amedia

Title: How Finaqua Got Its Name
Author: amedia
Word Count: 500 (pentadrabble)
Rating: G
Characters/Pairing: OC; no pairing
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Imagiquest. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's note: Response to the challenge "Finaqua" at

tm_challenge. It's pretty silly, but I just wanted to support the comm by contributing something, and this is all I came up with!

Many and many a year ago, there was an undistinguished lake among many others in a backwater area of the O.Z. Some developers had considered turning it into a bedroom community for commuters to Central City, but they couldn't get a permit for the high-speed superhighway that would make that possible, so they settled on Milltown instead.

One day Queen Esmeralda was out riding through the woodlands when her horse shied suddenly from a vicious chipmunk, threw her off, and bolted. Sitting on the ground, the Queen wished that she had ordered more emergency telephones to be built along this route. "Oh, well," she thought to herself. "The stupid creature will undoubtedly go back to the stables, and someone will notice I'm not on her, and they'll send out a search party." She hoped that one of the more observant stable boys would be on duty.

Even with a best-case scenario, however, she realized that she still had several hours before help was likely to arrive. While staying put would make it easier for trackers to find her, she was bored. She looked down at the expensive turquoise velvet riding habit she was wearing, shrugged, and tore a big strip off the overskirt. Off she went to explore, tearing off bits of the fabric and sticking them on branches every few feet.

After about an hour, she came to an open area by one of the lakes. The water was shimmering in the sunslight and looked remarkably pretty. "Really, a place that's not a royal residence shouldn't be allowed to look this nice," she thought. "Makes the Northern Palace and the Auxiliary Central-City Residence look shabby." She briefly considered turning the lake murky and adding a monster, but she was too tired to come up with a really inventive monster, and she hated dull spells. Then a thought struck her. "This could BE a royal residence! Then it would be MY palace and subsequent generations would remember my name every time they said, 'Let's go to the Esmeraldine palace, it's so lovely there!"

The palace itself could wait for later, but for now she needed a comfortable place to sit down. She waved her hand and concentrated a little; a pretty gazebo appeared by the side of the lake. She stared at it for a moment. "Needs something," she muttered. She waved her hand again, producing a swing. "That's better."

She was swinging comfortably when the trackers arrived. She could hear their voices in the distance. "What's that? No, that's a leaf. Look for the fine aqua material. Look, there's another bit. Fine aqua here ... more fine aqua ... another fine aqua ... hey, there's the Queen!"

They were so convinced that the "fine aqua" had saved her life that, no matter how emphatically she made the pronouncement that the new residence should be called The Esmeraldine Palace, everyone called it "Finaqua." Eventually she gave in, and in later years, believed it had been her own idea all along.