Just a quick note to flag that I have updated my pen name! The author formerly known as S. Z. Fletcher is now known as S. Z. Meriläinen. I am excited to post more under this name for everyone to see!
On a similar note, I am officially being published in a short story anthology! It’s a pair of collections of queer stories around the theme of masquerades. She Wears the Midnight Crown and He Bears the Cape of Stars for wlw and mlm focus respectively. My story, Carved of Ice and Snow, is a story of a hermit witch, the unseasonal blizzard that strikes her home, and the stranger that collapses at her door.
Available as an e-book through DuckPrintsPress soon!
Please enjoy this snippet as a taster and a treat!
The blizzard was relentless. But so was Siofra. And, unlike the storm, she belonged.
She threw herself back out into the fury of the ice and the snow. The cold was almost a living creature, sinking greedy claws into her flesh and nibbling at her extremities. Ignoring the ice crackling beneath her feet, the snow clinging to her clothes, and the wind pushing at her body, she lurched in the direction her heart knew her cabin was, even if her eyes said differently. Each breath she drew chilled her from the inside out, pain crystallising in her chest wherever the frozen air reached. Just like her trees, she was being snapfrozen; even the figure she fought to haul through the snow felt colder in her hands.
Wincing, panting, and swearing beneath her breath, she plunged forward. Trusting her heart. Trusting her feet, too, which knew the forest floor even when it was buried beneath unseasonable snow. Trusting them step after step, through the cold, through the fear, until one last footfall plunged her forward and she fell hard—
—against her cabin door.