blackwater Lightship (2004) [based off book below]

Breakfast on Pluto (2005) [trans f]

Viva (2015) [mlm, Irish writer/director only, in Spanish]

Handsome Devil (2017) [gay, mlm]

Papi Chulo (2019) [gay, Irish writer/director only]

Rialto (2019) [mlm]

Dating Amber (2020) [gay, lesbian]

Shorts:

Chicken (2002)

Lúbtha (2019) [mlm]

The First Saturday of May (2019) [trans]

Scene from the Men's Toilets at a Ceilidh (2019)

OUT (2020)

Candid (2020)

Punch Line (trans f)

Boxed In (trans m)

Cailín Álainn [trans f, as G]

Where Do All The Old Gays Go? [trans]

Homebird [trans]

Books:

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872) [wlw, Irish writer only]

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890) [mlm, outside Ireland]

As Music and Splendour by Kate O'Brien (1958) [wlw, outside Ireland]

A Noise from the Woodshed by Mary Dorcey (1989) [lesbian, anthology]

The Kiss by Linda Cullen (1990)

When Love Comes to Town by Tom Lennon (1993) [gay]

Hood by Emma Donoghue (1995) [wlw]

Biography of Desire by Mary Dorcey (1997) [wlw]

Breakfast On Pluto by Patrick McCabe (1998) [trans f, bi]

Crazy Love by Tom Lennon (1999) [gay]

The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín (1999) [gay]

The International by Glenn Patterson (1999) [bi]

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill (2001) [mlm]

A Son Called Gabriel by Damian McNicholl (2004) [NI, gay]

The Master by Colm Tóibín (2004) [mlm, Irish writer only]

Stir-Fry by Emma Donoghue (2006) [wlw]

Landing by Emma Donoghue (2007) [wlw]

Map of Ireland by Stephanie Grant (2008) [wlw, Irish-American]

Falling Colours: The Misadventures of a Vision Painter by R.J. Samuel (2012) [wlw]

The Rarest Rose by I. Beacham (2013) [wlw, Irish character, non-Irish writer]

To Summon Nightmares by J.K. Pendragon (2014) [trans, mlm]

Carolyn for Christmas by Lucy Carey (2015) [lesbian]

The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle (2015) [bi, lesbian]

The Green Road by Anne Enright (2015) [gay]

Wormwood Gate by Katherine Farmar (2015) [wlw]

A Good Hiding by Shirley-Anne McMillan (2016) [NI, gay]

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (2016) [mlm, outside Ireland]

Eelgrass by Tori Curtis (2016) [wlw, Irish myth inspired only?, non-Irish writer]

All the Bad Apples by Moïra Fowley-Doyle (2017)

Forget Me Not by Kris Bryant (2017) [wlw]

The Art of Three by Erin McRae & Racheline Maltese (2017) [bi, polyam, Irish character, non-Irish writers]

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne (2017) [gay]

The Spellbook of Lost and Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle (2017) [wlw]

The Unknowns by Shirley-Anne McMillan (2017) [NI, bi m, bi f]

My Brother's Name Is Jessica by John Boyne (2019) [trans f]

Every Sparrow Falling by Shirley-Anne McMillan (2019) [NI, mlm]

Perfectly Preventable Deaths (2019) and Precious Catastrophe (2021) by Deirdre Sullivan [wlw]

The Falling in Love Montage by Ciara Smyth (2020) [wlw]

The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar (2020) [lesbian]

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue (2020) [wlw]

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan (2021) [bi f, wlw]

Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar (2021) [bi f, wlw]

Not My Problem by Ciara Smyth (2021)

The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar (2023) [wlw]

Heartstopper by Alice Oseman, as Gaeilge by @heartstopper-i-ngaeilge (2024)[mlm, wlw, as G only]

Nonfiction:

Please be aware especially for this section that the pieces listed may be upsetting or cover difficult topics.

Print:

The Strange Story of Dr James Barry by Isobel Rae (1958) [biography: Barry, trans m]

The Perfect Gentleman by June Rose (1977) [biography: Barry, trans m]

Love In a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodóvar by Colm Tóibín (2002) [essay collection]

The Secret Life of Dr James Barry by Rachel Holmes (2002/2020) [biography: Barry, trans m]

Queer & Celtic edited by Wesley J Koster (2013) [anthology]

Running Amach in Ireland: True Stories by LGBTQ Women edited by Maureen Looney (2016) [essay anthology]

Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time by Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield (2016) [biography: Barry, trans m]

Green Carnations/Glas na Gile edited by John Ennis & Moxie Lofton (2021) [poetry anthology]

Screen:

A Different Country (2017) [pre-1993 documentary]

Outitude (2018) [lesbian documentary]

Tabú: Tras (2020) [trans m, trans f, as G]

Seal le Dáithí - Niamh Ní Féineadh (2023) [as G, trans f]

Scéalta Grá na hÉireann: Eleanor Butler & Sarah Ponsonby (2023) [as G, wlw]

Misneach: Ceist Bhróid (2023) [as G, gay]

Croíthe Radacacha (2023) [as G, wlw]

Aiteach Ní Aisteach [as G, queer]

[the-modern-typewriter]

I love your bool recs and I was wondering if you could do some more soon?? I really trust your taste and I'm out of stuff to read. As a lesbean, I personally adored your lgbt books rec post, btw.

I know lesbean is a typo. But now I’m imagining gay little beans and it’s adorable. Anyhow. Previous rec here for reference, I’m trying not repeat.

Lesbian books I’ve read and enjoyed since October 2017/last rec post:

- Literally all of Kirsty Logan’s stuff. I have recced her before, but seeing as I have read more since, I will do it again: The Portable Shelter, The Gracekeeper, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales. (All wonderful, fairytale/magical realism esque, a bit dark, a bit hopeful, and more than a bit gay. I am buying a kindle solely to read her ebook short stories. Enough said.)

- The Well of Loneliness, by Radcliffle Hall. (Sad at times, but a classic, and very well written. It’s one of the first published Lesbian novels from 1926, but it reads quite modern in the style) 

-  A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers (Lesbians. Sci fi. Aliens.)

- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg  (Historical romance? American South? One of those spanning a life type novels. I wasn’t jaw dropped by awe, but I enjoyed it. It was a cosy book.)

- As an author, watch out for Emma Donaghue. She’s a great writer and she does a lot of LGBT stuff, like my previously recced fave “Kissing the Witch”, but also “Frog Music” and other things.

A shortened version of my lesbian to-read list: Eelgrass, by Tori Curtis, When Fox is a Thousand, by Larissa Lai, Curious Wine, by Katherine V. Forrest, Art and Lies, by Jeanette Winterson, Hood, by Emma Donaghue

You might enjoy this tumblr @fuckyeahlesbianliterature​

Other LGBT books I’ve read recently and would recommend. 

- Shades of Magic series, by V. E Swchab. Includes “A Darker Shade of Magic,” “A Gathering of Shadows” and “A Conjuring of Light.” (OH MY GOD. My love, my life. The most main characters aren’t LGBT and it’s not a major part of the trilogy, but this series is amazing so I will take any excuse to rec it and the LGBT love isn’t a line and you miss it either. It’s very much there. Anyway, this might be my favourite series that I’ve read in a really long time. Fantastic villains. I recced it for the entire month of November immediately after devouring the trilogy, which shows you how much I loved it. There’s not a single character I didn’t adore. Also. Fantasy! Fantasy for adults!!!!)

- Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of The Universe, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Cute, romance, YA but sometimes we all like a bit of gay YA. I sped through this book, I really enjoyed it, couldn’t put it down.)

- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. (One of the main characters is gay, though it’s not a huge part. But this is a great book, it’s all about comics post the second World War, Jewish Protags, I have recced it before as part of my book-a-month recs. It’s so good.)

A shortened version of on my immediate GBT to read list: Tin Man, by Sarah Winman, The Vitner’s Luck, by Elizabeth Knox, Call Me By Your Name, by André Aciman, 

Other books that I’ve read and loved  and am recommending because you gave me an excuse:

The Secret History, by Donna Tart (Fave!!!)

The Invisible Circus, by Jennifer Egan (I love Jennifer Egan, Look at Me is my second fave of hers. This is perfect if you’re 18, or you’ve just graduated, or are a little unsure on where you belong in life.)

Anything and everything by Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Sharp Objects, Dark Places, The Grown Up

The Lover’s Dictionary, by David Levitan

When God Was a Rabbit, Sarah Winman (this may also have a small LGBT hint if I am remembering correctly. Mostly I remember loveliness. Sarah Winman has a uniquely lovely writing voice.)

The Picture of Dorian Grey, by Oscar Wilde (One of my classic faves. Slightly gay, being dear Oscar Wilde, beautifully written, and gothicly fantastic as many of my favourites are.)

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. (Noble Prize Winner of Literature yo, this man.)

And If you’re feeling a bit less plotty and a bit more literary awe:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera 

Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels

[shiraglassman]

Selkie/siren f/f historical fantasy EELGRASS becomes one of my top reads of 2017

Review originally posted on The Lesbrary. Eelgrass by Tori Curtis is an intimidating book to review because reading it was such a powerful experience that I’m scared of failing to do it justice. It mirrors its protagonist’s span of two worlds — she’s a selkie so both the sea and the shore communities are home — inasmuch as it comfortably straddles Irish historical fantasy and literary fiction (as well as lesfic!) It’s firmly woman-centered; most of the characters are women whose motivation is keeping other women safe.

This is the kind of book where a selkie asks a siren the What are we relationship question. I will reproduce the following deliciously incongruous quote here: “Around here, people decide they want to get to know each other and they — they court. And if that goes well, they marry. Are we courting?” This juxtaposition of conservative, period-piece village daintiness with a literal seal-woman and a bloodthirsty mermaid, I mean, freaking sign me up and sell me the Extras package.

The core of the story is Efa’s drive to rescue her best friend and fellow selkie Bettan from the fate every selkie woman knows about from birth–if a human man gets a hold of your sealskin, you become bound to him. When we finally get to see this up close, it’s a sort of emotional slavery that’s as subtle as feathers but harsh and binding below the surface.

Bettan and Efa’s relationship is the foundation of the book’s story, and I’m very drawn to stories of women as rescuers, especially of each other. I also really like how intense but platonic they were together, because it reaffirms that f/f and f-f friendship stories can support and coexist each other rather than threatening each other. Bettan and Efa literally promise to be best friends forever, which felt good to read.

I loved all the care and thought Curtis put into the details of her worldbuilding. For example, the selkie civilization on human land is more suited to their biology than human villages would be — the houses are very simple, shops are run out of the houses instead of being in separate buildings, etc. In the nearby human village, selkies are accepted as real–they’re othered and exoticized a little, but they’re a familiar presence. In contrast, sirens (called “fishwives” by the humans) are treated as more fantastical. As Efa says:

“I didn’t know fishwives were real,” she said, barely able to form the words over her blush. People told stories about them, but then, people told stories about kings, too. She’d never known anyone who met one.

As for Ninka the Siren/Fishwife herself, here she is in one quote:“Whatever I want. I go exploring, and fish, and bother sailors and seduce young women on the seashore.” Sounds like a nice life! I’d ask where I can sign up, except violins are easily waterlogged.

Ninka is described as “so beautiful Efa didn’t know how she’d ever thought she’d want boys.” Speaking of which, I loved the worldbuilding’s approach to queerness. For example, here’s a conversation between Efa and a male siren:

“I was with a human once. It didn’t end well.”

“With,” she repeated.

“A blacksmith,” he said.

Efa scrunched up her nose. “That’s as human as you can get without being a miner,” she said. And then frowned. “Are all sirens – do men always fall in love with other men?”

“A lot of us do,” he said, “but she was a woman.”

I like the creative decision to have selkie culture and siren culture show different approaches to male-male and female-female love—Efa’s community never presented it as an option, but it’s totally commonplace in Ninka’s. I don’t think I’ve run into this before, this contrast between two different fantasy creature communities. Usually it’s all “how does this group differ from humans.”

The entire book draws heavily on symbolism that can easily parallel real-world sexual assault, domestic violence, or bisexual women coerced into permanent relationships with allo cis hetero men rather than pursuing happiness with any gender wherever life leads them (which, yes, may happen to be a man like that but that’s different from ending up with one through social pressure.)

The most poignant and pithy representation of these connections is when Bettan asks Efa, “What if he turned me human?” What if he changed me irrevocably? What if I’ve lost something that made me fundamentally me? This works for all of these real-world parallels. Another quote: “You think people can’t do those kinds of things to you, but obviously they can.” And then, when Efa says, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re free now.” I’m probably making this sound heavy-handed, but it’s really not. It’s exquisite.

After all–

“But no one will take this seriously. It happens all the time.”

“I don’t see why we don’t stop it,” she said. . . . There were selkies who came home ten years, twenty years later, their sealskin won back, and never spoke of what had happened while it was kept from them. There were mothers so determined not to be trapped that they abandoned their sons and daughters. Efa knew people, a dozen of them at least, who stayed away from their human forms forever out of fear that their sealskin might be taken again. She couldn’t imagine losing one world to save the other, but they did it, and trembled at the thought of shedding their sealskins.

There may be some awkward and unintentional racial coding going on in the selkies having slightly darker skin than the human characters–between that and the “lol you’re sexy but exotic and othered” treatment from the human fishermen, plus all the themes of escaping coercion, one could see symbolism for women of color. However, as a fairly light-skinned white Jew, I’m still darker than the white Irish people in my life, so the selkies could still be white if thinking of them any other way gets awkward. A WoC will be better able to speak to this than I can.

Speaking of marginalization, though, the book had a neat moment where Efa forgets about the existence of Deaf people and Ninka (the siren) corrects her. Again, here for a siren “calling in” a selkie as if they were both, like, activist friends of mine or something.

I’m not sure if I was reading an earlier draft because I was given a review copy as a Lesbrary reviewer, but halfway through the book random hyphens started appearing in words that weren’t at the end of lines on the mobile version. It happened at least three or four times and I just wanted to give a heads up that other than this, the book was impeccably edited and didn’t have any other artifacts of Indie Life. Also, I’m not a fan of the cover and feel that it gives the wrong impression of the contents; it looks too modern to me and almost looks like a beachy wedding shoot. Would love to see it with the kind of sweeping fantasy art the story cries out for.

The ending is a little bit unresolved as far as relationships go – there’s an unambiguous f/f ending for Efa that seems like it could lead to future complications (but I’m pretty sure there’s a sequel in the works) plus a m/f resolution for other characters that seemed like a giant maybe. But life itself is unresolved and in continual flow, so I don’t have a problem with this. The plot and adventure part of the story are definitely resolved and complete, and overall this was a riveting read that I’m awarding five stars for quality and being thoroughly absorbing.

