Beautiful prose, the writing was pristine and engaging, spellbinding, even. I was caught up immediately by the atmosphere of the story and the unusual characters. It's probably one of the best  short stories I've read in a long long time, it had a fairytale-esque feel to it that I can't quite pin down but that made me feel the same as I did when I was a child and sat down with fairytales to spend a morning immersed in another world where everything was strange and fantastic and whimsical. Really loved this tale.