When you start to know someone, all their physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in their energy, recognize the scent of their skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That’s why you can’t fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and your body but not your heart. And that’s why, when you really connect with a person’s inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant.
Or “Mom Knight” which is what I kept calling it for most of the time I worked on this. This was my story for Valor, a fairy tale anthology I was in last year! It’s a really great book, and I’m so glad I got to be a part of it. You can purchase a copy here.
The strawberry top shell is a species of small sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Trochidae, the top shells. The size of an adult shell varies between 13 mm and 22 mm. This species occurs in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar, the Mascarene Basin, Mozambique, KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and Tanzania.