Trigger warning for on-the-page controlling husband behavior and “underwater fantasy violence”, as the MPAA might phrase it. These are not Lisa Frank mermaids.

Also, this book will make you thoroughly hungry for fish (if you eat fish.)

[readingallthethings9490]

Sapphic-A-Thon is only 4 days away!!!

So, as SapphicAThon quickly approaches (AT LAST!!!) I’m sorta revamping some of my reading plans and figuring out priority reading order~

It has come to my attention (thank you, Twitter) that Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember has some seriously problematic enby rep, and with my mental health already being wibbly of lately, I’m going to avoid it for the time being. If you’re curious about the problematic rep, this rep by Dax goes into depth - fey also were one whose tweet I saw warning about that book needing a CW for enby rep. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1990759466

So, I went to the library and found SO. MANY. F/F books and now I wanna try and include them because originally I was mostly planning to stick with things on my kindle. This way I can read one thing on my kindle/phone while “working” and read library books during breaks and the like.

ASH and HUNTRESS by Malinda Lo are at the top of my SapphicAThon TBR, and these books fulfill QWOC MC square (ASH) and BOTH WOC square (HUNTRESS).

GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS by Melissa Bashardoust is next in physical books, which fulfills FAIRY TALE RETELLING square.

On Kindle, CHAMELEON MOON by RoAnna Sylver is priority and fulfills TRANS MC square. This is a book I’ve been wanting to read for AGES but keep getting sidetracked. I’m finishing up STAKE SAUCE by the same author and RoAnna is amazing at sensitive character writing and their friendships are soooooo beautiful.

Also priority on Kindle is EELGRASS by Tori Curtis, which fulfills the SF/F square.

Third kindle priority is EITAN’S CHORD by Shira Glassman, which fulfills JEWISH MC square. I’m especially excited to read this one bc it’s a Hanukkah story and, hey, perfect time to read it because SapphicAThon starts on second day of Hanukkah.

Oh, also on kindle is VILLAINS DON’T DATE HEROES! by Mia Archer, which will fulfill HATE TO LOVE square.

I’ve also got GRRLS ON THE SIDE by Carrie Pack, NOT LIKE ITS A SECRET by Misa Sugiura, and GIRL MANS UP by M-E Girard from the library, and I’m going to find a way to fit those in! Two weeks isn’t very long, especially with full time work schedule and other responsibilities, and not necessarily working towards any BINGO stripes, but I’m going to read as much as I can - and have fun doing it!!

[biandlesbianliterature]

Shira Glassman reviews Eelgrass by Tori Curtis

Eelgrass by Tori Curtis is an intimidating book to review because reading it was such a powerful experience that I’m scared of failing to do it justice. It mirrors its protagonist’s span of two worlds — she’s a selkie so both the sea and the shore communities are home — inasmuch as it comfortably straddles Irish historical fantasy and literary fiction (as well as lesfic!) It’s firmly…

[glittership]

Episode #57 - "You Inside Me" by Tori Curtis

Download this episode (right click and save)

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 57 is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL and is part of the Autumn 2017/Winter 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/

    You Inside Me

by Tori Curtis

  It’ll be fun, he’d said. Everyone’s doing it. You don’t have to be looking for romance, it’s just a good way to meet people.

“I don’t think it’s about romance at all,” Sabella said. She wove her flower crown into her braids so that the wire skeleton was hidden beneath strands of hair. “I think if you caught a congressman doing this, he’d have to resign.”

“That’s ’cause we’ve never had a vampire congressman,” Dedrick said. He rearranged her so that her shoulders fell from their habitual place at her ears, her chin pointed up, and snapped photos of her. “Step forward a little—there, you look more like yourself in that light.”

  Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 57 for May 21st, 2018. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to share this story with you.

GlitterShip is now part of the Audible afflilate program. What this means is that just by listening to GlitterShip, you are eligible to get a free audio book and 30 day trial at Audible to check out the service.

If you’re looking for more queer science fiction to listen to, there’s a full audio book available of the Lightspeed Magazine “Queers Destroy Science Fiction” special issue, featuring stories by a large number of queer authors, including  John Chu, Chaz Brenchley, R.B. Lemberg, and many others.

To download a free audiobook today, go to http://www.audibletrial.com/GlitterShip and choose an excellent book to listen to, whether that’s “Queers Destroy Science Fiction” or something else entirely.

Today I have a story and a poem for you. The poem is “Dionysus in London” by Tristan Beiter.

Tristan Beiter is a student at Swarthmore College studying English Literature and Gender and Sexuality Studies. He loves reading poetry and speculative fiction, some of his favorite books being The Waste Land, HD’s Trilogy, Mark Doty’s Atlantis, Frances Hardinge’s Gullstruck Island, and Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. When not reading or writing, he can usually be found crafting absurdities with his boyfriend or yelling about literary theory.

  Dionysus in London

by Tristan Beiter

  The day exploded, you know.

Last night a woman with big bouffant hair told me, “Show me a story where the daughter runs into a stop sign and it literally turns into a white flower.”

I fail to describe a total eclipse and the throne of petrified wood sank into the lakebed.

James made love to Buckingham while I pulled the honeysuckle to me, made a flower crown for the leopards flanking me while I watched red and white invert themselves, white petals pushing from the center of the sign as the post wilted until all that remained was a giant lotus on the storm grate waiting to rot or wash away.

I let it stay there while the Scottish king hid behind the Scottish play and walked behind me, one eye out for the mark left when locked in. You go witchy in there—or at least you—or he, or I—learn to be afraid of the big coats and brass buttons, like the ones in every hall closet; you never know if they will turn, like yours, into bats and bugs and giant tarantulas made from wire hangers.

The woman showed me our reflections in the shop window while one or the other man in the palace polished the silver for his lover’s table and asked me who I loved; I decided on the cream linen, since the wool was too close to the pea coat that hung

by your door. I suppose that the cat is under the car; that’s probably where it fled to as we walked, knowing we already found that the ivy in your hair was artificial as the bacchanal, or your evasion, Sire, of the question (and of the serpents who are well worth the well offered to them with the wet wax on my crown). I

suppose the car is under the cat, in which case it must be a very large cat, or else a very small car. I eat your teeth. I see brilliantine teeth floating in her thick red lipstick. James tears apart the rhododendron chattering (about) his incisors and remembering the flesh and—nothing so exotic as a Sphinx, maybe a dust mote or lip-marks left on the large leather chaise. Teeth gleam from the shadows where I wait, thyrsus raised with the cone almost touching the roof of the forest, to drown

in a peacock as it swallows (chimney swifts?) the sun—or was it son—or maybe it was just a grape I fed it so it would eat the spiders crawling from the closet. It struts across the palace green like it owns the place, like it will replace the hunting- grounds with fields of straggling mint that the king would never ask for.

The woman teases up her hair before the mirror, filling the restroom with hairspray and big laughs before walking back into the restaurant, where we wait to make ourselves over—the way the throne did when the wood crumbled under the pressure of an untold story, leaving nothing but crystals and dust.

We argued for an hour over whether to mix leaves and flowers, plants and gems, before settling on four crowns, one for each of us.

