The Last Dessert: Flash Fiction Month, #9

By N. WS. Jokela

33 stories from July 2023 (plus a previously unreleased bonus story!), many of them made to expand already existing worlds. Most of this collection is dedicated to Bereth and his struggles in the sudden captivity that has complicated his quest to keep his late mentor's ring safe. Elsewhere, gambles are made and desserts both face and cause unfortunate incidents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: N. WS. Jokela
• Release date: Jun 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227186737

N. WS. Jokela

N. WS. Jokela, more commonly known as WindySilver, is a Finnish IT student and a hobbyist artist fighting a war against procrastination on the losing side. When her free time is not taken up by things like reading, procrastination, video games, watching series or more procrastination, she mainly writes sci-fi fanfiction and original flash fiction of various genres. While she dabbles in a lot of things ranging from digital art to jewelry to plants to whatever catches her interest, writing is her persistent forte. You should not give her yet another crazy flash fiction challenge to take part in because she simply cannot say "no" to it.

Book preview

Introduction

Hello there, reader!

It's great to see that you've chosen to pick my latest Flash Fiction Month collection. This year, I once again challenged myself only to write in already existing worlds whenever the day's prompt or challenge or the need to get a 55er out fast did not direct elsewhere. The lack of no fanfiction clause unintentionally got inherited from last year, at least in part due to the fact that I've shifted my flash fiction's focus almost exclusively to my original worlds, meaning that there is little need for it as a challenge anyway.

Last year, I had the unplanned personal challenge of having COVID in early July, while this year I had a whole new unexpected personal challenge: fitting FFM between working full-time and working on my master's thesis. I personally feel that the strain from work had a negative effect on my work – mainly because of how heavily I leaned to having bad things happen to my characters – but in the end it turned out okay enough in any case. As another unintentional effect, most of my stories ended up focusing one specific pre-existing character of mine, Bereth, who you know if you are already familiar with my Of Dragons, Magic and Love world. In case you are not, you can recap his story in my 2023 World Collection available on my website – including where this FFM's stories featuring him start off, which might be a good idea to check out if you have not.

In any case, I hope you enjoy this collection. Stay tuned for my FFM 2024 and Tribble Month collections as well, as I will work on them next once July 2024 is over!

1: A Dice-y Message

Challenge: The story must begin with a mysterious message and include someone who is very close to the one who receives the message who joins trying to solve the message. Optionally, include an item to be used in the protagonist's adventure with the message.

No prompts used, although the dice were inspired by the black light reactive dice set I bought earlier during the week I posted this.

––––––––

Come to the lorn house

Cast these dice into the darkness

And shine them with the light the color of which

Is the opposite to white

???

Profit

Well, Tricks, Jack set the paper down, this sure looks like some edgy teenager wrote it, ran out of fanciness and decided to flip to the opposite end and refer to a meme.

Heh, I could tell that much. I leaned forward in my rocking chair. What do you make of the dice?

Jack turned the container of dice around in his hand. Do you even have anything to show black light at them?

I pointed my thumb to my desk. I dug up an old spy pen thingy. It lights up and I'm pretty sure the dice reacted to them. Jack was looking skeptical. Look, Jackie, what I wanna know is if we should go to this lorn house AKA the so-called haunted house or investigate who bought these dice.

First of all, 'we'? Jack shook his head. Second of all, third option: 'we' don't have to do anything. 'We' could just ignore this letter.

I laughed. "But where's the fun in that? Aren't you curious at all? Someone's cringe enough to write something like this and dedicated enough to get a set of dice for it and stuff it into someone's mailbox. This is a mystery begging to be solved!"

Jack looked at the paper again, sighing. I can't decide if it's so cringe that I don't want to find out who's behind it or if I'm just curious enough to look into this.