Unconventional

Stories

Stories that you might want to

From different parts of the world

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The Day Boy and the Night Girl

Chapter One: The Witch's Curious

Deep in the heart of a forgotten valley, where the mountains stood like

silent giants, there existed two castles that defied nature itself. One

gleamed white as fresh snow, its towers bathed in endless golden sunlight.

The other crouched in perpetual shadow, its black stones swallowing

every ray of light. These were the domains of Watho the Witch, a woman

with eyes like cold silver and a heart that delighted in unnatural things.

One stormy night, when lightning painted the sky in jagged streaks, two

babies came into Watho's possession—one with hair like spun sunlight,

the other with eyes that seemed to hold the very stars.

*"Perfect,"* whispered the witch, her long fingers tracing their tiny faces.

*"You shall be my greatest experiment."*

And so she named them:

- Photogen (the Day Boy), raised in the White Castle, where no shadows

dared linger.

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- Nycteris (the Night Girl), hidden in the Black Castle, where even candles

feared to glow.

Chapter Two: The Boy Who Knew No Fear

Photogen grew tall and strong, trained by Watho's armored knights to

hunt wolves before he could properly spell his own name. By age ten, he

could shoot an arrow through a hawk’s wing at a hundred paces.

*"Fear is for the weak,"* his tutors told him, and Photogen believed

them—for he had never seen darkness. Even when the sun dipped behind

the mountains, enchanted lanterns flooded the White Castle with false

daylight.

But one evening, as he chased a silver fox beyond the castle walls,

something terrible happened.

The lanterns didn’t light the forest.

The world turned black.

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For the first time in his life, Photogen’s knees shook. The trees creaked like

hungry giants. A wolf’s howl slithered through the gloom—and the mighty

hunter collapsed, whimpering like a lost pup.

Chapter Three: The Girl Who Danced with

Meanwhile, in the Black Castle, Nycteris traced her fingers along walls that

hummed with secrets. She knew every inch of her night-world: the way

mushrooms glowed blue in the cellars, how spiders spun lullabies into

their webs.

Watho had given her one rule: *"Never seek the light."*

But rules, as you know, are like cookie jars—they exist to be tested. One

night, Nycteris found a loose stone in the dungeon. She wiggled it free...

and gasped.

Moonlight.

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It poured through the crack like liquid silver, painting her toes in

constellations. Without thinking, she squeezed through—and tumbled

into a world of whispering grass and sky-so-big-it-hurt.

Then she heard crying.

Chapter Four: When Sun and Moon Meet

Nycteris crept toward the sound and found a golden-haired boy curled

beneath an oak, his face buried in his hands.

*"Why do you hide from the night?"* she asked. *"It’s just the day turned

inside-out."*

Photogen peeked through his fingers. Before him stood a girl woven from

starlight, her bare feet glowing against the dark earth.

*"I—I don’t understand it,"* he admitted.

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*"Then I’ll teach you,"* said Nycteris, and she showed him how fireflies

wrote poems in the air, how owls sang the world to sleep. Slowly,

Photogen’s fear melted like snow in spring.

But when dawn pinked the horizon, Nycteris stumbled back. *"Too

bright!"* she cried, shielding her eyes.

Now it was Photogen’s turn to lead. *"Watch,"* he said, cupping her small

hands around the rising sun as if it were a baby bird. *"Light is just night

wearing its Sunday clothes."*

Chapter Five: The Witch’s Last Trick

Watho’s scream shook the valley when she saw her experiments holding

hands. *"You’ve ruined everything!"* she shrieked, summoning a storm

that boiled the very clouds.

Lightning stabbed the ground like Watho’s bony fingers—until one bolt

rebelled, striking her tower instead. With a wail that sounded oddly like a

sob, the witch vanished in a puff of sulfur-scented smoke.

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 Chapter Six: The First Real Morning

As the years passed, Photogen grew to love the hush of midnight, while

Nycteris learned to greet dawn with open arms. They built a cottage

where the White and Black Castles once stood, planting a garden that

bloomed in both sun and shadow.

Travelers who passed their home swore they saw something miraculous—

two children, now grown, dancing at the exact moment when day kissed

night goodbye.

