January2026

“What do you believe?”

On By Janni Posted in generalTagged , Leave a comment
The grasses sighed wearily and retreated back into the snow. “They’re not dead,” I said. “Not completely, not around you.”

“They are not dead.” Karin sounded as tired as the grasses had. “But they are dying. Tell me, Liza, do you believe that spring will come?”

Why ask me? I was no plant mage. “The adults in my town believe it.” They believed in spite of the gray trees and the gray skies, the failed crops and the too-long winter.

“So it is with the human adults in my town as well.” Karin held a hand out to the falling snow as we walked on. Snowflakes melted against her skin. “Yet I have never heard the trees so quiet. They yearn for darkness, and some have given way to it. Others slip into sleep, accepting that they may never wake. I am told this is the way of your world. It is not the way of mine. I have never known a forest that was not green. What do you believe?” Nothing more can grow out of such death. And so the worlds wind down, and tragedy runs its course. “Does it matter what I believe?” If the world was winding down, it would do so no matter what I believed. A scrap of cloth lay on the ground ahead of me. Kyle’s bloodstained bandage. I picked it up. Did I dare believe he might be all right? If I couldn’t believe in spring, could I believe that much?

–Faerie Winter

Ever after

On By Janni Posted in writingTagged , Leave a comment
I’m pulling on a thread of a story that could be resolved two different ways. Harsh or comforting. Hard truths or held punches. Grief or healing. Reflection or escape. Both paths can work. Both have power.

My stories are often quite chatty, telling me what they want to be, what they’re meant to be. But this story is silent, at least about this, as if to say, “This time, you have to choose, not me.”