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Putting Out Fires (and Lighting Others)

This one is just sort of silly.  Maybe an intro to something?

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Perfect is the enemy of Good

That’s engraved on the lintel of our headquarters.

Well, it would be, but what’s really there is Firehouse 14.

It’s a good building, and the fire company has since moved somewhere else, bigger place, I think, more poles.

We moved in the way we do most things – quickly, efficiently, with a minimum of excess energy.

Which means, of course (of course) that I’m sleeping in an old firemen’s dormitory and so are the other seven of us.

We put out fires, after all.  Sort of. Sometimes we light them.

We’re the Cleaning Team, which is kind of a funny name for us, but it’s what we came up with while drinking vodka one night.  We get things done.

We don’t get them done cheaply.  We don’t get them done elegantly.  We get them done on time and well. (You know: on time, in budget, in scope, pick two.)

And we get them done – if not cleanly, then “cleanly.”

That is.  If it is illegal or questionably moral, It will never come back to us.  It will never come back to you.

If it is shining and bright and just needs to be done quickly, you will get all the lauds and we will be invisible.

Just don’t ask questions.

That, we actually have a sign for, on the front desk, next to the “Quick And Dirty, Done” sign that our secretary came up with.

(We do actually have a “don’t kill the client” clause in our (unwritten) contracts, but that one has its own escape clause (Our contracts are the one thing we didn’t do quick nor dirty).)

Perfect is the enemy of Good.

And let me tell you, you want it done, we can get it done Quick and really, really Good.

 


Written to May 16th’s Thimbleful Thursday Prompt.

Want more?

Thimbleful Thursday: Here and There

“But who are you?” The woman at the gate was staring at the interloper. “What is your name and what are you doing here?”

“What I am doing here, I have already told you.” The woman popped up her umbrella as an unseasonable and unexpected rain began. “I am here to speak to Madam Thare Oliphant.”

“The current mistress of the house is not Thare Oliphant, and hasn’t been in two hundred and seventy-two years.”

“You’re remarkably well-informed for a gate guard.” Continue reading

Thimbleful Thursday: Envelope

“What…. what is it?”

Esuyp had been locked up in the old building for months on end, emerging only to do her required part of the settlement’s labor and fix the things that needed fixing, sometimes to eat and even more rarely to sleep.  Qiameth had been running back and forth between Esuyp’s workshop — so they all assumed it was — and the old school buildings, muttering to herself.

Now the thing — the result of every minute of leisure time for two people for over half a year in a settlement where everyone was working steadily — was out in the middle of the Green and the whole settlement was staring at it.

“What is it?” repeated the Eldest.   Continue reading

Visa

Originally posted on Patreon in May 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

“Excuse me, citizen.”

These border checks were getting ridiculous.

Karyk huffed and presented the gold-and-circuitry bracelet that everyone in Reldienne — or what had been Reldienne three weeks ago, at least — was required to have on their person at all times when crossing, or across, a border. “I’m going to the grocery store.” It wasn’t much of a protest, because protesting only upset the border guards, and when they got upset, they started asking for blood samples and stool samples and — it got rather unpleasant.

“You’re crossing over the border into South-west Reldienne.  That’s a new nation and, as such, requires a border check,” the guard explained. Continue reading

Reformed?

Okay, this was supposed to be short.  It is not short.  It is a riff off of a comment from a request for dark fic prompts from like 2 months ago. 

It took a while.

Superhero on Twitter Twemoji 12.0

Damon Rudd had not meant to reform. He had been living a perfectly happy life destroying anything at that pissed him off, thwarting people who got his way (heroes with overdeveloped moral senses usually, Golden Hawk and Wise Ibis and the like), being amazingly rich and getting richer, and more or less doing whatever he wanted to do. This had been working fine, until, walking behind one of his businesses, he found a woman and two children digging for food in his dumpster.  This, Damon found, pissed him off.  But because he was not an idiot, he was able to see that what pissed him off was not the woman.  Continue reading

Been to Middle Earth; Do you speak my language?

Okay, this is entirely because DaHob sent me the link to Talk Nerdy to Me

Woman Elf: Medium Skin Tone on Twitter Twemoji 12.0

When Nat first saw the ads shouting  “win a trip to Middle Earth,” she assumed it was just another studio amusement park, like “spend a weekend in the Wizarding World” or “Cruise on the Black Pearl.”

It wasn’t until she was lured by a clickbait article that she caught a clue as to what was really going on.

“Portal trips to other universes: are they as safe as they seem?”

It turned out that the answer was a firm no, something hammered home as Nat’s native guide physically moved her out of the way of a swinging mace and dropped her onto the back of a sturdy pony.  “Tourist gold, they said,” he muttered.  “Bringing fresh eyes and fresh treasure to Middle Earth!  Nobody said they’d be idiots without the sense to come in out of the rain!”

“Hey!”  She shifted on the pony and let it carry her away from the orcs.  “Let’s see you come to my world and see how you do in a strange place with strange dangers, hunh, Gladrin son of Gladuil?”

“Maybe I will, maybe I will,” he retorted.

“Good!  I look forward to it!”

Then, because she didn’t want to be the reason that the Ugly American trope was carried to another universe, she added, much more politely, “thank you for saving me.  Do you think, for the rest of this trip, you could perhaps show me the things that you like the best about your land?”

She thought from the expression – the beard made it hard to tell – that she’d surprised Gladrin.

“That I will, little human,” he consented.  “That I will.  And perhaps we can return you to your land intact, mmm?”

The Seventh Estate

In Seldith stood seven estates.

There were many houses, of course, some of them large enough to be considered manors, many buildings and homes and a great number of farms and plantations – but there were seven Estates.

From East to West, the first was the home of the Leader and thus whoever lived there had the First Vote, which was most powerful.  The second home was for the Head of Priests, who held the second vote. Continue reading