{"id":7139,"date":"2020-03-30T12:25:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T16:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/?p=7139"},"modified":"2020-03-30T12:25:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T16:25:00","slug":"when-does-this-damn-auction-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/when-does-this-damn-auction-start\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;When Does This Damn Auction Start?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-13\" src=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/j-avatar-e1443983489508.png\" alt=\"by jen\" width=\"81\" height=\"81\" \/>located at the base of your spine<\/li>\n<li>enough face cream<\/li>\n<li>Sorry honey!<\/li>\n<li>a language that literally no one<\/li>\n<li>a picture of you in the folder<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Tune in next time part 479<\/strong><strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/tune-in-next-time\/\">Click Here for Earlier Installments<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When does this damn auction start?&#8221; I bellowed, striding into the cavern. &#8220;Don&#8217;t tell me I missed it!&#8221; I tried to act as cocky and entitled as the diplomats and spymasters my mother tended to hang out with. My wooden climbing boots gave me a stilted, clattering gait.<\/p>\n<p>My brashness startled Oksana&#8217;s yeti minions. Their ninja training took over, and startled ninjas always freeze and attempt to camouflage themselves. I was suddenly surrounded by a forest of frozen yeti statues.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Jason!&#8221; cried Jim in faux-surprise. &#8220;You bastard!&#8221; And then he made another bird call, this one decidedly less Himalayan.<\/p>\n<p>Oksana straightened her spine and approached me. &#8220;You&#8217;re not late at all. In fact you&#8217;re early. I have to double check your identity, of course. I&#8217;m sure you understand. I have <em>a picture of you in the folder<\/em> of auction material on my phone, which I will now pull out of my cleavage.&#8221; She did so. While she compared me to the photo of my twin on her phone, she muttered to herself in Colloquillian,<em> a language that literally no one<\/em> outside of Colloquillia knew. Except for me. I had a Colloquillian lover years ago, who taught me the basics, after making me promise never to use my knowledge for espionage. That was a promise I now had to break.\u00a0<em>Sorry honey!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>What Oksana was muttering wasn&#8217;t very enlightening, though. Something along the lines of &#8220;with <em>enough face cream<\/em> I guess literally anyone can stay youthful.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I kept my mouth shut while she perused me, so that she wouldn&#8217;t see the golden tattoos on my tongue. My brother and I tended to copy each other&#8217;s distinguishing features, but as far as I knew, Jason didn&#8217;t have those. At least not yet.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now Jason, in order to confirm that it is you and not your twin, I need to see the crescent-shaped scar <em>located at the base of your spine<\/em>.&#8221; She smiled without showing her teeth. &#8220;I&#8217;m sure you understand.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>bonus points for using them in reverse order<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Stichomancy Writing Prompts\" href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/stichomancy-writing-prompts\/\">about stichomancy writing prompts<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/stichomancy-writing-prompt-generator\/\">try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>located at the base of your spine enough face cream Sorry honey! a language that literally no one a picture of you in the folder Tune in next time part 479\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Click Here for Earlier Installments &#8220;When does this damn auction start?&#8221; I bellowed, striding into the cavern. &#8220;Don&#8217;t tell me I missed it!&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319,4],"tags":[91,24,341,403,534],"class_list":["post-7139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stichomancy-prompts","category-writing-prompts","tag-bonus-points","tag-brother","tag-clothes","tag-tune-in-next-time","tag-yeti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7142,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7139\/revisions\/7142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}