Because life can be interesting when you are a character in a video game…

It had been a quiet few days in Wrathburnt Sands. The months since the Expansion had been very busy for Milla in her new role as a quest giver so she appreciated the break. It gave her more time to go beachcombing with Ruffkin, her little dog, and chat with Pew whilst she strung the shells she had gathered into necklace charms to give out as quest rewards to those Visitors who returned from the pyramid dungeon to claim one.
Pew – or more correctly Firecaster Pewpowerpwnsyou – was, she supposed, her boyfriend. At least he seemed to think he was and Milla was not entirely unhappy with the idea, even if there were times she wanted to shake him. But the other residents of Wrathburnt Sands made no secret of their feelings.
“He’s not a proper ryeshor. He’s not even a Local.”
“He don’t belong here.”
“Folk like him drag trouble with them. They’re cursed with it.”
“You be careful young’un, he’s a Visitor. He’ll only break your heart.”
Those last words were still ringing in Milla’s head as she walked along the beach in the morning sun, Ruffkin bounding ahead of her. One Eye Rye had said that yesterday, when she went to buy some fish for Ruffkin from his shop by the pier. He was her truest friend amongst the villagers. He even liked Pew. She knew he did because he sold Pew provisions from his shop at a discount those times when Pew was down on his luck and One Eye never did that for any other Visitor.
“Visitors never stay for long,” One Eye added, “and they always have other lives.”
“Not Pew,” she had told him stoutly, “He promised me he’s maining on his ryeshor toon and has stopped playing all his other alts.”
One Eye’s snout wrinkled at that.
“I start to worry about you, young’un. You’re even talking like a Visitor now – ‘toons’, ‘alts’ and whatever the bluesky and ocean that all means.”
Milla shrugged and had left quickly after that. The truth was she didn’t entirely know what any of it meant. But Pew had said it with such fervour that she knew it was something that mattered to him for her to know. She understood at least that it was his way of saying he wasn’t going to go away like the other Visitors always did. That made Milla happy as when she tried to imagine not having Pew around, life began to feel very flat and empty.
Walking along the beach in the early morning, she paused to pick up a shell. The pendant she always wore around her neck, swung forward, glowing with its hidden magic. She tucked it away in her simple tunic and was disturbed by voices on the pier. She couldn’t see them as the pier was above her, but she knew from what they were saying that it was Visitors.
“I hate this fragging fishing quest. Must have done it a million times.”
“You and me both, bud. You remember when we were in Epic Legends with that crazy guy, what was he called? The one who loved crafting and spent all his time harvesting?”
“You mean Buffalott?”
“That’s the one. I heard his wife left him for their guild leader in the end. She always just wanted to raid. Best MT on the server she was too.”
“Yeah? I thought that was Aggrowhore?”
“Just because We Rulz is the top raiding guild, doesn’t mean they have the best MT.”
“S’ppose. Anyway, I’m done fishing, have to go turn it in and then I can do the pyramid questline.”
Milla sighed and made an effort to keep the frills on her crest from flattening. Not for the first time she wished she didn’t have to be a quest giver. Life had been so much simpler before she became one.

We will return to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook next Sunday.

Return to Wrathburnt Sands was first published in Rise and Rescue Volume 2: Protect and Recover.

Crisping in her sweaty fingers
How the smell of money lingers
How the aroma of wealth entices
Making possible prayers, and vices
Crisping in her sweaty palm
Money. Reparation. Balm

©jj 2021

When a dame whose everyday walk is as smooth and studiedly sexy as a big jungle cat, and whose make-up is as immaculate as a well-pressed designer suit, arrives in your office at a shambling run with her face all over tears and snot it’s a safe bet that something pretty bad is wrong.
I was lost in thought, with my feet propped on my desk and my hat tipped way down over my eyes, when my office door was thrown open in a dramatic fashion. I barely had long enough to wonder why in the hell my holographic door was now making an eldritch shriek, when Katie Scarlett O’Halleran and her exceptional bosom landed almost in my lap. She was crying, and her face was a mess.

She grabbed me by the lapels and tried to shake me.
“Sam. Sam. You have to come. Somebody has taken Daddy.”
I sat bolt upright and squared my shoulders. Anybody brave enough to mess with Mister Aitch was certainly a big fish, and I guessed I was about to go shark fishing. I grasped the sobbing girl by her slender shoulders.
“Calm down Katie Scarlett, and tell me what happened.”
“I already told you,” she all but screamed, “somebody has taken Daddy.”
“Details Katie, details.”

