IDEAS ON TUESDAY 612

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them? Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.

Fantasy Trope: Fantastic Noir (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticNoir)
Current Event: (not-so-much-this-time) http://narnia.wikia.com/wiki/Mole

In a hole in the ground, in the lawn of a museum given over to the collection of scientific inventions both weird and wonderful, there lived a mole.

This wouldn't have been terribly surprising except that the museum was in Narnia and the mole was really a Mole named Loamy Trowel. She lived in a very comfortable hole with shuttered windows that overlooked an antique cotton gin as well as a rocket preserved from the brief but exciting Narnian Space Age.

Loamy would have loved to close her windows day and night. Daylight made her squint in a way her nephews and nieces thought was comical. Like most Moles, she felt that if she must be out and about, it should be at night. For this reason, she'd taken up a small hobby. She looked for things that daylight people had lost in darkness.

Her first job had been to find a sack of coins Fennerish the Faun had lost. Loamy had found it quite easily and felt her nose blush red at the acclaim accorded her for a bit of simple night-time looking.

The next time, Tincture the Skunk was certain the family of Chitteringfools, the Squirrels had made off with an ancient family heirloom reputed to possess magical powers. It turned out that the moth-eaten pelt had been sold at rummage by the youngest Skunk family member; and that the only magic it had was the ability to make virtually anyone sneeze because of the dust.

Her fame spread and soon she was doing far more mystery solving than gardening. Her services had grown to be in such demand that she'd recruited four other Moles, five Squirrels, a Raccoon, and a very young Centaur. The Mole Agency as it had come to be called, was busy all the time. Word spread from one shore to the other of Narnia, and Loamy was certain that would finally be the end of it, until one night there was a knock on her door.

Having grown used to such visits, she opened the door and for the first time in many years, stood with her mouth open in total surprise. Standing on her doorstep was a girl, her head carefully wrapped in the turban favored by the people of Calormen. She dipped in a curtsy and only then did Loamy see the circlet of gold atop the wrapping of fine cloth. The young woman said, "If you please, Madam Trowel, my name is Lucy Pevensie Caspiansbinti the Fourth, and I would like to hire you to solve a deep mystery..."

Names: ♀ Moleish; ♀ English Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg