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Moongrave retirement home for exceptional elders

Mar 20th, 2024 (edited)
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  1. Writing prompt from mastodon:
  2.  
  3. "There are lots of books about schools for magical kids: Hogwarts, Camp Half-Blood, Unseen University, Strange Academy, and on and on.
  4.  
  5. But what about a retirement home for magical grownups? Imagine reaching a ripe old age, children and grandchildren grown and gone, and one day you find a gold-embossed letter in your mailbox:
  6.  
  7. "Greetings!
  8. You have been selected for residence at the Moonfrost Home for Exceptional Elders."
  9.  
  10. Somebody write a novel about a magical retirement home. I want to read it."
  11. - https://fosstodon.org/@catselbow/110890609349505047
  12.  
  13. The Mall:
  14. As Jim stepped into the mall, he couldnt help feel like he was either being pranked or scammed. A week prior he'd received a letter inviting him to "Moongrave retirement home for exceptional elders", what ever the hell that means. The only exceptional thing he had going for him at the moment was an exceptional amount of annoyance and arthritis, with maybe a touch of bitter envy for all of the teens parading around oblivious to how fleeting this moment in their life truly was.
  15. Why'd it have to be a mall? Who ever heard of a retirement home in a mall?
  16. Jim stepped off the escallator and meandered over to where the Zero'th mile marker for the 'mall joggers' was, and in front of him was a small business front that, to Jims surprise, he recognized.
  17. Long before there was a mall here it was kind of a proto-stripmall with things like a liquor store, barber, nail salon, and, once, this place. When he was a child his father had stopped at the barber to get a haircut and Jim had wandered off, eventually finding his way in here. The store front was all mirrored glass embedded in worn and faded hardwood, tarnished brass filagree and a faded peeling logo of a yellowing crescent moon and the name Moongrave.
  18. Jim remembered the door being slightly open so he had gone in. It was a cramped waiting room with an ancient, to a child anyway, woman behind a desk.
  19. "Name?"
  20. Jim looked around and then realized she was speaking to him.
  21. "Jimmy, Jimmy Moran" he stuttered.
  22. She flipped through a binder then with a slightly amused smirk on her face looked up at me and said, "Your rooms not ready yet."
  23. Just then I had heard my father calling so waved and ran out the door. The next time we went back it was just a normal closed store front, but here I was, in a mall some 60 years later walking through the same door, into the same cramped waiting room, and though I know it's not possible, the same woman.
  24. She looked up over the rim of her glasses as I approached and her face brightened.
  25. "Ah, Jimmy! Welcome back to Moongrave."
  26. I stopped. I tried to process the collision of the memory and what she had just said, and my brain decided to opt out. I felt a flush of heat, the edges of my vision started to fuzz, and the floor leaped up at my face as I went down.
  27.  
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