Puck Malamud (pronouns: ve/ver/vis/verself or they/them/theirs/themself) is a librarian, writer, and poet who has lived in a variety of large East Coast US cities since immigrating from Ukraine in the 1990s. Ve is co-author of a chapter on being LGBTQ in the library profession, and author and co-author of multiple fanfics in various fandoms, though primarily The Untamed and Mo Dao Zu Shi. When not desperately trying to keep up with vis Libby holds, Puck can be found practicing dance, playing TTRPGs and board games, hanging out in various Slacks and Discords, and shitposting on Tumblr.
Story Title: Confluence
tags: alternating point of view, bipoc character, character is a murderer (mild), chinese mythology, creature character, harm to animals warning (mild), harm to children (mild), nature spirits, reunion, russia, slavic mythology, wlw
Teaser:
“It’s you!” she exclaimed. “You’re alive!” Her free hand lifted towards Alisa’s face and faltered. “But I thought you were human.”
“Wh—” Alisa spluttered. She grabbed the other woman’s hand where it had frozen centimetres from her face and dragged her out of the way of the other customers. “Keep your voice down,” she hissed. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Oh, uh, Liran,” she said. Her accent was Russian, but not her name. Chinese, if Alisa ventured a guess. “Liran Yan. I’m— You saved my life! It was, well, it was a hundred years ago, and I look pretty different now, but—”
She must. Alisa would definitely remember saving the life of a girl this gorgeous, even with a hundred years distance.
Liran was still talking, words pouring over themselves with the kind of nervous energy Alisa most associated with the youngest rusalki—the ones who lived in young mountain springs, deer-swift and hungry. Alisa had once had many sisters quite as beautiful as Liran, the better to lure landfolk into the river.
“Look,” she said, cutting Liran off. It was too late to deny anything, her reaction too compromising, but she could still do damage control. “We can’t talk about this here. Why don’t I buy us some coffees and we can start over?”
Will Alisa and Liran be able to start over, and will Alisa find out how Liran knows her? Back the Kickstarter for Add Magic to Taste, read the whole story, and found out!