Her hair mostly covers hers. The cats will love it though, playing with teeth that were knocked into your wine in the barfight (why did you order wine in a place like that, Buck?) and you got replaced with gold, like I wear woven in my braids as the sun sets on the daughter that, unsurprisingly, none of us have. But

if we did, she would turn yield signs into dahlias and that would be the sign to move on with the leopards and their flashing teeth and brass eyes and listen. To the walls and rivers, to the sculpture that is far whiter than me falling. And to the peacock which has just eaten another bug so you don’t have to kill it. Get yourself a dresser and cover it with white enamel it’ll hold up, and no insects live in dressers. Keep

the ivy and the pinecone in a mother-of-pearl trinket box with your plastic volumizing hair inserts and jeweled combs. And put a cat and dolphin on it, to remember.

    Next, our short story this episode is “You Inside Me” by Tori Curtis

Tori Curtis writes speculative fiction with a focus on LGBT and disability issues. She is the author of one novel, Eelgrass, and a handful of short stories. You can find her at toricurtiswrites.com and on Twitter at @tcurtfish, where she primarily tweets about how perfect her wife is.

CW: For descriptions of traumatic surgery.

  You Inside Me

by Tori Curtis

  It’ll be fun, he’d said. Everyone’s doing it. You don’t have to be looking for romance, it’s just a good way to meet people.

“I don’t think it’s about romance at all,” Sabella said. She wove her flower crown into her braids so that the wire skeleton was hidden beneath strands of hair. “I think if you caught a congressman doing this, he’d have to resign.”

“That’s ’cause we’ve never had a vampire congressman,” Dedrick said. He rearranged her so that her shoulders fell from their habitual place at her ears, her chin pointed up, and snapped photos of her. “Step forward a little—there, you look more like yourself in that light.”

He took fifteen minutes to edit her photos (“they’ll expect you to use a filter, so you might as well,”) and pop the best ones on her profile.

Suckr: the premier dating app for vampires and their fanciers.

“It’s like we’re cats,” she said.

“I heard you like cats,” he agreed, and she sighed.

    Hi, I’m Sabella. I’ve been a vampire since I was six years old, and I do not want to see or be seen by humans. I’m excited to meet men and women between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five.

“That’s way too big of an age range,” Dedrick said. “You want to be compatible with these people.”

“Yeah, compatible. Like my tissue type.”

“You don’t want to end up flirting with a grandpa.”

I’m excited to meet men and women between the ages of twenty and thirty-five.

I’m most proud of my master’s degree.

You should message me if you’re brave and crazy.

    It took days, not to mention Dedrick’s exasperated return, before she went back on Suckr. She paced up the beautiful wood floors of her apartment, turning on heel at the sole window on the long end and the painted-over cast-iron radiator on the short. When she felt too sick to take care of herself, her mom came over and put Rumors on, wrapped her in scarves that were more pretty than functional, warmed some blood and gave it to her in a sippy cup. Sabella remembered nothing so much as the big Slurpees her mom had bought her, just this bright red, when she’d had strep the last year she was human.

She wore the necklace Dedrick had given her every day. It was a gold slice of pepperoni pizza with “best” emblazoned on the back (his matched, but read “friends,”), and she fondled it like a hangnail. She rubbed the bruises on her arms, where the skin had once been clear and she’d once thought herself pretty in a plain way, like Elinor Dashwood, as though she might be able to brush off the dirt.

She called her daysleeper friends, texted acquaintances, and slowly stopped responding to their messages as she realized how bored she was of presenting hope day after day.

    2:19:08 bkissedrose: I’m so sorry.

2:19:21 bkissedrose: I feel like such a douche

2:19:24 sabellasay: ???

2:20:04 sabellasay: what r u talkin about

2:25:56 bkissedrose: u talked me down all those times I would’ve just died

2:26:08 sabellasay: it was rly nbd

2:26:27 bkissedrose: I’ve never been half as good as you are

2:26:48 bkissedrose: and now you’re so sick

2:29:12 sabellasay: dude stop acting like i’m dying

2:29:45 sabellasay: I can’t stand it

2:30:13 bkissedrose: god you’re so brave

  (sabellasay has become inactive)

    “Everyone keeps calling me saying you stopped talking to them,” Dedrick said when he made it back to her place, shoes up on the couch now that he’d finally wiped them of mud. “Should I feel lucky you let me in?”

“I’m tired,” she said. “It’s supposed to be a symptom. I like this one, I think she has potential.”

He took her phone and considered it with the weight of a father researching a car seat. “A perfect date: I take you for a ride around the lake on my bike, then we stop home for an evening snack.”

“She means her motorcycle,” Sabella clarified.

He rolled his eyes and continued reading. “My worst fear: commitment.”

“At least she’s honest.”

“That’s not really a good thing. You’re not looking for someone to skip out halfway through the movie.”

“No, I’m looking for someone who’s not going to be heartbroken when I die anyway.”

Dedrick sighed, all the air going out of his chest as it might escape from dough kneaded too firmly, and held her close to him. “You’re stupid,” he told her, “but so sweet.”

“I think I’m going to send her a nip.”

    The girl was named Ash but she spelled it A-I-S-L-I-N-G, and she seemed pleased that Sabella knew enough not to ask lots of stupid questions. They met in a park by the lakeside, far enough from the playground that none of the parents would notice the fanged flirtation going on below.

If Aisling had been a boy, she would have been a teen heartthrob. She wore her hair long where it was slicked back and short (touchable, but hard to grab in a fight) everywhere else. She wore a leather jacket that spoke of a once-in-a-lifetime thrift store find, and over the warmth of her blood and her breath she smelled like bag balm. Sabella wanted to hide in her arms from a fire. She wanted to watch her drown trying to save her.

Aisling parked her motorcycle and stowed her helmet before coming over to say hi—gentlemanly, Sabella thought, to give her a chance to prepare herself.

“What kind of scoundrel left you to wait all alone?” Aisling asked, with the sort of effortlessly cool smile that might have broken a lesser woman’s heart.

“I don’t know,” Sabella said, “but I’m glad you’re here now.”

Aisling stepped just inside her personal space and frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, “but are you—”

“I’m trans, yes,” Sabella interrupted, and smiled so wide she could feel the tension at her temples. Like doing sit-ups the wrong way for years, having this conversation so many times hadn’t made it comfortable, only routine. “We don’t need to be awkward about it.”

“Okay,” Aisling agreed, and sat on the bench, helping Sabella down with a hand on her elbow. “I meant that you seem sick.”

She looked uneasy, and Sabella sensed that she had never been human. Vampires didn’t get sick—she had probably never had more than a headache, and that only from hunger.

“Yes,” Sabella said. “I am sick. I’m not actually—I mentioned this on my profile—I’m not actually looking for love.”

“I hope you won’t be too disappointed when it finds you,” Aisling said, and Sabella blushed, reoriented herself with a force like setting a bone, like if she tried hard enough to move in one direction she’d stop feeling like a spinning top.

“I’m looking for a donor,” she said.

“Yeah, all right,” Aisling said. She threw her arm over the back of the bench so that Sabella felt folded into her embrace. “I’m always willing to help a pretty girl out.”

“I don’t just mean your blood,” she said, and felt herself dizzy.

    It was easier for Sabella to convince someone to do something than it was for her to ask for it. Her therapist had told her that, and even said it was common, but he hadn’t said how to fix it. “Please, may I have your liver” was too much to ask, and “Please, I don’t want to die” was a poor argument.

