The Sisters Darkstone and the Three Ladies of Middlesbrooke, the Fish & Chips of pairs of things.
Dunstana really feels like a proper adventurer today.
Usually, it’s just her and Kat, or maybe them and Uncle Jonas and Annie. But lately, Dunstana and her sister have been working a group of three adventurers travelling through Porthaven: a Wilderling from Natalis, a Troll-Amazon, and an Aurorean Sorceress.
Kat won a game of darts against and old mercenary back at the Hammered Nail and won a big trunk the old guy had inherited from his aunt. Kat gave the trunk to Dunstana, because, her words, “What am I going to go with a giant box?”
So, naturally, Dunstana decided to rummage through the box and ended up finding a treasure map sandwiched between several angry letters to the Senior Magistrates of Goldharbour and a cookbook titled One-Hundred-and-Twelve Ways to Cook Snails.
So, naturally, Kat and Dunstana set out an adventure, meeting up with the three other adventurers along the way and deciding to team up.
Dunstana glances up from the map.
“Hey, Kat!” she calls.
The Wilderling woman freezes mid-stride and her ears twitch. She throws up her hands in exasperation and rounds on the little pirate.
“My name is Lucia!” she cries. “You don’t hear me talking to you like Hey, Pirate!”
“I was talking to my sister,” Dunstana notes. She frowns. “And I thought your name was Ludmila.”
“Ugh,” Lucia groans. She glances over at Kat. “Is she always like this?”
“Most of the time, yeah,” Kat answers.
“I am not bad at names!” Dunstana insists, indignantly puffing up her cheeks and staring down the Wilderling woman. “You’re Lu…cia.”
She points to the Troll-Amazon. “That’s Penelope.”
She points to the sorceress. “And that’s, um, Andraste!”
“Wrong,” Lucia says bluntly.
“Fine,” Dunstana counters. “If you don’t want my help, then I guess I’ll take my treasure map and go home, and you can try to find the treasure all by yourself! And I hope you spend the rest of the day with a rock in your shoe!”
She sticks her tongue at Lucia.
Apolline steps between Dunstana and Lucia, ready as ever to use her natural tact for diplomacy to defuse a tense situation.
“You can’t leave now, Dunstana,” Apolline says. “You have the map. You’re the most important person here. And, besides, don’t you want to be there when we find the treasure?”
Dunstana nods.
“Oh, sure,” Lucia grumbles. “Take her side.”
Kat nods sympathetically and gives her a consoling pat on the shoulder.
“But do you think you could do us a favour?” Apolline continues. “You haven’t know us very long, and that leaning new names can be hard.”
“I am not bad at names!” Dunstana insists.
“I didn’t say you were,” Apolline notes. “I said that names can be hard for everyone. But I know Lucia would appreciate it if you could remember her name while we’re working together.”
“Okay, Ainsley,” Dunstana says. “I’ll try to get your names right.” Her face lights up as she turns back to Lucia. “Oh! Could I call you Lucy?”
“Fine,” the Wilderling concedes.
“You know, I quite like the name Penelope,” Petra notes.
The rest of my Writing Exercises are here.
Also, follow me via WordPress, social media, or via my email list:
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
