© J.B. Norman — Published by Emona Literary Services™
Every year, their mom warns Dunstana not to eat too much candy on Heroes’ Eve night. And, every year, that warning goes unheeded.
And Kat watches as her little sister becomes an entire bestiary unto herself: dutifully portioning out her candy like a worker ant, hiding the bulk of it away like a squirrel, jumping on the candy like a breaching Turboshark, unhinging her jaw like a snake to devour it all whole.
Then promptly entering hibernation like the great bear of the forest. On the one hand, Kat is shocked that Dunstana can not merely sleep at all after ingesting so much sugar, but sleep so deeply that she becomes utterly immovable and imperturbable.
On the other hand, after that much sugar, it only makes sense that she would crash hard.
Kat just wishes her sister had picked somewhere else to crash than on top of her.
Still dressed in her vampire costume, Dunstana is sprawled across her sister. Still dressed in her pirate costume, Kat has no choice but to serve as Dunstana’s pillow for the duration.
Kat sighs.
This is the ideal time to eat the left-over candy. And that candy is mocking Kat from the other side of the room. So far out of reach that it might as well be halfway across Terrace. Pinned as she is by Dunstana’s sleeping form, Kat can only gaze wistfully at the candy bowl.
She’s going to get Dunstana for this.
Dunstana stirs in her sleep, causing a surge of optimism to well inside Kat.
“Look out,” Dunstana murmurs as she rolls over, “it’s the Baleful Saucier!”
She completes her roll and returns to stillness.
Kat sighs.
Estelle comes into the room. She looks down and smiles at Kat. “Are you alright like that, Kat?” she asks. “I can wake her up if you want.”
“No,” Kat says. “It’s fine. What are big sisters for, right?”
Estelle’s smile grows and she drapes a blanket over her daughters. “Well, let me know when you get tired and we can do something about your vampire problem,” she offers.
Kat nods. “Yeah. Thanks, Mom.”
Estelle crosses the room and returns with the bowl of left-over candy. “Here,” she says, offering it to Kat. “I think you’re earning your wages.”
“Thanks,” Kat says, taking the bowl.
Kat is interrupted by the arrival of her father in the room.
“Ah, perfect,” Dorian says when he sees Kat on the couch. “I’ve been looking for you, Kat. First, I wanted to tell you that you picked a great costume this year.”
Oh no.
She should have known better, Kat tells herself.
For her, the greatest terror Heroes’ Eve holds isn’t the cold of autumn, or the dark of the night, or the amuse-bouches done up like monsters or any or ghosts or gremlins or Baleful Sauciers.
It’s the Pirate Talk.
“And,” Dorian continues as Kat breaks out into a cold sweat, “you wear it well, Kat. Which is why I think you should give some serious thought into going into the family business. You’re only fifteen, after all. Still plenty of time for a good pirate career.”
Kat glances down at the sleeping Dunstana and begins to wonder how she might be repurposed into a projectile to allow Kat to escape.
Dorian reaches into his pocket.
“In fact,” Dorian says. “I’ve made a list of reasons to consider piracy.”
He pulls out the list. And then continues to pull it out of his pocket as it becomes clear it is a long list.
Dorian clears his throat. “Reason number one,” he declares. He glances up from the paper. “And this is reason one of one thousand and four, by the way.”
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
