A few weeks ago, I posted an excerpt from my WIP, “The Dragon of Sullivan Hall”. That story is now finished and in submission. Here’s another bit of it:

Dragons, you may or may not know, are long-lived creatures. If they aren’t immortal, they’re no further from it than your nose is from your chin. Nevertheless, they’re born, as all creatures in this vale of tears are born. A certain amount of toll is taken by the stress of modern life, poor diet, cave-ins, heroes, and what-not, so each dragon reproduces once in a lifetime by the process of shedding living scales.

Neef, when this story takes place, had just produced her brood — an even two thousand, exactly. The little devils were crawling all over her, nibbling at the tender places where she’d shed them. She’d returned the favor by eating as many as she could catch, and they hadn’t agreed with her. What with the irritation and the indigestion, Neef was in no mood for girlish high spirits, yet here came Kerry and her friend, with the House Mother behind them.

“People are trying to study,” the House Mother said, crossing her fingers and promising to say a Hail Mary to make up for the lie. “People are trying to sleep.”

“Sorry,” Kerry said, lying without scruple. “We’re sorry, aren’t we, Debbie?”

Debbie nodded solemnly.

The House Mother thought of another objection. “A song about drinking wine is not appropriate for young ladies to sing.”

Debbie, who pretended to be a clueless foreigner as it suited her, laid on an artificial Japanese accent as thick as two planks and said, “How ’bout Hundled Botters of Beel On A Warr?”

The House Mother, who didn’t know the version about “take one down and pass it around” but only the one about “if one of those bottles should happen to fall”, said, “At least you wouldn’t be drinking them. Singing about drinking them, I mean.”

“We sing Beel On Warr,” said Debbie, as if swearing herself to virtue.

“Or some of my Granma’s Irish tunes,” said Kerry, who knew many a drinking song in the original Gaelic, and many a one that involved activities which, by comparison, made drinking wine seem the ultimate in maidenly deportment.

So fly, little story, fly! I hope you get accepted!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Take some incidents from a stage in your life and weave them into a fantasy. More of a fantasy than memory already is, I mean.

MA