“So, you would take my liver—”

“It would actually only be part of your liver,” Sabella said, stopping to catch her breath. She hadn’t been able to go hiking since she’d gotten so sick—she needed company, and easy trails, and her friends either didn’t want to go or, like her mom, thought it was depressing to watch her climb a hill and have to stop to spit up bile.

“So we would each have half my liver, in the end.”

Sabella shrugged and looked into the dark underbrush. If she couldn’t be ethical about this, she wouldn’t deserve a liver. She wouldn’t try to convince Aisling until she understood the facts. “In humans, livers will regenerate once you cut them in half and transplant them. Like how kids think if you cut an earthworm in half, you get two. Or like bulbs. Ideally, it would go like that.”

“And if it didn’t go ideally?”

(“Turn me,” Dedrick said one day, impulsively, when she’d been up all night with a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop, holding her in his lap with his shirt growing polka-dotted. “I’ll be a vampire in a few days, we can have the surgery—you’ll be cured in a week.”)

“If it doesn’t go ideally,” Sabella said, “one or both of us dies. If it goes poorly, I don’t even know what happens.”

She stepped off the tree and set her next target, a curve in the trail where a tree had fallen and the light shone down on the path. Normally these days she didn’t wear shoes but flip-flops, but this was a date, and she’d pulled her old rainbow chucks out of the closet. Aisling walked with her silently, keeping pace, and put an arm around her waist.

Sabella looked up and down the trail. Green Lake was normally populated enough that people kept to their own business, and these days she felt pretty safe going about, even with a girl. But she checked anyway before she leaned into Ais’s strength, letting her guide them so that she could use all her energy to keep moving.

“But if it doesn’t happen at all, you die no matter what?”

Sabella took a breath. “If you don’t want to, I look for someone else.”

    Her mom was waiting for her when Sabella got home the next morning.

Sabella’s mother was naturally blonde, tough when she needed to be, the sort of woman who could get into hours-long conversations with state fair tchotchke vendors. She’d gotten Sabella through high school and into college through a careful application of stamping and yelling. When Sabella had started calling herself Ravynn, she’d brought a stack of baby name books home and said, “All right, let’s find you something you can put on a resume.”

“Mom,” she said, but smiling, “I gave you a key in case I couldn’t get out of bed, not so you could check if I spent the night with a date.”

“How’d it go? Was this the girl Dedrick helped you find?”

“Aisling, yeah,” Sabella said. She sat on the recliner, a mountain of accent pillows cushioning her tender body. “It was good. I like her a lot.”

“Did she decide to get the surgery?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her to choose.”

“Then what did you two do all night?”

Sabella frowned. “I like her a lot. We had a good time.”

Her mom stood and put the kettle on, and Sabella couldn’t help thinking what an inconvenience she was, that her mother couldn’t fret over her by making toast and a cup of tea. “Christ, what decent person would want to do that with you?”

“We have chemistry! She’s very charming!”

She examined Sabella with the dissatisfied air of an artist. “You’re a mess, honey. You’re so orange you could be a jack-o-lantern, and swollen all over. You look like you barely survived a dogfight. I don’t even see my daughter when I look at you anymore.”

Sabella tried to pull herself together, to look more dignified, but instead she slouched further into the recliner and crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe she thinks I’m funny, or smart.”

“Maybe she’s taking advantage. Anyone who really cared about you wouldn’t be turned on, they’d be worried about your health.”

Sabella remembered the look on Aisling’s face when she’d first come close enough to smell her, and shuddered. “I’m not going to ask her to cut out part of her body for me without thinking about it first,” she said.

“Without giving her something in return?” her mom asked. “It’s less than two pounds.”

“But it’s still her choice,” Sabella said.

“I’m starting to wonder if you even want to live,” her mom said, and left.

Sabella found the energy to go turn off the stovetop before she fell asleep. (Her mother had raised her responsible.)

    12:48:51 bkissedrose: what happens to a dream bestowed

12:49:03 bkissedrose: upon a girl too weak to fight for it?

12:53:15 sabellasay: haha you can’t sleep either?

12:53:38 sabellasay: babe idk

12:55:43 sabellasay: is it better to have loved and lost

12:56:29 sabellasay: than to die a virgin?

1:00:18 bkissedrose: I guess I don’t know

1:01:24 bkissedrose: maybe it depends if they’re good

    “It’s nice here,” Aisling confessed the third time they visited the lake. Sabella and her mom weren’t talking, but she couldn’t imagine it would last more than a few days longer, so she wasn’t worried. “I’d never even heard of it.”

“I grew up around here,” Sabella said, “and I used to take my students a few times a year.”

“You teach?”

“I used to teach,” she said, and stepped off the trail—the shores were made up of a gritty white sand like broken shells—to watch the sinking sun glint off the water. “Seventh grade science.”

Aisling laughed. “That sounds like a nightmare.”

“I like that they’re old enough you can do real projects with them, but before it breaks off into—you know, are we doing geology or biology or physics. When you’re in seventh grade, everything is science.” She smiled and closed her eyes so that she could feel the wind and the sand under her shoes. She could hear birds settling and starting to wake, but she couldn’t place them. “They’ve got a long-term sub now. Theoretically, if I manage to not die, I get my job back.”

Aisling came up behind her and put her arms around her. Sabella knew she hadn’t really been weaving—she knew her limits well enough now, she hoped—but she felt steadier that way. “You don’t sound convinced.”

“I don’t think they expect to have to follow through,” Sabella admitted. “Sometimes I think I’m the only one who ever thinks I’m going to survive this. My mom’s so scared all the time, I know she doesn’t.”

Aisling held her not tight but close, like being tucked into a bright clean comforter on a cool summer afternoon. “Can I ask you a personal question?” she said, her face up against Sabella’s neck so that every part of Sabella wanted her to bite.

“Maybe,” she said, then thought better of it. “Yes.”

“How’d you get sick? I didn’t think we could catch things like that. Or was it while you were human?”

“Um, no, but I’m not contagious, just nasty.” Aisling laughed, and she continued, encouraged. “Mom would, you know, once I came out I could do pretty much whatever I wanted, but she wouldn’t let me get any kind of reconstructive surgery until I was eighteen. She thought it was creepy, some doc getting his hands all over her teenage kid.”

“Probably fair.”

“So I’m eighteen, and she says okay, you’re right, you got good grades in school and you’re going to college like I asked, I’ll pay for whatever surgery you want. And you have to imagine, I just scheduled my freshman orientation, I have priorities.”

“Which are?”

“Getting laid, mostly.”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“So I’m eighteen and hardly ever been kissed, I’m not worried about the details. I don’t let my mom come with me, it doesn’t even occur to me to see a doctor who’s worked with vampires before, I just want to look like Audrey Hepburn’s voluptuous sister.”

“Oh no,” Ash said. It hung there for a moment, the dread and Sabella’s not being able to regret that she’d been so stupid. “It must have come up.”

“Sure. He said he was pretty sure it would be possible to do the surgery on a vampire, he knew other surgeries had been done. I was just so excited he didn’t say no.”

Ash held her tight then, like she might be dragged away otherwise, and Sabella knew that it had nothing to do with her in particular, that it was only the protective instinct of one person watching another live out her most plausible nightmare. “What did he do to you?”

