Tyler Hillis

Written for the first round of the 2026 NYC Midnight Short Story competition with the following requirements:

Genre: Fairy Tale
Subject: Shot in the dark
Character: A sideliner

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Once upon a time there was a young girl named Asper. Unlike most girls her age, she spent her time in the forest she called home, digging in the dirt and admiring its many creatures.

Young Asper’s face was covered in freckles, accompanied by a mop of brown shaggy hair, a few missing teeth, and an endearingly stupid grin. Her hands were stained from the dirt while bits of moss and twigs sprinkled over the rest of her body. 

By her side, her mother—a bit less shaggy and dirt covered, although not entirely—stepped deftly through the old-growth forest. Asper slipped and stumbled trying to keep up. She always tried to match her mother’s elegant movements on the uneven ground, but could never find her rhythm. 

She let out an excited squeal after falling near a decaying stump.

“A Puffyedged Earfig,” Asper squeaked. She plucked the purple mushroom off the stump and held it up. “Good for eyes, toes, and the in-betweens!”

Her mother laughed softly and took the mushroom from her daughter’s outstretched hand.

“And very deadly if not prepared correctly.” She tossed it into the open sack secured to her chest. It joined the numerous other mushrooms they’d foraged this morning—each one correctly identified by young Asper.

They continued on and soon came to a well-trodden path. Both were thankful for more stable footing. They had hiked through the backcountry all morning, and their legs burned. 

The path twisted along the natural curvature of the land. Often, it ran alongside the streams and rivers that cut through the overgrowth like veins in a body. Crossing over these veins, they used bridges that had been bent and shaped from living trees over many years.

Whenever she crossed them, Asper ran her hand along the bark and whispered, “thank you.”

Eventually, the path led them to a denser part of the forest. The thinner moss-covered trees gave way to a more ancient and awe-inducing variety. Here, the trees were so wide and tall that Asper imagined they were the legs of a gargantuan God rooted in place. They were so massive, and so closely packed together, that walking between them was nearly impossible. And when tilting her head back to look up at them, Asper couldn’t see their top. 

At the base of one of these trees was a staircase spiraling up and around the huge trunk. The staircase, like the bridges before, was formed from the very branches of the tree they ascended, having been shaped, braided, and maintained over generations. Climbing it, the pair soon rose above the canopy of the forest and Asper briefly paused to look out at the sea of emerald green. 

Continuing on, the staircase brought them to the crown of the tree where the branches split away. They were then turned back on themselves to form a flat, central platform. The other trees that rose alongside had their branches intertwined, creating pathways, staircases, and dwellings. 

They had made it back to their village.

“I’ll see you at home, nubbin’,” Asper’s mother said. “I need to meet your father at High Branch.”

“Can’t I come? Just this once?” Asper said. 

Her mother shook her head. “Not this time, nubbin’. And besides, I need you to take our mushrooms home and organize them for me.” She removed the sack from her chest and handed them over to her daughter. 

Asper was torn. She was very excited at the prospect of classifying and organizing their haul, but she also knew her mother gave her this task to divert her attention away from being excluded. She took the sack, but didn’t look back up.

“We’ll be home soon, okay? And I can’t wait for you to tell me all about what we found,” her mother tried.

Asper slung the sack over her shoulder and walked away toward their tree. Her mother watched her go, tinged with a small amount of regret.

As Asper trudged up another natural staircase, she came to a fork that separated a grouping of five other trees—each, at their crown, shaped into enclosed dwellings. Along the stairs sat a group of children about her age. She groaned to herself as she came around the spiral and saw them.

“Dirtbag is back from her daily dirtbath everyone! Cover your noses!” one of them yelled. It was Hulper. It was always Hulper. His red hair and fair skin shined spotless and clean. 

Around him sat his younger brother, Trut, and the Defnap twins. All of them sneered at Asper and mockingly pinched their noses. 

Asper kept her head down and didn’t react. She walked slowly around the group toward the staircase leading to her home. Their taunts and laughter followed her until the staircase bent around the far side of the tree. 

As soon as she was out of sight, she stopped and rubbed the tears from her eyes, smearing dirt across her face. She took three long, deep breaths as she placed both hands on the bark of the tree. It felt as if the tree breathed with her. 

Now composed, she continued up the stairs and into their home. It was one large space, again formed by shaped branches, and covered on all sides and above by thick green leaves. A small fire continuously burned in the center of the space. Their beds were all along the wall of one side of the circular dwelling, while the other was occupied by their homely things: a table; a shelf with an assortment of items including books, cookware, and hunting gear; an assortment of jars filled with liquids, vegetables, and mushrooms. 

Asper made her way over to the table and overturned the sack, letting the morning’s plunder spill out. She first separated the common Muckcaps. She counted them, noted the number in a small book, and then placed them all into a large jar which she then returned to the shelf. 

For the others, even though she was quite confident in her initial field assessment, she retrieved her mushroom guide book and verified each one as she logged the amount and stored them away. Four mushrooms—including the Puffyedged Earfig—were first-finds for her, and she left them out on the table to show her parents when they returned. 

When she was done, she went and sat near the fire and flipped through a book about river creatures.

After some time, her parents returned home and her father—sporting the same freckles as his daughter—looked both exhausted and on edge simultaneously. He gave half a smile of greeting down at Asper then made his way to the shelves and began taking down his hunting gear. 

Her mother looked sad. She watched him silently for a moment, then said, “Perba, why must you be the one? Why not Gorsa? Or Faralin?”

Her father shook his head as he slung a quiver of arrows over his shoulder. 

“What’s happening?” Asper said to them both. 

Her father turned toward her mother. “They are going with me. We have to—” he trailed off, lost in thought. He shook his head again. “We can’t let it reach here, Shill. We have to protect our children.”

Her mother sighed, looking for a moment at Asper. When she did, Asper sat up.

“Want to see my mushrooms, momma?” she said. 

“Not now, nubbin’.” 

Asper slumped back down.

“Look, we don’t know what this fog is, what it does, or what’s causing it,” her father said. “If I can help answer any of those things, I’m going to.” 

Asper’s father walked over to her mother and gave her a long hug. She let out a few small cries, but then composed herself and took three long, deep breaths. Then she nodded. 

“Be careful.”

Her father bent down and kissed Asper on the forehead. And without another word, he was gone.

“Momma. What’s happening?” Asper said. 

Her mother sighed again as she made her way over to the table. 

“Nothing dear. Let’s eat, yeah?”

She took down their iron pot from the shelf and filled it with water. The laid out mushrooms were pushed aside as she began chopping vegetables.

Two days passed and Asper’s father hadn’t returned. From their treetop village she could now see the wall of fog spreading across the forest below, swallowing it away into nothingness. Their village became tense, gripped by the looming fear of whatever was in that fog. 

But Asper wasn’t tense, nor fearful. She looked out at that fog and saw something no one else did. 

Like the mushrooms on the forest floor, Asper saw the fog as something unnoticed by most. If it were just a cloud in the sky or a subtle mist, no one paid it any mind. It wasn’t until it was loud and disruptive that people started to notice. Asper knew how that felt.

After another day, the fog progressed further and their village now looked out over a sea of eerily still white. It hung unmoving, hiding the lush forest below. And along with it, the distant sounds of crying, sobbing, and wailing drifted up to them. 

The people in Asper’s village entered into a strange fugue state. They had stopped doing much of anything and seemed overcome by a deep sadness. Even her own mother had stopped leaving their home and spent most of her day staring into their fire.

But Asper remained unaffected and grew restless. She wanted to understand the fog and why it had come. She searched her books for clues and found nothing. She tried talking with her mother but only received silence. Finally, she decided to find out for herself, and descended the main staircase.

Passing through the white veil felt like entering a new world. Shadows moved in undefined shapes on her periphery. Sounds wandered in from every direction. When she felt the soil beneath her feet, she set off along the path that led into the heart of the forest.

Down here, the cries came from all around her as she walked. Some of them sounded human, but others sounded like animals or strange creatures wailing into the mist. 

She walked sure-footed, feeling for the first time like her mother. Each step placed precisely where it needed to be. Each time she shifted her weight, it was in sync with the natural rhythm of her walk, and in harmony with the forest. And even though she had no destination in mind, she let her feet guide her. She walked for hours.

Finally, a large shadow appeared in the fog in front of her. As she approached, the fog parted, and the shadow defined. 

A large woman sat by herself on the forest floor. Her skin was made of bark and her hair of drooping vines. She had a blanket of moss wrapped around her shoulders and dandelions sprouted from her feet. Small streams of water ran out from her knotted eyes as she cried.

Asper recognized her as a forest nymph—a mystical creature she had heard tales of. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of what this powerful spirit might do to her. But she knew she had to try something, even if it was a shot in the dark.

And so, young Asper stepped forward and hugged her. 

“With me,” Asper said. “Three long, deep breaths.”

She hugged and they breathed together. They then sat there for a while, in silence.

Eventually, the nymph pulled away. The streams in her eyes had dried and she smiled at Asper as the fog began to settle all around them. 

“Thank you,” Asper whispered. 

The nymph laid down on the forest floor and before Asper’s very eyes, she disappeared. An overturned decaying tree took her place. A tuft of moss lay overtop. 

As this happened, the fog faded away across the rest of the forest. With it, the sadness it inflicted disappeared.

A mushroom pushed out of the mossy tree and bloomed. 

Asper admired its beauty.