My latest piece of fan-fiction, now available at Noble Cobra Magazine:

The old red hat still fit. It was a little faded from when he had first worn it, a little stained from years under leaky pipes, but after all these years it sat just as comfortably as ever upon his head.

It was what was under the hat that’d changed.

Mario Mariamotti looked thoughtfully into the mirror. Was it really a grown man looking back at him? A man about to leave home, to go off to college, to begin an adult life? Yesterday, it seemed, he had been an eager, active boy, caught up in carefree games, imagining himself on fantastic adventures with his friends.

How had it all gone by so quickly?

And why did it feel like he wasn’t ready yet?

As he tried to puzzle out his feelings, he saw the door behind him open and his brother poke his head in.

“Are you packed yet?” asked Luigi.

“Just about,” Mario answered, shaking off his gloom and adjusting the hat. “I’m making some last minute choices.”

Luigi came and frowned into the mirror next to Mario. The two brothers were very different types; Luigi was tall and lanky, taking after their father, while Mario was shorter and stockier, more like their mother. But both of them now had thick black mustaches, just like papa’s.

“Are you really going to take that?” Luigi asked, indicating the hat.

“I think so,” said Mario. “I don’t really feel right without it.”

“It isn’t very scholarly.”

“I’m going to engineering school, not Harvard,” said Mario. “Besides, I have to represent the family, no? And the Mariamotti men are plumbers. Let the college people say what they wish!”

Luigi chuckled.

“Mama mia, I’m glad you’re going first at least,” he said. “Though it’s sure going to be strange here without you. Papa’s gonna have to yell at me for your share as well as mine.”

“Your time will come, little brother,” said Mario, slapping him on the back. “You just watch yourself. Won’t have me to look after you now.”

“Me?” said Luigi. “What about that time we went to Rome and you got lost at the airport? Who was it who found you, eh?”

“I was eight!” Mario protested. “Besides, that was one time.”

“As you like it,” said Luigi sagely. “In any case, if you’re done, mama needs us to run down to Donker’s and pick up a few things for tonight. After that, I’m gonna treat you to one more lunch at D.K.’s.”

Read the whole thing here!

UPDATE: Also available on FanFiction.net