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said, and then—grimacing, she knew her mother would have been so angry with her—“at least, he didn’t mean anything by it. He never read anything about how to adapt the procedure to meet my needs.” She sounded so clinical, like she’d imbibed so many doctors’ explanations of what had happened that she was drunk on it. “But neither did I. We both found out you can’t give vampires a blood transfusion.”

“Why would you need to?”

She shrugged. “You don’t, usually, in plastic surgery.”

“No,” Aisling interrupted, “I mean, why wouldn’t you drink it?”

Sabella tried to remember, or tried not to be able to, and tucked her cold hands into her pockets. “You’re human, I guess. Anyway, I puked all over him and the incision sites, had to be hospitalized. My doctor says I’m lucky I’m such a good healer, or I’d need new boobs and a new liver.”

They were both quiet, and Sabella thought, this is it. You either decide it’s too much or you kiss me again.

She thought, I miss getting stoned with friends and telling shitty surgery stories and listening to them laugh. I hate that when I meet girls their getting-to-know-you involves their Youtube make-up tutorials and mine involves “and then, after they took the catheter out…”

“Did you sue for malpractice, at least?” Ash asked, and Sabella couldn’t tell without looking if her tone was teasing or wistful.

“My mom did, yeah. When they still wanted her to pay for the damn surgery.”

    Aisling pulled up to the front of Sabella’s building and stopped just in front of her driveway. She kicked her bike into park and stepped onto the sidewalk, helping Sabella off and over the curbside puddle. Sabella couldn’t find words for what she was thinking, she was so afraid that her feelings would shatter as they crystallized. She wanted Ais to brush her hair back from her face and comb out the knots with her fingers. She wanted Ais to stop by to shovel the drive when there was lake effect snow. She wanted to find ‘how to minimize jaundice’ in the search history of Aisling’s phone.

“You’re beautiful in the sunlight,” Ais said, breaking her thoughts, maybe on purpose. “Like you were made to be outside.”

Sabella ducked her head and leaned up against her. The date was supposed to be over, go inside and let this poor woman get on with her life, but she didn’t want to leave. “It’s nice to have someone to go with me,” she said. “Especially with a frost in the air. Sometimes people act like I’m so fragile.”

“Ridiculous. You’re a vampire.”

Her ears were cold, and she pressed them against Aisling’s jawbone. She wondered what the people driving past thought when they saw them. She thought that maybe the only thing better than surviving would be to die a tragic death, loved and loyally attended. “I was born human.”

“Even God makes mistakes.”

Sabella smiled. “Is that what I am? A mistake?”

“Nah,” she said. “Just a happy accident.”

Sabella laughed, thought you’re such a stoner and I feel so safe when you look at me like that.

“I’ll do it,” Ais said.  “What do I have to do to set up the surgery?”

Sabella hugged her tight, hid against her and counted the seconds—one, two, three, four, five—while Ais didn’t change her mind and Sabella wondered if she would.

    “I have to stress how potentially dangerous this is,” Dr. Young said. “I can’t guarantee that it will work, that either of you will survive the procedure or the recovery, or that you won’t ultimately regret it.”

Aisling was holding it together remarkably well, Sabella thought, but she still felt like she could catch her avoiding eye contact. Sabella had taken the seat in the doctor’s office between her mother and girlfriend, and felt uncomfortable and strange no matter which of their hands she held.

“Um,” Ais said, and Sabella could feel her mother’s judgment at her incoherence, “you said you wouldn’t be able to do anything for the pain?”

To her credit, the doctor didn’t fidget or look away. Sabella, having been on the verge of death long enough to become something of a content expert, believed that it was important to have a doctor who was upfront about how terrible her life was. “I wouldn’t describe it as ‘nothing,’ exactly,” she said. “There aren’t any anesthetics known to work on vampires, but we’ll make you as comfortable as possible. You can feed immediately before and as soon as you’re done, and that will probably help snow you over.”

“Being a little blood high,” Ais clarified. “While you cut out my liver.”

“Yes.”

Sabella wanted to apologize. She couldn’t find the words.

Aisling said, “Well, while we’re trying to make me comfortable, can I smoke up, too?”

Dr. Young laughed. It wasn’t cruel, but it wasn’t promising, either. “That’s not a terrible idea,” she said, “but marijuana increases bleeding, and there are so many unknown variables here that I’d like to stick to best practices if we can.”

“I can just—” Sabella said, and choked. She wasn’t sure when she’d started crying. “Find someone else. Dedrick will do it, I know.”

Aisling considered this. The room was quiet, soft echoes on the peeling tile floor. Sabella’s mother put an arm around her, and she felt tiny, but in the way that made her feel ashamed and not protected. Aisling said, “Why are you asking me? Is there something you know that I don’t?”

Dr. Young shook her head. “I promise we’re not misrepresenting the procedure,” she said. “And theoretically, it might be possible with any vampire. But there aren’t a lot of organ transplants in the literature—harvesting, sure, but not living transplants—and I want to get it right the first time. If we have a choice, I told Sabella I’d rather use a liver from a donor who was born a vampire. I think it’ll increase our chance of success.”

“A baby’d be too weak,” Aisling agreed. Her voice was going hard and theoretical. “Well, tell me something encouraging.”

“One of the first things we’ll do is to cut through almost all of your abdominal nerves, so that will help. And there’s a possibility that the experience will be so intense that you don’t remember it clearly, or at all.”

Sabella’s mother took a shaky breath, and Sabella wished, hating herself for it, that she hadn’t come.

Ais said, “Painful. You mean, the experience will be so painful.”

“If you choose to go forward with it,” Dr. Young said, “we’ll do everything we can to mitigate that.”

    Sabella had expected that Aisling would want space and patience while she decided not to die a horrible, painful death to save her. It was hard to tell how instead they ended up in her bed with the lights out, their legs wound together and their faces swollen with sleep. Sabella was shaking, and couldn’t have said why. Ais grabbed her by her seat and pulled her up close.

“You said you couldn’t get me sick?” she asked.

“No,” Sabella agreed. “Although my blood is probably pretty toxic.”

Ais kissed her, the smell of car exhaust still stuck in her hair. “What a metaphor,” she murmured, and lifted her chin. “You look exhausted.”

Sabella thought, Are you saying what I think you’re saying? and, That’s a terrible idea, and said, “God, I want to taste you.”

“Well, baby,” Ais said, and her hands were on Sabella so she curled her lips and blew her hair out of her eyes, “that’s what I’m here for.”

Sabella had been human once, and she remembered what food was like. The standard lie, that drinking blood was like eating a well-cooked steak, was wrong but close enough to staunch the flow of an interrogation. (She’d had friends and exes, turned as adults, who said it was like a good stout on tap, hefty and refreshing, but she thought they might just be trying to scandalize her.)

Ais could have been a stalk of rhubarb or August raspberries. She moved under Sabella and held her so that their knees pressed together. She could have been the thrill of catching a fat thorny toad in among the lettuce at dusk, or a paper wasp in a butterfly net. She felt like getting tossed in the lake in January; she tasted like being wrapped in fleece and gently dried before the fire; her scent was what Sabella remembered of collapsing, limbs aquiver, on the exposed bedrock of a mountaintop, nothing but crushed pine and the warmth of a moss-bed.

She woke on top of Ais, licking her wounds lazily—she wanted more, but she was too tired to do anything about it.

“That’s better,” Ais whispered, and if she was disappointed that this wasn’t turning into a frenzy, she didn’t show it. They were quiet for long enough that the haze started to fade, and then Aisling said, “I couldn’t ask in front of your mother, but was it like that with your surgery? They couldn’t do anything for the pain?”

