S.V. Plitt

S.V. Plitt is a queer author living and working in Naarm, Melbourne. Son’s writing has been published in Archer magazine, Darebin n-SCRIBE, and won second place in the Odyssey House Short Story Prize 2022. Their manuscript ‘Strange Intersections’ was Highly Commended in the VPLAs Unpublished Manuscript Competition 2022. They also appear on the (Un) Marginalised Season Two Podcast, discussing themes included in their writing, such as gender identity, mental health, religious oppression, and intergenerational trauma. Son draws inspiration from volunteering as a carer and their work in customer service.

 
 
 
A Fairy God Princess

A subversive tale of feminist woes 

There once was a Fairy God Princess.

She kissed a lot of toads looking for her prince.

Not only toads, in fact.

She pranced through the forest kissing lizards and lions and amorous amphibians.

With each slippery kiss, her disappointment grew.

The disappointment grew and grew inside her belly like a bag of snakes in a battle for sovereignty.

Battling for the prize of turning the princess into a lizard, or a lion or an amorous amphibian.

They fought fiercely, keeping the princess up at night.

Whenever she drifted into an exhausted slumber, the lizards or goannas, the toads or the lions would pull the tendon by her tailbone.

Like a puppet, her legs wriggled and squirmed out of bed and tried to run away with her.

To turn the princess into a toad or lion or amorous amphibian.

To make her a bride.

But the princess was also a warrior and worried that if her legs ran away with her,

the battle in her belly would boil and boil, filling her up with a storm for scales and fur.

She begged the moon and the stars and the emptiness in between,

that the lizard prince whose eyes gleamed like black jewels,

the prince that had so chivalrously waited in the forest for a decade,

that he might be the victor, in this battle of bravado that boiled in her belly.

But like all the contestants, his price for saving her from the lions and the toads and the amorous amphibians, was sovereignty. To possess the flesh in which she resided. To grow a lizard in her belly. To grow a king.

The Fairy God Princess, the warrior that worried, knew deep down that the flesh in which she resided, could not be divided. It was hers and hers alone.

No heir, no king, no lizard, no amorous amphibian, no lion, and no toad would chain her to the future. She prayed to the moon and the stars and the emptiness in between.

An answer came. It was a vast and empty silence that spread through her heart, her belly and her mind. She relinquished her title. No more a Fairy God Princess.

She remembered her true identity and became they. They knew the I in them. Their I was in all of the fairies, gods and princesses, in all of the princes, lizards and toads, all of the goannas, the lions and the amorous amphibians. They were all of it and nothing. And belonged to themselves and no one.

And they all lived ever after in a confusing land of grammatically problematic pronouns.