Category: Visual

Flash: It’s Not My Fault … For Once

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Image by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash

Nebula formed out of the fog, all judge-y like. His side-eye is strong.

“What?” My voice breaks on the question. “I found him like this.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Really, really, really, one hundred percent.” I cross my heart, touch two fingers to my lips, and lift them to the darkening skies. “God as my witness.”

He turns his body to face me head-on and spreads his legs.

I sigh before saying, “How can you think so poorly of me? We are partners.”

The old man crashes his eyebrows together at the last statement.

“Okay, not partners, but friends,” I step around the body that recently bleed out leaving a mess all over the road, “Right, friends?”

“So what did happen?”

(words 121; first published 8/25/2024 – created based on a visual prompt for a Facebook writer’s group, aim is about 50 words)

Flash: When a DM asks a question, you say yes

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Image from Rock Vincent Guitard on Unsplash

The white dragon rises, shimmering in the slanted rays of the winter sun, her moves sounding like icicles crackling as her great head—

“I cast fireball.”

The DM stops her description and sends a sharp look at the player.

“What? I cast fireball, a surprise attack, right?” Jeremy starts picking up his six-siders.

“She is well aware that your party is there.” Emily places the sheet she had been reading down behind her screen. “Even the thief failed his stealth roll.” She sent her boyfriend a sympathetic smile.

Mark slouches further in the Snorlax bean bag lounger, crossing his arms. “Stupid nat one.”

“Yeah, that was a bad one.” Jeremy laughs.

“Now do you want to roll initiative, or hear the rest of the description?” Emily laces her fingers and rests her head on them.

I and Andre perk up and look at each other. As the other DMs of the group, we know exactly what she is saying.

Time to meta? I raise my eyebrows at Andre.

The group formed around three high school best friends: Andre, Jeremy, and Chris. They picked up Emily from a book club, and me from an advertisement at a comic store. Mark joined when he moved in with Emily, as she and Andre alternate hosting the sessions.

The problem is Jeremy. He likes action, and the rest of the group leans more toward roleplaying. To make matters worse, he doesn’t really listen well to women, even with two out of three of his DMs being female. So whether to meta is an Andre call. Will he yank Jeremy’s magic user back?

While we are talking with facial expressions, a die rolls. “Twelve for initiative.”

Andre sends me a shrug of I-guess-we-are-doing-this. “Sixteen.”

“Five” I say, then mouth ‘sorry’ to Emily.

She gives me the same smile I gave the party after a superhero TPK three months ago where they ended up in the realm of Death and Dreams, before looking down behind her screen with an air of concentration. Not good.

I notice her scratching out things with her pencil and writing new stuff. “So, what are you doing Em?”

“Hmm.” She casually raises her eyes with an innocent look on her face.

No DM ever gives a look that innocent without doing evil things.

“What.are.you.doing, Em?” I clearly enunciate each word.

“Oh, nothing big. I’m adding a hit point for each die of the dragon since …someone…” Emily glares at Jeremy, “cut me off.”

“Hey, that is not fair.” The man protests.

She points a finger at him. “Zip it. I spent hours on this campaign. I can choose to alter things.” Emily drops her voice. “Pray I do not alter the contract further.”

“You can’t just—”

“No.” I yelp, and Chris hits Jeremy with his journal. Simultaneously, on Jeremy’s other side, where the three core friends of the group sit on the couch, Andre says, “Dude, don’t.”

“Max hit point it is.”

Mark palms his face and mutters. “I’m getting the strap tonight.”

“If you survive,” Emily blows him a kiss.

“Jeremy, let me explain to you a fact of life.” Chris says, reopening his journal to the appropriate page. “DMs are gods. We live in their worlds. You, my friend, are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. Do not antagonize them.”

“Whatever.”

“Everyone else, your initiatives please?” Emily pulls her sweet persona around herself, and the guys relax.

Six and eleven finishes out the group.

“The dragon’s initiative is a 23, and her mate’s rolled fifteen.”

Chris surges forward on the sofa. “What mate?”

“The one I would have described. Why don’t you roll perception and if you get a ten, I’ll give you the sheet to read. Your fighter has that study opponent’s skill, right?”

Chris didn’t even hesitate on the roll, “Fifteen, give it here. I don’t get to act until six so I got time to read it.”

After creasing the paper and tearing off a small part, Emily passes the rest of the paper to me, since I am the closest to the DM table. I do a quick glance over the sheet and notice the words nest and eggs. Wincing, I rock forward on hands and knees to reach over to where Chris sits on the couch.

“Now, where were we?” Emily picks up her favorite silver and black twenty-sider and contemplates it. “Ah yes, a towering ice dragon and a party threatening her. I do believe her first action is to breathe. So nice of you to be clumped together after going through the ravine. Everyone roll dodge.”

(word 765; first published 3/3/2024)

Roleplaying Group Series

  1. Roll to Hit the Ceiling (5/30/2021)
  2. When a DM asks a question, you say yes (7/28/2024)

Flash: Even when the trees are apart

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Image from freedigitalphotos.net

The artificer had her umbrella partially unfurled, making Lorelless pause where the wooden pier abutted the rocky shore. Unable to spot any danger, as the elf slowly rotated her magic’ed paper and bamboo shielding device, he stepped on the wood. More like stomped. His sensibilities grated at being nosy, but Jasmine ability to perceived her surrounding rivaled rocks.

She didn’t even turn around. The girl needed a keeper.

“Hey, Jasmine, you okay?” the half-elf said, just out of range of her preferred gadgets of choice.

She startled and turned. “Oh, hey, hi Sticky Fingers.”

“Hey, yourself.” Lorelless let an easy smile escape across his face. No one else could call the thief by that nickname, but she meant it in an entirely different manner after the time he helped her build something and she hadn’t explained exactly how the glue created specifically for that project would work. “What are you doing out here? The village is blowing it out in celebration, and I’ve never known you not stuff yourself to bursting when real food is available, especially all the elven stuff like greenie grubbie and fermentia.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there. It’s just that,” her slanted green eyes studied the elven script she had inscribed around the edges of her umbrella as she twirled it one way then the other, “we had been with humans so long I had lost track of the date.” Tears hovered at the edges of her young eyes. “It’s Ring Day.” She tilted her head to the side and wiped her eyes with her ungloved hand. “At least it would be ring day if I was back home. Each community has their own aur-o nimloth taith.”

“I guess that is an important day.” Lorelless sat on the end of the pier and patted the wood beside him to the left. “Could you explain it for an abandoned city rat?”

With a watery laugh, she closed her umbrella completely and sat down beside him, placing the, now, walking stick within easy reach of her dominant naked left hand. To show solidarity in caution, Lorelless pulled out his most obvious dagger and placed it beside him, easily able to be grabbed with his right hand, and scooted closer to her until their shoulders touched.

“So why does aurko minnylothtait make you cry?”

“Cin prenan’tion na-deleb.”

A giggle danced in the air and alit directly in Loreless’ ear as Jasmine bumped his shoulder. He was well aware of what that phrase meant; you can’t speak elvish worth shit, although Jasmine inflection was much more polite about it. The underlying growl and the rising final note he could not replicate were missing, changing it from the insult said to him by most pure elves. For her, the words were just a statement of fact and some amusement, with the physical touch indicating that the amusement was meant to be shared.

Elves never touched unless their words were meant to be communal.

“I try.”

“You do not,” she protested, “Not even a little.”

“I haven’t had a reason to learn it before.” He turned his head to look at her, his nearly black eyes meeting her green ones. “But knowing you does provide some incentive.” He shifted to face her, a bent leg resting just behind her, not touching but close enough for her to feel the heat if her prosthetics were magic’ed to experienced temperature. Something he didn’t know but wanted to learn. Unable to leave his weapon outside of easy reach behind him, he moved it to lay on the leg still dangling over the pier with just a bit of the two-foot blade landing her right thigh. “Now, tell me, what is ring day?”

