I’m having a writing retreat day!  Tell your friends!  Tell your foes!  Tell everyone~

This prompt (two prompts, combined) – from @marionline@mastodon.art

~*~

It was the sort of thing that people – teachers, specifically, Mrs. Gruble, very specifically – thought was clever. 

Ani and Charlie had never gotten along, not since – well, if Ani was going to put a date on it, or a First Event, it was the second time they met, which would have been the third preschool Ani had gone to, the good one, the one that was fun, the one where Ani fit in.

Until Charlie showed up.

And that – that had been their entire school life.  Not just school. Scouts. Church. 4-H.  You name it – it wasn’t that big a town – and Ani and Charlie were both in it. And they were at loggerheads. 

But of course, since teachers like Mrs. Gruble only saw a tiny fraction of it, they tended to think that they knew what was going on, and they tended to think that it was nothing important, nothing rational, nothing but a little spat or something. 

Which is how Ani and Charlie had ended up working on a project together, which was how they’d both ended up with detention, which was how they had ended up in the theatre’s prop room, moving things around, sorting out ancient backgrounds, and cleaning everything. Twice.  Thrice, possibly. 

Which was okay – the theatre prop room was pretty big  – until they both sighted a really nice tiara in the middle of the room, right on the line that they’d agreed on, mostly silently, was their borderline.  Continue reading →