Flashback Friday: The Gods' Own Keeper

I'm off celebrating my youngest son's university graduation. While I'm busy, I hope you enjoy this story from 2015!

 

The Gods' Own Keeper

Osbert Godskeeper scurried across the Great Hall of Chaotica. Orgo and Hempto were fighting again, and Osbert had no desire to get caught between those two. Neither had learned the control proper to a god, and Orgo tended to leak lightning when he got mad. Hempto was worse. He smoked. Not his pipe, which was bad enough--the gods’ herb of choice stunk, as far as Osbert was concerned. But when Hempto was upset, smoke came out of every orifice. It stunk even worse than his pipe, or Chacto the Great's cigars, and it burned. Hempto was a fire god, and nothing but trouble.

 

When he had reached the far end of the hall and the safety of his office, Osbert’s manner changed. No longer a frightened, scurrying figure, he stood erect and took firm hold of his microphone, scowling fiercely at the battling behemoths.

 

"Orgo and Hempto! You two will stop that NOW!" His amplified voice boomed across the hall, and the battling gods screeched to an abrupt halt, abashed. “Now, clean up the mess you made, then go to your rooms and behave yourselves,” Osbert continued, and watched, arms crossed, until the blushing gods started to right the overturned furniture, and put out the fires Orgo’s lightning had caused. Someone opened a window high on the wall—one of the bird gods, Osbert thought—and let the smoke out until the air cleared enough to see across the hall.

 

His job done for the moment, Osbert slumped back onto his desk chair, waving away a mosquito that buzzed by his ear. There were insects all over Chaotica, there being so many kinds of them on earth. They drove him mad, as if the larger and more boisterous gods weren’t doing a good enough job of that. Every kind of being on earth had to have its own god here in Chaotica, plus all the extras like Orgo and Hempto. The humans added to the chaos by inventing gods by the dozen, one for every neighborhood, Osbert sometimes thought. Chacto was one of those, god of some little island where they grew a lot of tobacco.

 

Keeping this menagerie of gods in order was tough. When the Church of Eternal Peace had made him their head priest and told him he was the one who would manage the gods, he hadn’t understood that they had meant it literally. For the last century, he’d been stuck here in Chaotica, breaking up fights between gods, keeping the predator gods from eating the prey gods, and always sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a bucket of water by his cot, because Orgo had far too little self-control for a lightning god.

 

When Osbert opened his eyes again, he saw the divine prototype of the gastropods had left a thick slime trail across the great hall. Sna the god of slugs and snails lacked a great deal more than self-control, though he lacked that, too. Like the creatures who worshiped him, he was just a slimy blob, and shed that slime wherever he went, like some kind of drooling infant. By now he was, as usual, somewhere halfway up the far wall. The raccoon god stood below him, a shaker of chocolate sprinkles in paw. Where did the gods get this stuff, anyway? Osbert had a feeling that if he ever got time to return to his kitchen, he’d find he was missing his chocolate sprinkles.

 

Osbert groaned and levered himself to his feet. Back at his microphone, he commanded the masked god to back off.

 

“But slugs are good if you roll them in the dirt to cover the slime,” Forbol protested. “I thought they’d be even better if you rolled them in chocolate sprinkles!”

 

“You will have to find a mortal slug to test that on. Leave Sna alone. And Sna, you will have to clean the floor, because I am NOT going to do it again! Oh, drat it!” Osbert spotted the great cat goddess Fluffy. She had the mouse god Squeak in her mouth again. “Fluffy! Put him down! Now!” The gods’ keeper let his head fall into both of his hands. It was going to be one of those days. The gods were worse than a class of kindergarteners.

 

A lot worse, and he lacked the managerial skills of Miss Cornflower, the woman who had molded Osbert and his classmates into a group of rational beings capable of learning at least a little bit. The gods refused to learn manners or common sense.

 

What would happen if he just let them fight it out? What happened to a god if another god ate it? They were immortal, right? So they’d just come right back, right? But how did that work when a god had been masticated by another and passed through the digestive tract? Osbert moaned again. His head hurt. A lot.

 

Maybe if a god died, nothing would happen. After all, most people got on just fine with no gods, or no gods that they took seriously. And with all the new gods the humans had been producing, Chaotica was getting crowded.

 

That mosquito was back, buzzing around Osbert’s ear. This time, he slapped at the creature, not thinking. The buzzing stopped.

 

Osbert looked at his hand, and froze. The mosquito god was a little smear on his palm, and it didn’t seem to be popping back to life.

 

In a few minutes, the prayers of praise and thanksgiving began to roll in. The mosquitoes that had plagued so many parts of the earth with everything from annoyance to deadly diseases had vanished.

 

Now Osbert knew what would happen if a god died. And he began to look about the great hall of Chaotica, a thoughtful look on his face.

 

The Gods’ own Keeper finally understood what power he had been given. And he never had liked rodents…

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

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Friday Flash(back): What's for Dinner?

 

Before I give you a story, I get my little brag. My story for the February WEP was runner-up in the judging. I think people want humor these days! If you missed it, the story is here.

 

I wrote this story in 2014. It's kind of a fun venture into seeing the world in different ways :)  I'm reposting it complete with the photo from the original. This was written to a sort of prompt that challenged the writer to turn something very ordinary into a story.

What’s for Dinner?

Mom’s acting weird.  Well, that’s kind of normal, if you follow me, because she’s always weird, but usually she’s weird like wearing strange clothes and working all night on one of those bizarre sculptures she makes.  I won’t ever tell her this, but I don’t like them.  They have too many jagged edges.  They’ll tear holes in you if you get too close.  I sometimes wonder if she’s out to destroy someone, or if she just sees the world that way, all jagged.  Either way: weird.

But what’s really weird is that she’s started cooking.  No more Swanson’s pot pies, and no more trips through the fast food drive-through window.  So now, I have to eat what she calls “real food,” which is sometimes pretty unreal, if you follow me.

The thing is, her idea of real food can get pretty disturbing.  And that’s why I am sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework, instead of in my room with my music.  I’m keeping an eye on the cooking, between algebra problems.  I’m watching for that moment that says she’s gone over the edge, so I can try to save the rest of us.

She’s put on a big pot of water to boil.  That seems pretty safe, so I turn back to my math book.  6x + 7y=23.  If y=2, what is x?  Okay, algebra’s weird, too.  What do I care what X equals?  I can see at a glance that it’s not going to be a nice round number.  I don’t like decimals.  They’re messy.  And I need some kind of motivation for X, if I’m going to care why it’s multiplying six.

Pasta.  She’s gotten out the spaghetti, which is good, and matches the pot of water.  But a lot depends on what she wants to put atop it.  My palms start to sweat as she begins pulling things off of shelves and muttering.  She’s got an awful pile of weird stuff: ginger and allspice and beans, and for some reason a bottle of pickled pigs feet.  And is that an incantation she’s muttering?  We have never in our lives eaten pickled pigs feet, and I do not intend to begin now.  I forget all about algebra and concentrate on willing the bottle to disappear.

She puts the first cupboard load back on the shelves, and I heave a sigh of relief when the pigs feet disappear.  Then the search starts all over, and I start to sweat again.  What is that green stuff?  And is it supposed to be green, or is that a very bad sign?

Mom does the search three times, and I can’t tell what she’s selected.  By the third shelf of the third cupboard, I’m a nervous wreck, and algebra is a distant memory.  Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is the night she poisons us all, and I can only wonder if it will be on purpose or just because she let her artist’s imagination get loose.  But if I’m poisoned, I don’t have to turn in my homework, so I won’t hurry.

I start to pray.  I’m not religious, but when we studied world religions last fall, my best friend Griffin and I memorized prayers from every one of them, mostly in languages we don’t understand.  We made up a couple of our own, too, in the elf language J. R. R. Tolkien invented for The Lord of the Rings.  I repeat them all now.  Maybe at least one of the gods will appreciate the attention and save me.  And Dad and my sister, though by this time I’m thinking mostly of myself.

Mom plops the big pasta bowl onto the table, interrupting my prayers and scattering my algebra.

 I stare into the bowl, horrified.  It’s green.  Radioactive waste is green, isn’t it?  Or ectoplasm, or space aliens.  And mold.  Mold is green.

“Eat up,” Mom says.  “Come and get it,” she calls to Dad and Lily.

My hands are shaking.  We who are about to die. .  .

“It’s just pesto, for heaven’s sake Joseph!”

I sag in relief.  Pesto’s bad, but it’s better than interplanetary ecto-slime. 

Rats.  I’ll have to finish my homework after all.

###

Empty the box and find a meal hidden therein! It clearly worried my son.

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

 

Flashback Friday:

 Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month.
The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it.

Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to Jemima Pett, who has kept it going--visit her blog to add your name to the list!

Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts, including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month.

***

I found this one from 2015, and it made me laugh, because we just crossed the Rocky Mountains during the May 20 snowstorm, which might have made us think we were lost. We've also gotten a GPS unit, which has led us astray at least twice, insisting that vague tracks in the dirt are roads.

This was from 2015, written for the letter O in the A to Z Challenge, when I was doing mountains as my theme. I've kept the end-note from that post.

A Minor Navigational Error

"I'm cold, dear."

"You're always cold. That's the trouble with you females. You can’t handle the weather at all."

"It's July. It shouldn't be this cold here. Are you sure we're in the right place?"

He made an exasperated noise. "Of course I'm sure."

She sighed in her turn. "You're always so certain you are right."

"I am Zeus, after all. A god. Remember?"

Hera hated it when he brought that up. Anyway, she was a god, too. "Well, yes, dear, but..." She didn't finish the sentence. They both knew she was thinking about Leda. That had taken some tricky explanations on his part, and she had really only pretended to believe him. But he'd had to claim it was a navigation error, and that gave her a lever now. Plus, there was that time he took out the wrong village with a thunderbolt, and wiped out a hundred loyal followers instead of a crew of rogues. Zeus didn’t have a great record as a navigator.

"But it's been an awfully long time since we were there," she insisted. "Won't you just check the GPS? That's why we got it, remember? There’s an awful lot of snow. And where is the hall? Remember, we had a great hall atop Olympus?"

Zeus sighed again, even more dramatically, and dug around in his robes. They had too many folds; it was hard to find the pockets. Originally, they hadn't had any pockets, and it hadn't mattered three or four millennia back. Now it seemed there were so many things to keep track of, and he could never find the right pocket.

He found the GPS in the top left pocket, and pulled it out, along with a flashlight so he could see it. He could have used a lightning bolt, but those things took a lot of effort. A flashlight was easier. He shone the light on the little device, and scowled. A bit of thunder sounded in the near distance, proof he was getting irritated.

Hera hastened to hand him her own reading glasses before he could resume the dramatic search through his robes. Really, these new-fangled purses and hip-packs made it much easier to keep track of things than pockets did. Leave it to Zeus to be old-fashioned about such things, though. He’d kicked about getting pockets until none of the lesser gods would haul his stuff around for him. Then he’d had to find a way to carry it himself. Now he wouldn’t move on from pockets, though Hermes was using a backpack these days.

Zeus put on the glasses and squinted at the little device. He pushed a few buttons, and gave a triumphant exclamation.

