WIP - Secret Santa Story 2023

NOTE: I don't think any of my followers here are, but if you're someone from the Lair who's participating in the event, please don't read this story!

Doing this a bit early this year... I've always found the yearly secret santa prompt exchange event on the private writing server I'm on to be a good way to get me to write (because I struggle to commit to finishing things, as I'm sure you're well aware...). Unfortunately, I'm also bad at letting simple ideas extend into longer stories than they prooobably should be, haha. But this got us Deck the Malls from 2020, Sable and the Statue from 2021, and The Lich and the Aimless from 2022, all of which I'm quite happy with, for various reasons. So I'm busy on trying to get this new one done, with a deadline of the end of next month.

I wanted to get you the first couple of chapters, and I'll be continuing to work on them in the next couple of weeks. 2 chapters done now, of what I expect to total... 5? At least with this one, since there's a hard deadline and a specific person I'm writing it for, it keeps me from letting it drag out indefinitely. 

Also, as additional context, the setting of this story is a little strange in that it's historical, but set in a world where certain magical/supernatural beings coexist with humans. This is because it's sort of fitting in with how another particular author writes some of her stories? But I'm also doing some extrapolation in imagining the setting... basically, my thought is that in this world, the course of history has gone about the same. Magic and supernatural creatures exist, but they're looked on with suspicion and prejudice (particularly in this time period). Effectively, I imagine the overall trajectory of acceptance to be similar to that of queerness: queer people have also always existed, but in many historical circumstances are marginalized by mainstream society in various ways. TBH it's not actually going to come up that much in this story, I think? but it's something I've thought through. In fact, there's a little bit and pieces of a sequel idea already stuck in my head, haha, but I am focusing on this first, and no idea if the latter will ever materialize.

Anyways, that's enough rambling. Enjoy the first couple of chapters, and I'll be adding to them as I go. <3