THE IRON

The Iron is a short fantasy inspired by the prompt, “You listed an ordinary object on eBay, but the top bid was seven million dollars. The auction winner is eager to pay. You need to find out why.”

Written in September 2022, this weird little story is the first of the prompts. It follows Charlie and their brother Terrence as they journey from Missouri to New York to exchange their old family iron for $7,000,000. When the siblings meet with the old eccentric buyer, HeirToTheThrone, they learn that the metal from the iron was fused with larimar, a rare blue mineral native to the Dominican Republic. The iron-larimar ornament was an old family heirloom that harnessed power. HeirToTheThrone’s family would use it to defeat Spanish colonisers who wreaked havoc in their small town in DR.