And if you listen very closely on summer evenings, you can still hear their

laughter riding the wind, a reminder that:

*Some things—like courage and kindness—grow best when light and dark

share the same soil.*

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The Wise Woman

Chapter One: The Terrible Children

In a kingdom where the rivers sang and the oldest trees remembered

when men spoke to animals, there lived two girls who might have been

the most unpleasant children in all that land.

Princess Rosamond resided in a castle with seven golden spires, where

servants scrambled to fulfill her every whim before she even spoke it. She

took particular delight in trapping songbirds in gilded cages, claiming their

music belonged to her alone.

Half a day's journey away, in a village where the houses leaned together

like tired old men, lived Agnes. Though she owned nothing but a patched

dress and a pair of muddy shoes, Agnes ruled her family with sharp words

and sharper nails. She once made her little brother eat dirt simply because

he'd looked at her slice of bread.

Neither child knew it yet, but their stories were about to change in a most

unexpected way.

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Chapter Two: The Vanishing

On the afternoon everything changed, Rosamond was in her walled

garden torturing butterflies when the air turned strangely cool. A wind

smelling of frozen apples and distant mountains swirled about her. The

last thing she saw was her silk slippers lifting off the ground as the wind

carried her away.

At that very moment, Agnes stood in the forest screaming at a family of

hedgehogs when the mossy earth beneath her feet gave way. She tumbled

down, down, down - not into some nasty badger hole as you might expect,

but into a round, smooth tunnel that felt almost... intentional.

Chapter Three: The Peculiar Cottage

Both girls awoke in identical cottages built of honey-colored wood. The

fireplaces crackled with perfect flames that never burned low. The

windows showed only rolling white mist in every direction.

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"Good," said a voice. "You're awake."

The Wise Woman sat knitting in a rocking chair that moved by itself. Her

silver hair shimmered like spiderwebs in moonlight. Though her face bore

many wrinkles, her dark eyes sparkled with something between

amusement and sternness.

"You may call me Auntie," she said, though neither girl had ever been

permitted to call adults by familiar names. "This is my school for children

who haven't yet learned what matters."

Chapter Four: Lessons in the Looking Glass

For Rosamond, education began with a shock. The Wise Woman handed

her a coarse broom. "Sweep the floor," she instructed.

"I don't sweep," Rosamond declared, tossing her golden curls.

"Then you don't eat," replied the Wise Woman calmly.

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When hunger finally drove Rosamond to take up the broom, she

discovered the cottage floor changed each time she cleaned it - one

moment flagstones, the next packed earth, then polished wood - as if

testing her willingness to work without reward.

Most unsettling was the oval mirror that showed not Rosamond's lovely

face, but a small, snarling creature with greedy eyes and grasping hands.

"That," explained the Wise Woman, "is what grows inside children who

always take and never give."

Chapter Five: The Thorny Meadow

Agnes found herself in a barren field where a sickly sheep coughed in the

thistles. "Keep it alive," said the Wise Woman's voice from nowhere.

"I hate sheep!" Agnes shouted at the empty air.

By nightfall, shivering and alone, Agnes discovered the sheep's warmth

when she hugged it close. As days passed, she found herself talking to the

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creature. "You're not so stupid," she admitted one morning, surprised to

realize she meant it.

The remarkable thing was this - wherever Agnes walked with kindness in

her heart, the thistles bloomed into roses. Where she stamped in anger,

they withered to dust.

Chapter Six: The Hardest Choice

When the time came for decisions, the Wise Woman appeared holding

two doors. "One leads home exactly as you were," she said. "The other

stays here until your lessons take root."

Rosamond thought of her soft bed. Agnes longed for her mother's stew.

Both reached for the first door... until they caught sight of themselves in

the Wise Woman's mirror.

The reflections showed not the monsters they'd seen before, but glimpses

of who they might become - a queen beloved by her people, a healer

known for gentle hands.

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Hands trembling, both girls chose the second door.

Chapter Seven: The Return

When they finally went home (for the Wise Woman never kept students

longer than necessary), the changes showed in quiet ways.

Rosamond opened the palace aviary, her laughter mixing with the

songbirds' music as they flew free. Agnes carried her baby brother

piggyback through the village, both of them giggling.

And if sometimes, when the wind smells particularly of apples and

mountains, the girls exchange knowing glances... well, that's their secret

to keep.