"Ha! See, dear? Mt. Olympus!"

She bent closer to look at the device, reclaiming her glasses so that the tiny screen would come into focus. It was tough getting this old. Nothing worked like it used to, and if the conditions on this peak were any indication, they'd lost their followers. She knew they shouldn't have stayed so long in Elysium. If you didn't stay on top of worshipers, they strayed away after other gods. Nowadays they were all excited about technology and didn’t think the gods mattered any more. She and Zeus had come back to clear that confusion up.

Mind, she thought as she studied the GPS device, technology had its uses. In this case, it explained what had gone wrong. Though, she mused, it was also probably responsible for their being lost. She peered more closely at the screen.

"Dear?" Her tone was gentle, which put Zeus on notice that he was in trouble. "Here's the problem."

He studied where she was pointing. "'Washington'? What kind of a place is that?"

"I don't know, dear. But they appear to have a great admiration for us. Or at least for our home."

"Well," he said defensively, "you have to admit I was right. We are on Mt. Olympus."

"Yes, dear," Hera said, resigned. "But this Mt. Olympus is in some barbaric place called Washington State. And I've just asked for the route to Greece, and it appears to be...rather far."

Zeus peered into the gloom. It was snowing a bit now. "Well," he said, "this seems a nice enough place, and there aren't so many tourists..." He broke off as she made a disgusted sound. "Very well, dear. We'll start for Greece at once."

The pair of gods rose into the air and vanished. The GPS unit lay on the mountaintop, glowing softly until Zeus reached back with a small lightning bolt and vaporized the thing.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

That's right: today's mountain is a two-fer. Mt. Olympus--home of the Greek Gods, rising 9570' above the Aegean Sea. And Mt. Olympus, Washington State, 7838' of rugged glaciated peak on the Olympic Peninsula (that hunk of land that separates Puget Sound from the Pacific Ocean).  I just had a little fun with the confusion the names could cause a navigator too dependent on poorly-understood technology.

 ***

I'm experimenting with increasing the font size for my posts. This bit is in the default "normal" size from Blogger. The rest of the post I set to "large type." I think it's more readable, but let me know if it messes things up for whatever devices you all are using!

Flashback Friday!

Flashback Friday: 

 Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month.
The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it.

Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to Jemima Pett, who has kept it going--visit her blog to add your name to the list!

Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts, including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month.

I found this one from 2014 that seemed appropriate, given that we are definitely on the road, and will be starting across the country about the time this posts up!

This story is a merging of two Chuck Wendig challenges. A couple of weeks ago he ran a random title challenge that sparked the story, and I finished it off this week and retitled it for the color title challenge.  The second title is from the original challenge.

Singing the Highway Blues

or, What the Highway Prefers

LeAnn clutched the wheel of her ’78 Buick, and kept her eyes on the road. It had been a long drive from Ely, and traffic was growing thicker. US 50 wasn’t the Loneliest Road in America at this end, and there were on-coming cars every minute or two. She pulled off the road at Grimes Point, where the petroglyphs were, just outside Fallon. She knew it was the last convenient bathroom before Donner Pass.

LeAnn didn’t like to stop at Donner Pass. The thought of what had happened there so long ago (even though it hadn’t happened at the Pass at all, but down below, closer to Truckee) haunted her, and she always thought the water in the drinking fountains tasted . . . odd. She didn’t want to wait that long anyway.

LeAnn didn’t even know why she was making this trip. The ancient Skylark didn’t need this kind of abuse, in spite of what her late husband had always said about needing to get out on the highway now and again to blow the carbon out of the cylinders, or something like that. But she’d felt compelled to come. Just to get into the car and go, maybe not stop until she could see the Pacific, except she needed a bathroom, and she had to buy gas.

Meanwhile, the sun beat down on the dark lava rocks that surrounded the restrooms. She thought about walking the trail and looking at the petroglyphs. She liked to wonder about the long-ago people who must have struggled to live in this place but still had time to chip their art into the stones. People who must have really wanted to make art, or leave a mark, or something, because this was not like spray-painting your initials on a wall. This took work. She started toward the trail, but a blast of heat hit her like a blow, and the road called.

The car had air conditioning, miraculously still functional.

Reluctantly, LeAnn got back behind the wheel and turned the key. The first blast of air was even hotter than that among the rocks, but in a minute it began to cool.

She needed gas. There was the new station by the freeway. She’d get a tankful there and it would take her almost to the coast. Surely that was why she’d come—to see the ocean again.

First she had to get through Fallon. It used to be a small town, LeAnn thought as she idled at a stoplight. It was well suited back then as anchor to one end of the Loneliest Road. But now—now the place was growing in all directions, but mostly it was growing a slick strip-mall chain-store look along the highway that she hated. She had the odd thought that it must have offended the highway, too.

At the second light, LeAnn glanced at the gas gauge. Dang, she’d not make it to the freeway. She turned on her blinker and pulled into a station on the next block, scanned her credit card, and filled the tank. It took so much gas to fill, and gas cost so much these days. She really shouldn’t be doing this. She tried to recall why she was. Something about the ocean? She liked the ocean.

Thinking about cool sea breezes and waves breaking on sandy beaches, LeAnn didn’t realize at first that she’d turned east, not west. When she noticed, she thought about turning around, but the urge to go west seemed to have faded. Besides, she was on the causeway and couldn’t do a U-turn there. She thought about home and kept driving.

The car and the road settled down together smoothly, and LeAnn relaxed. Maybe this was just what the highway wanted—a single car, driving the breadth of Nevada. The road was, after all, lonely. A little company was all it had needed.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2014

Flashback Friday: Take a Zero

Since I’m not really even sure what day it is, let alone what month, I’m going to toss out a Flashback Friday today (which turns out to be Friday where I am, though in fact the first of the month, not the last—I know this thanks to the calendar in Blogger). I decided to take a quick look back at my first year of blogging, and stumbled on this post that still seems relevant in most ways.