Sabella shifted uncomfortably, rolled over next to Ais. “I was conscious, yes.”

“Do you remember it?”

It was a hard question. She wanted to say it wasn’t her place to ask. She tried to remember, and got caught up in the layers of exhaustion, the spaces between the body she’d had, the body she’d wanted, and what they had been doing to her. “Sounds and sensations and thoughts, mostly,” she said.

Ais choked, and said, “So, everything,” and Sabella realized—she didn’t know how she hadn’t—how scared she must be.

“No, it’s blurry,” she said instead. “I remember, um, the tugging at my chest. I kept thinking there was no way my skin wasn’t just going to split open. And the scraping sounds. They’ve got all these tools, and they’re touching you on the inside and the outside at the same time, and that’s very unsettling. And this man, I think he was the PA, standing over me saying, ‘You’ve got to calm down, honey.’”

“Were you completely freaking out?” Ais asked.

Sabella shook her head. Her throat hurt. “No. I mean—I cried a little. Not as much as you’d think. They said if I wasn’t careful, you know, with swallowing at the right times and breathing steady, they might mess up reshaping my larynx and I could lose my voice.”

Ais swore, and Sabella wondered if she would feel angry. (Sometimes she would scream and cry, say, can you imagine doing that to an eighteen-year-old?) Right now she was just tired. “How did you manage?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think just, it was worth more to me to have it done than anything else. So I didn’t ever tell them to stop.”

    “Please don’t go around telling people I think this is an acceptable surgical set-up,” Dr. Young said, looking around the exam room.

It reminded Sabella of a public hearing, the way the stakeholders sat at opposing angles and frowned at each other. Dr. Young sat next to Dr. Park, who would be the second doctor performing the procedure. Sabella had never met Dr. Park before, and her appearance—young, mostly—didn’t inspire confidence. Sabella sat next to her mother, who held her hand and a clipboard full of potential complications. Ais crossed her fingers in her lap, sat with a nervous child’s version of polite interest. Time seemed not to blur, but to stutter, everything happening whenever.

“Dr. Park,” Sabella’s mother said, “do you have any experience operating on vampires?”

Dr. Park grinned and her whole mouth seemed to open up in her face, her gums pale pink as a Jolly Rancher and her left fang chipped. “Usually trauma or obstetrics,” she admitted. “Although this is nearly the same thing.”

“I’m serious,” Sabella’s mom said, and Sabella interrupted.

“I like her,” she said. And then—it wasn’t really a question except in the sense that there was no way anyone could be sure—“You’re not going to realize halfway through the surgery that it’s too much for you?”

Dr. Park laughed. “I turned my husband when we were both eighteen,” she said as testament to her cruelty.

Sabella’s mom jumped. “Jesus Christ, why?”

She shrugged, languid. Ais and Dr. Young were completely calm; Ais might have had no frame of reference for what it was like to watch someone turn, and Dr. Young had probably heard this story before. “His parents didn’t like that he was dating a vampire. You’ll do crazy things for love.”

Sabella could see her mother blanch even as she steadied. It wasn’t unheard of for a vampire to turn their spouse—less common now that it was easier to live as a vampire, and humans were able to date freely but not really commit. But she could remember being turned, young as she had been: the gnawing ache, the hallucinations, the thirst that had only sometimes eclipsed the pain. It was still the worst thing that she’d ever experienced, and she was sure her mother couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to do it to someone they loved.

“Good,” she said. “You won’t turn back if we scream.”

Dr. Young frowned. “I want you to know you have a choice,” she said. She was speaking to Ais; Sabella had a choice, too, but it was only between one death and another. “There will be a point when you can’t change your mind, but by then it’ll be almost over.”

Ais swore. It made Dr. Park smile and Sabella’s mom frown. Sabella wondered if she was in love with her, or if it was impossible to be in love with someone who was growing a body for them to share. “Don’t say that,” Ais said. “I don’t want to have that choice.”

    The morning of the surgery, Aisling gave Sabella a rosary to wear with her pizza necklace, and when they kicked Sabella’s mom out to the waiting room, she kissed them both as she went. “I like your mom,” Ais said shyly. They lay in cots beside each other, just close enough that they could reach out and hold hands across the gap. “I bet she’d get along with mine.”

Sabella laughed, her eyes stinging, threw herself across the space between them and kissed each of Ais’s knuckles while Ais said, “Aw, c’mon, save it ‘til we get home.”

“Isn’t that a lot of commitment for you?” Sabella asked.

“Yeah, well,” Ais said, caught, and gave her a cheesy smile. “You’re already taking my liver, at least my heart won’t hurt so much.”

They drank themselves to gorging while nurses wrapped and padded them in warm blankets. Ais was first, for whatever measure of mercy that was, and while they were wheeled down the dizzying white hallway, she grinned at Sabella, wild, some stranger’s blood staining her throat to her nose. “You’re a real looker,” she said, and Sabella laughed over her tears.

“Thank you,” Sabella said. “I mean, really, for everything.”

Ais winked at her; Sabella wanted to run away from all of this and drink her in until they died. “It’s all in a day’s work, ma’am,” she said.

It wasn’t, it couldn’t have been, and Sabella loved her for pretending. Ais hissed, she cried, she asked intervention of every saint learned in K-12 at a Catholic school. A horrible gelatinous noise came as Dr. Young’s gloves touched her innards, and Ais moaned and Sabella said, “You have to stop, this is awful,” and the woman assigned to supervise her held her down and said hush, honey, you need to be quiet. And the doctors’ voices, neither gentle nor unkind: We’re almost done now, Aisling, you’re being so brave. And: It’s a pity she’s too strong to pass out.

Sabella went easier, hands she couldn’t see wiping her down and slicing her open while Dr. Park pulled Ais’s insides back together. She’d been scared for so long that the pain didn’t frighten her; she kept asking “Is she okay? What’s happening?” until the woman at her head brushed back her hair and said shh, she’s in the recovery room, you can worry about yourself now.

It felt right, fixing her missteps with pieces of Ais, and when Dr. Young said, “There we go, just another minute and you can go take care of her yourself,” Sabella thought about meromictic lakes, about stepping into a body so deep its past never touched its present.

END

    “Dionysus in London” is copyright Tristan Beiter 2018.

“You Inside Me” is copyright Tori Curtis 2018.

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Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a reprint of “The City of Kites and Crows” by Megan Arkenberg.

  Episode #57 – “You Inside Me” by Tori Curtis was originally published on GlitterShip

[nellasbookplanet]

Currently reading Tori Curtis’ Eelgrass, in which selkie girl Efa goes off to hang with sirens and maybe also fall in love

[sapphicbookclub]

Sapphic Book Club schedule

List of the upcoming reads for the sapphic book club (which you can join here)

October: Enchanters by K.F. Bradshaw 

November: Eelgrass by Tori Curtis

December: Snowball Earth by Andrea Lisowski and Max Fink

Free ebook copies for the first 2 books (October/November) will be available for the club members who join during the reads. As always more info on the club can be found here or on discord. 

[readingallthethings9490]

Let’s Talk Books!

