I'm not even going to attempt to do all the prompts; but I do have another.
It's longer than I originally intended; it kind of got away from me. I was significantly far into it before I realized what it's about.
Inn the middle of nowhere
The roads are hazardous, of course; everybody knows that. Any distance that can't be covered in daylight usually isn't worth the trip. But sometimes longer trips are necessary. No human society has ever managed without some long distance trade; not everybody who wants to marry can find a marriage partner close to home, especially with so many tiny communities. And all those tiny communities, and the larger ones too -- they crave news, they crave new stories. We are the species that tells ourselves stories, after all.
So there are travellers; though not many. And, given that there are travellers -- there's need for shelters en route.
Some of them are unstaffed bunkers; many of them places found by the travellers themselves, with word spread among each other, and maps left in the nearest towns for those who aren't part of the travelling community to use. But here and there, among the more-used routes and occasionally along a rarely-used trail, there's an isolated building or three kept in repair, area cleared around it, fenced gardens and livestock paddock and a sign along the trail. Sometimes these places grow into another tiny settlement. Sometimes they disappear. Sometimes one turns into a trap; approach with caution, pay attention to your cat! and worse in some ways, if only because the cat likely won't warn you: there are still evil humans in the world.
But the word passes, among those who need to travel. The best reassurance to the customer, and the best advertising for the proprietors, has always been word of mouth (and the strongest warning, these days, the sudden disappearance of that word.) And the place whose sign reads only "Inn Within" has always had excellent word of mouth, ever since the mid first century when Tarja told stories there and Hennet cooked. They never said where the beer came from, and that hasn't been explained since -- but it's very good beer. Everyone assumes some hidden community, which trusts only the Inn but isn't about to extend that trust to the customers.
The sign's painted on the outer ring of a double palisade, both rings twenty feet tall, electrified wire strung near the top. Outside the ring, some cleared grazing and hay area for use on bright sunny days. Inbetween the rings produce grows in season. (No grains, though: maybe those come from the beermakers?) Inbetween the rings, also, the traveller must stop to be inspected. Ring the bell at the sign; someone will check what they can check by sight from the watchtower. Hold your cat where they can be seen, or the Inn will wonder why you haven't got one. The outer gate will open, if you've been approved; then the Inn's cats will inspect you also, and then one of the humans will check your weapons, and list them as you stack them in a locked cabinet. In emergency, the Inn can open those cabinets from inside the building.
Inside the inner ring: barns and paddocks for the Inn's livestock: healthy pigs, sheep, and cattle and, of course, chickens. Separate barn and paddock for the travellers' creatures: horses and mules, mostly. Cats, of course, come into the inn with their humans; so do any dogs, though the Inn's dogs live with the livestock until their old age, when they need the extra warmth of the stove.
And inside the inner ring, of course, the inn itself. It's run these days, in the late second century, by two intertwined families. Occasionally over the years a traveller has married in, or someone born in the Inn has either married out or otherwise chosen to leave; but for the most part the family's pretty stable. Everyone knows what their part is, and everyone knows how to turn their hand to other work if their hands are more needed elsewhere than their specialty. The menu varies; but the food is always good. The beds in the multiple rooms upstairs are warm and clean, with nearly always enough of them to choose one's bedmate or to choose to have none; and one can be assured in either case of sleeping safe. There's always music -- a traveller can pay their bill that way, or if there's no good musician on that road that night two or three of the Inn family will step in. And there's always news, of course -- the Inn family will pass on what other travellers have left, so there's news even if the only customers there that night are from the same place -- and, of course, there will always be at least one story.
Tonight there's only a small group there, three of them a Trader family with a cart of scavenged goods plus the grain and cider they've been taking in payment for them parked in the barn; one an old woman who wants to see once more the daughter who married out; and one a young man doing what young men do. Perhaps he'll marry in somewhere down the road, but he's not ready to do that yet.
The storyteller is one of the Inn people; also an old woman, but telling a new story, which she says she had from travellers a month ago. It's a very odd story -- a story about trolls. There are of course lots of stories about trolls, but this story is told from the point of view of the trolls! And these particular trolls -- they're changed from the humans they were two centuries ago, very much so; but their minds and their souls are not destroyed. They're still capable of love, and of compassion. All of them have killed -- but none of them has killed healthy humans; or other healthy animals, either, except out of need to eat. Over very many years, a few such managed to find each other, in the ruins of the world; and joined together. So one of the tiny communities in the world now is a group of trolls; travelling through the ruins at night when and where no human dares, salvaging books and other knowledge, useful tools and beautiful things, before the weather can destroy them; in hope of a time in the far future when perhaps they can make these available to the human communities, without being automatically destroyed because the humans assume by their appearance that they're like all other trolls.
The story gets applause, and fascinated reaction. Wouldn't it be great if such things were true! But of course, say all the listeners, such a thing could never happen. Everyone knows what trollification does to a human. It's essential to kill them; and a kindness of a sort, even when it's done by burning alive. The best that can be done is if a mage can help their souls home; and even that is usually not possible. But it's pleasant to tell fantasies, safe and well fed before a good hot fire! Tell the one about the cats who built a house on their own, next!
The storyteller laughs, and starts the story about the cats who built their house. She's certainly not going to tell them the one about who the beer comes from.