I gently compelled her to sit down, and held onto her until her chest stopped heaving and she took two steadying breaths. Then I got the bottle out of my drawer and poured her a stiff one. Her teeth chattered against the side of the glass, but the act of drinking calmed her almost as much as the bourbon.
“Daddy’s personal alarm sounded about an hour back. Me and the twins ran, but his office door was locked. When we broke the door down he was gone, and there was blood all over.”
“Okay,” I said, although I didn’t think anything was okay. “Where are the twins now?”
“Flirting with your holographic floozie. We set droids to watch on the office and came straight here.”
I decided now was not the time to react to the slur on Sugar’s character. Instead, I reached into the locked drawer of my desk and pulled out two extra weapons, a mini blaster that I stuck in my sock, and a weighted sap that slipped into my pocket.
“Let’s go then.”

The twins and Sugar were in animated sign language conversation.
“Sugar,” I said, “if anybody comes looking…”
“I don’t know where you are, and I certainly never saw these folks.” She flashed me that empty-headed smile that I knew hid a mind like a steel trap and wiggled her assets. I gave her the raised eyebrow and we left.

The trip down the glides was tense and silent. Katie had herself together but she was only holding by a thread, while the twins obviously looked to me for a lead. I’ll admit it. I was worried. So much so that I didn’t even bother to exchange words with the young chancer who thought it would be a good idea to put his hands on Katie Scarlett; I just broke his wrist before I threw him off the glide. Myk gave me the thumb, and Zig grinned a tight grin.

At Hood’s Bar, everything looked smooth on the surface, the booths were full, the bar droids were just about run off their feet, and the holographic pianist was playing that damned song. Again. The undertones of worry were there if you had the eyes to see them, though. The droids were jittery, and every security guy had a hand on his weapon. Oh yeah. It was tense and they were all looking to Sam Nero for a lead.

“Office,” I said and followed Katie Scarlett’s long legs down the familiar corridor. She signalled to a guard droid, who opened the door.
“You all wait here.”
I strode into the office then stopped in my tracks. The blood was wrong, it smelled wrong. I rolled back the plastic ‘skin’ from my fingertip and bent to touch the red fluid. It was blood all right, but not human blood. It was rat blood. Somebody had recently killed one of the rats that inhabit the tunnels that honeycomb The City. So why was that blood artistically splattered all over O’Halleran’s office?

I turned and closed the office door. I spoke softly.
“Okay Mister O’Halleran, what gives?”
A panel behind the desk opened and the big shark himself stepped out. He was a little dusty, but unharmed, and he held a blaster in one big fist. Seeing it was me, and I was alone, he pocketed the weapon. His flat, killer’s eyes regarded me unblinkingly for a second.
“You have just presented me with a problem, Nero.”
“How so?” I leaned one shoulder against a bit of door that wasn’t smeared with rat blood and lifted a brow at the hulking killer.
“I got information that you had taken money to kill me. And that Katie Scarlett was in on the deal.”
“So you decided to disappear?”
“I did. And I heard my little girl screaming. And now you come in here quiet, with your hands empty. And I don’t know what to think.”
I shrugged.
“Try thinking that you’ve been had.”
He regarded me for a long moment.
“Maybe I have. But what to do about it.”
I examined my fingernails for a long minute before giving him my blandest stare.
“Go back in that cubbyhole and await developments. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Or find out who set this up.”
“And how do you suggest I go about that?”
“Think for a start. Think about who would benefit if you thought Katie Scarlett had betrayed you.”
O’Halleran stared at me. His eyes were lightless and unreadable. Then he nodded.
“I’ve thought. And now we have to catch the bastard.”
“You narrowed it down to one?”
He shook his big head ruefully.
“Not that simple. Gotta be family. Nobody else benefits. Nearest is my sister and her slimy bastard of a husband. But it don’t quite fit.”
I waited as something came across his countenance, something he didn’t like too much by the looks of him. When he said nothing I pulled my brave together and spoke up.
“Okay, Mister Aitch, what does fit?”
He looked at me with something akin to loathing, but I gave him back stare for stare and in the end he dropped his eyes.
“I got a cousin, his mammy died when he was just a button and my ma and pa brung him up as their own. We was like brothers. He has a son, a smooth handsome son…”
He stopped speaking, and I kept my mouth shut too, knowing that this glimpse of O’Halleran’s humanity was a dangerous thing to have seen. He was quiet for a while, but when he did speak his voice was as coldly unemotional as it always was unless he was talking to Katie Scarlett.
“All right, Nero. You are supposed to be the best. Catch the bastard for me. I’ll pay whatever.”
“I’m working for Katie Scarlett right now.”
His face worked for a moment.
“I suppose you are. So now what?”
“That depends on you. Can you get out of here unseen?”
“I can.”
“Once you are out, where can you get to?”
“My private apartment, upstairs. You will need a key card to get in,”
“Doesn’t Katie Scarlett have one?”
“No. She has her own apartment and I don’t have a key to that.”
I thought he probably did have a key, but deemed it prudent not to voice that thought. He handed me a card and turned to go back through the panel.
“One hour,” I said to his retreating back, and he nodded.