Reposted from Dec. 20, 2012

Take a Zero

I've been catching up on some through-hikers I was following last summer.  For those of you who aren't backpackers (in the US sense, not the European sense), through-hikers are people who hike an entire long trail (Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail, etc.) in a single season (well, more like 3 seasons, starting very early in spring and continuing until they arrive at the end or snow gets too deep to manage, whichever comes first).  I'd been following a couple of PCT hikers, and got distracted, so I went back yesterday and read the blogs all the way through, since they were all off the trail by late October. I don't know if this sort of thing is meant satisfy my desire to do a long hike, or feed it, but that's a post for another day.

What I wanted to talk about was the concept of a "Zero" or "Zero Day".  A day in town or camp when you don't hike anywhere.  Zero mileage.  When you are trying to cover 2660 miles between late March and first snow in the North Cascades, you think a lot about miles (you also think a lot about miles between food drops, since taking a day too long could mean a day without dinner, not something you want to consider when hiking 20-25 miles/day).  Spending a whole day without gaining any miles can be hard.

What I got to thinking about this afternoon is how hard it is for me to take a Zero, to stop doing all the things I'm supposed to be doing.  Now, granted that on those "Zero Days" the hikers usually kept plenty busy--laundry and shopping and eating as many meals as they could jam in--in a sense they didn't do any of what they were there to do, i.e., hike.  That's the beauty of a Zero.  Just don't do it.

Maybe that's behind the old religious prohibition on doing any work on Sunday.  If we humans don't know enough to take a rest day when we need it, maybe we need an outside force telling us to, before we burn ourselves out.  Around here in the U.S. we've pretty much forgotten about that whole Day of Rest thing, but I'm old enough to remember when very very few stores were open on Sundays, and most people (except ministers) took the day off.  Everyone took a Zero and was the better for it (eventually my Mom stopped cooking on Sundays, too, though not for religious reasons.  She just needed a day off).

So today I really haven't done much.  I finished two books last night, and read another clear through today.  It was past time for me to do that, and it meant, as much as anything, getting the heck off the internet (where I'd been all yesterday afternoon, reading about through-hikers. . . ) and just reading a book.  But I was also feeling pretty guilty.  Not doing any writing, not cleaning up the post-holiday mess, just indulging myself.  Like I did when I was a kid--curled up with a book for hours.

But here's the thing: on my "Zero", when I'm kind of beating myself up for not doing anything productive, I have puttered at a number of minor kitchen chores, baked a batch of bread, done a load of laundry, finally pulled out my dead and dying tomato plants and spaded compost into the beds to rot the rest of the winter in preparation for the spring planting, and cleaned up the mud I tracked into the house afterward.

See what I mean?  I'm not too good at taking a Zero.  Okay, yeah, I can take a day off from writing, especially the revisions I'm supposedly working on right now, all too easily.  But the rest of my job is that of chief housekeeper and I can't seem to let it go.  But the thing is: if the hikers don't take a Zero now and then, they break down.  The body just won't keep it up, the mind wears down.  Next thing you know, you've left the trail for permanent, not just for a day.

Now, I've a hunch that "trail fatigue" might happen to writers, too.  Take a break or get the boot.  I'm not so sure about housework, but I do know that a) it will never go away, and b) it will never go away.  It'll still be there tomorrow.  Take a Zero.  Read a book and let the dust bunnies thrive one more day.

Flashback Friday: New Year's with Xavier Xanthum

 Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month.
The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it.

Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to Jemima Pett, who has kept it going--visit her blog to add your name to the list!

Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts, including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month.

 ######

This month's Flashback post is a 650-word story I'd forgotten all about. I thought it was about time for some action from Xavier Xanthum, Space Explorer, and this in my opinion is on of the best of his tales.

Xavier Xanthum's New Year

Xavier Xanthum, Space Explorer, gazed morosely at the fuel-level indicator of the starship Wanderlust. A voice interrupted his gloomy musings.

"Captain, we're going to have to put in at Haven for fuel," Larry announced.

"I can see that." Xavier let his irritation show. Larry wouldn't take offense. It was hard to offend even a self-willed AI. "I told you, I hate going there," Xavier continued. "Why didn't you remind me about fuel back in the D-36 System where we had some choices?"

"I did. But then there was that sweet little planet..."

Xavier sighed. It had been a lovely planet, with gleaming seas and perfect land-masses. It would have been worth just about anything to claim that one. Too bad about the Krrg who held it.

He'd been in such a hurry to get away from the Krrg--they didn't take kindly to interlopers--that he'd forgotten all about the fuel. Bad, but understandable. "Hey, wait a minute--yeah, I forgot, but you could have reminded me once we were away from those brutes."

"I forgot."

That silenced Xavier. After a long minute, he carefully pointed out, "You're an AI. You don't forget."

Another silence followed, despite the effectively instantaneous nature of Larry's thought processors.

"That is correct."

The two friends, man and AI, considered this. Larry appeared in his usual guise, as a pair of eyeballs, sans body. On this occasion, the eyes were green. An odd, pea-soup kind of green. "I am dismayed to learn this," Larry said, his computer voice drained of expression by his shock.

After a minute, Xavier decided he'd rather not think about it.

"Larry, set course for Haven. We need to refuel." The subject was closed.
###
Haven was wide open.  Xavier studied his viewer with distaste. Like most free-lance space explorers, Xavier Xanthum was an introvert, quite content with the company of Larry and their cat, Comet. It was a necessary condition of the employment; an extrovert would go mad or die, forced to spend months and even years alone between planets.