Jasmine looked at the knife, taking a second to touch his hand holding it with a gloved finger, curious about the weirdness of touching when not touching. Using a created-metal object instead of natural physical naked touch. The mixed signal had no meaning in elven communities, but Lorelless said many things without speaking if she could just figure out what he was saying. She drew back her hand and turned her face up to his to answer his question. “Aur-o nimloth taith, or Ring Day, marks the day the Home Tree has gained enough growth to have another ring. It is approximately every eleven or so years.”

“It sounds like a big deal.”

“Yeah, it is. A huge community thing, everyone spends the entire spring of years with Ring Day weaving new clothes, carving decorations of gifts, practicing old songs or crafting new poems. About a week out, the bakers start the seed pancakes, brewers add finishing touches to last winter’s syrups, vinegars, and brews, and the calen harvest early berries. The last two days of prep are non-stop decorating and cooking.” She nodded to the lights and music drifting from the riverside village behind them. “When it finally comes together, that night makes what is happening there seem like bas a nen.”

“And you are missing it.” He tucked an escaped blond curl from her bun behind her ear.

Her face fractured into a thousand expressions. “For the first time ever.” A sob rushed out. “I’ve never been away from home for aur-o nimloth taith. Even when at the academy, they always let me go home for it.”

Loreless sheathed his weapon and pulled her against him, as tears poured from her.

“It shouldn’t be important. I’m an adult now and left home for real and ever.” She wept into his shoulder, words filtering through his shirt in a mix of human and elven he barely made out.

Patting her back, he reassured her, “It’s always important. Home and family always is important.” Personally he had no clue, but he had hungered for the concept of it more often than for food while stealing on the streets of Forever. “Nos bang-golas ir nimloth rucs. Kin share branches even with the trees are apart.”

Laughing, she pushed away from his shoulder but kept her right hand on where her tears had soaked the linen. “Where did you learn that?”

“An elf once said it to me, claiming to be a relative.” Loreless lips thinned and he dropped his eyes to the small bit of bleached wood between them, shifting back a little. “They were the first words I had ever heard in elven, and I engraved them into my heart.”

“Oh,” Jasmine cupped his chin and raise his face, “I take it she wasn’t.”

“He, and no. I was maybe ten or twelve, the years blend and I didn’t age like most of the kids around me on the street.” He pushed his face into her gloved hand, closing his eyes. “I had hoped so much.” Loreless pulled back, reaching up his left hand the one cradling his stubbled cheek before dragging it down, and rearranged his face into an earnest smile. “But enough about me, I’m here for you. How can we make a Ring Day for you?” He stopped, dropping her hand, then held up a finger. “Correction, do you want a Ring Day or something like it? Would it help?”

Her eyes grew soft as she handled the thought, looking at it from all angles, like it was a gadget. “No, I think I just needed to … rin glir, sing of its memory. Thank you for listening.” She patted herself down.

“Your umbrella is beside you. Your goggles are on your head. And your bag is back in the village with the horses.”

She touched her goggles then reach for the umbrella. “You are the best.”

He gracefully stood and offered his hand, which she ignored, using the umbrella and her gloved hand to leverage up. Her replacement leg creaked, and Jasmine made a face. Tomorrow she will have it spread out on a table, figuring out where the noise came from.

“After recovering from a hangover,” Loreless muttered.

“Hmm, what?” Jasmine looked up to where he towered nearly a foot taller than her.

“Oh, just thinking about how much you and I are going to drink tonight.” Loreless looked at his hands, and pretended to juggle them before stepping to her right side. “May I escort you back to a party, keep your cup and plate full, and fall asleep in your arms tonight?” He extended his hand to her gloved one, holding his breath.

(words 1,396; first published 6/23/2024; created 11/19/2023)

Lorelless & Jasmine Series

  1. Dragonfly (5/26/2024)
  2. Even when the trees are apart (6/23/2024)

Flash: Dragonfly

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Image from Ashish Khanna of Unsplash

“The polymorph worked! Holy Sheet!” The thief danced around waving a wand he just used for the first time, but not saying the activation word again.

