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

Boilerplate follows story.

A Librarian At The Races Part 2

Bright and early in the morning, Holly and Darzin picked up a crudely drawn map at the front desk, with a bright red X in the middle labled with Tinipp Mippblipp’s Pratty Farm. The desk clerk stamped one edge of the map with You Are Here, which was the name of the inn, and offered to rent them a pedal car. He knew they were city slickers, but he had underestimated them both, and they chose to walk.

The countryside was glorious in the cool morning sunlight, rampant with the flowers that had given Meadow of Flowers Province it’s name. The smell, on the other hand, was distinctly … rural.

“Ah,” said Holly, attempting to take in air through any aperture which didn’t involve scent glands, “that fresh country air. So rich. So fertile.”

“Pratty country,” said Darzin. “As I live and, sadly, breathe.”

As they reached and passed Mippblipp’s pratty fields, Holly’s keep observation and childhood experience told her that these were, indeed, unhappy pratties. She saw bald spots on the creatures’ sides and noted them shifting from foot to foot to foot to foot or lying down on their backs with their hooves waving in the air.

“Dear me,” she said.

Even Darzin, a city boy born and bred, could tell something was wrong.

(Pratties, for my Earth readers, look a lot like long-necked sheep the size of llamas. Just so you know.)

The two turned in at a gate with a sign above it saying, Tinipp Mippblipp’s Pratty Farm: Where All Your Pratty-based Dreams Come True, Provided They’re Dreams You Wouldn’t Mind Sharing With Your Mother.

The rural of the day before hustled out of a small but neat house to meet them.

“Aye, I near gave up on ‘ee. I been up since morn waitin’.”

Holly remembered the rural competitiveness over being earlier-than-thou. It was one of the reasons she had moved to the city.

“I saw your pratties as we passed the fields,” she said. “They’re in sorry shape, all right. I’d like to see one up close.”

The wicked glee on the rural’s face when he pictured the city gal trying to examine a pratty was nothing compared to the wicked glee in Holly’s heart when she laid a hand on the nearest pratty’s neck and it leaned into her touch and lifted a foot for her to commiserate with it over its ouchie.

“I’ve seen this before,” she said. “Don’t try to tell me you haven’t. All regular boys and some renegade girls take a pratty for a joy trot now and then. You’ve done it, yourself, when you were a lad. You have, then, haven’t you?”

Appealed to as a “regular boy”, Mippblipp could only bob his head. “But that don’t hurt ’em. Nobody would ride ’em till they lose wool an’ hurt they feetses. That’s mean!”

“It is mean,” Holly agreed. “And I know who’s mean enough to do it.”

TO BE CONTINUED….

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.

MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: Holly Jahangiri

MA