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The cabin was an hour away from the nearest town. This would have been inconvenient if Fern could drive, and was outright damning since they couldn’t.

“I’ll call every day,” Adrian had promised while unloading the car. “You should have enough groceries here to last the whole two weeks, but if you run out, I’ll get some and bring it over. Make sure you unpack the frozen goods first.”

It was the kind of well-intentioned but obvious reminder that Fern didn’t know how to answer without being sarcastic; when family was involved, they tended not to say anything at all to avoid poisoning their own well. They’d watched their brother fumble when the silence stretched on a little too long and felt a little spike of amusement.

“You’ll like it,” Adrian had finally said. “It’ll be good for you. Calming. I’ll see you later, Fern.” He’d accidentally called them by their old name, not ‘Fern,’ but there was no point getting upset about it, not when Adrian was just really the unwilling family volunteer, propped up to take the heat of the decision to strand Fern in the woods, away from all civilization.

That wasn’t a fair thought. Fern could have refused, but even if it felt like being shipwrecked, abandoned, their family’s suggestion was likely right. They needed a break, a rest, space from the world out there.

Shaking their head, they dragged the bags up to the porch. The owner had said that the key was hidden behind a loose stone in the front path, which they found after a little digging. Mortar ground to dust under their fingertips and several insects scurried away. Foreboding, Fern decided, a little pleased about that. 

The key itself was more modern than the little house in the woods was, the lock having been replaced recently. It stuck regardless, as if trying to resist Fern, but Fern leaned on it harder until it clicked, then pulled the door open.

It was a pretty large place for a single writer to stay in, although the ad had described it as a one bedroom. Fern could swear it was large enough that there’d have to be two of them in here somewhere. It was at least two stories tall, and the first floor looked well-kept, clean and bright. Admittedly, it came with a variety of odd decor choices, as if the owners had aimed for an old-timey, woodsy yet welcoming aesthetic, but had no idea what any of those words meant. On the stone fireplace’s mantle were a variety of family photos, but none of the people in the family seemed to match; over it was a mounted alligator head with a gruesome smile. Not only was this entirely the wrong area for alligators, it seemed bigger than it should be.

Not that Fern knew anything about alligators, to be fair.

It was nice enough, though, and honestly to Fern’s taste. Perhaps this really would be good for them, rather than just their family wanting to avoid having to deal with Fern for a while. Admittedly, it could be two things at once; Fern was certainly out of sight and out of mind, and whatever happened to them here would be nobody’s business. 

Still, it wasn’t like they were completely isolated, even like this. The lack of internet was a drawback, but the place had electricity, and their phone had a single bar that occasionally flickered up to two, so it looked like they could use roaming data in a pinch—if not reliably. There was an old phone on the wall, too, so presumably there was also a landline if their cellphone was unreliable. 

They chided themself for the thought. The whole purpose of this was to not contact anyone for a few weeks. To spend some time disconnecting, far away from other people. To take a couple of weeks to pull themself back together. 

How they’d get started on that task, Fern wasn’t sure.

[It begins! Comment with your suggestion for Fern 

For example, should Fern:
> Explore the cabin more thoroughly?
> Immediately unpack?
> Get started writing?
> Try to contact someone: friend or family?]

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Instructions | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 

It’s time! Our yearly Halloween “Interactive” Fiction begins tomorrow! As always, it’ll be spooky, queer, and a whole lot of fun! 

Last year we went very urban fantasy; this one’s going to be a bit more uneasy horror, with themes of disconnection, identity, loss, and rediscovery. You’ll meet several creepy crawlies in need of affection, help, and comfort. Or, perhaps, in need of fresh victims. It’ll be up to you how this ends up going for our isolated protagonist!

