Ice Cream Truck Starter
Fig Binge with Malt
Rating : PG
Word Count : ~2k
Malt Prompt : Summer '11 #35: "There's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a stick." - Doctor Who
ICE CREAM TRUCK STORY
This is a starter piece for the ice cream truck. Feel free to adopt it for a turn and do with it as you see fit. I left it really vague intentionally, so it would be easier to make varied interpretations of what was happening.
Golden fleece
“Here kid, hold this.”
Tobias was still reeling from the collision with the stranger. As the dark cloaked shadow of a man pressed the box into his hands, he could find the presence of mind to do little more than gape at him.
“Don’t lose it.” The man’s tone was icy, and his eyes were narrow slits.
The little golden box was warm against his palm and it seemed to pulse with a soft thrum. “But, but-” He spied the sword at the man’s hip and swallowed anything else he might have said.
“They’ll be looking for a master thief, not a child,” said the man, as if he had been asked. “But don’t worry,” in the dim light of the alley, Tobias could barely make out the grin that spread across his thin face, “I’ll know how to find you.”
He opened his mouth in another attempt at protest, but the words refused to leave his throat.
“The world’s riding on you, kid.” With that the stranger bounded from the alley and in a moment he was little more than a distant shadow, slipping quickly out of sight.
The face that launched 1000 ships
“That’s him?” There was no mistaking the awe in Jetta’s voice.
Tobias just stared dumbly at the poster that he himself had just placed on the overturned shipping crate that served as their table. “Well, he did say he was a master thief,” he said, eyeing again the hefty sum listed beneath the portrait. The little gold box the man had given him rested on top of it, and he swore now that he could no longer feel the hum of it in his pocket he could hear it instead.
“I can’t believe you really met the Rook. Why didn’t you get his autograph or something?”
Tobias quirked a brow at her. “I got the treasure,” he said.
“Yes but the Rook! They say he’s handsome. Was he handsome?”
He shrugged. “You’re looking at the same poster I am, aren’t you?” Jetta glared at the roughly sketched face on the page and then at him. “I wasn’t looking. I’m pretty sure he’s not my type.”
She rolled her eyes. “I still just can’t believe you met the Rook.”
“You know what?” said Errol from his corner where he’d been standing, arms crossed and scowling at the poster, through the whole exchange. “He didn’t. Tobias wasn’t anywhere near Sheftone Market. He’s never seen the Rook in his life, save on a poster, and he certainly isn’t carrying around his treasure.”
Jetta’s face fell. “But-”
“Do you want the patrol in here breathing down our necks?” said Errol. “Or worse? What are the lives of a few street kids in light of a ten thousand gold bounty?”
Jetta looked as if she were about to argue, but sighed instead.
“One thing,” said Tobias, and they both turned his way. “What happens when he doesn’t come back looking for it?”
Pandora’s box
“What do you suppose it does?” Jetta leaned over Errol’s shoulder to watch as he prodded the golden box with the tip of a file. He gave her a sideways look and went back to work.
“Why are you so sure it does anything?” said Tobias.
“Because the Rook nicked it from the temple and now the patrol’s torn up half the city looking for him. There’s talk of calling in the Inquisitors. That’s no harmless piece of fluff.”
“We should take it back to them,” said Glen.
Tobias shot him a look. “We are not taking it back to them,” he said firmly.
“Inquisitors, Toby!” He’d gone pale.
“And you think they’re going to show us any kindness if we return it?”
“Besides,” said Jetta, still ogling the box, “if we take it back, we won’t know what it does.”
“I’ll tell you one thing it doesn’t do.” Errol set it on the table with a sigh.
“What?” asked the rest.
“Open.”
Labyrinth
Tobias slumped against the wall, out of breath and shaking. After an hour of racing through the labyrinth of alleyways, he was certain he couldn’t take another step without his legs simply dissolving beneath him.
Jetta staggered to a halt beside him. Errol threw an arm around her to stop her from tumbling to her knees and she offered him a weak smile. “I don’t think they saw us,” she panted. “We can probably stop running.”
“Just the same,” said Errol, gently helping her right herself, “we can’t go home.”
“They didn’t get it, did they?” said Tobias.
“Of course not.” Jetta slipped a hand down the neck of her shirt and pulled the little golden box from a hidden pocket inside. “But what about Glen? Shouldn’t we go find him?”
