I wrote mine in three days and it was more fun writing than I've had in months.

here's a bit of it--unedited:

The prompt is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Dear Author,

I am getting really tired of the waiting. No one told me that waiting to die would be quite this boring. So to pass the time, I wrote a letter to my sister, but somehow my letter got to the wrong person. Who do I end up writing? Did I really commit the murder I will hang for? Can whoever my mysterious pen pal is get me out of the mess?

Fantasy or pseudo-regency preferred, where same sex relationships are normal, no PWP,

HEA or HFN ending please

Sincerely,

Xelly

Photo description: A man in his early twenties looks scruffy in a blood-stained shirt covered by a dusty leather coat. His handsome face wears a slight smirk which is odd, considering the very large noose around his neck.

Genre: Victorian/Historical


THE SCENT OF HOPE
Summer Devon

“And do you regret your actions that have brought you so low?” The elderly gent wore a fixed smile as he examined Dez. “I do not speak of the crimes of which you are accused. I mean all the sad conditions of your life.”

Dez sat at the edge of the metal platform that functioned as a bed and wiggled his perpetually cold toes. Hell, yes. I regret getting so drunk I was caught almost at once. “Yes, Father.”

The vicar leaned far back on the wooden chair he’d brought into the cell. Poor man probably wished he hadn’t settled so close to the prisoner. Dez got a bucket of water every couple of days and he didn’t waste more than a few drops on cleaning his stinking self and he hadn’t had a change of clothing for …too long.

But Dez had underestimated the old man who’d been shifting about on his chair for another purpose: to pull some crumpled blank pages and a pencil from inside his fusty black jacket. “Do you have someone to whom you can write, and beg forgiveness?” the vicar asked. “Can you write?”

Writing? Dez considered the notion.

Messing about with pencil and paper seemed more interesting than sitting and watching the rats chew on his dinner. His first week in prison, he’d tried to tame a rat—that seemed a standard way a convict might entertain himself. The creature bit him. After that, Dez decided to ignore his fellow inmates.

“Yes, Father. I’ll write a letter. Good idea.”

If the vicar gave him paper, he’d figure out what to do with it later on.

But then his plans to make salacious drawings were destroyed with the vicar’s next words. “I shall carry these pages from this place and send them. No official eyes will see what you’ve written.”

A generous offer, although perhaps the man of God was lying like the devil. Dez considered writing to Bill and ask he bring some tobacco and the ten shillings he owed Dez, but he supposed his friend would ignore any pleas.

No one he knew had tried to come to his rescue…and wasn’t that a lowering thought.

The vicar said, “Do you have a mother? Father? No? A sister? No one?”

“A sister,” Dez said. “But she wouldn’t want to hear from me.”

“Write to her. Do you have anything better to do with your time?”

Dez laughed for the first time in days. He liked this old crow of a man. “I’ll cancel my luncheon appointment with her majesty immediately.” He took the papers and pencil and got to work.