This post is part of StoryADay May (https://storyaday.org/) #StoryADay #StoryADayMay @storyadaymay #freeshortstory #HollyJahangiri #Llannonn @hjahangiri.author

For those who don’t know, years and years ago, I wrote a novel (currently out of print) set on Llannonn, a planet where courtesy is literally the law. When I went on a blog book tour for the novel, I ran a contest for naming a character in a short story set in the same world. Fellow writer Holly Jahangiri (the real one) was such a determined contestant, I named a character after her, too. That character commandeered the story, and I’ve been writing about her ever since.

I write a Holly story on the Sundays of Story A Day May.

Holly Jahangiri (the fictional one) becomes, is, and retires as a Librarian at a library for living books. It seems that somebody on Llannonn read Fahrenheit 451 and decided a library of people who recite books they’ve memorized was a great idea. Typically for Llannonn, they officialized it. Becoming a living book is now a respectable career, provided you can get a gig in a library.

Holly Afield

Young Holly Jahangiri stuck a wisp of straw between her teeth and leaned back against a fencepost. She had brought the straw from home, for she was on pratty herding duty, and you didn’t want to suck on any straw that had been around pratties for any amount of time.

On the other side of the fence, the pratties (which, a human would say, resembled sheep the size of llamas) milled about, grazing, chewing, and staring at one another with gazes ranging from loving to enraged, depending on their mercurial feelings at this delicate time of the year.

It was mate-picking time on Llannonn, when pratties (and a great many Llannonninn) switched, swapped, chose, or repledged partners. At such a time, emotions were uncertain and many poor decisions were made and had to be regretted and apologized for as the year progressed.

Holly was the youngest in her family to be entrusted with watching over the village pratty herd at this time of year, a fact of which she was inordinately proud. Various cousins had held the job in the past few years, but all had refused it this year, citing the stress and loneliness.

Holly wasn’t stressed, nor was she lonely. Pratties would be pratties, and youth must have its fling. Let them make their own choices, was Holly’s motto. Even if the choices turned out to be bad ones, let them decide on their own and definitely don’t try to reason with them. Every day during mating season, Holly left them alone and they went home wagging their tails behind them.

As for loneliness … Holly had a secret weapon.

Here it came, now.

Around the bend in the rustic road strode a figure draped and swathed in homespun cloths of different colors, bedecked with necklaces and bracelets that glinted in the sunlight and hair so filthy it wouldn’t glint if you stuck diamonds in the grease.

A wild storyteller. She was very small, and she told tall tales, for Llannonninn were nothing if not humorously ironic.

Holly handed her two bihts and said according to accepted practice, “Tell me a story.”

“Long ago….” And the storyteller spun a tale of the mighty Abnab Rhubarb and Honey-Pie, his blue pratty.

She was just getting to the good part when a disturbance in the herd broke Holly’s immersion in the imaginary world and snapped her back to the here and now.

The worst had happened. No, the worst that could happen was a foul band of pratty rustlers, but even foul rustlers weren’t stupid enough to try to rustle a herd during mating season. This was one of the worst things that could happen: Two pratties had come to a non-negotiable disagreement and all the rest were choosing up sides. Soon, there would be a full-blown brouhaha, which was even worse than a free-for-all. Pratties were nose-to-nose, blaring and staring and gnashing their teeth. Soon, they’d start throwing hooves and damage would be inevitable.

Such a thing couldn’t be foreseen or forestalled; they happened in a flash, without warning or recourse. The only hope was to get the village on the scene. If each pratty-holder came and took the side of his/her/their own stock, arguing and shoving, the pratties would stop fighting to watch and nobody would lose an eye.

Leaping into action, Holly flipped open the emergency box and pulled out a homing squerch. She chose a bright yellow one, the code for “pratty riot”, placed it on the hot line (not really hot – what do you take the people of Llannonn for?) and nudged it in the direction of the village.

It took of as if the line were really hot (which it wasn’t) and was soon out of sight.

Would they believe her? Would they come? Holly was well aware that she was the youngest in this position because her older cousin, Nittleigh Witterr, had abused his trust by repeatedly calling for help when he didn’t need it, just for a lark, until finally nobody came when he really did need help and seventeen pratties had ended up with black eyes.

The wild storyteller waved farewell and scurried back around the bend. Holly reflected that it must be difficult to be a storyteller with a fear of public speaking, but she had more urgent business at hand.

While she waited for help, she climbed atop the fence and sang lullabies at the top of her lungs, which irritated the herd just enough to give them something else to think about, diffusing the hostility somewhat.

Soon, the village showed up in a caravan of pedicars. They had come! They had believed her!

At that moment, Holly vowed to find and hold a place of trust in society, to take a job that involved caring for difficult people, and to do her level best for them. And she would do this in a city, far, far away from livestock of any kind.

Stories would be involved, as well. She didn’t know what possible profession would fit the bill, but she vowed to find it.

And, as we know, she did.

MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: Holly Jahangiri and this picture I took of a caterpillar on the clothesline.

p.s. No caterpillars (or pratties) were harmed in the writing of this story.

MA