This is to stryck‘s prompt to this bonus-round call to the dailyprompt prompt “I can’t fail.”

It would probably have come out better if I knew anything about football… sorry.

There was a witch in the stands. There had to be.

Ernie was trying to miss throws. He was trying to fumble the ball. He’d even tried to run into the opposing team’s biggest guy: in short, he was trying to fail, because if he didn’t…

There had to be a witch in the stands.

He grabbed at the point of the ball and suddenly found the whole thing in his hands, threw it haphazardly, and found it flying true towards his teammate, tripped into the opposing team and ended up getting in their way just enough to tangle them up.

There had to be someone jinxing him. He couldn’t fail.

He made his second touchdown of the night and tried not to cry. Grown men don’t cry, certainly not football players, even college players. The team was cheering. They hadn’t done this well in years. They hadn’t done this well ever.

Someone was messing with him. There had to be someone in the stands.

Ernie made a last-ditch effort. He’d seen someone do this by accident, once, slip, fall just the right way, and fracture their leg. He found the muddiest patch of ground – it was a wet day after a wet week, so there was a lot of that – and let his heel slip out from under him.

The ball flew at him as he dropped and, on instinct, Ernie caught it.

There might be a witch in the stands. There had to be.

But there was also, front and center, the mafioso who had told him he had to fail today.

There had to be someone jinxing him.

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This is to Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt to this bonus-round call to the dailyprompt prompt “the end of an era.“

The sign out front said “Closing! Everything Must Go!” It brought people in like nothing else ever did.

Vultures, Tama thought, but, like vultures, they served a purpose. They picked the last otherwise-useless things off the bones, for one, leaving a nice, tidy skeleton. Nature’s disposal system.

“Excuse me? Excuse me, miss, this Hunnel statue. It’s a fake, you know, right?”

“I sell curios and curiosities, trinkets and treasures.” It was late in the evening, and Tama’s spiel was sounding rough around the edges. “I do not verify anything.”

“It’s just that this price…”

“Everything in the store is seventy-five percent off. That little statue is…” She peered at the ancient tag. Miss or not, the light was low and the day was old. “Five-fifty.”

“But twenty-two dollars is too much for a fake Hunnel, miss.”

Tama let her accent thicken. “Is not twenty-two dollars. It is five-fifty.” She flapped a hand around the store. “Everything is seventy-five percent off. Five-fifty.”

The woman held up the statue woefully. “It’s the last thing left in the store, except the table it was sitting on. And twenty-two is too much.”

“Sell it for eleven on e-bay.” Tama had bargained and argued and fussed all week. Now, she was ready to be done. “Statue and the little table, ten seventy-five.”

The table, unlike the Hunnel, was a genuine antique. The woman salivated. “Nine.”

“Eleven.”

“That’s not how you’re supposed to do that!”

“Twelve.”

“Okay, okay, here.” The woman counted out eleven dollars. “There.” She paused, as if the act of buying had broken some spell on her. Maybe it had. “This store has been here as long as I can remember. What will you do, now that it’s gone?”

Tama looked around the empty store. Bones, now, picked clean. “I’ll move on.”

“It’s like it’s the end of an era.”

She closed the cash register on the last eleven dollars. “It is. And now I can start a new one.”

She locked the door behind her last customer, her last customer ever. The end of an era, indeed. With that outworld Hunnel (and the sapient pearwood table) safely out of her hands, she could move on, see the worlds. Do something with her life.

She thought, this time, she’d try to travel light.

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To kelkyag‘s prompt to this dailyprompt prompt.

“Come on, already.” Fionnlagh shed boots and socks, cuffed pants, and waded in to the swamp. “You said you wanted to see.”

Eoghan lingered on the path. “I wanted to see. I didn’t say I wanted to go into White Swamp.”

“There’s no other way to see it. And it’s not like you can go alone.” Fionnlagh was moving fast, despite water that was knee-deep in places and ankle-eating mud in others. Soon, the swamp would obscure vision between the two entirely.

“Fionnlagh! Come onnnn.”

“You can’t see the House of the Mist from the path. You can’t see anything worth seeing from the land path. Now come on. Take off your boots and wade in, or don’t bother. It’s no use if you don’t get your feet wet, and sodden boots are exhausting.”

“Off? My boots? What if…”

“Nobody will steal boots from the edge of the White Swamp. You know that.”

Eoghan swallowed. A quick glance along the edge of the path showed that to be true… although the moss had grown up around the oldest pairs, there were boots there, just barely still on the solid land, waiting for owners who had never returned.

And, sitting within boot-lace reach of a pair so old they had hobnails – and a tree growing out of the left boot – were Fionnlagh’s, almost-new, fair-bought this summer and the shiny not worn off yet.

“Are you coming? Or will you spend your whole life in the safe and the dry, never seeing aught at all?”

One, two, Eoghan’s boots joined the others, generations of others, on the short. “‘Twill be the death of us both.”

“It may be, and it may not be. But I’d rather this death than a dry life, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m coming, aren’t I?” The water was surprisingly warm on Eoghan’s bare feet, and surprisingly deep.

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