How it works:

• On October 1, I’ll put up the first section of a story.
• By no later than 3 pm PST the next day (check your time zone against the world clock), please leave a comment to the post (i.e. a post goes up on Oct 1 —> You have until 3 pm PST on Oct 2 to comment).  
• Comments should be suggestions for the protagonist specifically. Generally, this will be an action or something for them to consider.
• You can always just +1 other people’s ideas if you like what they’ve said!
• The next section of the story will get posted between approximately 5-9 pm PST on the next day.
• We repeat this every day through October (or until the story comes to a natural end)!
• Please only leave suggestions on the most recent post — if we’ve already moved on, I won’t be able to fold the suggestion in. 
• Each suggestion should apply to what’s coming up next (either immediately or shortly thereafter); if in a morning entry you say “remember to call your boyfriend tonight” a. I probably won’t remember by the time it’s in-world evening and b. the situation may have fundamentally changed by then.

As noted, you can only advise the protagonist from the other side of the screen. You can’t tell the villain to surrender, but you can tell the protagonist, “Beg the villain to surrender.” If suggestions contradict each other, I’ll pick either the one most people have suggested or the one the character is most likely to do based on their established personality.

For a better idea of how this works, take a look through the Halloween IF archives to see what we did in previous years.

“Do I have to check back every day?”

I’d love it if you came back and kept playing! This game only works if people participate, so don’t be shy! 

But don’t feel that you have to comment or follow along every day: it’s OK to hop in and out as you like. 

If you want to participate regularly but are worried about forgetting to check in, you can put your email in to “Get Email Updates” in the page footer, and you’ll receive an email every time the blog is updated with a new post. (You can always unsubscribe if it ends up not working for you! I don’t update all that often outside of the Halloween event, so there won’t be any spam.) If you’re not seeing it in the footer, it’s because adblockers sometimes hide email fields — you can pause the adblocker just long enough to subscribe, then block ads again, I don’t mind.

KICKOFF COMMENTS

To get us kicked off, comment with an oddity that might be found in a rentable cabin in the woods. Nothing powerful (no firearms or magical artifacts), but just a curiosity. Something a previous guest left behind, or was put in as decor or a gratuity from the owner, or maybe even that our protagonist’s family helped pack for them. 

The Fine Print
I reserve all rights to this work. If I eventually get this published in any form that requires me to take this version down, I will send copies of this online version, with comments left intact, to everyone who contributed suggestions, if I am reasonably able to get in contact with them.

We’ve done it! We’ve made it! The story’s complete!

It was really exciting to get to come back to the Uncanny Valley setting again for the fourth time, and absolutely amazing to hit our eighth story over the 9 years we’ve been doing this little event. Star, as you know, was a minor tertiary character back from A Little Night Magic, but some characters stick with you and make you want to tell their stories. I’m glad I got to do that with you all. 

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed suggestions, whether on one part, five parts, or all the parts. It wouldn’t be the same piece without all of you, and I’m so grateful for everyone who turned out and got invested in Star’s little adventure as the stakes got higher and higher.

Of course, I hope you enjoyed this, whether you read it as it came out or read it later, whether your participated in suggestions or not! I had a lot of fun writing it, truly. If you did enjoy it, while it’s absolutely not required, I’d be delighted if you’d consider leaving me a tip over at my ko-fi, and I’d also love it if you checked out more of my work!

Anyway, the full story ended up being 58,274 words! Damn, that’s like an entire short novel out there! If you want to read it again from start to finish, the Index will stay up, and you can find the whole thing linked off my Interactive Fiction page.

Thank you again for reading, thank you so much for participating ♥

Now… ask me questions! You can ask me about the story, about the characters, about the writing process, about how something looked in my planning doc and how it changed to now, what would have happened if you’d done x instead of y, any background details about a character that you’re curious about, whatever! AMA! (And if you don’t have questions, feel free to share some part of it you enjoyed and I’m happy to talk about that part at random!)

Or just talk to me :> It’s been a lot of you suggesting things and me turning it into story but I’d love to just chat.

