Yesterday I needed a book to last me on a long train journey, and I picked up a fantasy: “Firethorn” by Sarah Micklem.* And what do I find on Page 8?
The girl called Luck is a servant in a manor house:
They gave me simple tasks: sweeping and scouring, combing the fringe on carpets, emptying slops. I was always running off and leaving things half done, always distracted. Na would make me fetch a willow wand for the beating I was due. Afterward she’d soothe me and call me her own little Luck.
Short and sweet, and made so much better by the little things like having to go fetch the rod, and the hugs in the end.
It’s not so hard to make a perv like me happy, really. Just one paragraph usually does it.
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* I don’t know whether I recommend it or not yet: I’m only about 50 pages in. It’s not the greatest work of modern fantasy, but it’s nice enough.