Accident-Prone

This week on Facebook, I posted the photo below and held a contest! The fifth person to correctly identify the flowers shown (cow parsnip), would get to select the topic for my story today! Feel free to join me over on Facebook, you never know when you might have an opportunity to suggest a writing prompt, name a character, or support some other sort of fun! There was a lot of suspense, some great guesses, innovative attempts at cheating my system, and a whole lot of fun! The topic selected turned out to be, "...browsing on the internet...or wasting time on facebook when I am supposed to be working...well...not wasting..um..." If that's not a universal theme, I don't know what is.   :-)

Accident-Prone

After all this time, folks are still nattering on about the Library of Alexandria and the fire that demolished it. Sure, it was a magnificent place, but it wasn’t the only great library of the ancient world. There was Ebla, the Library of Ashurbanipal, the Library of Pergamum, the Imperial Library of Constantinople, and hundreds of others. I visited all of them. Alexandria was my only accident. Everyone makes mistakes. Of course, once the council finally concluded its investigation of that one little conflagration, they banned me. Can you imagine? Here I was, immortal, learned, and with a passion for knowledge, but barred from all libraries for the remainder of eternity.

To make matters worse, I just happened to own the bakery in London that started the Great Fire of London. After that mishap, the council insisted I stay here. In this metal domicile. They said I’m “accident-prone”. Really? In all these millennia, two fires qualify me as accident-prone? Of course, there’s no arguing with the council. It may take them hundreds of years to investigate an infraction and determine a sentence, but once they do, it’s more permanent than mountains.

To keep me busy, they say, I am required to act as their secretary and general assistant. I take all the council meeting minutes, organize and publish the agenda, and manage incoming and outgoing mail. Now that the age of the internet is upon us (thank the heavens above!), most of my duties are digital in nature, and so I spend many hours at my computer. I have a strong satellite signal, in spite of the metallic nature of my home. It was a very long time between my last library visit and the development of the great and glorious Internet. Once again, though, the knowledge of the world is at my fingertips, and it’s all perfectly safe. I couldn’t burn down the internet, even if I tried. What? No! Of course I wouldn’t try. I told you, those were accidents. 

The council expects me to work, work, work, almost every waking hour. None of them have ever been on the internet, however. They’ve no idea how little time I spend doing my job and how many hours I while away happily running down rabbit holes and talking to friends on social media who are so far away that they’re halfway through tomorrow while I’m still muddling through today. It’s a small insubordination, really, but it is my sole pleasure. After all, what else can captive djinn do while sealed inside a metal lamp? 

As always, thank you for all of your support!