Kathryn McConaughy's Feast of Adventures

[I wrote this story based on a prompt for the Penprints Flash Fiction Dash.  Yay flash fiction!  If you check out the Penprints site in early June, you will be able to see the stories from everyone who participated!  The Penprints site is <https://rosalievalentine.wordpress.com/> ] Painted with Light Duomik slipped through the liner’s banquet hall, a poncho wrapped around him, bare feet sure.   Despite the blasting warmth of the liner’s heating system, the floor carried a trace of cold. “That’s one of them—the divers,” a teenage girl hissed to her mother, abandoning her plate of fish.   “Ask him!” “Excuse me,” the older woman called sharply. Duomik turned back, squinting against fluorescent lights and tourists’ stares.   Skinny, pale, he was anything but impressive. “Does it work?   The lights?   Does it bring them out?” she asked. “It says in the brochure, na ?” Duomik wrinkled his nose.   The stinks ...

Such excitement!   My story “A Bride-Price for Hinzuri” is included in the May 2017 contest issue of Spark magazine from Splickety Publishing. I never expected to get a story into a flash-fiction romance magazine.   But the theme was “Ancient History,” so I couldn’t resist!   (Don’t worry—most of the stories in Spark are G or PG rated.   Mine is definitely G.) There’s a lot you can’t include in a 700-word story, so I thought that I would give you some historical background here. My story is set in the town of Nuzi in the 1300s BC.   Even though Nuzi was pretty close to Assur, the then-capital of Assyria, it was part of the small kingdom of Arraphe.   The king of Arraphe, in turn, was the vassal of the Great King of Mittani, a Hurrian kingdom as powerful as the Egypt, Babylon, and Hatti (Hittites) of that era.   Assyria had been under the control of the Mitanni, but shortly before my story, the Mitanni had begun to lose strength and ...