I ended up sleeping for a very long time. A full four days, they tell me. A lot can happen in four days; all of this stuff happened in way less than that. But most of the healing happened while I was asleep, and between my own ability, the nice care at the local hospital, and the help I received from the Twilight Council as local big damn hero, I’m mostly back to normal. I still tire out really quickly, and I’ve been told by the Council I likely will for a few weeks, but that I should go out and keep exercising until I recover. I’ve also got a big mark over my side. It’s not a scar, but I’m reluctant to say it’s just a discoloration until I know more. I hope it fades. I’m worried it might require a quest or some bullshit, or that it has a problem lurking that I won’t learn about until later.

But that’s a problem for future Star, if so.

The current problem is over. The banishment was successful, despite my genre fears; it took Ramullin away from us, and a demon who is officially banished from a place will need to stay away for at least a hundred years. That’s a drop in the bucket for both a fairy and a demon, but we’ll be ready next time. Maybe Ramullin will have given up on it by then. Maybe they won’t. But a hundred years is a lot of time to plan and prepare.

As for my sister… because she was in the circle too, it also caught Seerose. She will have gone wherever Ramullin went, whatever eponymous abyssal wastes they control. She won’t be required to stay away a hundred years, since a demonic binding wouldn’t function the same way on a fairy, though likely there’ll be some kind of trick for her to come back. Like, not through abyssal exits, that’s for sure. I expect, if she survived, I’ll see her sooner rather than later. I don’t know exactly what that’ll mean for us. I hope we can become friends. I hope, if we can’t, she stays with Ramullin and they’re so happy together they forget about everyone else.

You’re probably wondering about some of the others as well, right? No, no, don’t say anything, I can see it on your face. I can speak to the others who were having to heal up as well as myself. Garrett survived and has already gone home. I don’t know him well enough to know all his struggles after surviving drowning, but I imagine there are some. Still, where there’s life, there’s hope.

Halle’s an easy case to answer, thankfully. It turns out the Twilight Council had some extremely talented stone-shapers on the team. She’s fully recovered now. Thanks to some damage, they had to shorten her neck and her tail, and her voice is a bit higher as a result. She’s otherwise unchanged, but pretty shaken up.The track is getting things back together, and just for her, they’ve brought in some therapy horses to board, so she’s spending a lot of time with those, and I hope they help her in every way they can.

Vayne is needing a little more time to recover than either of those others. He’s home too—he doesn’t need persistent round-the-clock care or anything—and as I’d thought before, magical care was covered by his insurance so the worst is healed now. He’ll need more recovery time and rehab, of course, but maybe it’s a good thing that he has some quiet time to think about what happened and work on his relationships.

Georgio’s fine. He’s got some scars, but he’s delighted to show them off and brag about them. He and Vayne are a little rocky, but not as rocky as I thought they’d be. If Ramullin were threatening Vayne’s family, yeah, of course he’d turn on a guy he didn’t get along with—even if I was Georgio’s bud now, we could both understand that. And he’d sent Georgio away to protect him. But Georgio hadn’t wanted to be sent away, and there’s a lot coming out about the respect they need to rebuild between them. Georgio can be hard to respect because of his attitude, I think, and Vayne isn’t someone who respects others easily. They’re going to have to do a lot of work to find that equality between them.

Me and Georgio, though… yeah, I respect the hell out of that dude, now. When I’m fully recovered, we’re going to do a lot of hanging out, I think. Maybe some sparring, maybe some racing. He’s showing up to take me for walks pretty regularly already. It… turns out I had a great friend just waiting to be made, and I’d had no idea. I think we’re going to get to be true friends.

Speaking of people who need to work to fix their relationships… well, I guess I should cover Éabha and everyone else at the Lindwyrm’s. As we’d all planned, Miette did indeed safely take Éabha, Caoimhe, and Adrien back to the Lindwyrm’s. Thankfully, they hadn’t lied about what they were doing at the warehouse, something I didn’t even think to worry about at the time. No, they actually had gone because they were suspicious of Éabha and all that, and they got everyone back safely. Everyone spoke for Éabha, as promised, and the Lindwyrm’s fury was turned on the person who had put Éabha in the position where she’d have to act on others. He didn’t leave his house, of course, but it turned out he got to vent his anger anyway. A bunch of the thugs that had been in the truck got out after Ramullin opened the doors and tried to regain their favour by coming after the hostages who got away. The Lindwyrm didn’t leave much of them behind.

