Copyright
J.B. Norman
Lena, Niamh, and the two Addies — Adelaide and Adelgundis — sit on one side of the table in the Hammered Nail and all stare intently as Kat.
They briefly huddle together and confer in hushed tones, then turn back towards Kat to continue staring intently. Then briefly huddle back together.
“Yes?” Kat asks, filled with a growing sense of foreboding.
“We have a proposal,” Niamh says, the Half-Goblin thief taking the initiative.
“Now? Do, uh, do you mind?” Kat asks, gesturing to the entire roast chicken set in front of her. “I’m trying to eat lunch here. Can you wait, like, five minutes?”
“You can eat an entire chicken in five minutes?” Lena asks.
“I was aiming for the slow end,” Kat mutters.
“We want you to be our Guild Captain,” Adelaide says.
Shocked, Kat pauses midway through the act of reaching into the chicken and tearing it in half.
“WHAT?”
“We would like, Miss Darkstone,” Adelgundis says, “for you to become our Guild Captain.”
“You don’t have a guild,” Kat notes.
“We don’t,” Niamh says. “Well, not yet. But we got thinking, we’re all here in Porthaven, so maybe we could just start our own guild. And then we thought about who we should pick as our Captain, and we all agreed it should be you.”
Kat groans. “That sounds like work.”
“But, Miss Darkstone,” Adelgundis notes, “you’ve already proven yourself quite the capable mentor for Addie and I. It’s only natural that we’d want to keep learning from you.”
“Yeah,” Kat protests, looking at Adelaide. “But you’ve got a brother with a guild. Just join him!”
Adelaide scoffs.”I don’t want to be in Nolan’s guild!” she protests. “He’s such a dork! Besides, I already live with him, I don’t want to go on adventures with him.”
She turns across the table, turning desperately to Niamh and Lena — one-and-a-half Goblins staring back intently at her.
“You’re both older than me,” she notes. “One of you should be leader.”
“But you’re more experienced as an adventurer than either of us,” Lena counters. “Niamh’s, like, a lone wolf and I’m more of the freelancer type.”
“So am I!” Kat protests.
“Officially,” Lena notes, “but think about it, you’re always adventuring with your sister. You took over her pirate ship when she was sick.”
“You found Captain Fryte’s gold, William Newgate’s treasure on Oake Island,” Niamh notes. “Fought a Gigacrab —”
“— apprehended the Bandits of Goldharbour,” Adelaide adds.
“— and tackled a burglar off a roof,” Adelgundis concludes.
Kat groans again. “That still sounds like work. A lot of work. Ugh.”
“Miss Darkstone,” Adelgundis says, “if you wouldn’t do it for, do it for my dear Augustinus.”
Right on cue, the weasel pops out of Kat’s vest pocket to lovingly nuzzle her cheek.
“Gah!” Kat exclaims. “How did he get in there?”
“Weasels are natural masters of stealth and subtlety,” Adelgundis says. “They’re like Nature’s Miss Niamh.” She frowns. “Though with less Brain Chopping, I suppose.”
“If I say yes,” Kat asks. “Will you let me eat my chicken in peace?”
“You know,” Lena offers, eyeing the roast bird. “You could share with us. It can’t be healthy for a person to eat an entire chicken in one sitting.”
“But I’m hungry!” Kat protests.
The rest of my writing exercises are here. This one was originally written in March 2023.
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