Errol shook his head. He still hadn’t let go, nor stepped away from her. “You can see the mess they made of the place a mile away. I think he’ll know better than to go near it.”
Tobias leaned his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. “I hope you’re right.”
Herculean
Glen crossed his thin arms over his chest. “You’ll get nothing from me,” he said, and the degree to which he kept the quiver from his voice was enough to surprise himself.
The Inquisitor regarded him with a grin that rather reminded him of a wolf. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“I’m not talking,” Glen said, with a bit less resolve.
“I don’t need you to.”
He tried to peer over the man’s shoulder as he turned to search among his tools but saw nothing, and he swallowed hard.
“You’re still getting nothing,” he declared as firmly as he could, and the Inquisitor laughed. “Nothing.”
Trojan horse
Errol smoothed the billowing crimson robes down his front as he did a full turn in front of Jetta. “How do I look?” He sounded as uncomfortable as he looked.
She wrinkled her nose as she tipped her head this way and that to take it all in. “Like a complete sell-out,” she said. “It’s just… wrong.”
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked, nervously.
“Just how uncanny it is. I feel like I should be afraid for my soul.”
“You’ve got nothing to fear from me.” He held out a hand and she reluctantly took it.
“Except whether you’ll come back in one piece or not,” she said, focusing on the fingers curled around her own, trying not to see the robes. “Promise me you will.” She closed her eyes and pulled him to her, finding his lips with her own with ease.
He held her fast, and though the thought of those robes wrapped all around her made her skin crawl, the thought of letting him go hurt far more, so she stayed.
“You know,” Errol said after a moment, running a hand over her hair. “I’ll probably make a much more convincing priest if I’m not seen kissing street urchins.”
Jetta glared at him, but it was hard to muster any real malice.
“One piece,” he said. “I promise.”
The River Styx
Jetta pulled the ring from her finger and held it up so it would catch the light of the moon. “This is all that I have,” she said. “And it should be more than enough for passage.”
The ferryman watched her from his rickety boat, leaning on the oar lodged in the reeds. “This?” He sniffed. As if a dirty old mess of a man like him had any place to judge another. “A cheap token from some lover of yours?”
Jetta’s throat tightened, and she gripped the ring more firmly “It’s all I have left of him.”
The ferryman pushed himself to his feet and took two steps over the shore. “You know where we’re going?” he said, when his face was even with hers.
Jetta eyed the trees along the far bank, with their dark, barren limbs twisting towards the violet sky, and the great, billowing shapes, that from time to time sailed between them. She swallowed hard and nodded.
“And you think you’ll start the journey lying to me?” He was so close now that she could smell his rancid breath.
“What?” She stumbled back a pace.
In a flash, his hand was to her collar and the box was in his grasp.
Oedipus complex
Errol could smell the priestess before he could see her. She seemed to float into the room on a cloud of jasmine. And he could hear the swish of her robes behind him before he could feel her hand close over his shoulder. He still jumped at her touch and her words, soft and smooth as they were.
“What troubles you, my son?”
“Trouble?” He turned and met her dark eyes and suddenly felt like a rabbit whose burrow is on the other side of the cat. “No trouble. I was simply too engrossed in my evening prayers to notice the passage of time.”
The woman’s lips curled into a smile at that. “Were you now?”
“Y-yes,” he squeaked, and he was keenly aware that he was much more engrossed in the cherry red of her lips than he ever had been in prayer. “Yes, of course, Blessed Mother, er, Mistress, Sister, what do I-“
The hand on his shoulder slid gently down over his arm, and the slow blink of her lashes suddenly had him studying them as well. “Faline,” she said, her voice almost a purr.
“Right, Blessed, er, uh, Faline,” Errol said, dazed.
Muse
“Please, your holiness,” said Jetta, barely over the constant tinkling of the crystal chimes that filled every corner of the shrine. She retreated to the doorway, shuffling her feet and wringing her hands, as the Oracle examined the golden box. “If anyone knows what this is for, or, well, how to even open it, it would be you.”
The old woman turned the box over one last time with her gnarled fingers before setting it back on the table. “This is temple work,” she said, wrinkling her long, hooked nose at the thing.
“Yes, Mistress. It… it is.”
“So why do you not find a temple priest to decipher it for you?”
“A thousand pardons, O Holy One, but I… do not trust the priests of the temple. I was hoping-”
“I cannot open it for you.” The Oracle pushed the box across the table and Jetta’s heart sank.
“You can’t?”
“I am afraid not. I can, however, give you the key.”
Wax wings
“I have the key!” Jetta shouted, over the howl of the wind and the rain. She searched the windows for signs of movement as she held it aloft. “I have the key, so you can let him go now.”
In her mind, the door flew open, and he rushed out to greet her.
In reality the storm tore through the trees, but the temple was still. Not a shadow, not a sound. She held her breath. She got ready to turn around.
And then the door opened.
Sword of Damocles
“What do you mean it’s empty?” Tobias slammed a fist into the wall. “How did you even open it?”
“I, er… didn’t?” Jetta looked at the ground as she shuffled her feet.
Tobias gave his stinging hand a shake. Jetta slowly lifted her gaze once it was clear he wasn’t going to make the next move.
“It’s a long story?” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“Well, you see, there was this… No, you’re not going to buy that, are you? It was for Errol, you know. I was trying to save him.”
“Errol?” he said. “And Glen?”
Jetta shrugged. “I figure Glen’s already long dead.”
Tobias clenched his fist again, just barely refraining from driving it into the wall again. “Well, isn’t that kind of you.”
“It’s practical,” she mumbled.
“So now we’re sitting here with an empty box, waiting for the Rook himself to come and ask for it back. What’s practical about that?”
“We could close it, hope he doesn’t notice it.
“Yes.” He snatched the box up off the table and snapped it shut. “That sounds just brilliant.”
Midas touch
“So… that’s what it does?” Jetta’s voice was barely above a whisper as she crept back from the edge of the roof.
“Yes.” Corbin wasn’t looking. “That’s what it does.”
“I’m… uh… sorry?” she said, glancing back again and shuddering.
Corbin raked a hand through his hair. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted it to children,” he said. “Was simply holding onto it until I returned really so difficult? Did you have to open it?”
“Lay off of her,” Tobias snapped. “They had our friends.”
“And they have a lot more than that now thanks to your foolish heroics.”
Rating : PG
Word Count : ~2k
Malt Prompt : Summer '11 #35: "There's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a stick." - Doctor Who
ICE CREAM TRUCK STORY
This is a starter piece for the ice cream truck. Feel free to adopt it for a turn and do with it as you see fit. I left it really vague intentionally, so it would be easier to make varied interpretations of what was happening.
Golden fleece
“Here kid, hold this.”
Tobias was still reeling from the collision with the stranger. As the dark cloaked shadow of a man pressed the box into his hands, he could find the presence of mind to do little more than gape at him.
“Don’t lose it.” The man’s tone was icy, and his eyes were narrow slits.
The little golden box was warm against his palm and it seemed to pulse with a soft thrum. “But, but-” He spied the sword at the man’s hip and swallowed anything else he might have said.
“They’ll be looking for a master thief, not a child,” said the man, as if he had been asked. “But don’t worry,” in the dim light of the alley, Tobias could barely make out the grin that spread across his thin face, “I’ll know how to find you.”
He opened his mouth in another attempt at protest, but the words refused to leave his throat.
“The world’s riding on you, kid.” With that the stranger bounded from the alley and in a moment he was little more than a distant shadow, slipping quickly out of sight.
The face that launched 1000 ships
“That’s him?” There was no mistaking the awe in Jetta’s voice.
Tobias just stared dumbly at the poster that he himself had just placed on the overturned shipping crate that served as their table. “Well, he did say he was a master thief,” he said, eyeing again the hefty sum listed beneath the portrait. The little gold box the man had given him rested on top of it, and he swore now that he could no longer feel the hum of it in his pocket he could hear it instead.
“I can’t believe you really met the Rook. Why didn’t you get his autograph or something?”
Tobias quirked a brow at her. “I got the treasure,” he said.
“Yes but the Rook! They say he’s handsome. Was he handsome?”
He shrugged. “You’re looking at the same poster I am, aren’t you?” Jetta glared at the roughly sketched face on the page and then at him. “I wasn’t looking. I’m pretty sure he’s not my type.”
She rolled her eyes. “I still just can’t believe you met the Rook.”
“You know what?” said Errol from his corner where he’d been standing, arms crossed and scowling at the poster, through the whole exchange. “He didn’t. Tobias wasn’t anywhere near Sheftone Market. He’s never seen the Rook in his life, save on a poster, and he certainly isn’t carrying around his treasure.”
Jetta’s face fell. “But-”
“Do you want the patrol in here breathing down our necks?” said Errol. “Or worse? What are the lives of a few street kids in light of a ten thousand gold bounty?”
Jetta looked as if she were about to argue, but sighed instead.
“One thing,” said Tobias, and they both turned his way. “What happens when he doesn’t come back looking for it?”
Pandora’s box
“What do you suppose it does?” Jetta leaned over Errol’s shoulder to watch as he prodded the golden box with the tip of a file. He gave her a sideways look and went back to work.
“Why are you so sure it does anything?” said Tobias.
“Because the Rook nicked it from the temple and now the patrol’s torn up half the city looking for him. There’s talk of calling in the Inquisitors. That’s no harmless piece of fluff.”
“We should take it back to them,” said Glen.
Tobias shot him a look. “We are not taking it back to them,” he said firmly.
“Inquisitors, Toby!” He’d gone pale.
“And you think they’re going to show us any kindness if we return it?”
“Besides,” said Jetta, still ogling the box, “if we take it back, we won’t know what it does.”
“I’ll tell you one thing it doesn’t do.” Errol set it on the table with a sigh.
“What?” asked the rest.
“Open.”
Labyrinth
Tobias slumped against the wall, out of breath and shaking. After an hour of racing through the labyrinth of alleyways, he was certain he couldn’t take another step without his legs simply dissolving beneath him.
Jetta staggered to a halt beside him. Errol threw an arm around her to stop her from tumbling to her knees and she offered him a weak smile. “I don’t think they saw us,” she panted. “We can probably stop running.”
“Just the same,” said Errol, gently helping her right herself, “we can’t go home.”
“They didn’t get it, did they?” said Tobias.
“Of course not.” Jetta slipped a hand down the neck of her shirt and pulled the little golden box from a hidden pocket inside. “But what about Glen? Shouldn’t we go find him?”
Errol shook his head. He still hadn’t let go, nor stepped away from her. “You can see the mess they made of the place a mile away. I think he’ll know better than to go near it.”
Tobias leaned his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. “I hope you’re right.”
Herculean
Glen crossed his thin arms over his chest. “You’ll get nothing from me,” he said, and the degree to which he kept the quiver from his voice was enough to surprise himself.
The Inquisitor regarded him with a grin that rather reminded him of a wolf. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“I’m not talking,” Glen said, with a bit less resolve.
“I don’t need you to.”
He tried to peer over the man’s shoulder as he turned to search among his tools but saw nothing, and he swallowed hard.
“You’re still getting nothing,” he declared as firmly as he could, and the Inquisitor laughed. “Nothing.”
Trojan horse
Errol smoothed the billowing crimson robes down his front as he did a full turn in front of Jetta. “How do I look?” He sounded as uncomfortable as he looked.
She wrinkled her nose as she tipped her head this way and that to take it all in. “Like a complete sell-out,” she said. “It’s just… wrong.”
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked, nervously.
“Just how uncanny it is. I feel like I should be afraid for my soul.”
“You’ve got nothing to fear from me.” He held out a hand and she reluctantly took it.
“Except whether you’ll come back in one piece or not,” she said, focusing on the fingers curled around her own, trying not to see the robes. “Promise me you will.” She closed her eyes and pulled him to her, finding his lips with her own with ease.
He held her fast, and though the thought of those robes wrapped all around her made her skin crawl, the thought of letting him go hurt far more, so she stayed.
“You know,” Errol said after a moment, running a hand over her hair. “I’ll probably make a much more convincing priest if I’m not seen kissing street urchins.”
Jetta glared at him, but it was hard to muster any real malice.
“One piece,” he said. “I promise.”
The River Styx
Jetta pulled the ring from her finger and held it up so it would catch the light of the moon. “This is all that I have,” she said. “And it should be more than enough for passage.”
The ferryman watched her from his rickety boat, leaning on the oar lodged in the reeds. “This?” He sniffed. As if a dirty old mess of a man like him had any place to judge another. “A cheap token from some lover of yours?”
