This post is part of StoryADay May (https://storyaday.org/) #StoryADay #StoryADayMay @storyadaymay #freeshortstory @HollyJahangiri
Boilerplate follows story
A Librarian at the Races Part 4
Holly stepped into the Meadow Lick Hotel resplendent in a long purple tunic with a lilac sash, her trademark purple feather boa and a purple feather tiara. Darzin, undercover in a dark green urban tunic with a fashionably wide day-glo orange sash, accompanied her.
Reservations at Meadow Lick were not to be had at a moment’s notice, but the manager happened to be a fan of Earth literature, especially of the self-reciting Living Books of which Holly was the planet’s premier caretaker, and he had given them the second largest suite available. He apologized for not having given them the best, but the best was permanently retained by up-and-coming criminal Moriarty Capone.
Holly had assured him that she was quite happy with the accommodations, and that Capone was just the fellow they had come to find.
“He’s in the dining room,” said the manager, “having lunch.”
“We’ll join him,” Holly said, sweeping magnificently into the room and, along with Darzin, settling at Capone’s table.
Capone began to object, then saw who it was.
“Well, well, well,” said Holly. “We meet again. But it was Dickens O’Henry, then, when you car-jacked my pratty-drawn wagon and threatened to break bits off my cousin at my family’s Anti-Hot Solemnities.”
“Ever since I found out it doesn’t cost anything to adopt a human name,” said the up-and-comer, “I’ve changed my name often, as well as those of my henchmen. Remember Humbug Plugugly?”
Holly did.
“He’s Skullcracker Knuckleduster now. Lots of letters in that name. Value for money.”
Holly nodded appreciatively.
Capone leaned back in his chair, picking his teeth with a reinforced barloe whisker. He thought it made him look cool. It didn’t.
“What can I do you for?” he asked. He thought saying that made him SOUND cool. Also, it didn’t.
Softly, Holly said, “I’m here about pratties. Pratties borrowed without permission. Pratties run to exhaustion and returned with thinning wool and sore feet. WITH. SORE. FEET.”
Capone, who was not a cruel man, stirred uncomfortably. He looked from Holly to Darzin and back, but each wore her or his own particular expression of disappointed reproach.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Capone said. There are no busses on the planet Llannonn, but that didn’t stop anyone from throwing other people under one if faced with the possibility of shame-shame gestures from authority figures. “I’ve made some poor business decisions lately, and my little nephew is depending on me for his school tuition. The only way out of utter ruin was to run these races. Only this one set. At the end of the racing season, I get paid off, and this is all over. I’m out. I swear!”
Darzin switched his expression to one he used on minor criminals who he sensed were ready to repent and repay their debt to whomever they had wronged. “Up-And-Coming Criminal Moriarty Capone,” he said, “who has led you astray?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Capone.
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 and the recent Kentucky Derby
MA
