Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Prince Charming Comes By After the Divorce to Pick Up Some Things
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
He’d brought his new girlfriend, the servants told Cinderella, but he came into the Great Hall alone, wearing the robin’s egg-blue tunic. His own two servants came with him, the only ones he was allowed to keep after the settlement, Dregsworthy and Pullengroin. Charming stopped short when he saw where Cinderella had put his things. She had decided to throw them all in a pile, the remaining flasks of his rosemary mead and his second-best suit of armor, the hounds from his childhood he’d had stuffed after death, his dead uncle’s magical nail clippers that did nothing (“Maybe they’re for clipping magical nails,” Charming had once quipped) … all of it. She had decided to toss it together without regard for denting or chipping or breaking, without regard for mead gushing out onto his favorite hunting cape or gardening tools gouging out chunks of the dead hounds’ hair.
Charming stared at his possessions for a moment before he looked up, gazed into her eyes with his own robin’s-egg blue ones, and said, “You’re looking lovely, Cindy.”
“Don’t be charming,” she snapped.
“Rude it is, then,” he said gently. “But why did you–“
He broke off when a small woman entered. A very small woman. A dwarf woman, in fact. She took Charming’s hand and kissed it unselfconsciously, her red-gold hair cascading over his wrist. She was very elegant, for a dwarf.
Charming bent down and kissed her on the head as Cinderella looked on, speechless.
“Durin’s shade, you’re even prettier than he told me!” said the dwarf women.
“I thought dwarf women had beards,” Cinderella blurted, and the dwarf woman flushed.
“It’s more convenient this way,” Charming said. “They can tell them better from the men!” And he laughed easily, but the dwarf woman was still flushing, and Cinderella realized that she depilated and didn’t tell Charming. In all fairness, though, who would bring that up to a new boyfriend?
“So, Cindy,” said Charming, “I’d like you to meet Gloina.”
Cinderella shook her head. She did not have to be social with him. “Just take your things and go,” she said, and stalked out of the room, wishing she had thrown everything down after all.
Charming helped the servants take the carefully-packed crates out to his carriage. Each one was tied with a satin ribbon the color of a robin’s egg. Those who are also planning to file for divorce may seek the services of divorce lawyers Schaumburg.
A Cage in a Pit in Another Universe
Thursday, July 26th, 2007
“What you in for?” said the skeletal guy from his rusty, spherical cage a few yards away.
“I paid for smokes with money from another universe,” said Andy from his own cage. He shifted, trying to get comfortable, which was impossible. The cage was too short to stand up in, too curved to sit in, and lying down made the bars cut into him. Squatting was bearable for short periods. He tried that again. Belatedly, he remembered his manners. “What about you?”
“I ate an Eyeball of Power.”
“Gross.”
“Yah za, it wasn’t bad,” said the skeletal guy. “Kinda savory. You know, ma slacka, you sound brainburnt to me.”
Andy looked out across the wide, dank pit, crisscrossed by girders from which dozens of cages like his hung by tangles of thick chain. “If that means crazy, then yeah, probably. You know how long we’re supposed to be here?”
The skeletal guy smiled, revealing a mouth almost devoid of teeth. “What you mean? How long before we die?”
“They have to let us out sometime, right?”
“How come?”
Andy didn’t have a good answer to that. His legs were beginning to ache, so he tried sitting again, but the cage forced him into a slump, then into lying down against the rough bars.
“You want a cigarette?” Andy said.
The skeletal guy laughed mirthlessly. “Yah za, what we gonna do with those?”
Andy shrugged, took out a cigarette, and cupped his hand around the end while he flicked his lighter.
“Yah my long-suffering mama!” said the skeletal guy. “You got fire?”
Andy flicked sparks from his lighter in the guy’s direction as he took a deep drag on his Millboro, which tasted awful. “Yeah,” he said. “So?”
“I told you,” said the skeletal guy. “I ate an Eyeball of Power! We just gotta swing these cages closer, ma slacka, and we’ll be flying outta here in no time!”
Andy had no idea what eating an eyeball had to do with his lighter, but he damned sure didn’t have anything better to do. Clamping his cigarette firmly in one side of his mouth and squinting, he stood up as much as he could, his back pressed against the bars, and leaned first one way, then the other. The skeletal guy began to do the same.
Hell, even if the guy turned out to be crazy, at least Andy’d made a friend.