For Xavier, an entire planet engaged in a massive drunken party was a blast for about fifteen minutes. By now, he knew better than to even start. But there it was, clear on every channel he could open to Haven. Always a party planet at the best of times (the name referred to the planet being a haven from a repressive regime that didn't approve of festivities), every spaceport dirtside appeared to be enjoying some kind of wild celebration.

"What are they partying about, Larry?" It would be good to know. A party this huge might indicate the overthrow of a regime or survival of a plague.

"It appears to be an annual celebration of the recalibration of their local calendar."

Xavier thought about that. "Translate, please."

"Something they call 'New Year's Eve,'" Larry elucidated.

Xavier groaned. He now had a choice. He could try to get his fuel and leave without other contact, giving him nothing to distract him from Larry's surprising revelation. Or he could join in the party and drown the memory of Larry's forgetting in Carpintinarian rum, in hopes that by the time he sobered up he would have no recollection of Larry's descent into humanity.
###
About to drain his first tankard of rum, Xavier hesitated.

Always before, when he'd chosen to get sloshed dirtside, Larry had kept track--of him, of the ship of their Credits, and anything else that needed remembering.

What if Larry forgot?

Xavier slowly lowered the tankard, and slid off the barstool.

This was one New Year he'd skip celebrating.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2018
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Flashback Friday--Pismawallops PTA Xmas Part II

 Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month.
The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it.

Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to Jemima Pett, who has kept it going--visit her blog to add your name to the list!

Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts, including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month.

 ######

I posted the first half of this story a couple of weeks ago because I was using parts of it in the new Pismawallops PTA mystery.  You can check that out if you don't remember or didn't read it, because this is part two, and needs the first half to make sense. In a quick summary, Kitty and JJ have been setting up the PTA holiday bazaar, and someone or something keeps messing up the display of hot pads and scrubbies. Just before time to open, Kitty finds out just what it was, and proposes a most unlikely person to adopt the cat: Arne Hancock, the somewhat fussy art teacher whose table the kitten has been disturbing.

Pismawallops Christmas, Part II

I put my hands on my hips and glared at Kitty. The kitty in her arms poked its furry little face toward me and mewed.

“How on earth do you intend to persuade Arne Hancock to adopt that creature?”

“It’s a kitten, JJ, not a ‘creature.’ And I have about three minutes to come up with the answer to that,” she added.

“While we tidy his table,” I pointed out. “I think it will go a lot better if he doesn’t see what the kitten did to his rainbows.” I left her trying to hold the cat in one arm while she moved potholders around with her free hand. Trotting across the gym, I flipped the switch that started the music, then scurried back the other way to open the door. Three PTA parents stood outside with trays and platters of baked goods.

I took the goodies, directed the one donor who was willing to stay to help Kitty, and tried to match the desserts with Patty Reilly’s signs. Fortunately, Patty came in before I could make too much of a mess of things, and I went back to directing people and coping with emergencies.

I spotted Arne at the door, and, a quick glance showing me that Kitty and her helper weren’t done with the table, set myself to delay him a minute or two.

“Oh, Arne. Glad to see you.” I clutched his arm, turning him so his back was to the scurry around his table. “Do you have the pricing tags for the art table?”

He looked at me, confused by the question, as well he might be. “I’m in charge of the crafts table, Ms. MacGregor, not the art.” He looked at my hand on his arm, and I got the message. I let him go.

“I’m sorry. I just thought that since you’re the art teacher… ” My words trailed off as he turned and saw what Kitty and Amy were doing.

“Why are they messing up my display?”

“Um, they’re just straightening up a bit. There was, ah, a bit of an accident.”

“Again?” His lips narrowed. “I fail to see why my table should be the one cast into disarray by every clumsy lout,” he began, then stopped. “I’m sorry. I suppose one of you bumped it while trying to do too much. No harm done,” he said without conviction as he hurried away to see to his goods.

I watched Kitty turn her back and trot off as he approached, the kitten now snuggled inside her gaudy Santa snowman sweater. I cut across the room at an angle to intercept her.

“I don’t know why Arne is so fussed about his perfect arrangement of potholders,” I murmured when I caught her. “The shoppers will reduce it to chaos in minutes in any case.”

She laughed. “And he’ll spend the whole time trying to restore it to order.”

“What are you going to do with the furball there?” I asked. “Even if Arne does adopt it, you have to do something with it for the day.”

“I’m not sure. I only know I have to keep her out of sight, because if Kat and Sarah see her, I’ll have another mouth to feed at my house.”

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “I’m allergic.”

Kitty didn’t believe me, but I was gone before she could challenge that, off to calm another crisis. I called back over my shoulder, “take it to the teachers’ room and give it some milk!” I’d have to get along without my partner for a while.

The bazaar had opened while I was running around, and shoppers were swarming over the tables, especially the treats. I checked to make sure Amy was at the cashier’s table, and had everything she needed, then went to get the lids for the cups of coffee and hot cider we were selling.

After that, I spent my day dashing from table to table, giving people a break where needed, fetching whatever had been forgotten, and trying to keep a smile pasted on my face so I wouldn’t scare off the customers. Patty slipped me a broken cookie or two, and my coffee cup stayed filled, or I wouldn’t have made it.

Eventually, Arne Hancock waved me over. “I need a break,” he announced. “The crowd is getting rather large and loud and I must go somewhere quiet for a time.”

How on earth did this guy survive teaching high school kids? I hid my smile, and told him I could give him ten minutes.

“I’m going to the teachers’ room,” he said, and was off before I remembered.