It was apparently very cool and it’s a shame I didn’t get to see it, but I also don’t have much stomach for that sort of thing. So it’s, you know, whatever.

Caoimhe and Éabha are in a … complicated state after all that. Caoimhe had been betrayed, after all, and she now knows whatever Éabha feels for her, there is a limit to that trust and affection and respect that ends at Éabha’s skin. Betrayal doesn’t sit well on any fairy, and an elverpigen is possessive and lonely. But Caoimhe also can be captive and bound by nature, so she knows what that’s like, and a selkie’s skin is her freedom. Obeying whoever holds their skin is their nature. You can’t blame someone for their nature, right? They’ll really have to work on things if they want to repair them. I can’t say for sure if either of them will. They’re cold and they’re bitter, respectively. But… I think they’ll try.

As for Éabha’s skin, that’s its own story. We know that Ramullin had brought it to this world; they’d apparently showed it to her once, with the promise that if she served well enough and got them their revenge, they might return it. But it wasn’t hidden at the track. Folks looked everywhere after things settled, and it didn’t turn up anywhere. But we have a lead. See, when the thugs raided the Lindwyrm, Yuree held back and didn’t get massacred with the rest. She called out that she wanted to help Éabha, and might have a line on where her skin was stored. Adrien spoke up for her, despite the fact she’d been the one to betray him, and she agreed to help them look for it in exchange for her life. Yuree claimed that she’d heard of an ally that Ramullin had stored some important leverage with, and Yuree thinks this must be the skin. Maybe that’ll be a further adventure sometime, though I doubt it’d be one I’d lead. I’ve done enough leading for a decade. But if Caoimhe gets involved and asks me to help, I’ll help. 

Right now, it sounds like Caoimhe, Yuree, and Éabha are going to work on this and follow up on it. Adrien’s hoping to help, both because he felt partly responsible about his part in getting tricked, and because he wants to keep an eye on Yuree throughout this in case she turns on them too. And Miette might get involved too, since they hit it off so well with Adrien.

Speaking of Miette, I’m planning on bringing them into my regular D&D day. They seemed to think it was fun, and they were a real pal with this. I think they’d be a real asset as an ally and a really fun person as a friend, so why not? Group’s getting a bit big, so maybe someone else will have to take a turn as a DM at some point. They sounded like they might be willing.

Ugh, speaking of D&D, I can’t decide if I should give Viv a special gift or benefit in-game for saving all our asses in real life. On the one hand, it wouldn’t really be fair to all the other players, but I owe her so much. She got out of it all unharmed, thankfully—if she didn’t, Thys would have killed me and I wouldn’t be telling you this today—and she even seemed really revitalized by getting to help us on that level. But nevertheless, if she hadn’t brought in the Twilight Council, I can’t even imagine what would have happened back there. I don’t know that I’d have survived it. So I gotta do something for her, right—?

“Okay, Star,” Dr. Winslow finally interrupted. “It sounds absolutely terrifying, and of course I’m so glad you made it. But even now you’re thinking about the things you can do for others. You just did all this for others, and now you’re trying to think of what to do for her in thanks for something she seemed very willing to do. Why do you think that is?”

“W-well,” Star stammered, thrown off his groove. “I mean, debt and obligation are really important to fairies—”

“I know they are,” Dr. Winslow said softly. “Like you said, you can’t blame anyone for their nature. But you tend to go into monologues like this, talking about all these other people and how monumental things were for them, when you’re trying to build up a momentum to cover for the fact that you haven’t done anything for yourself. I can understand why you wouldn’t have, after everything that’s happened. You don’t need to make excuses. But making time to do something for yourself is still important.”

