I like the Story-a-Day prompts. Sometimes I follow them as they are, but often I adapt them to fit what I want to do. And sometimes I ignore them. To me they’re suggestions to help get you started, not binding contracts.
Since I already have a something of plan–the stories should fit into my Telling the Future with Illustrious Ladies book within a book–I am definitely changing the prompts to suit the plan.
Also, on my Patreon, I asked patrons if they’d like me to use their name in a story. Well, I have to change the name to work in this fictional world. I used one name yesterday and am using another today. The one for today, I’m actually using as given. So here is the start of story three.
An excerpt from Telling the Future with Illustrious Ladies
It is true, dear reader, many seek to become illustrious. Perhaps you have imagined accolades and starry-eyed gazes from fellow citizens and even kings. Some of our tales do include the stories of such seekers. Whatever their motivation, they made a difference one way or another.
But I’ve a fondness for those who stumble into illustriousness. Let us tell the story of Magnolia Jem and how she became a great detective.
The story starts when she was ten. Eager to help her family, she took a job with a tailor. The tailor once dreamed of working on the castle staff, making royal garments, but such was fate that he kept to his cramped shop in less glamorous circumstances. He specialized in mending the clothes of workers and hardened travelers, and he hired Magnolia to sew.
Most days she sat in an old chair and sewed buttons on coats. And so it was that Magnolia fell into the habit of looking for buttons gone astray. Walking to the market or to work to visit with a friend, she’d scan the ground and once in a while she’d even find the button missing on a coat just brought into the shop. Finding any unbroken button was to her a sign of an especially good day.
How does a sewer of buttons become illustrious? What prophecy is there in that?
Dear reader, have you not seen that prophecies come far more often in the ordinary. You don’t need a comet or a three-headed calf. You need only a way to see.
And Magnolia Jem was learning every day she scanned the muddy busy streets.
Hope this day finds you well and safe! Thanks for reading!
Marta Pelrine-Bacon 