Kitty had left the kitten sleeping in a box in the teachers’ room. I hoped Furball would keep quiet.

***
Arne didn’t return. I needed to leave the table and take care of business, like finding a bathroom to offload the four cups of coffee I’d drunk. Where was he?

I finally got someone over to take my place with the potholders, and found Kitty. “We need to find Arne. He went off to take his break and never came back.”

“Where’d he… oh, no!” Kitty said.

“Oh, yes. If that cat got out and made a mess in the teachers’ room, we will never hear the end of it.” We raced down the breezeway between the gym and the main school building, dreading what we might find. Opening the door of the teachers’ room, we came to a dead halt.

Arne sat on the floor, surrounded by wads of crumpled paper. As we watched, he tossed one to the kitten, who pounced on it and batted it back to him. The stressed-out art teacher had a blissful smile on his face as he reached out to stroke the soft kitten-fur.

When at last he noticed us, he looked up, unperturbed. “You’ll have to get on without me over there. Someone abandoned this poor animal, and I need to take care of her.” He frowned. “It’s not yours, is it?”

“No,” Kitty managed to answer. “I found her in the gym.”

“Excellent. Then I shall take her home and see that she is cared for properly.”

We closed the door before we turned to high five each other.

Mission accomplished: two fewer lonely creatures.

###

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2018

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

Flashback Friday: Enchanted Blasted Forest

 Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month.
The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it.

Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to Jemima Pett, who has kept it going--visit her blog to add your name to the list!

Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts, including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month.

****

I dug into the archives in search of something appropriate to the season and found this story. Not exactly a Halloween story, but there are monsters enough to satisfy, I hope. This one appears to have clocked in at exactly 1000 words, and I said this about it when I first published it in May of 2016:
Chuck Wendig gave us a new challenge this week: a series utterances from his preschooler, to be used somewhere in a story. As one might expect from Chuck's progeny, they were... interesting. I selected "there's a 3-headed flying werewolf in that tree," and the rest of the Enchanted Forest came into being.

The Enchanted Blasted Forest

The Enchanted Forest is a punishment post, but never mind what we did to get sent there. They have to man the post, and soldiers don’t last long there, so you don’t have to do much to end up there. About half of those sent never even arrive.

There were six of us, and when the road entered the blasted Forest we divided up the watch. Tomo watched left, Martin right, Jock ahead, Kora behind, Shea overhead, and I was back-up to them all, scanning every direction as thoroughly as I could.

The monsters weren’t bold. If Shea called out “harpy overhead!” we’d all raise our spears and the monster would sheer off. Or Tomo would yell, “there’s a 3-headed flying werewolf in that tree!” and we’d aim our bows that way and the thing would fly away.

We only had to fire once, when a flying monkey swooped in low and tried to grab Kora. She’s not very big, but tough as nails. Martin and I both loosed arrows, but they stuck in a dead monkey. Kora had already beheaded it. She’s fast with her sword.

We were still several hours distant from the outpost when we began to wonder something. In short, we started to ask ourselves if everyone who vanished on the way to Fort End had been carried off by monsters. Maybe there was a way to get out of a long hitch in the army. Joining up had seemed like a good idea when I first went in, but it didn’t take long to knock the stars from my eyes, and if a single night out on the town could get you in this much trouble, I wanted out.

There was a guard hut halfway, and we holed up there to enjoy our lunch without having to swat away monsters. That’s when Martin asked, “Why are we here, anyway?”

“We got taken up for drunk and disorderly on our last leave.” Dumb question.

“Yeah, but…”

“Martin’s right.” I looked at each of them. “We acted like soldiers on leave and for that they sent us where only half the troops survive to even reach the post? But maybe we don’t have to get hauled off by harpies to disappear.”

“Yeah,” Jock said. “We can get eaten by 3-headed werewolves instead.”

“Or,” I said, looking from one to another, “we can appear to have been eaten by 3-headed werewolves.”

Jock was the last to get it.  “You’re saying we could run off,” he said after we all looked at him for several minutes. “Desert.” We all turned that word over in our minds as he went on. “You know what they do to deserters.”

We knew. It was a great deal faster and more sure than a posting in the Enchanted blasted Forest, but they said it was painless, which this posting wasn’t likely to be.

We finished our lunch in silence, but when we left the hut, we took the wrong turning.

“That’s our story if anyone catches us up,” I said. “Just a bit of trouble navigating.” We were still nervous at the thought of being caught by a patrol, which was the wrong worry.

Our nerves lasted until the first harpy attack. After that we were too busy to worry about the army. It seemed the creatures of the forest were a lot less bashful about attacking travelers who strayed from the military road. I began to wonder how many of the disappeared had started as deserters, and ended as dead as they’d pretended to be.

It was farther to the edge of the forest this way than the way we’d come in, so we’d have to hurry. Trouble was, we were under such constant attack that we couldn’t hurry. By an hour or two after lunch, it was plain to all of us—even Jock—that we weren’t going to make the edge of the Forest before night.

“Now what?” Shea asked.  She would. Always expecting someone else to fix her problems, that one. We couldn’t take care of that right then. We were a team and we’d only make it if we stuck together.

“We find a place to hole up,” I said, just as Kora said, “We fight on through the night until we get out.”

Martin protested. “I heard there’s things out at night here that you really don’t want to me. Things that make harpies look like pet kittens.”

We thought about that. It might be lies told to keep soldiers from deserting the fort.

It might all be true.

We had no choice but to find out. There was no safe place to hole up for the night. No more huts, and any natural hole would surely be inhabited by orcs or dragons or ten-headed hydras.

It was nearly dark before we knew the extent of our folly.