“I know it is,” Star said. “And I actually have found time for it. Right after this, in fact.”

***

“How are the glazed carrots coming?” Star demanded. He was sitting down instead of working, because Dandelion insisted. The other two had physically recovered sooner than him, so he was in the nerve-wracking position of controlling the kitchen. “It has to be glazed carrots. It’s very important.”

“We know you’re a horse, Star-eyes,” Adrien said, passing by and ruffling his hair. “Though you’re not usually a veggie-eater.”

“It’s important to do a fully balanced meal for a human,” Caoimhe pointed out quietly as she pulled the scalloped potatoes out of the oven bare-handed. “They need balance to survive. Otherwise they wither away.”

“It does take time before that happens, though,” Dandelion said. “A single meal won’t do it. The carrots look lovely, Star.”

Scalloped potatoes, glazed carrots, beans, and roast hen. Not a bad celebratory meal, Star thought. He was jiggling a leg anxiously. Dandelion came over and put a hand on that knee, leaning in and kissing him.

Star allowed his anxiety to get assuaged by that kiss, leaning up, sliding fingers into the puff of hair that surrounded Dandelion’s head, kissing him and tasting starlight on his tongue. “Okay,” Star mumbled. “That’s fine. I’m just nervous.”

“What, about serving your human a fairy meal?” Caoimhe said.

“We’re not doing anything about it.”

Adrien laughed, low. “It’s a show of trust, though, isn’t it?”

“We’re beyond shows of trust,” Star declared, hoping that neither of the other two would have any bitter feelings at the statement, given what had happened to both of them. “After what we all just did, he and I are just, we’re balanced for each other, there’s nothing that he needs to fear. How’s the hen? The hen isn’t under cooked, is it?”

“Darling,” Dandelion said, sliding to sit in Star’s lap and thoroughly distract him, “Let them cook.”

The knock at the door came a half hour later, and sure enough, everything was cooked perfectly. Dom was a perfect guest, and it was a relief, somehow, to have him over. To have Dom in Star’s own house after all without having to worry about more than the usual things, to have Dom eating their food and laughing and meeting everyone properly without any fear of mind control or kidnapping or anything else.

After, Star stood, and offered Dom a hand. “Hey, let me show you my room,” he said, and the others drew back to give them privacy and, hopefully, to do the dishes. 

“I’d like that,” Dom said, serious and a little shy. When Star led him out back instead, he seemed a bit surprised. “Your room isn’t inside?”

“I’m not much of an indoor sleeper,” Star said. Then, hurriedly, “Though if a friend—or a lover—asks it of me, I’ll sleep in a bed.”

Dom still seemed confused for a moment, but when Star led him over to the fish pond, he laughed in startled realization. “Oh. You just sleep underwater, huh?”

“Usually,” Star said. And, still daring, “like I said, I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“That’s fantastic, since I’m still not a great swimmer,” Dom said, smiling at him. It was soft and warm, and Star felt something inside himself just melt. Dom sat at the edge of the pond, taking his shoes off, then his socks, and rolling his pants to his knees. He slid his feet into the pond and stretched them, kicking the water lightly.

Star laughed in return, pleased, warm, safe. He flung himself down next to Dom, splashing his own legs in, and leaned against his side. His foot bumped Dom’s, and Dom turned a little toward him.

For a moment, they didn’t say anything, just gazing at each other. Dom lifted his hand, touching Star’s cheek. “May I?” he asked, slow.

“You may,” Star said, mouth dry enough that for a moment he wondered if something was wrong.

But it was just nerves and anticipation, and as Dom leaned in and kissed him, Star felt a rush of relief and gratitude that Dom had seen everything that happened and had decided he still wanted this—and relief and gratitude to himself as well for letting himself have it.

And then he finally stopped overthinking, winding his arms around Dom and simply kissing back with all he had.

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