Good morning and Happy Hump Day! If it's Wednesday, then it must be time for more flash fiction from the Wednesday Briefers! We're a group of authors who bring you our finest flash fiction every week, 500 to 1000 words, inspired by one of our prompts.
Avram enjoys a brief respite, conversing with Andrei while Dracula is at rest below. See what is happening in this week's chapter of Dracula! Don't forget to visit the other Briefers and see what's up with them. Their links follow my tale! Enjoy!
“So you are traveling to Vienna?” Andrei asked between hearty bites of bread and cheese. He offered a hunk of the cheese to Avram as well, who accepted it, appreciating its salty flavor.
“We are,” Avram replied cautiously. He had no reason to think the smuggler would betray their whereabouts. Not like he wasn’t aware of their destination anyway. He knew what the next leg of their journey was and where his cousin would conveying them from there. But Avram was concerned that the man not possess any information that could potentially bring him trouble. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but better he should err on the side of caution than see an innocent person be hurt. Truth be told, he didn’t believe the villagers would even have the desire to track them down, much less the extra resources. Why would they bother? Out of sight, out of mind. Life would go on as usual for all concerned. Not like he and Nico hadn’t left the village on its own before in order to travel. The difference this time was the circumstances under which they were leaving. Normally they would be scrounging for funds that would enable the nobleman to continue his entitled lifestyle. This was that, but also the need to distance themselves from the unfortunate situation and any possible repercussions. The death of the blacksmith and his poor wife would be the topic of gossip and speculation for some time to come, no doubt. By the time they returned, hopefully not so much. The greatest uncertainty in the whole affair lay in not knowing how long this self-imposed exile would last. He was trying not to think about that.
“What is Vienna like? I have never been there myself. From what my cousin says, there are many interesting things to see there.”
That was probably true… if you had money. And weren’t Jewish. Antisemitism was far from dead in the Habsburg empire, and Vienna was no exception. Although there did seem to be some relief on the horizon, as more enlightened thinkers published their philosophies. Writers such as Voltaire and Locke, Hobbes and Mary Wollstonecraft, among others. He owned a few volumes of their works… or, rather Nico did, although Avram was sure he never read them and only purchased them to please Avram. Ironically, while Voltaire advocated freedom of religion, and rejected the notion of the Jews as “Christ killers’, he was also antisemitic in that he hated Jews for what he considered to be their innate, degraded character. As Avram explained to Nico, he read Voltaire, despite that, because he preferred to see all sides of an argument, and not make judgments without obtaining sufficient information to do so.
“To be honest, we don’t go out much. We stay with some people Dracula knows, and our time is taken with them.” That was technically true, although far from telling the entire story.
“He’s told me there are many pretty ladies there. Ladies who will… well, you know… allow you liberties.”
Avram could have sworn Andrei was blushing. He and his brothers were still young, and lived together, which made it easier to run their smuggling operations.
“I’ve heard that too,” Avram agreed. Actually, he’d a number of those ladies where they were going. They were called courtesans.
A rose by any other name…
to be continued
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