I yawned and stretched. My hands encountered hot, damp sand and it scattered throughout my long hair before I registered what it could be. Although still drowsy I refrained from rubbing my eyes. Forcing myself to open them I immediately regretted it and squinted against the fierce brightness of the sun. I felt groggy. Of course, I chastised myself. You did imbibe rather freely letting your hair down and all that. You were so proud of yourself. You did it. I bolted upright. Hey, this isn't the tavern. It doesn't look like Kansas either. As if I'd recognize it. Where in the Sam hill am I? I shaded my bleary eyes with one trembling hand and pressed my throbbing temple with the other. You're standing on a beach, a rather unspoiled beach. A beach straight from a travel agency poster. Azure water stretches as far as the distant horizon. I jump with a shriek. A blurry figure appears from within the green tangle of undergrowth and waves at me. He seems to know me? As he breeches the gap between us I shake my pounding head and moan.Now it's coming back to me. We, the 'he' and I, instigated a bit of mischief. It began with him mentioning a bag of gold coins and escaping on a dragon. My cohort, I hesitated to refer to my partner in crime as a crony, dropped a brown, fuzzy object at my feet. "These aren't the cocoanuts we slurped from last night, but when stranded on a deserted island, eh? Go on, try it. Probably restorative or something. Do you have a head? There's a jackhammer drilling in mine." I stoop and instantly regret it. I sip and swallow. "Thanks. It's something. What happened? The details are kinda fuzzy. Did we... ?" His eyes flashed and he whooped. "Did we ever! In spades. I mean gold, lots of shiny, beautiful gold." I winced and followed the pointing of his arm. I know I gasped. It wasn't a dream or a drunken plot. Canvas bags, straining against their treasure, reclined against a towering palm tree. " It wasn't easy rustling up a willing dragon, but I know someone who knows someone. And boy did he deliver, the guy and our pilot. Oh, his wings were massive, the creature's not the middle man. He swooped us in and out. That vault coulda been constructed of cardboard. If it had been, well, hello, fire-breathing dragon. No glitches whatsoever." "So, we are thieves extraordinaire? We pulled it off? The Bank of Braavos wasn't impenetrable? Wait, what are we doing here? Correct me if I'm wrong, but we can't spend our loot here." My co-conspirator shrugged. "Ya, about that. There may have been some miscommunication. I think we mentioned retiring to a tropical island and the over-eager dragon dropped us here. I'm certain this is just a temporary setback. We can afford to live anywhere. We'll figure it out. In the meantime we sit back and relax. Who's gonna find us here?" I was mulling this over when we both spotted a rather large steamer, well, steaming towards us. Personally, I considered its black belch to be an abomination, but we had other concerns at the moment. We watched, most likely with our mouths gaping, as a rowboat was lowered into the surf and a crew paddled to our beach. We didn't bother to snap our jaws shut when a familiar person alit and stomped across the sparkling sand. How had she found us? Had the dragon uber ratted us out? Surely, we'd paid richly for his sly services. We didn't bother to flee or hide. What was the point? Creeper Of The Realm  had discovered the island fair and square. All's fair in love and war, right? We'd addled our brains with a premature celebration. Every plan had a few holes. Why had ours been so glaring, so obvious, yet not to us? I could only point a finger of blame to the writer's fatigue. GoT got us, caught us, red-handed. Had we failed to peruse the fine print? Had we been struck during one of the reviewing skirmishes? The purloined, what a great word, gold winked at us as we bowed our heads. As weary writers we offered a deal, a bargain, a new wrinkle. . . . Jeremy  and I admitted to our skullduggery ,another jewel of a word offering up glorious images of swashbuckling. I didn't feel much like a carefree pirate, but my knees buckled. The three of us hammered out an agreement. Of course, without a doubt, we permitted Creeper Of The Realm to retrieve the loot. She insisted we lug it to the awaiting rowboat. It was so much easier with the dragon's assistance, but thieves cannot be beggars. Well that kind of beggar. We did beg. We did not take a knee though. In consideration of our momentary lapse of judgment and displaying an amazing and somewhat surprising grace, our esteemed, dare I say, beloved leader granted us leave to continue in "Game of Thrones"  . I had to admit it was punishment enough. There would still undoubtedly be more slogging ahead. We were not offered room on the steamer. Creeper Of The Realm snapped her fingers and a listing, foul-odoured garbage barge swept from behind her first class ship. "Start swimming and don't forget to keep your heads up. I'd advise you not to breathe too deeply. Oh, and . . . Jeremy and SandraLynn  I expect the next door's challenge later today." (898 words)   "Game of Thrones" |
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