Weathering Youth: “Things My Mothers Taught Me” and “Flapping”
Because Weathering Youth is my biggest collection to date, I’m grouping the short stories and flash fiction stories in pairs for my posts, based on the way they fall in the collection. This lets me look at the connections between the stories and how I decided to arrange specific stories in the collection!
“Things My Mothers Taught Me” and “Flapping” are two flash fiction pieces that are a little less connected to each other than some of the other pairings in this collection, but both of these pieces have themes of learning and moving forward.
“Things My Mothers Taught Me” involves the mermaid mythology that I first introduced in my short story, “Catch” (which appears in both Denizens of Distant Realms and What If I’m a Merfolk?). In this story, the mermaid character learns about her life before she became a mermaid and contemplates how to move forward with that knowledge.
“Flapping,” on the other hand, features a young cave dragon learning to fly, despite being discouraged from doing so by some of those close to him. He decides that just because his species never learned to fly doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and soon he soars to new heights, inspiring others of his species (and only terrifying the humans a tiny bit).
Both of these stories are exclusive to Weathering Youth! You can read them, along with other stories featuring young protagonists in a variety of settings, in print and ebook formats!
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