So, even though Sapphic-A-Thon is a month away, I’m already planning books for each square xD

Bi MC: Dying for a Living by Kory M Shrum QWOC MC: Ash by Malinda Lo Trans MC: Chameleon Moon by RoAnna Sylver Disabled MC: Keeping Long Island by Courtney Peppernell SF/F: Heart of Time by Skye MacKinnon Non Coming Out story: Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember Fairytale Retelling: Eelgrass by Tori Curtis Under 500 Goodreads Ratings: Kiss & Tell by Cynthia Dane Established Relationship: Life Within Parole, Volume 1 by RoAnna Sylver Hate to Love: Villains Don’t Date Heroes by Mia Archer Jewish MC: The Second Mango by Shira Glassman Friends to Lovers: The Gravity Between Us by Kristen Zimmer Both WOC: Huntress by Malinda Lo

This is, of course, subject to change over time, and no guarantees I’ll get even half of this board read in only 2 weeks. If you have any recommendations for Interracial, Ace-Spec MC, or MC Realizing They’re Queer squares, please send them my way.

I’m also going to make a post, later, with books I’ve read that fall under the various squares. It’s going to be a lot of repeat books because I used my GR “wlw” shelf and I’ve only really been adding books to there for the past year. I know I have more options on my Kindle, but that’s a little overwhelming to try going through ^_^’‘

Anyway! Lemme know what you’re planning to read and any recommendations you have!

[readingallthethings9490]

✨ Sapphic-A-Thon Wrapup ✨

So, about halfway through SapphicAThon I lost momentum of reading wlw stories because I kept being so disappointed by what I found 😖 I have a bunch of books I didn’t get to that I still plan to read~ Now to summarize all the things I read, and links to reviews 😎

One of the books I started was GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS by Melissa Bashardoust. I’m still in the process of reading/listening to it (I fell into the trap of The Bright Sessions podcast, so haven’t been listening to audible 😅), but I’m about 19% through and plan to finish it next.

The first book I read was EITAN’S CHORD by Shira Glassman, which fulfilled the Jewish Char bingo square. I’ve read other books by Shira Glassman and KNIT ONE, GIRL TWO is basically a happy place read for me, but this one was less than stellar to me. I wanted to like it because polyamory/triad and Hanukkah fairies! But it just fell a little flat for me. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2213933363

Next on Kindle I tried reading VILLAINS DON’T DATE HEROES by Mia Archer, which could have fulfilled Hate to Love bingo square. Unfortunately this was a huge DNF for me, at only 36%, which is a huge disappointment because I love villains and hate to love is such a good trope. This book was a mess, though; definitely needed a good editing and it was just so long-winded at times. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2162748323

Next up, we have THE PRICE OF MEAT by KJ Charles, which fulfilled Non-Coming Out bingo square. I adore KJ Charles and her writing is always so good. This was a quick, creepy read with some really interesting history. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2215862781

Next, GIRL MANS UP by M-E Girrard, which probably could’ve fulfilled Interractial bingo square, but I NOPEd outta there real quick (28 pages quick). The friendship between MC and her “best friend” was gross and toxic, the way she helped him get and then toss girls was gross, and how the best friend told MC she needed to leave his exes alone and not listen to them really bothered me. Everything about those 28 pages made me so uncomfortable. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2217413312

I read GRRRLS ON THE SIDE by Carrie Pack, which fulfilled Bisexual MC bingo square. The premise of the book was interesting and I liked the punk scene in the 90s with the zines as part of story telling style, but in the end this book didn’t completely wow me. It had a lot of issues, including: fatmisia, transmisia, racism, not listening to WOC voices, and erasing/invalidating MC’s bisexuality. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2216300341

I tried (and failed) to read EELGRASS by Tori Curtis; I only made it about 14% through before I couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to use this book to fulfill SF/F bingo square, but the attitude towards Bettan’s lost sealskin and subsequent kidnapping (she’ll be happier for it, she’ll have babies and find her place, it’ll settle her, etc) just made me TOO uncomfortable and I couldn’t finish it. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2217554958

I was reading ASH by Malinda Lo for about half of SapphicAThon, but ending DNFing it because while I enjoyed the writing style, I was bored of the story. No review.

RIPPED PAGES by M. Hollis was my next reading adventure, and it fulfilled Retelling bingo square. It was a unique, cute Rapunzel retelling, but sometimes the pacing got to me. It was a bit of a Princess Saves Herself (major positive) but also really nice example of princesses saving each other. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2140722418

I also read M. Hollis’ NIGHT AT THE MALL, which fulfills Less Than 500 Goodreads Ratings bingo square. This was another cute fluff read, but it felt more like the Meet-Cute (which I love) without the subsequent relationship and feelings that I wanted. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2220418677

MY HEART IS READY by Chace Verity was my next read, which fulfilled Established Relationship bingo square. I have also read TEAM PHISON by Chace and omg their writing is so much feelings for me. I can’t wait more of this series to come out 😍 but I adored Corsine and Tristis, and their flawed but loving relationship. Just, such fun characters and a cute story! Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2197767772

Finally I read IT’S NOT LIKE IT’S A SECRET by Misa Sugiura, which fulfilled Both WOC bingo square. I have some mixed feelings for this book, especially because cheating is such a prevalent theme (MC cheats on her gf with a boy bc she thinks gf is cheating, and friends are all “it’s not cheating if she cheated first.”). Definitely has strong themes of racism and prejudice, and examining how those views affect us and our perceptions of people. Full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1929858655

In total I finished 7 books, DNF’d 4, and am still reading 1. I fulfilled the following bingo squares: Both WOC, Established Relationship, Less Than 500 GR Ratings, Retelling, Bisexual MC, Non-Coming Out Story, and Jewish MC. I did not manage to get any BINGO though 😅

[readingallthethings9490]

SapphicAThon Day 6 Update

So, didn’t remember to do update yesterday, but also didn’t really do much sapphic reading.

Started EELGRASS by Tori Curtis like I had planned, but I didn’t even get past the first chapter because it had such an attitude of r*pe apology and normalizing the kidnapping of selkie by stealing their sealskin. I much prefer, and recommend, SEVEN TEARS AT HIGH TIDE by CB Lee, especially because it treats losing your sealskin as a trauma and NOT as something that’s going to lead to “finding purpose” and being “happy” once married and having kids. Full review, as well as some highlights, can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2217554958

I also started HER MOST SECRET AFFAIR by Jesalin Creswell and I got about halfway through before giving up because I was just bored by the story telling and creeped out by the main character. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2218391727

I returned ASH and HUNTRESS by Malinda Lo to the library today because I was bored and uninvested in ASH.

I feel terrible because I feel like I just keep DNFing books that I’ve started for SapphicAThon but they keep making me uncomfortable or boring me.

Today I actually haven’t read anything for SapphicAThon 😅 I found The Bright Sessions podcast the other day and oooo-eeee, I am in LOVE with this series. The characters are so interested and there’s so many little hints of mystery coming together, I can’t get enough. Damien is SUPER creepy and I love it, but CALEB, Caleb is my absolute favorite character 😻 I’m only on S2E7 but Caleb is so mushy and soft when he talks about Adam and I CANNOT get enough of it~~~

I also started reading GEMINI KEEPS CAPRICORN by Anyta Sunday because I love her Signs of Love series and I really just wanted to read something that would make me smile after all the things I’ve started and ended up giving up on.

I plan to read more of GIRLS MADE OF SNOW AND GLASS once I finish Gemini Keeps Capricorn and can divide my focus better.

Hope you’re having a good experience with your SapphicAThon reads 😊