“Keep fighting, move as fast as we can, and stick together.” It wasn’t a good plan, but it was the only thing we could do, and we all knew it, so I got no argument. We were too busy.

By dark every one of us was bleeding somewhere, and the attacks picked up. I put our chances of survival at less than 50%. Meaning I didn’t expect more than three of us to live, and I’d already picked out which three.

One of the flying werewolves got Shea before midnight. There was nothing we could do. We kept moving, and enjoyed the respite the feasting gave us.

The forest started thinning about the second hour after midnight, and I thought the rest of us might make it.

The harpies had other ideas. They attacked in force, with the flying monkeys darting between them wherever our guard was incomplete.

Martin went down under the assault, but he wasn’t enough. We broke into a full run, speed more important than battle.

We’d none of us have made it if I hadn’t tripped Tomo.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass 2016

Flashback Friday: Dragonmistress

 Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month.
The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it.

Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to Jemima Pett, who has kept it going--visit her blog to add your name to the list!

Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts, including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month.

**
I dug into the archives and found this story from 2014. It started with a Chuck Wendig challenge, apparently (according to my notes) a given first line. It suggests a world to me that might be fun to enter more deeply.

Dragonmistress

She rode in on a dragon; or more accurately, clutched in its front claw.  It wasn’t exactly the entrance she’d planned, but it had turned out to be impossible to ride astride the dragon as Korrina believed the riders of old had done.  She achieved most of the desired effect anyway: the populace gaped in awe and wonder.

Of course, they could barely see beyond Skyborne, the dragon, and when they did spot the woman in the grip of the beast, many probably thought that Korrina was not Dragonmistress, but dragon dinner. 

Dragons were big.  Far bigger than any remembered or imagined.  So much dragon lore had been lost in the centuries since the last Dragonmistress rode a dragon through the skies over their village.  No one even knew what made a woman become a Dragonmistress—Korrina only knew that, from birth, she had been pulled to the land of the dragons, and at last she had gone.

Now she had returned, in the grip of an immense dragon.  It wasn’t just the size that had prevented mounting it, however.  The neck ridge was impossibly sharp, and spiked.  Skyborne had not known, any more than Korrina, how the Riders of old had done it.  They had tried no end of ideas, with no end of unhelpful suggestions from the younger dragons—there were none older—but ended up with Skyborne picking Korrina up in her huge claw and flying her back to the village.

It wasn’t ideal, but Korrina told herself that didn’t matter.  She was, at least, alive, and had succeeded in partnering a dragon, just the way the old songs told it.  Though the old songs made the creatures seem more war-like and less . . . prickly.  The songs had definitely said nothing about prickles.

For all that, here she came with a dragon to save the village.  It would have been easier had the villagers not screamed and fled as they approached.  Skyborne circled the village lazily a time or two before landing in the square.  People scattered in all directions as they came down, and did not approach even when Korrina hopped down from the claw and shook out her tunic, which had become a bit rumpled on the flight.

“You stay here,” she instructed the dragon unnecessarily.  There was no place for her to go.  “I’m going to gather the leaders and make a plan.”

She was also going to send old Tomin into the oldest archives in search of the answer to how a Dragonmistress properly rode a dragon, and what kind of saddle she used.

Skyborne lowered her huge head and licked Korrina’s face.  “Stop that!” the girl sputtered, half drowned.  A dragon had a big tongue.  A very big, very wet, tongue.

But I love you, Skyborne protested.  It is how a dragon shows love.

“We’ll have to work on that,” Korrina said.  “I could have drowned.”  But her mind had moved on, thinking about what they had seen from the air.  What was drawing ever nearer over the hills to the south.  The barbarian army.

If she and Skyborne did not find a way to defeat them, the village was doomed.  And a dragon might not be enough.  To Korrina’s surprise, she’d learned that dragons, beyond claws and teeth meant for hunting deer and sheep, were short on weaponry.  Especially, she had found the whole fire-breathing thing to be a myth.  The gods knew how that had begun, but it was a pity it wasn’t true.  They could have used some fire-breathing.

But one thing Skyborne had given to Korrina: the respect of the Elders.  They listened to her warning, and they listened to her plan.  She gave them no chance to do anything else.  Then she held her breath.

“We must do what?” protested the Headman, a supercilious man with too much nose.  “Will you not lead a flock of dragons to burn our enemies out of existence?”

“No.  I will not.”  Korrina didn’t explain that there were no other dragons old enough to come, or that none would come without riders.  Nor did she say that they didn’t breathe fire in any case.  She just said, “We’ll do it this way or not at all.  If you don’t want my help, and that of Skyborne, we can leave.”  That got their attention, and within an hour every able-bodied man or woman was at work, digging pits across the neck of open land that led to the village.

Korrina had Skyborne take her up again to view the situation, though old Tomin hadn’t yet found out how the Dragonmistresses of old had ridden.  The claw was not uncomfortable, though it put her too far from the dragon’s ear to make for easy conversation.  That is, Skyborne could not hear her, unless she shouted.  She heard the dragon inside her own head, no matter where they were.

By the end of the second day, the pits were dug, spiked, and covered.  And Tomin had found an ancient drawing of a rider perched high on the neck of a dragon.  It didn’t show exactly what the saddle was like, but Korrina knew it must be well-padded and thick, to conform to and smooth out the spikes.  She set the women to work making one.

By the fourth evening, the barbarians spread their camp across the open land before them, and the light of a hundred fires made the hills glow.  The villagers blessed the cliffs that surrounded them on three sides, but worried as fire after fire sprang to life.

Korrina refused to fly out with Skyborne that night to survey the camps.  They would do what they must, she said, when the time came.  Also, when she had a saddle, though she didn’t mention that.  It was nearly ready.

