Thursday, December 7, 2017

Day 6: December Writing Prompt Challenge

The tired antique dealer sat on the rocking chair in the foggy block at sunrise to create a diversion.

She wasn’t thrilled with the assignment. Filgurta loathed the daytime, and it had taken an enormous amount of convincing (and bribery) to talk her into being there.

As a general rule, goblins go out and about during the night and sleep during the day. It wasn’t a deal breaker sort of thing,  where if she were to be caught outside in the sunlight she’d turn to stone or dust or whatever those ridiculous fairy tales said would happen. It was more a “this is how it’s always been done and we’ve no good reason for it but we’re sure as hell not gonna change it now” type of situation.

Filgurta still wasn’t one hundred percent convinced that she was doing the right thing by changing her schedule now, but she’d already taken the bribe (two gold coins and a can of sardines) and was already established in the rocking chair (wishing she were snug in her house eating sardines instead) and so she might as well stay where she was.

Another general rule about goblins is that they don’t like to move around a great deal. Once a goblin is where they need to be, they tend to stay there for hours. If their location also happens to be conveniently out of the sunlight, they can stay there for days. One of the most famous goblin tales tells of a goblin lad who, having traveled to his in-laws home in another city, stayed rooted to the spot in their living room for fifteen years. The legend says it was an enormously comfortable chair, and as his mate didn’t care for her parents all that much, she mostly let him alone.

Filgurta wasn’t sure WHY she had to provide a distraction, exactly. This street was all warehouses, some of which she knew to be owned by the goblin Consortium, though she didn’t know what was inside of those. She rented a space in one of the buildings herself, to store the more unique antiquities she procured for select buyers; very different pieces from the other items she sold in her shop a few blocks over.

Which brings up another goblin general rule: never sell magical items out in the open where humans could see them. Most humans never even noticed them, true, but the few who did were rarely quiet about it. It had taken enough struggle for goblins to be ‘out of the cave’, so to speak, without having humans want to slaughter the lot of them. Showing the dumb creatures magic wasn’t something they were ready for.

So why the Consortium representative had told her to sit in this particular rocking chair was an extremely unusual demand. Of course it would appear to any human to be an ordinary rocking chair; old, well-used, a little scuffed and scratched. Perfectly normal.

Even if a human were to sit in the chair, they’d never suspect that it was magical. They could rock back and forth to their heart’s content and nothing unusual would happen.

Unless they knew the magic word.

Then there’d be a problem. A big one.

But the Consortium rep had assured Filgurta that no human alive knew that word. How could they? It was completely safe to have outside.

The rep did, however, double check that Filgurta knew the magic word. He was very intent on that. Once he was satisfied on that count he left Filgurta alone on the road, in the fog, rocking in the chair.

That was hours ago. And although a comfortable goblin was apt to stay put for as long as possible, an uncomfortable one could quickly become a seething mass of impatience.

Filgurta squinted into the fog, trying to pick out any movement in the street ahead. She stopped rocking and looked over her shoulder to examine the street behind her. Looked on both sides, along the sidewalks and front of warehouses. Nothing but the fog, which seemed to be getting thicker as the day dawned.

It was eerily quiet. Even with her excellent hearing, Filgurta couldn’t hear so much as a leaf rustle.

Then there was an enormous explosion which she felt shudder through the ground, and then the deafening boom hit her ears. She looked anxiously into the nearly impenetrable fog, searching for the source of the blast. The another explosion. And another.

Filgurta was no coward. She was a goblin, after all. But even a nearly-fearless goblin has a sense of self preservation. And not even a bribe of gold and sardines was worth getting blown up for.

She leaned forward and made to rise from the rocking chair, but yet another great blast shook the chair and she fell back. The shockwave continued and the chair began to rock violently back and forth.

From out of the fog came a shape, indistinct at first, then growing into the panicked form of the goblin Consortium representative.

“The word!” he screamed at Filgurta. “Say the word!”

The word? Filgurta, clinging to the chair arms for dear life, didn’t understand at first. What word?

The rep ran toward her, staggering from side to side as though he were intoxicated, trying to keep his feet under him as the ground continued to shake.

“Say the magic word!” he bellowed, nearly close enough to touch her.

But she couldn’t. Her jaw was clenched shut with the effort of keeping herself on the out-of-control chair.

The rep growled in frustration and dove. He hit the chair with all his considerable goblin weight (male goblins are nearly pure muscle), causing the chair, Filgurta, and himself to tip backward.

“Nwod edispu!” he shouted when they were inches from the pavement.

Filgurta waited for the inevitable crash… but it never came. Instead, the chair continued falling, back and back and back.

And then they were upright again. Barely rocking. Right-side up.

And not on a street full of warehouses.

“So it’s true,” Filgurta said in a hushed voice. “The chair rocks through time.”

The Consortium rep awkwardly climbed off the chair (and off of Filgurta) and brushed off his suit. “Not exactly, no. It would be more accurate to say that the chair rocks through possibilities.” He extended his arm and gestured around at the unfamiliar landscape. “Welcome to one of the infinite possible universes."

Filgurta grunted. Definitely not worth a can of sardines.

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Day 6 Prompt - Story Starter: The tired antique dealer sat on the rocking chair in the foggy block at sunrise to create a diversion.

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