Jetta’s throat tightened, and she gripped the ring more firmly “It’s all I have left of him.”
The ferryman pushed himself to his feet and took two steps over the shore. “You know where we’re going?” he said, when his face was even with hers.
Jetta eyed the trees along the far bank, with their dark, barren limbs twisting towards the violet sky, and the great, billowing shapes, that from time to time sailed between them. She swallowed hard and nodded.
“And you think you’ll start the journey lying to me?” He was so close now that she could smell his rancid breath.
“What?” She stumbled back a pace.
In a flash, his hand was to her collar and the box was in his grasp.
Oedipus complex
Errol could smell the priestess before he could see her. She seemed to float into the room on a cloud of jasmine. And he could hear the swish of her robes behind him before he could feel her hand close over his shoulder. He still jumped at her touch and her words, soft and smooth as they were.
“What troubles you, my son?”
“Trouble?” He turned and met her dark eyes and suddenly felt like a rabbit whose burrow is on the other side of the cat. “No trouble. I was simply too engrossed in my evening prayers to notice the passage of time.”
The woman’s lips curled into a smile at that. “Were you now?”
“Y-yes,” he squeaked, and he was keenly aware that he was much more engrossed in the cherry red of her lips than he ever had been in prayer. “Yes, of course, Blessed Mother, er, Mistress, Sister, what do I-“
The hand on his shoulder slid gently down over his arm, and the slow blink of her lashes suddenly had him studying them as well. “Faline,” she said, her voice almost a purr.
“Right, Blessed, er, uh, Faline,” Errol said, dazed.
Muse
“Please, your holiness,” said Jetta, barely over the constant tinkling of the crystal chimes that filled every corner of the shrine. She retreated to the doorway, shuffling her feet and wringing her hands, as the Oracle examined the golden box. “If anyone knows what this is for, or, well, how to even open it, it would be you.”
The old woman turned the box over one last time with her gnarled fingers before setting it back on the table. “This is temple work,” she said, wrinkling her long, hooked nose at the thing.
“Yes, Mistress. It… it is.”
“So why do you not find a temple priest to decipher it for you?”
“A thousand pardons, O Holy One, but I… do not trust the priests of the temple. I was hoping-”
“I cannot open it for you.” The Oracle pushed the box across the table and Jetta’s heart sank.
“You can’t?”
“I am afraid not. I can, however, give you the key.”
Wax wings
“I have the key!” Jetta shouted, over the howl of the wind and the rain. She searched the windows for signs of movement as she held it aloft. “I have the key, so you can let him go now.”
In her mind, the door flew open, and he rushed out to greet her.
In reality the storm tore through the trees, but the temple was still. Not a shadow, not a sound. She held her breath. She got ready to turn around.
And then the door opened.
Sword of Damocles
“What do you mean it’s empty?” Tobias slammed a fist into the wall. “How did you even open it?”
“I, er… didn’t?” Jetta looked at the ground as she shuffled her feet.
Tobias gave his stinging hand a shake. Jetta slowly lifted her gaze once it was clear he wasn’t going to make the next move.
“It’s a long story?” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“Well, you see, there was this… No, you’re not going to buy that, are you? It was for Errol, you know. I was trying to save him.”
“Errol?” he said. “And Glen?”
Jetta shrugged. “I figure Glen’s already long dead.”
Tobias clenched his fist again, just barely refraining from driving it into the wall again. “Well, isn’t that kind of you.”
“It’s practical,” she mumbled.
“So now we’re sitting here with an empty box, waiting for the Rook himself to come and ask for it back. What’s practical about that?”
“We could close it, hope he doesn’t notice it.
“Yes.” He snatched the box up off the table and snapped it shut. “That sounds just brilliant.”
Midas touch
“So… that’s what it does?” Jetta’s voice was barely above a whisper as she crept back from the edge of the roof.
“Yes.” Corbin wasn’t looking. “That’s what it does.”
“I’m… uh… sorry?” she said, glancing back again and shuddering.
Corbin raked a hand through his hair. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted it to children,” he said. “Was simply holding onto it until I returned really so difficult? Did you have to open it?”
“Lay off of her,” Tobias snapped. “They had our friends.”
“And they have a lot more than that now thanks to your foolish heroics.”