From Sam Nero PI by Jane Jago

I’m in my happy place
The world is all rosy
I’m feeling good today
All safe and cosy.

I’m in my happy place
Outside the storm rages
I’m letting it go by
Lost in a books pages.

I’m in my happy place
Though troubles are many
I’m chilling with TV
And don’t give a penny.

I’m in my happy place
The door closed on worry
I’m letting woes roll by
Not feeling sorry.

I’m in my happy place
Today I can borrow
Time to forget it all
Until it’s tomorrow…

E.M. Swift-Hook

Mes Chers Readers Who Write,

I am sure I do not need to remind you of who I am at this point in our relationship, but I will acknowledge there may be a handful of benighted individuals who have yet to make my acquaintance. So for their benefit, I will again mention that my name is Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV and I am the renowned author of both the speculative fiction classic ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ and of this ‘The Thinking Quill’ which offers insight into the mysteries of the authorial craft.

Indeed it was only yesterday Mummy observed: ‘You spend too much time in that coal cellar. You should get out more.” But I assured her the reason I was committing so much of my life to my literary sanctum, was both to progress my own literary offerings and to selflessly share of my copious pearls of wisdom with you, oh Reader Who Writes.

So, without further hesitation or procrastination on either side, let us undress the goddess of literature and peer beneath the skirts of her most intimate places. In brief, dear RWW, let us consider the very building-blocks of her DNA – the tools with which one has wrought such wonders – words.

How to Start Writing a Book – The Write Words

It is a truth universally acknowledged that paucity of vocabulary is the fence at which a multiplicity of putative novelists fail. Gird up your loins my children and do battle with the twin dragons of over-simplification and ugly language. Let that duo of decrepitude be downtrodden under the heels of linguistic loveliness. Let your Muse speak to you in honeyed prose. Let the thesaurus be your Bible and let not the commonplace leave your fingertips. Never say that your grass is green, rather enchant your readers with the verdant viridian vegetation. Let them inhale the aroma of the recumbent emerald as it is crushed beneath the bare toes of powerful simile.

Let your doting following bask in the sunlight of your fertile poesy. Let your words be as sunlight to the face of the damask rose. Let your adjectival imagery lift your readers from the commonplace to the heights of quasi-sexual ecstasy. Let your voice be as the zephyr of a southern breeze carrying the redolence of olive groves and lemon trees and the salt tang of mare nostrum.

Lead your interlocutors along primrose paths of erudition and titillation, and do not cease in your endeavours until your mind’s ear can hear their sighs of replete completion. Only then have you begun to understand the manifest prognostications of your craft.

To encapsulate this vital educational epistle:

1. Never use a simple word where a periphrastic locution can be set.
2.  Never use a sole descriptor – a lonely adjective should be a contumely maxim! Instead, allow the perihelion swirl of elucidatory and expressive ornament to embrace each noun and verb.
3. Seek always the etymological road least travelled and endow your audience with rare gems mined from deep archaisms and seek the perfect bon mots from languages few speak. Thus you will both educate and impress.

Consider my words with care.

Until next mes enfants, adieu and may Erato and Calliope attend your dreams.

Bon Ecrit!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Maisey, at two and half years of age, looked up at the sky, saw something wonderful and smiled.

“Look!” she said excitedly.

“Yes dear, birds.” Her mother didn’t pay attention. Maisey wasn’t pointing to the birds. Scowling she tried again.

“Look. Wanna eat.”

“We have lunch after the playpark,” her mother said, still not really paying attention.

Maisey looked up to where the soft white fluffy stuff was floating against the blue. Not even her friends at the playpark could see it. Maisey sighed. She couldn’t understand why nobody else could see that the sky was full of cotton candy.

