Yggdrasil and Nanna Duel

Yggdrasil and Nanna Duel

Since there is no terribleminds flashfiction challenge this week, I'm posting a recent flashfiction I wrote for a Steampunk Empire - Scribbler's Den one year anniversary celebration tea party. The challenge was for 250-words. This first version is 307 words and I widdled it down to 247. Scribbler's Den is looking to put all of the work in a small ebook. It will be nice to see them all together.

Nanna and Yggdrasil are also in my 100-word fiction.

~

The crowd holds its breath as Yggdrasil cleanly eats her biscuit seconds after Nanna. The Tiffin Master says, “Yggdrasil’s won. She’ll wear the blue gown to Höðr ball.”

The crowd hesitates in their applause. Nanna, a five-year champion of Aphrodite's annual competitions, lost. Goddesses sitting on Yggdrasil’s side applaud.
The hall’s doors open with a crash and a man, with a perfectly tied cravat, enters. “Yggdrasil cheated. Her parasol contains a time-turning contraption!”
“How dare you…” begins Yggdrasil, reaching for her parasol.
“Stop her,” yells a woman in a brown-striped dress.
The Tiffen Master’s reacts too slowly. Yggdrasil presses the blue jewel on the tip of her parasol’s handle.
The scene reverses three minutes. Yggdrasil is moments away from winning the tea duel.

~

Yggdrasil remembers the day she challenges Nanna to a duel. Nanna, obviously bragging, brings out her dress during a tea hosted by the three Fates. Nanna’s dress was the same design and cloth as Yggdrasil’s dress which she’d kept a secret.

An argument ensues.The Fates conclude; Nanna’s destiny is to wear the gown and Yggdrasil would look atrocious in that color anyway.
Yggdrasil is irate, takes a deep breath, and extinguishes the fireball she wanted to throw at Nanna’s dress. She devises a plan instead. Before another word is said by a Fate, Yggdrasil challenges Nanna to a duel and the Fates approve.

~

She knows the Fates are against her. She wobbles her hand which holds the biscuit. It splashes on her cup and the table.

The door opens, the well-dress man says, “Yggdrasil cheated…”
Before he can say, ‘her parasol’, the Tiffen Master says, “Yggdrasil has lost horribly. She has not cheated.”
Yggdrasil points her parasol at the man’s cravat and says, “And, I’m stuck wearing yellow and pink taffeta gown.” She storms out of the hall hatching a new plan to thwart Nanna.