Day 5 of my drabble-a-day challenge. Here is today's drabble:

What Care I For Beans?

Bodies lay broken among the green leaves, and blood soaked into the earth with the late, golden sunshine.

One man stood, silent, a tear running down his face.

"Victory!" boomed a voice above him. The knight swayed in his saddle, light-headed with wounds. "The Queen is safe!"

He stared down at the man. "Aren't you happy? Are you another traitor?"

"This was my field. My crop of beans."

"Ha!" The knight threw back his head, laughing. "We save kingdoms, and you talk of beans!"

The knight rode off, leaving the man to wonder how to feed his family come winter.

There is controversy this evening. I wrote this on my phone, on the tube, on the way home from a comedy show (Leo Reich’s Literally Who Cares? which I highly recommend). Some random online word-count-y thing assured me it was 100 words.

Then I get home, and check with my trusty emacs M-x-count-words (shut up, shut up, I am a computer programmer from the past), and it says… 101. I think it boils down to whether you consider “light-headed” to be one word or two.

Anyway, I have written a very short story, in accordance with an arbitrary constraint. It just might not have been exactly the same arbitrary constraint as I’m usually working to. You’ve got to pick your battles.