The slightly charred fighter and cleric leaned against each other, eyeing the dragonfly as it buzzed around the churned grass, mud, and baked broken ground on the meadow. “I can’t believe it, thank Mercury for his luck,” whispers the cleric.

“Amen.” The fighter responded, not sure if the luck was a gift from the gods or a comment about Lorelless’ insane ability to walk out of any situation smelling like roses.

The artificer lowered her umbrella shield slowly, drawing it back into a walking stick. “How? How did that even work? I mean the mass conversion on that should have resulted in an explosion.”

Lorelless grabbed her face, “Shh, Jasmine, stop overthinking it. Just live in the moment and be happy.” He kissed her, because why not take advantage of her distraction, it could be days before she let him get within pickpocketing distance again. Not that he would ever pickpocket her, the crap in her pockets were a variety of sharp tools, some capable of slitting fingers in half. If Alister hadn’t treated that instance as a learning opportunity, Lorelless would have eleven fingers instead of just ten. He still owed Mercury some coin for that healing.

“Bah, why do you do that?” She pushed him away.

“Because he like you, Jasmine,” the fighter, the oldest of their group shook his head. Unless it had gears and whistles, Jasmine had no clue. He didn’t think that she was actually opposed to Lorelless’ pursuit, she just didn’t understand it.

“I like him too, but that is all germy and,” she rubs her chest with her gloved hand, “weird feeling.”

The dragonfly, after closing the distance from where it had been transformed, annoyed that it took so long to travel a distance she used to be able to transverse in a single leap, landed on the hateful wand.

Like her intelligence and sense of being, the mass of the dragon had not, in fact, been removed by the polymorph.

(words 354; first published 5/26/2024; created 11/19/2023)

Lorelless & Jasmine Series

  1. Dragonfly (5/26/2024)
  2. Even when the trees are apart (6/23/2024)

Flash: Join the Crew

Erin Penn 2 Comments

Image from Jennifer Marquez on Unsplash

“Come forward, hermana.”

Anita walked forward to the gray-haired, stooped old man, her body trembling, her head bowed with her black hair streaming down against her white quinceaera gown, grateful for the gown still fitting a year later, though gaping wider at the chest and re-cinched at the waist. Her family was poor; the gown would be sold after this ceremony, her younger brother not needing it. She dropped to her knees on the first of galvanized diamond-etched steps making up the repurposed the spiral staircase. The metal used to connect the bridge to engineering, now it connected the passenger-congregational area of the community casa y iglesia to the Ship Logs.

“Rosita blessed, guiding light, she who brought us to Neuvo Mundo through Starfire and Voidcold. Before us this day is a child, our future. A daughter and a sister. You have guided and protected her four times four rounds of our home. Today, matching days to the ancient world, she has reached majority and is a child no more.” The priest of the Shipboard Faith paused. “Are her parents present?”

Her parents rose from the madera-nega bench they sat on and came forward. “Nosotros estamos aqui.”

“Do you have a marido for your hija?”

“No one has spoken to us or her. We present her to the Ship as an adult with no contracts for apprenticeship or procreation.”

Few men took on the title husband without a hefty dowry, and her small family were saving what little credit they had for their son. Fewer still of the skilled artisans and crafter took on apprentices outside their families. Her family’s small pasto y madera farm would go to her brother. Anita would need to find her own way in their colony.

“Rosita bless you for raising a child from birth to adulthood. Thank you for answering the calling, padre, madre. You are relieved of the onus you took on for us all.”

They sighed in relief behind her, her lifegivers, the ones who raised her, before retreating. Last year they celebrated her fifteenth birthday with all the love in them. Today, they willingly gave up obligations related to her. They had talked about it, her and her parents, but still, it hurt. Sixteen years was not enough; eighteen years and twenty-seven days by the Earth calendar, was not enough.

“Hermana Anita, welcome to the Shipboard. Do you join our vessel freely and of your own will?”

Not knowing any other options after being raised in the small Neuvo Mundo colony, forty-two light years from the ancient world, Anita answered, “I do.”

“Do you wish to serve the vessel as crew, or travel as a passenger?”

Anita inhaled deeply. What she was about to ask wasn’t asked often and granted even less, but without a husband and no skills, the procreation and school house was her only other option. “Officer on Duty, I wish to join the crew.”

“Daughter of passengers, the life of crew is hard. Are you sure you wish to take up this burden?”

“I do,” Anita’s voice was firm.

Officer Alfonso turned on the narrow spiral riser and walked up to where the Ship Logs were stored at the top of the fifty-foot spiral. Each step set the bells sewn along the outside edge tinkling, reminding the congregation of the sounds their ancestors used to hear as the ship heated and cooled on its long journey.

A second Officer, Hermano Sanchez, the one who normally covered Night Shift, came out of the audience and stepped around Anita to mount the steps. He carefully measured his stride against Alfonso’s, so the bells harmonized, traveling up to the first landing and stepping off onto the platform where the Console was suspended above the main floor.

The Officer on Duty walked down the steps carefully carrying a non-reflective metal black box. He stopped at the Console for the Calibration ceremony.

Relaxing her hands where they had gripped her skirts, Anita smoothed the wrinkles. No female had tried to join the crew as long as she had been alive. Last two who tried both died. According to what little times she spent with the copy of the logs available on the passenger level, women had never done well qualifying for crew. And fewer qualified among each of the three generations born under gravity.

Anita knees hurt against the repurposed metal while she waited hoping she would be an exception. She didn’t want to die. The planet hadn’t been kind, and she, like all females raised in the colony, knew her onus to replenish the ranks. The colony was struggling to survive. Food they had in plenty, but much of it became natural contraceptives to humans in the sun and soil of Neuvo Mundo. She would hate to deprive her community by dying, but she knew she wouldn’t survive as passenger procreator. Being a crew lifegiver and careraiser to the seven Officers that served as clergy, leadership, and security would be challenge enough.

At last, the priest of the Shipboard Faith returned to the passenger level and set the black box against the staircase handrail until it clicked into place. He then opened the box. From inside he raised out a golden crown of Roses ad Rays, each ray an antenna sparking with its own LED light.

“Blessed be Rosita, Captain of Us All,” said the Officer on Duty, holding the crown high for all to see.

“Blessed be Rosita, Engineer of La Libertad.” The congregation returned.

“Hermana Anita, I ask once again, do you wish to join the crew and take on all onus, duties, and responsibilities pertaining thereto?”

“I do.”

“Rise, hermana.”

Anita stood, carefully holding onto the handrail after so long on her knees. Between her short height as a third generation compared to the Officer’s first generation and him being on a step above her, he easily lowered the crown to her head.

“Hold it steady.” He instructed, his voice cracking with age as he reached under her chin to buckle some trailing wires. He took the step down and walked to first one side and then the other to connect additional strings around her ears. He then lifted his hand back to the crown. “Let go.”

Anita lowered her hands away from the slick feeling metal, waiting for whatever came next. The copies of the Ship’s Log said nothing about how the Rose testing worked. Some of the Diaries speculated the Crown came from the Captain Helmet which allowed her to communicate with the La Libertad before a meteoroid holed its second AI unit, destroying its personality.

Shadows grew sharper surrounding her, until the passenger-congregation gasp helped Anita figure out the Crown lights were growing brighter. Then, as the glow emulated from the gold metal crown, she felt the spike rays slip downward through her thick hair, etching into her scalp. First with a pinch, then a pressure. Anita bit her lip hard enough to bleed when the humming pain began. She fell forward, grabbing the handrail for support.

“Auh!” she screamed as the rays dug deep, the shorter ones completely imbedding in her head. Someone kept her from falling forward, guiding her down onto the hard textured steps. Iron and burnt hair taste and smell filled her mouth and nose. Abruptly the pain stopped, but so did all tastes and smells. The world turned black and soundless, except for a group of dots brightening and dimming one after the other in a circle.

(words 1,247; published 5/5/2024; created 11/19/2023)