The village would be saved.

The Dragonmistress would see to that. Of course she would.

***

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2018

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

Flashback Friday:

 Flashback Friday is a monthly meme that takes place on the last Friday of the month.
The idea is to give a little more love to a post you’ve published on your blog before.  Maybe you just love it, maybe it’s appropriate for now, or maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserved when you first published it.

Thanks to Michael d’Agostino, who started it all, there is a solution – join Flashback Friday! And thanks to Jemima Pett, who has kept it going--visit her blog to add your name to the list!

Just join in whenever you like, repost one of your own blog posts, including any copyright notices on text or media, on the last Friday of the month.


I went way back for this one, and found a nice little tale of Bovrell the Bold. Those who have read Halitor the Hero will know that he was Halitor's apprentice master, teaching him the art of Heroing. He may, just *may* have been a poor choice.

Dead Man’s Revenge

Bovrell the Bold looked furtively about him before ducking through the low doorway next to the sign, “Maya Kinten, things discovered.” He’d heard about this woman who had the power to find just about anything. He wanted something found, and couldn’t admit to just anyone that he’d lost it.

He blinked a moment in the dim interior. All interiors in Kargor were dim, but this one seemed to have an extra layer of opacity. His chain mail clinked as he moved away from the door, just in case.

“You have come for my services, Bovrell the Bold?” The voice was not, as he’d expected, old and cracked. His eyes adjusted to the dim light, and saw that the woman behind the table was heavily veiled, in the accepted tradition of those who practiced the mystical arts. His impression, however, was that she was neither young nor old. Ageless? He cleared his throat.

“I have lost some things, and need help in finding them.”

“I see. They are important to you?”

“Yes, very.”

Maya Kinten studied her hands. He’d expected she would gaze into a crystal, or a mirror, or something, but she looked up and said, “That is only somewhat true.”

Bovrell felt a chill. He didn’t really believe in the powers of the occult seekers of Kargor, even if he had come looking for one. But this woman… he pushed his doubts aside.

“I have lost my apprentice, and a Fair Maiden I rescued. You know the rules.”

She gazed unblinkingly at him this time, before answering. “I know the rules. You have no sorrow for the loss of the apprentice. You left him behind to pay your bills with his own sweat. You regret the princess, but I sense you also left her intentionally.”

“Perhaps, but I need them back now.” Bovrell tried his most winning smile on the woman. It worked on all the young women. All except maybe that pesky girl in Carthor, but she wasn’t a princess anyway. The one he’d lost was in Duria, and she’d been pretty and compliant and he’d been very sorry to have to leave in such a hurry.

The Seeker appeared unmoved by the winning smile. Bovrell shifted position, the better to display his well-muscled torso, and tried again. “I have sought you, Mistress Kinten, because I have been told that you are the best. I can pay you well.” He crossed his fingers behind his back, since he had, as usual, less than enough money for his next meal. The life of a roving Hero can be hard. Unless he keeps his hold on the princesses, and Bovrell had a surprisingly poor record there.

Now the woman took up a mirror, and studied it as though seeing more than her veil in its depths. Bovrell hated seeing any woman covered up, unless she was old and ugly. Already he itched for his next quest—or conquest.

Maya Kinten stiffened, and bent to look more closely at the mirror. “So much blood,” she murmured.

Bovrell shifted uneasily. He’d prefer to just find the girl and get on his way, without raking up uncomfortable bits of his history.

She spoke again. “You must tell me of the pool of blood, and the one who lies in it.” Her voice carried less of mystical seduction and more of command, and he felt himself unable to refuse.

“He held the princess against her will in a grim, dark castle. I am a Hero. I had to kill him, and rescue her. That is all. I was the better swordsman.”

She gave him a look so knowing, what he could see of the eyes over the veil, that he felt certain she knew the truth. That he had hidden in the curtains and tripped the man while he was carrying a tray of kitchen knives back from the smith who had just sharpened them. The man had fallen, and cut his own throat in the falling. “I slew him and freed the princess, and returned her to her own people.”

“And then?” Maya Kinten prompted gently.

“And then,” Bovrell found himself saying, “ill luck began to dog my footsteps. I was forced to ride from village to village, ever seeking something I could not name. I visited the tiniest of Durian villages, and found myself accepting an apprentice. He was the most useless of lads, and I do not deny that I left him when I could bear it no longer.”

“And the princess? You left her even sooner.”

“I returned her to her people.”

“You have left so much unsaid.”

“I left her with her people,” he found himself saying, “and they threatened to kill me. They said she had been given rightfully to the man in the grim castle, and that my action had brought a curse upon them and me.”

“And now,” said Maya Kinten, “you wish to find her and them, and see what must be done to remove the curse.”

“I haven’t been able to find a single princess since leaving Loria! And every one I ever did find turned out to have been promised in marriage to another, thus overriding the rule of The Hero’s Guide to Battles, Rescues, and the Slaying of Monsters that the Hero shall marry the princess he rescues.”

The woman pushed aside her veils, and Bovrell saw that she was the princess he had rescued long ago, at the beginning of his troubles.

“You!” he exclaimed.

“Yes. I am the princess you ‘rescued’ by slaying my lover. I am the one who has made certain that you will never again have success in your endeavors.”

He felt himself frozen to the spot. “And now you will slay me as the dead man’s revenge?” he managed to croak.

“Oh, no,” she smiled. “I shall leave you to continue as you have begun. You shall spend the rest of your life as a Hero, riding gallantly about, but never quite succeeding. Oh,” she added as an afterthought, “and you might want to know that your hopeless apprentice has done well for himself. Quite well,” she repeated with a smile that stabbed Bovrell’s icy heart.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2018
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!