"I don't know," I say. "How am I supposed to get you into Maisy's world? And why should you care, anyway?"
"Maybe he can use me for dragon bait. After all, I carry the dragon's mark on my shoulder," says Maisy, an even younger red-headed woman. She's not as fiery as redheads are reputed to be, but she is willful. "He could rip my sleeve as he's rescuing me from the attack, and realize I'm the person he's looking for. And while you're at it, you could dig through that big list of names you keep adding to. In 495 pages, I bet you could find a better name than Maisy."
"What's wrong with Maisy?" says an older, stooped -shouldered man. "I thought it was a lovely name."
"Oh, Thom. You know I love you like a father, but...well, that name is so, well, backcountry."
"Well, I did find you growing up in the hills," Thom replies, scratching his head. "Your ma thought it was pretty."
There is a cough and a smell of brimstone, and a sudden swirl of wind. Everybody's head turns to see an aged, grey in the snout black dragon. His eyes are cloudy. "At least you all have names. Me, I'm just the Old Black Dragon."
"Shut up, dragon," says the short, silverhaired witch with a pixie sitting on her shoulder. "You don't have a cloud of pixies to put up with every waking hour."
"Mistress Gan," says the pixie on her shoulder, a little petite girl dressed in a flower petal dress. "I thought you liked me. And all of us. You made us cobbler."
My head's getting to be a noisy place. I blame Pink for having trouble making decisions. If not, they're all going into the maybe file, and they don't like the sound of that. Pink, taking a drink of her sake, looks at the gang surrounding her.
"It was your idea, Pink," I say. "Fix it."
"Yeah, yeah," she says, picking up her bowl. "This is going to take more popcorn."
- Current Mood:
overwhelmed by the noise
Comments
This week, I have a platoon of off-duty Roman legionaries playing dice in one corner of the Hutch, a shifty bunch of shapeshifters in another (today they're horses; yesterday it was wolves and before that, ravens - I think. Falcons, maybe?), and the Final Fantasy 7 crowd cleaning their weapons in a third.
Fenik's guarding the threshold, glaring at all of them and if any of their associated bunnies make a break for my ankles, he tags 'em with a number and tosses 'em back.
I'm being good. Pink wanted me to slip a hot IK bunny in the hutch, but I sent her back to the corner. LOL.
Edited at 2011-08-03 03:18 am (UTC)
Our furballs could teach the military a thing or two about sabotage techniques!
All my other fragments and pieces have been taking place in this vaguely European medieval setting...lucky for me it's not any real place...it stretches around easily. Fairy Tale universe, I call it. It's got all sorts of magic critters in it, too, and gateways to the real realm of Faerie, and bad magic users and whatever else I need. Handy, that. Between my folklore and my medievalist background, I do very little research. I did check up a bit about village life, but I might not even need to use it the way the current story's blooming.
Now if I had Roman legionaires, I'd have to go back and do more primary research. I'm hoping to keep Pink interested in the Fairy Tale Universe for a while.
Apparently, the bunnies' idea of writerly relaxation is to drop me into Ancient Rome around the time Mt. Vesuvius blows its top, because they know I don't have to do much primary research. Furry opportunists. *fist shakey*
*listens to chorus of drunken bunny giggles*
Yep, furry opportunists. Like when they get me to do something with the really classical Greeks, like characters from Homer. That's almost as easy as the Fairy Tale universe.