Alethea Paul
Step-mother said I’d never leave. That I’d never see a foreign kingdom, the sea, or snow fall. But now I watch flakes float from the dusking sky, catch one, and taste freedom on my tongue.
I was forced to clean. The house, the hearth by candlelight. Wasting no coals for myself.
Thrill shivers through me.
The night waxes, while incandescent hues paint the clouds, mirroring below.
Did you know revenge burns cold?
Yes, call me Cinder. Tonight the flames rise, and your ashen flakes fall. I’ve cleansed you from this world and taste the embers that were once your skin.
Alethea Paul writes speculative flash fiction and dabbles, or drabbles, in literary. Find her @aletheapaul.bsky.social.
The last thing to divide was a bottle of Shiraz, a wedding gift meant to be shared on our twenty-fifth anniversary. Neither of us wanted the reminder. Nor to be wasteful. Two last things in common.
“Let’s share it, as we sign?”
You opened. I poured.
“Too dry.” Like our bedroom.
“Wasn’t sweet enough to age.” We hadn’t been kind.
“Not enough acidity.” We never fought to preserve our relationship’s thrill.
This marriage was never meant to last six years. Let alone twenty-five.
“At least it’s not bitter.”
We weren’t.
We knew not to linger; to enjoy a smooth finish.
Alethea pretends to be profound with purple prose, puns and alliteration.
I hold my breath and brush away some sediment. Years of searching and dwindling expedition funds, I finally found one. With a slow, steady exhale, I blow the last dust of eons long passed into the wind.
But a marvel remains.
Before man and mammals, other creatures lumbered under the first towering conifers; animals whose bones fell into stagnant swamps and mineralized over millennia.
I can envision, as I hold the Maiasaura’s footprint, its duck-like bill reaching to graze. Perhaps this was the final muddy step before its last breath.
But now, an eternity after, I know it lived.
Alethea pretends to be profound with purple prose, puns, and alliteration.