FFF 3.2

Well, I had a not-so-happy day*, so I wrote 400 words of something lighthearted.

Stay tuned for another post (soon? okay, probably not until Monday) about the interesting & fun things I did this week :D Be warned, it comes with photos... and is the reason I wrote what I did.

I hope some people come back and post links to their flash fiction pieces, as it would certainly cheer me up to read them (cue sad-puppy-dog eyes...)

Here it is: rough, quickly written, and unedited.

The smell was worse than surströmming.

Sophia wrinkled her nose. “I think the newts have gone bad.”

Charlie gave one of the small, black dried lizards a tentative sniff. “How can you tell?”

With one hand, Sophia plugged her nose, and flapped the other hand at the cauldron, hoping to encourage the lilac plumed smoke to billow elsewhere. “Besides the fact it smells like rotted fish?”

With a shrug, Charlie tossed the newt into the cauldron, sneezed, then wiped his drippy nose on his sleeve. “Can’t smell a darn thing. Allergies.”

“Lucky.”

“What happens if they’ve gone bad?”

“Dunno, but we don’t have time to start over. Guess we’ll lose marks if it doesn’t work right.”

Charlie grabbed a threaded funnel from the floor and screwed it tightly into the top of the large, brass mould set deep in a pit of dry ice. “So, we going to do this?”

Between the two of them, they tipped the cauldron carefully and poured the bubbling purple liquid into the funnel. As it splashed against the sides of the mould, it hissed, the dry ice fizzed, sputtered, cracked, and shattered in a hundred tiny explosions.

As the dry ice evaporated, the plumes of lilac smoke turned a sickly green and petered out.

Charlie looked at Sophia. “What do you think?”

She nodded. “Unbolt it.” It was the only way to be sure if the potion worked or not.

They slid on heavy leather gloves and attacked the mould from both sides, struggling to twist the  bolts free, and unlock the hinges. The mould fell open, the four-foot-tall sections clattering unevenly against the sides of the pit. Sophia and Charlie peered in, anxious.

With a belch of lilac smoke, the creature inside shook itself.

Charlie groaned. “It looks like a chicken, a naked purple chicken! We’re going to fail for sure!”

“I don’t know, I mean, it looks funny, but it still worked. It’s alive.” Sophia winced. “Maybe the scales grow in later, like... like feathers?”

“Yeah, that’ll fix everything. A dragon covered in purple scales is so much better than a dragon that looks like a purple naked chicken. We’re going to get laughed at. Failed, and laughed at.”

The creature looked up, a pathetic expression on its googley-eyed, sharp-beaked face. “Brawck,” it croaked.

“Oh, geeze!” Sophia grabbed her nose. “It’s breath is even worse! Darn those newts!”

* I was in Victoria a few days ago packing up the last of my possessions from the house, today, the blood tests took over 3 hours of sitting/waiting, when I got home, the dog had thrown up all over the white carpet, and today is/was? my 10th year anniversary... yeah, so sad things all around.

My post is so late 'cause I ate dinner and watched 'Lilo & Stitch' to cheer myself up before sitting down at the keyboard.