Ad Libitum

     “Where did you learn to play?” Kent ‘the Bard’ Wheelock asked the old woman sitting across from him.

She looked up slyly, a slight smile slipping along her lips. “One does not become Archeireus et Celatrix Ministrae without learning a number of strategy games.”

     “Don’t become the Bard without it neither,” he muttered.

     Sizing him up, her grin faded, “oh, I do say.” She nodded sympathetically as she pushed her queen-side bishop into play.

     “A little premature, no?” he asked as he threatened the bishop with a pawn.

Munere Fungor

     Ensign Osborne swung open the intricately carved oak door, revealing the mouse-like newly sworn-in Chief Justice Moira Thibodeaux who’d picked up the Fasces of the Antigone and stood holding the bundle defensively. “Whoa! Ma’am! Easy. Don’t hit me!” Ensign Osborne’s easy grin and light manner caused her to lower the fasces and relax a bit, though he could tell she still wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of entering what had—until recently—been the sole dominion of the Oathbreaker Fraunx Adonis. “I’ve checked the whole place. Don’t seem to be anyone hiding. But…you should know…” he paused searching for the right words, “…someone tore this place apart.” After once again taking the fasces from her, he stepped out of the doorway.

     She quickly walked up the three steps and entered the foyer where she was greeted with the solemn painting of a rock-wrecked ship being pummeled by fierce waves. Unable to peel her eyes from the depressing imagery, she muttered, “so typical of you, Fraunx.”

Debito Justitiae

“Here gloom hath enchantment in beauty’s array,

And whispering voices are calling away —

Their wooings are soft as the vision more vain —

I would live in their empire, or die in their chain.”

The Valley Cemetery, Mary Baker Eddy

*** *** ***