I wanted something to write and, forgetting I still had a stack of prompts, I asked for prompts on the FediVerse and @Milouchkna linked me to this prompt. What came from it is definitely interesting.  Little dark – content warning, blood mention, alcohol mention, some violence.  

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Allen O’Dale’s was the sort of place you didn’t walk into twice if the clientele didn’t want you there. 

You’d think that the proprietor would complain when someone walked up to a stranger, looked them over once or twice, and said “find another place, friend,” but not the eponymous owner of the little tavern on a side road just outside a small town that itself was on the borders of a medium-big rust belt city.  No, O’Dale would just tut and say “that’s good money you sent away,” not really sounding like it mattered, and the jar on the counter would fill up with coins and bills. 

Any other place, someone might complain about the antecedents of the money, but not here.   After all, if anyone was going to know where to spend those strange iridescent bills or the weird hexagonal coins, it was going to be O’Dale. 

And nobody else was going to complain about what their change got made in.  For one, you complained at Allen O’Dale’s, you had to find someplace else to drink, to play pool, to shoot darts, and to find… friends.  Continue reading →