E.M. Swift-Hook

On the big day, all the bits of furniture I had been quietly buying were liberated from my big orange storage unit in a park full of big orange storage units. While that was happening, my dad collected the neat pile of stuff from my bedsit in his Tranny, and me and my stepmum supervised. I think she was surprised by how much I had accumulated, and I grinned at her.
“I’ve been nesting for a while. I just couldn’t find the right tree.”
By teatime we had everything ready, and Mum had even hung my curtains for me. She stood and looked about her.
“It’s a funny house, but it suits you Aly.”
“It does. And it’s convenient too. Just across the road from work. Ten minutes from the gym. And the same to the Wounded Soldier – where we are going for our tea. My treat.”
We got our coats and ambled off to the pub for a huge meal from the carvery. When we were so stuffed we could barely stand, my parents went one way and I went the other to my new home.
If some of those who moved in after me are to be believed, there was an inimical atmosphere in the luxury apartments from day one, but I felt nothing. I just fell into my king sized bed and slept like a baby.
The next day was Sunday, so I got to lay in bed reading until long after nine. Then I thought about food. As far as I knew there was bugger all in my shiny new kitchen, not even the wherewithal for coffee. I groaned and groped my way into the shower.
When I finally made it upstairs I found a note in my stepmum’s neat round hand on the worktop.

Bet you forgot food. There’s basics in the fridge and the tall cupboard next to it. Coffee machine is charged.

“Bless the woman” I said out loud. Once I had coffee in my belly and a bacon sandwich in front of me, I sent her a text. She called me right back and we had a very giggly, girly sort of conversation. The upshot of that was her getting in her battered Nissan Micra and coming to pick me up for a proper grocery shop. We lunched together, on fresh bread, cheese, and deli ham before she set off home to cook a big roast tea for Dad who had been at work all day. I declined the offer to eat with them, and she smiled and stroked my cheek.

From Jackdaw Court by Jane Jago.

Listen to Granny because Granny always knows best!

The ones that phone and try to sell you shite. You ask what they are selling they deny it. 
And you KNOW they are telling porkies.
And it’s not really their fault.
There are two routes. Hang up.
Or string them along. Agree to everything up to the moment they start wanting money. Then say you don’t have a card or a or a bank account.
They always ask why.
Then explain that your nurse doesn’t let you have money and you shouldn’t even be on the phone. Then laugh like Hannibal Lecter.
It’s funny how fast they run…

He suddenly became aware of how hard it was raining. Jogging back to his car, he found the chief superintendent standing next to it, his stout figure barely sheltered by the large umbrella he was holding above his head.
“Davis, I’d like a word.”
Nodding, he pulled a keyring from his pocket and pushed the button on his key fob. The hazard lights of the BMW M6 he was walking toward flashed twice. He opened the passenger door for the other man to get in, before going round to the driver side and sliding out of the rain himself.
“Chief Super, what can I do for you?” he asked, noticing the grim expression on the superintendent’s face.
“Davis— lad— I want to start by offering you my deepest condolences. Sergeant Williams was a bloody fine officer. I know how much he meant to you.”
Davis nodded but could think of nothing to say in reply.
“So, I think it is best that you take a compassionate leave of absence until—”
“Sir—”
“Until you’ve had a chance to get over this.”
“Sir, my work is all I’ve got. You know that. Don’t—”
“My mind is made up, Davis. When Dr. Hanson is able to sign off on these forms”— he pulled a folded packet of papers from the inside pocket of his coat and handed them to Davis—“ you will be reinstated immediately, at which point you will also be assigned a new sergeant.”
“Sir, it is my request that I be allowed to see a psychologist of my own choosing.”
“Why is that? There’s nothing wrong with Dr. Hanson.”
“I would just prefer to eliminate any opportunity for bias in my evaluation. Dr. Hanson is too familiar with the friendship Williams and I had. It’s possible that he might—”
“Say no more, Davis. I will grant your request, but you will inform me of whom you choose. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Davis replied. He waited until the chief superintendent got out and closed the door, then he started the car. Its tuned engine purred a low note of contentment at being brought to life.
A knock sounded from the window just as Davis was putting the car in gear. He lowered it enough to get a clear view of the superintendent’s face.
“I am sorry, lad. I know how tough this is for you. I just think you need a bit of time to allow yourself to grieve. There is nothing wrong with that, so don’t be so hard on yourself.”
He strode away, leaving Davis unsure whether he was upset or grateful for the chief’s condolences. Coming quickly to the conclusion that he didn’t care either way, he set out for the pub, where he knew he would find the only friend he could count on at the moment. A drink

From Hunting Darkness by Ian Bristow .

“The laws of the jungle must be obeyed,” the oldest of the elephants said. “This new law must be taken from here and trumpeted to all the animals. From hyenas to gorillas, from lions to meerkats.”

“The cheetahs won’t abide by it,” said another member of the elephant council, “they always look for ways to exploit or get around our laws. The rhinos will trample roughshod over it too.”

Youngest elephant wondered why no one addressed the real problem with getting this new law adopted. It was as if they didn’t dare speak about it – the human in the room.

E.M. Swift-Hook