Device

by Katherine M. Bradford

"Tell me again, what exactly is this thing?" asked a smartly-dressed young man in front of an ancient-looking street urchin's wagon. A bright green sign that hung above the merchant's window proclaimed the wagon to be called "The Blessings In Disguise Shoppe." The man, with an expression of utter perplexity etched into his face, continued to turn the small, octagonal-shaped piece of plastic over and over in his hands, as he tried to decipher exactly what it was that he was supposed to be looking at. "It's called a 'plot device,'" said the old crone who was standing at the wagon's window, dressed in a long, wine-colored cloak adorned in gold and silver etchings of many celestial symbols. "But what specifically does it do..." continued the man, as a beggar of no more than ten years of age and dressed in little more than filthy rags, expertly retrieved the magical bobble from his hand and then disappeared into the crowd of tourists who walked by in search of something worth admiring. Without a word, the man took off after the beggar, while the crone who he had left behind yelled to them, "As pointless and contrived as it may seem, such a bobble is what we are using to drive this plot forward..."

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Katherine M. Bradford is the author of Bones Among the Leaves, which you can purchase on Amazon.