Last night, I wrote Flash Fiction live on my Twitch stream for the first time! It was an interesting experience. A few trolls, but those were easily banned. Most of the stream was actually about other things, I conlanged some and ended up talking about worldbuilding with someone, so the flash fiction did sort of take a back seat but I still write this, inspired by playing Yatzy the other day:
The dice were stark white against the blue of the table cloth, black pips peering up at her like little eyes. She picked them up in one hand, rolling them on the table. Three fours, two twos. A full house. She nodded to herself, pushing them aside so they gathered in a little cluster by the brass candle stick. Shuffling over to the counter, she took the French press out of the cupboard, the large one that served six, and prepared it for use. As the kettle begun hissing, she went back to her room to get dressed. A full house meant a full house, and she was not one for receiving guests in her robe.
She barely had time to scarf down a piece of toast, the coffee did not have time to cool, before there was a knock on the door. It was those Miller sisters that lived down by the grocery story, and old Mrs. Miller too, and that odd cousin of theirs, the quiet one with the gingham coat. They came in, in a bustle of “we just happened to be coming by, hope we’re not intruding, no need to make a fuss, we just thought we’d say hello” and left in a bustle of “oh, we should be on our way, plenty of things to do today, take care of yourself now, dearie”. Just before the door closed, Mrs. Miller turned to her and said “You always have coffee on, and it’s always freshly made. I don’t know how you do it.”.
She smirked to herself, closing the door. She sat down by the table again and reached for the French press. Four guests meant five cups of coffee were gone, the sixth was her refill. She sipped it in silence, glancing at the dice. They didn’t tell time, at least she didn’t think they did, but over time she’d developed an intuition for knowing when what they predicted would come to pass. She waited until she had finished the cup before she picked up the dice again. She weighed them in her palm, pondering whether she should put off the next prediction. There was no real point; what was going to happen was going to happen whether she rolled them or not, it was just a matter of how much warning she would get.
She cupped her other hand over the dice, gave them a shake and let them tumble out over the table again. Two ones, a three, a four and a six. A pointless string of numbers by any objective assessment, yet she knew exactly what it meant. She sighed and stood to out her cup in the sink. That damned cat. It wasn’t even four days since the last time she rescued it from being stuck up a tree. She sighed, and got up to put her coffee cup in the sink. Goddamn cat. It wasn’t even three days since it had gotten stuck up her apple tree the last time. But the dice never lied…
I sort of feel like developing a system of scrying with regular dice now, for some longer story. We’ll see!
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