The exercise:
Write about: the prize.
Ran some errands around town this morning with Max. He made new friends pretty much everywhere we went.
Mine:
As they enter the room, each man drops a piece of paper into a waiting box. On every scrap is a name and an address, both provided so that should their name be drawn for a door prize it could be mailed to them.
That is what they have been told, at any rate.
The conference they are attending is three days long and it has only just begun. If any of them had given the instructions they'd received upon arrival any thought they would have realized there was plenty of time to pull names and hand out prizes in person.
But the bartenders were waiting and ready for them, happy to let them know the first five drinks were on the house. Glasses had been filled and emptied many times before any of the attendees had even begun to look for the conference room.
So each man had dutifully completed his entry, placed it in the box, and taken his seat. Prepared to learn, prepared to make new contacts, prepared to enjoy a few days away from the cares of work and home.
However they, apparently, were not the least bit prepared to have those very same homes emptied of all of their valuables while they were at this bogus conference of ours.
2 comments:
Heh, I'm looking forward to being able to take the puppies outside, but that won't happen for about another four weeks or so. I'm pretty certain that I'll get stopped even more when I'm walking them than I do when I'm walking their mother. Babies and puppies seem to have the same effect on people!
What a nice idea for a conference, and it sounds like it should pay for itself several times over! I shall have to give some thought into how I could implement that over here in London... ;-)
The prize
There are certain items, thought Uruk as he sweated and grunted, that a sensible adventurer always has in his backpack. Such as a small crowbar: very useful for levering open doors, prizing out jewels from the eyes of statues, and opening crates just left lying around behind locked doors, booby-traps, and iron bars. Like this one. There was the satisfying crunch of wood surrendering to metal, and the lid flew off the crate and crashed into the dungeon wall, breaking into four splintered pieces. Uruk looked into the crate.
It was filled with straw, so he put the crowbar in and stirred experimentally. It clunked, so he pulled the straw out by the handful, wondering what prize he'd located. After only a few seconds of effort he reached in and pulled up, with much straining and effort, a heavy box shaped like a coffin and sized for a medium parrot. Setting it down on the dungeon floor he set to work on it with the crowbar.
As the crowbar gouged the metal lid he realised that the coffin must be fashioned from lead. That deserved a grimace: lead coffins were far too heavy to be worth his while carrying away with him, and there was a good chance it wouldn't sell anyway. He had no use for such an unwieldly doorstop.
Then the lid slid back, and he found the real prize: a genuine Transmontanian pocket-vampire.
Greg - I am still, just for the record, quite looking forward to seeing pictures of these puppies. But I can imagine that they are not prone to sitting still for picture time.
A pocket vampire! That's fantastic. Some great descriptions and details leading up to the big reveal as well.
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