Deep in the archives at Cair Paravel, between accounts of the White

Witch's defeat and the voyage of the Dawn Treader, exists one yellowed

parchment mentioning a certain silver-haired teacher of spoiled children.

The chronicle concludes with these words, written in a pawprint's inky

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flourish:

*"The best magic turns not lead to gold, but selfish hearts to wise ones."*

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The Three Monarchs of the Primordial World

In the dawn of creation, when the earth was yet unformed and the sky still

practiced being blue, three brothers governed the nascent world. To the

sun-baked south ruled Impetus, whose restless mind devised countless

innovations before breakfast. To the frozen north reigned Haste, forever

measuring moments too fleeting for others to perceive. Between them,

where rivers wandered as they pleased, dwelled the eldest brother - the

Lord of Potential, whom men called Chaos.

Chaos built no straight halls nor angular towers. His palace was a single

perfect sphere where walls embraced visitors like a mother's arms. No

doors barred entry, yet none entered uninvited. Within, the very air

shaped itself to visitors' needs - fragrant with childhood memories for the

weary, thrumming with creative energy for the inspired.

When the younger brothers visited each solstice, their restless natures

calmed in Chaos's presence. Once, when Haste spoke of his lost love, the

wind carried her voice through the willows. Another time, Impetus found

his favorite childhood meal waiting, though none had set the table.

"Brother," Impetus remarked one evening as they reclined on living

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couches, "how can you govern without eyes to see your domain or ears to

hear petitions?"

"Indeed," Haste agreed, "a proper king requires seven noble features. Let

us remedy this lack!"

The warm air thickened in protest, but the brothers, consumed by their

design, paid no heed.

At dawn they began their fatal improvements with tools of celestial silver.

Eyepits they carved first, but where vision should have blossomed, only

argent tears flowed, hardening into blind mirrors.

Ear canals followed, admitting not sound but tempests that howled

through Chaos's being.

For seven days they labored, each incision bleeding away essential wonder.

The self-adjusting cushions grew still. The thoughtful aromas faded.

When the final aperture was shaped, Chaos uttered his first and final

sound - the shriek of existence torn asunder. The perfect walls shattered.

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Every firefly in creation extinguished mid-glow.

Where infinite potential had pulsed, only a pitted orb remained, its seven

wounds weeping the scent of lost possibilities.

The brothers returned to their realms to find Impetus's inventions

collapsing into nonsense, Haste's precise clocks unraveling time itself.

Their reunion feasts, once nourished by Chaos's grace, now tasted of

hollow ambition.

Children sometimes pause near the crumbled palace ruins, sensing in the

wind's whisper something between a lament and a warning. The wise

among them understand:

Some harmonies go beyond shapes,

Some perfections require no form,

And love needs no face to be true.

But this wisdom came too late for the well-meaning kings, who only

understood when their brother's absence became the void of their world.

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The Master Butcher's Secret

In the golden autumn of the Wei Kingdom, when persimmons hung like

lanterns in the orchards, there worked a butcher unlike any other. While

his fellow tradesmen sweated over their chopping blocks, their cleavers

growing notched as walnut shells, old Ting moved with the quiet grace of

a heron wading through reeds. His knife - the same slender blade he'd

carried since his apprenticeship - flashed like a silver minnow through

water, never catching, never faltering.

One crisp morning, as maple leaves pirouetted into the courtyard, Lord

Wen-Hui paused to watch this marvel. Where other shops rang with the

clamor of metal on bone, Ting's workspace hummed with something

nearer to music. The butcher's shoulders swayed as if keeping time to

some silent melody, his blade gliding through carcasses with scarcely a

sound.

"My good man," called the lord, "how does your knife remain sharp when

others' blades dull daily?"

Ting wiped his hands on a linen apron barely stained with blood. "Young

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butchers see only hide and gristle, my lord. I?" His calloused fingers

sketched pathways in the air. "I follow the song."

He described his craft as a poet might recount his first love:

First Year

"I hacked like all beginners - brute force against nature's design. My arms

ached, my blade chipped, and the oxen seemed to resist me out of spite."

Third Year

"Then I began seeing the map written beneath the hide - valleys of tendon,

rivers of fat, the secret meeting places where bone greets bone."

Twentieth Year

"Now?" Ting lifted his knife, sunlight racing along its flawless edge. "I no

longer cut. I simply accompany the blade as it finds the paths already

waiting."

To demonstrate, he approached a suspended carcass. His breath slowed.

The knife tip hovered, then darted forward - not slicing, but parting. Flesh

unfolded like petals at dawn, revealing glistening architecture beneath.

When he reached a knot of gristle, the blade paused, circled twice like a

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curious fox, then slipped through some invisible gateway.

Lord Wen-Hui's teacup sat forgotten in his hands. "This isn't butchery," he

whispered. "It's philosophy with a knife."

Ting smiled, polishing his blade with a silk cloth. "All things have their grain,

my lord. Wood knows how it wishes to be carved. Rivers remember their

courses. Even oxen..." He patted the dismantled carcass, now a tapestry

of meat and bone. "...contain their own instructions, if we bother to read

them."

As the lord departed, a single maple leaf drifted onto Ting's workstation.

Without looking, the butcher flicked his knife - snick - splitting the leaf

along its central vein. The two perfect halves fluttered downward, coming

to rest beside a blade that had not lost its luster in twenty years.

Like a key turning in a well-oiled lock, the expert's touch meets no

opposition, because it has learned to speak the world's hidden language.

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The Master Carpenter’s Secret

The morning the royal proclamation arrived, every carpenter in Lu felt

their chisels grow heavy in their hands.

*"By order of His Majesty: A sacred stand is required—one to cradle nine

bronze bells without trembling, yet light enough to sing with their every

note."*

Men who had carved for decades exchanged grim looks. The jù-frame

demanded the impossible—the strength of iron, the delicacy of a moth’s

wing. Many tried. Their creations either shattered beneath the bells’

weight or muffled their voices like woolen mittens.

Then came Zi Qing.

The Man Who Listened to Trees

When the ragged carpenter first shuffled into the palace courtyard, the

guards nearly turned him away. His robe was patched at the elbows, his

hair streaked with sawdust. But when he lifted his chisel, a curious hush

fell over the courtyard—as if the tools themselves were holding their

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breath.

For seven days, Zi Qing did not touch wood.

On the first morning, he sat beneath the palace plum tree until sparrows

mistook him for a statue and nested in his sleeves. *"I forget rewards,"*

he whispered when the chancellor questioned his idleness.

By the fourth day, he had burned his carefully drawn plans in the courtyard

fountain. *"Rules are cages,"* he explained to the horrified scribes,

watching the parchment blacken and curl.

On the seventh dusk, the kitchen maids swore they saw him sitting so still

that his chest no longer rose and fell. *"Now,"* he murmured to no one,

*"I forget Zi Qing."*

At dawn on the eighth day, he shouldered his tools and walked into the

forest where the oldest trees stood sentinel.

The Wood That Dreamed of Music

Deep in the green cathedral of pines, Zi Qing pressed his calloused palm

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against a gnarled catalpa. The trunk hummed beneath his touch like a

plucked harp string.

*"Ah,"* he breathed, and his chisel began to move—not cutting so much

as *unveiling*, as if the wood were shedding layers to reveal its true self.

The blade waltzed around knots as if they were dance partners. It

skimmed along the grain like a child tracing a map’s river. When it

encountered resistance, it paused—not forcing, but waiting until the

timber seemed to whisper a solution.

By twilight, the jù-stand stood completed in the clearing. Its posts arched

like leaping dolphins frozen mid-air. Its surface swirled with patterns that

made the eyes ache to follow them. And when the evening breeze passed

through its curves, the wood emitted a soft, bell-like *chime*—though no

metal had touched it.

The Trial of the Nine Bells

At the unveiling ceremony, the royal musicians gasped as one when the

first bronze bell settled onto the stand. The wood *breathed*—flexing just

enough to cradle the weight without yielding. The bell’s voice rang purer

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than it ever had, its vibrations dancing along the jù-stand’s curves in visible

ripples. Even the dust motes swirled in perfect, spiraling orbits around it.

The king leaned forward on his throne. *"How?"*

Zi Qing bowed low. *"Your Majesty hears only the wood’s song. For seven

days, I silenced the noise in my soul—until I could hear it too."*

That night, under a moon sharp as a freshly honed blade, the carpenter

vanished—though the kitchen boys swore they heard his laughter echoing

whenever the jù-stand caught the wind just right.

The Apprentice’s Discovery

Years later, a 16 year-old young apprentice dared brush his fingers against

the sacred stand. To his shock, the wood pulsed with warmth like a living

thing.

*"Of course it’s warm,"* chuckled the oldest musician, tuning his zither

nearby. *"Real craft isn’t about forcing your will upon the world. It’s about

listening so closely that the world begins to speak… and lets your hands

become its voice."*

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And high above them, the nine bronze bells trembled in agreement, their

song clearer than it had ever been.

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The Fall and the Flight

Prologue: The Labyrinth's Whisper

King Minos' throne room smelled of salt and fear. Before him crouched

the thing that had once been his queen's son—a monster with a bull's

head and a child's whimper.

"Build me a prison," the king commanded Daedalus, his knuckles white on

the armrest. "One so cunning, even its prisoner won't find the exit."

For seven years, the master craftsman worked. His labyrinth grew like a

living nightmare—hallways that slithered like snakes, staircases that led

nowhere, and doors that only opened when the moon was right. At its

heart, Daedalus placed a trick of the light: a false sun that moved across

the ceiling, so the Minotaur would always think it was chasing dawn.

When the last stone was set, Minos smiled. "A perfect cage," he

murmured, running his hand along a wall that seemed to breathe. Then

his grip tightened on Daedalus' shoulder. "For both of you."

Chapter One: The Tower Without Doors

single window, Daedalus could see his creation writhing below—a stone

serpent digesting its prey.

Icarus kicked at the tower walls. "You built this maze to trap a monster.

Now we're the beasts in a cage!"

Daedalus said nothing. In the fading light, he began plucking feathers from

gulls that nested on the ledge. Their down was softer than he

remembered. Softer than his son's hair when he was still small enough to

cradle.

Then Daedalus the Maker sat in his moonlit prison, running fingers over

the bones of a dead seagull. Outside, the Cretan waves gnawed at the cliffs

like hungry dogs.

"They search my robes for tools daily," he muttered to his son Icarus, who

lounged on the windowsill, tossing pebbles at the guards below. "But they

never think to check the wax in our ears, or the feathers the gulls leave as

gifts."

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Icarus smirked. At fifteen, he had his father's sharp chin but none of his

patience. "Why whisper, Father? Even if they heard, what could dull men

do against the mind that built the Labyrinth?" The boy's voice rang too

loud in the small cell. Daedalus winced.

Chapter Two: Wings of Wax and Arrogance

For nine nights they worked in secret:

- Daedalus melting beeswax with stolen candle stubs

- Icarus threading gull feathers with golden harp strings

- Both shaping frames not like bird wings, but as the dragonflies do—each

vein precise as a mathematician's dream

When the final quill was set, Daedalus grasped his son's shoulders.

"Remember: Fly the middle path. The sun's kiss will melt your wings. The

sea's breath will drown them."

Icarus stretched the wings wide, their shadow like a giant's hand on the

wall. "I'm not some trembling sparrow," he laughed. "I'll kiss the clouds

and make the eagles jealous!"

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Chapter Three: The Boy Who Challenged the
Sun

Dawn came purple as a bruise. As the guards changed shifts, father and

son leapt from the tower.

At first, Icarus obeyed—keeping level with Daedalus's steady course. But

then... A thermal caught him. He spiraled upward, whooping.

"Come down!" Daedalus cried, but the wind stole his words.

Higher Icarus climbed, past the cranes, past the hawks, until—

Pop.

A single feather broke free, then another. The boy laughed as wax pearls

rained down, not realizing they were his wings weeping.

"Father! Look how near I've brought you the sun!" And then... The last

thing Daedalus saw was his son's radiant face, backlit by Apollo's fury,

before the boy became a comet streaking toward the wine-dark sea.

Chapter Four: The Gift of Broken Things

"Your toys don't fly," scoffed King Cocalus.

Daedalus smiled sadly. "All true flight begins with broken wings." He

dropped the carving. Unlike Icarus's doomed wings, this wooden bird

caught the midday thermals—rising not with arrogance, but by

surrendering to the wind's will. As it vanished into the light, some say they

heard a boy's laughter riding the breeze.

And if you listen very carefully when gulls cry over the Icarian Sea, you

might discern the oldest lesson of all: *Pride flies upward, but wisdom

sails between.*

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