Becoming Miss Pennyworth

The air was sodden when Anna arrived. There was no storm in the novel. The Duke was supposed to take MissPennyworth on a moonlit walk.

She got out of the carriage and the sky lit up. Anna looked at her ballgown to make sure it was straight.

Anna curtsied to the Duke as the Majordomo crowed. He had a scar on his eyebrow from a battle gone wrong.

Lady Ashby told them to stop gaping.

Anna looked at the man. Their eyes would lock when they saw the picture on the page. She forced herself to breathe slowly as her anxiety got worse. She felt like they were full of jumping spiders.

There were silk and jewels in the ballroom and candles in the windows. Words were shouted over lemonade glasses as it stank of humanity. The orchestra started playing. Lady Ashby looked at Anna's dance card and pushed her into her first partner.

She moved around. She was interested in something. She was perfect in the role of MissPennyworth.

Anna drank a glass of ratafia to calm her down.

Lady Ashby took the glass. The duke wants to dance.

Anna was following her gaze as he looked at them.

I think this dance is my.

Yes, indeed.

They moved quickly.

His hand at Anna's waist felt like he pressed against her. The spiders were doing tarantellas when her heart hit her.

She needed some air.

You can come to the garden. There will be no rain.

Nature futures has more science fiction.

Anna let him take her outside. The sky was suddenly dry.

The book does not go that way.

The Duke told her not to be so specific.

She would be kissed there. She would know that he was her destiny when he pressed his lips into hers. Her parents spent a lot of money on the book- travel experience.

What did you do to accomplish that?

He shrugged and said "magic."

Life wasn't magic, but it wasn't magic at all. It was a long time since life was calm. She didn't walk anymore.

What is the name of the person?

I'm named Anna. She held out her hand to shake his hand. He was able to hold onto it.

It's your Christian name, Elizabeth.

''Anna''

Do you deliberately break character?

She was absolutely correct. This was not the right thing to do. Book travel was a carefully calculated experience. She thought she could enjoy it. Still

She wanted to know how the rain stopped.

The Duke smiled and snapped his fingers.

I don't like romancing ingénues.

That's the plot.

I didn't know I had to follow the plot.

Make it worse.

The Duke smiled and took a step closer. The spiders began to move.

He asked if they would stand here all night.

This is part of your programming?

It had to be a clever way to respond to a book traveller going off the rails.

I'm a man with feelings

Anna blinked out of her eyes. It felt like something had happened tonight.

In this world, I'm MissPennyworth. You're the lone one here.

It was very good. It's possible that it's too good.

The rain had darkened the Duke's hair and the water was running down his neck as he tightened his grip on her. He became more appealing.

Anna looked into the rain. She let the water wash over her and let it eat her. It wasn't like the novel, but that's what made it perfect.

She told them to run with her.

Past the statuary and the gardens they ran. Anna had her feet on the grass. It was great.

She said this was better than the book.

I didn't like MissPennyworth.

You get married to her. On your wedding day, the church is carpeted with roses.

That is not my tale. I don't like the balls. It makes me feel like a piece of a man.

Anna wouldn't say that this was true.

We should be able to decide how we write our own stories.

He wasn't real, he couldn't be real. This was not an artificial intelligence. Anna was still holding onto his hand.

Sometimes life doesn't allow us to do that. We have to follow the script sometimes. We don't have a choice sometimes. She pushed the spiders down. It's not right now.

"I'm more than just words on a page."

Sometimes the script gets thrown away.

Can you help me? Anna, I'm going to dance with you again.

When I leave, I won't be MissPennyworth.

You're a lot better.

This will not be true.

I think it is real to me.

It's time to perform your magic again. It must be poured.

They were dancing as the storm raged. For a moment, she believed in magic, even though it wasn't real.

Anna kissed him and pretended to claim him as her own. To remind him of her. Even if she couldn't do anything else.

He smiled as the rain fell.

Jenny Rae Rappaport is the author of the novel Becoming MissPennyworth.

I gave birth to my third child a month before I wrote the first draft of the book. I was very pregnant at the time and the idea of escaping into a book was very appealing to me. A flash-fiction contest was running on my writing group's website. I immediately thought of Regency romances when I saw that two of the story prompt were 'Give us a hero' and 'Why do people like kissing?'

A good book has characters that we fall in love with, we want to know them better, and we mourn when something bad happens to them. It was easy to imagine a technology that would allow readers to join those characters in their own worlds. Imagine if some of those simulation characters would yearn for sentience of their own one day.