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it seems like a mistake at first.
I guess this is a mistake she says. it probably doesn’t know where it is.
then the deer begins dragging in grasses and leaves from the woods.
it spreads them out into a nest under the kitchen table.
all day she and her grandfather watch the deer.
it gets tiring over the next few weeks, living with this creature.
the deer eats their food, nibbles on her sweaters.
it doesn’t help with the dishes or sweep the floor
or pay its share of the rent.

the deer has no understanding of the salient history of her town,
a place nicknamed The Village of Fatherless Children.
when she was young, the dads of
half the kids in town disappeared.
the other half did not have dads to begin with
either they had two moms or single moms.
she often wonders why it is called The Village of Fatherless Children
and not The Village of Many Mothers
or even The Village of Mostly Mothers
which would be a much more positive and progressive way of viewing things.

one day she finds that a framed photo of her father is missing.
the deer, when interrogated, discloses nothing.



Nikki Caffier Smith is a writer based in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Typishly, and Awakened Voices Magazine, and is forthcoming in 42 Stories Anthology and on the podcast Kaleidocast. She works as a fiction editor for Cleaver Magazine. She lives with her partner and their two ill-behaved cats.
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3 Mar 2025

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On a Tuesday night, I hang the lamp on the hook beside my front door. When I light it, the oceanic darkness that surrounds the house steps back, away from my hands, away from my face. For a moment, I stand on my porch and look down the long driveway, and I guess what creatures might exist out there, circling around me, living invisibly.
My bird husband has made his choice.
At night, my grandmother’s house flowers / into not one but many palaces
In this special episode of Strange Horizons at 25, Kat Kourbeti sits down with fiction editors Hebe Stanton and Kat Weaver, as well as poetry and administrative editor Romie Stott, to talk about some of the work we published last year, just as the Hugo nominations deadline draws close.
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