FICTION |FANTASY |SEEDLING CHALLENGE

Tessa and the Dracolich

Seedling Challenge (2)

This story is #2 in my Seedling Challenge. I began with a drabble (100 words). This is my microfiction expansion (101–300 words).

“Lower the mainsail!”

“She’ll roll over in this storm!”

Though technically a passenger — not part of the crew — Tessa couldn’t just sit idly by as the crew of the clipper Boggart Blighter raced frantically to save their ship.

Tessa raised her arms and fired her magical bolts at the mainsail — an orison to drop the fabric to the deck. It obeyed with a loud thud. Nearby sailors cheered.

The captain of the Blighter, an aged ruffian half-orc with a wooden leg and eye patch, clopped over to her and grasped her arm tightly.

“Sailors be superstitious fools, ye blasted sorcerer!” he yelled over the sea’s wailing. “Get ye down below ‘fore I throw ye o’erboard!” Tessa felt him slip something into her pocket.

“Captain, we gotta turn back!” a sailor yelled, frightened.

“Goblin swill! The Blighter nay turns tail fer naught but a blushing mermaid’s bosom!” The captain winked with his good eye, turning away from Tessa. “Into the wind, Sebastien! I’ll not tell ye again, scurvy kobold fodder!”

Tessa stumbled, struggling to get below decks before a massive wave flooded the deck. She smacked her head on the railing and was thrown into the churning sea.

“Man overboard!”

Tessa awoke on a warm sandy beach. Her body had transformed into a cat’s!

The orange sunset touched the ocean in the distance, and Tessa sighed.

Since she’d been abandoned here on this island with nothing, she’d been too scared to enter the water.

Would a ship ever come to rescue her?

She passed the time chasing seagulls with a childlike innocence, and befriended a crab, even found a nice rock to rub like a makeshift comb.

But she needed to go home, needed to get back to normal. She missed being human.

She spotted three black sails approaching…

Thanks to the brilliant team at The Kraken Lore for always challenging me to write! Thanks to Bradan Writes Stories, Rayne Sanning, and Jay C Wells for all their efforts with the Seedling Challenge. And good luck to all who enter the Seedling Challenge! I’m excited to see how things develop!

My next Seedling: