small mercy

Your comments have all been so, so lovely; thank you so much! I’m glad you’re enjoying my little sprinklings of mythology and superstition; there are more to come. 😁

Great insight, that’s exactly what I was going for! You’re right, though, it is indeed very short and could be more fleshed out—perhaps at a later date 🤭

Thank you so much for your kind words. I do intend to write more (for other stories). 😊

Thank you so much, and thank you for your review as well! 😊 I had this whole idea that the prisoner was a revolutionary/freedom fighter of some kind but ended up keeping it short and vague so the reader’s imagination could fill in the gaps.

The prisoner sat with his legs crossed, his forehead pressed against the iron bars. He was the only one in this cell and he took possession of it like a raja over his empire, a god over his realm. Sometimes he lay on the floor spread eagle, looking for faces in the stains on the ceilings, sometimes he paced the four metres he was allotted, sometimes he scratched his fingernails against the walls, trying to etch out a mark, a reminder of himself. Such an awful place and it was all his and no one

A prisoner converses with his jailer.

There is something about Indian poetry and music and it's the fact that there are so, so many men writing about men. And it's always been this way. This is especially prominent in the Punjabi language, and now that Punjabi culture is so trendy in the rest of north India, it's becoming increasingly prominent in Hindi-language music. If you look back at Indian poetry, in any language, men have written about their love for men, but, for the most part, they used feminine verb conjugations to refer to themselves. So, it's a man writing about love for a man, but from the point of view of a woman. This is extremely common and completely normalized. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Hindi music in which men sing about men... but continue to use masculine verb conjugations in reference to themselves. So no one can "no homo" it away by saying it's from a woman's POV. It's a man singing about his male beloved. In some cases, it's pretty simple. It's considered extremely disrespectful in India to change the lyrics when you're covering a song. So that leads to women singing about women and men singing about men. For original songs, you could say something was lost in translation. For example, the Punjabi language is so popular now. Perhaps the singer doesn't realize "mahi" is a masculine form of "beloved" or that "sohneya" is not gender-neutral and literally means "beautiful boy." After all, in the music videos, the men are still crooning the songs to women. He's just calling that woman his "beautiful boy" in Punjabi. ...Maybe it just rhymes better this way.

I’m the same way! Plus if I wake up with an idea at 4am, it’s much easier to reach for the notebook than the laptop

I didn’t think a story that started with a 911 call could be so cute!

I do love a slow burn hehe

That sounds like a great way to edit; you end up writing it twice and are able to catch mistakes easily when transcribing. I only use my notebook to write out story notes, most of it is written on my laptop.

I won’t say I’m much of an artist but drawing the characters is certainly a lot easier than writing about them lol

He spent the remainder of the day grinding neem seeds with a strength he hadn’t known he’d possessed. He didn’t stop to eat or rest, just collected his dried-up seeds and ground them against rock until they were dust, until every last infinitesimally tiny droplet of oil was wrung from their insides. It kept his mind from wandering. He had only just gotten used to his role in the gardens and in Salim’s courtyards and now he would have to—he’d have to... He didn’t know. The skin of his palms

Hi everyone, I'm very new here. I have a long history of writing (since I was a teenager... back in the mid-2000's) but until now, it's all been fanfiction. I've always wanted to try my hand at writing an original story and now I'm doing it! I've heard fanfic authors have a certain "fanficcy vibe" to their original writing; I'm not sure if I've got it or not, so someone will have to tell me. 😛 Nice to meet you all. 😀

Has anyone else watched the latest Melodysheep video (Life Beyond III)? I was blown away by it! I feel like his animations and music just keep getting better and better. For those who don't know him, he makes popular astronomy documentaries on YouTube. His Life Beyond series is a summation of popular theories about what alien life could look and act like. Despite having 2M followers, I still think he's criminally underrated.

Trust your gut! Or don’t. Or do! Maybe half trust it? 🤐

🤐 It’s so hard to respond without spoiling anything so I’ll just respond with a great big thank you for reading!

Thank you so much! We’ve all been cooped up due to the pandemic for the last 2 years, at least I can imagine I’m in a far-off lush pleasure garden as I write this. 😆

I am a hopeless romantic at heart 💖

“Say, do you know whatever happened to Bismil? Al-Jafari was his name, I think. He was part of Prince Salim’s entourage.” Somesh spoke in a hushed tone, not wanting their supervisor to overhear. Today they were tasked to clean a guest room currently occupied by one of Prince Salim’s most unmannered friends. The man, Kasim, had sat himself down on a chaise by the fireplace and hadn’t budged for nearly a half-hour now, ostensibly reading a book—but Somesh could feel his eyes on the back of hi

Thank you! I’m trying hard with the descriptions since it’s such a different place and time and I’m glad it shows. And Abdul is definitely the voice of reason.

Yay, I’m so glad! Next chapter is just in queue and should be up soon!

Thanks so much for reading! I hope you’ll like where this story goes.

Thank you so much! I wanted to make it tropey but since this setting is rather niche, it does add a bit of a twist to the old servant/royalty set up.

Some antagonists might already be present 👀 👀 👀