As mentioned, we’re writing new original stories every week, and we’ll be posting them on Fridays. So here are the prompts we used this week, followed by Robert’s story (crossposted at his personal site). Feel free to use the prompts to write your own story, and to share it in the comments if you like.
Character: Accountant
Object: Shoe
Genre/Tone: Saga
Also, a note: I completely forgot to include the shoe. So on that level, this is a failure? But it’s fun anyway, and more importantly, it’s what I actually wrote. So here’s a thing that didn’t exist before:
In a vast concrete wasteland, where the land was burdened with skyscrapers and SUVs and the sun only reached the ground in early morn or late evening, there came Jo Wednesday, bearing the leather attache case and aluminium laptop which served her as tools for her trade. She gazed at the roads that spread out in a rigid grid but gave her no information, and pulled out her phone which would provide her directions to her destination.
Her mission, given by word of Halvar the Chief of Executive Officers, was to seek the office of Marius the Lovely here in the downtown area, and to examine his books. Halvar had scryed discrepencies in his books, and Jo must examine the originals and discover the origin of the discrepencies, lest the account be lost to the demon Audit.
Being well-directed by her faithful phone, Jo strode into the lobby of the office building wherein Marius kept his stronghold on the sixty-third floor. She took the elevator, and the doors opened onto the receptionist’s desk, but the shieldmaiden who theresat announced that Marius was not present, even before Jo had stepped over the threshold. “I’ll wait,” said Jo.
“I expect him not back today,” said the shieldmaiden. “Nor does he take appointments.”
Jo stepped up to the shieldmaiden’s desk and proffered the card which bore her credentials and authority as a servant of Halvar. “He’ll make an exception for me.”
“On the contrary,” quoth the shieldmaiden. “For he hath declared enmity against Halvar and all his house.”
Jo shook her head. “Then he hath declared enmity on his own house, for he has kin in the house of Halvar, even his daughter and nearest heir.” Jo leaned forward, allowing her red braids to swing in front of the shieldmaiden’s computer monitor, and her grey eyes to lock onto the shieldmaiden’s watery orbs. “Even myself,” she said softly.
The shieldmaiden blinked, but afore she could break herself free from her terror a door was flung open and a voice bellowed from within.
“Jo, my darling and dearest, is that you? What brings you to my offices?”
Jo stood and faced Marius squarely. “Father, you will be consumed, not only with debt but also with criminality, unless you show me your books.”
Marius grinned. “How can I resist my own daughter?”
She matched his grin. “You cannot. I am your only hope at survival.”
He nodded. “If Halvar had sent anyone else, I would have gone to war everlasting with him. But if you have come, he must desire peace.”
“He does. And also the gild that is owed him.”
And that, the house of Marius Wednesday the Lovely was bound in notarized contract to the house of Halvar, who brought many and great profits to the land. Yet Jo remained unsatisfied and left the service of Marius soon thereafter, about which other tales may sometime be told.