For EllenMillion‘s prompt.

“I want to tell a story.”

It wasn’t what Miss Kelley was expecting to hear from her students, and certainly not from this particular student, shy and a bit slow to learn. She looked down at Diandru thoughtfully. “What kind of story, Di?”

“I had a dream,” the very earnest child told her. “And it was like a movie, with everything very clear and bright, and there were explosions and gunshots and people were crying. And there was a dragon.”

“It sounds like a very interesting dream.” Miss Kelley found herself leaning forward, intrigued by the suggestion of a story.

“It was really cool. But I don’t know how to draw it and I’m not very good with letters yet.” Diandru held up a few crayon drawings. “They don’t look right.”

“Well, then.” Miss Kelly patted the bench next to her. “Let’s figure out how to tell this story, then, you and I, okay?”

“Okay.” Diandru scrambled up next to the teacher, and the two began to plot.

So it was that, at storytime the next day, Diandru began to speak, in a voice as clear as a bell, holding up illustrations drawn by Miss Kelly, labeled in painstaking handwriting by Diandru.

“The dragon came into town in the middle of the night. It was very cold, so cold that his fire wouldn’t light.”

The children leaned forward, intrigued, even those who wanted to be dismissive.

“He was looking for a warm place, somewhere that would make his steam turn back into fire. Dragons don’t like the cold, you know. Like Miss Carpenter’s snake.”

The children nodded. Snakes didn’t like the cold. They knew this to be true.

“There was a building on fire. It was in the part of town where the firemen took their time, a scary neighborhood where people shot just to hear their guns.”

The kids shivered, and nodded. They knew those neighborhoods. Some of them lived there.

“And the dragon saw this building, and its fire – it was a house,” Diandru hurried to add, but managed not to break the flow of the story anyway, “with people trying to get out. And the dragon settled down around the house, soaking up the fire like a cat in the sunlight.”

The children smiled at the image, but leaned in. “What about the people?” demanded a classmate.

“Well, they shot at it. That’s what people did in that neighborhood.”

“That was silly!”

“Yep. It was very silly, because the dragon didn’t even notice. It just kept soaking up the fire, eating it up, getting warmer and warmer… so that by the time the firemen showed up, the fire was all gone, and the people were saved.”

“And what about the people who had shot at the dragon?”

“Well, they felt really silly about shooting at something that was helping,” Diandru answered, holding up the picture labeled “feeling silly.” “And they threw all their guns into the lake…. Where the lake monster ate them for dinner!”

As the children giggled happily, Diandru hugged Miss Kelley’s legs. Looking down at the small child, the teach couldn’t help a giggle of her own. “Next week,” she whispered, “we can tell them the story of the Lake Monster.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/221276.html. You can comment here or there.

For skjam‘s prompt.

“HENRY JOHN CHRISTCHURCH, YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO RECEIVE A BRIDE!”

It was not the e-mail Hank was expecting to see in his inbox. Any other day, he would have deleted it as SPAM, but there had been that contest he’d entered a few months back. He hadn’t thought it was for a wife, but, well, there’s been a long list of prizes (he’d been interested in the IPad more than anything). So he clicked.

The e-mail, once read, looked surprisingly legitimate, especially considering the all-caps hysteria of its subject line. Go to this place, present ID proving that he was, indeed Henry John Christchurch, collect mail-order bride.

There had to be a catch, of course, but the attached photos were of a very lovely woman, dark-haired, exotic looking. From some country up in the frozen north, he was sure, and, more than anything, he was curious how they’d pull off the swap. Present him with some ugly girl and say she’d had a hard time since she left her homeland? Tell him that the picture was only representative?

Mika, it said her name was. Curious to see who he’d really meet, Hank packed an overnight bag and drove to the location, a couple hours outside his hometown.

The sleek businessman who greeted him at the door confirmed all of Hank’s suspicions. This was some sort of scam, some sort of time-share-thing. Wife-share? no, that was something else. Hank let the suit lead him into a posh conference room, and sat to wait.

The girl who came to meet him didn’t look like the photos; if anything, she looked prettier. Beautiful. Stunning.

“My husband,” she murmured, in accented but comprehendible English. “Will you take your bride?” Indeed, she was even dressed in a white dress, the sort of beaded confection Hank’s female co-workers drooled over.

“Uh…”

Yes, yes was the appropriate answer. She was gorgeous. She was perfect. Hank hoped she could cook; he’d never gotten beyond burning beans-in-a-can himself.

So married they were – the sleek suit provided a priest – and Hank took his Mika home. She could cook. She could clean, although she did better directing a cleaning service. She could also, it appeared, work, and had US citizenship, and soon had a job which kept her out late and meant they were back to eating burned beans and take-out. And she could, much to Hank’s surprise, fuck like a demon, like a wild thing, and no matter what late hours she kept or how much pizza they ate, Hank remained deliriously happy. No matter how much more she earned then him, or how the house slowly became hers, not his, he stayed happy. No matter how tired and worn-out he seemed to feel, and how she seemed to grow more and more lively, Hank stayed happy.

And died happy, a smile on his face at the funeral and his lovely wife radiant, sniffing gently into her handkerchief.

Mika missed this one. He’d been sweeter than the most, though the papers had suggested he wouldn’t be. She waited a month before she called her broker, the slick man in the suit, and murmured to him, quietly, in Sweedish, “it is time to begin the Gift Delivery again.”

She’d always found it appropriate that, in Swedish, “gift” meant “poison…” and “wife.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/217108.html. You can comment here or there.