As a college student, I took a few fiction writing courses as an ETS (English and Textual Studies) minor. A couple of those have been lost to the ravages of time and/or computer migrations. But some still remain … including “The Bard’s Blessing.”
I wrote “The Bard’s Blessing” at a time when I wrote most of my stories as gifts for people, who in turn had heavily influenced those stories. So when my fiction writing professor tasked my class with writing a flash fiction piece, it was only natural for mine to be based (extremely) loosely on the class.
This means that “The Bard’s Blessing” is the first story I wrote as a piece of flash fiction (rather than one I just thought of as an assignment). I don’t think I’ll ever submit it anywhere, but I still think it should be made available for historicity’s sake if nothing else. It’s extremely short and kinda funny, so you should go read it now!