What is it with this and also that? How can a little bit of this, and some of that, take up so much time? Because time it took last week and so I didn't even get to read your wonderful stories.
From hardboiledbaby's little Aggie to Anarion's tender-hearted thieves, from Honeyed Moon's budding romance in a galaxy far far away to Ali's sweet siren, the stories for the last prompt were charming and I love them and you know what?
This and also that? They can just get kriffed. I'll really, really try and not let time get away from me again, I'll do my best to get your weekly writing prompt up, well, weekly.
Tip-toe Tentacles and All That Writing Jazz
And now onward to the wonders of the week before last's writing prompt:
The siren’s arms wrap her waist and warm lips steal a salt-flavoured kiss as scales rub her thigh. “Your swimming has improved, love. Anyone would think you’d earned your fins already. Have you come to stay for good this time?”
*
Filidan was tempted to kick his cousin’s shin. “We are trying to build a profile as professional and specialised art thieves. If we loot, we are no better than… well, not-professional and specialised thieves.”
“I know, I know. I’m just saying! She probably wouldn’t even miss… Is that a Samurai uniform?”
*
“There you are,” she said to the room, “Kriff’s sake, for a large human, you can be really hard to find somet…” Her monologue cut off mid-stream as she opened the ‘fresher door. “What?” Was all she managed.
Kl’yd was standing at the sink, still as a statue, with the skin on his left arm peeling off. Or on? It was hard to tell.
*
The splashing suddenly stops. Curious, I follow her gaze as she stares into the water. Little silver flashes, darting to and fro around her ankles and toes. “Fish,” I whisper.
“Fishies,” she whispers back, awestruck. For once, she is silent and still, a living statue. We exchange a glance of pure delight.
*
The tide got all frisky again, bouncing my boogie board, and Talla and if I could have seen below the waves I’d bet T was standing on tip-tentacle. Didn’t matter, a sludge of seaweed hit her in the neck again. High tide brings out mers and sea muck.
Okay, your turn. If you've not filled any of these writing prompts before, how about now? Share a story, teeny tiny or long, it's up to you. Use some of the words above or none. Every bit of the world you invent is yours. To invent. So…what'dya say?
“In my ‘sperience the purple ones taste like fun and the orange ones taste like wind.”
Thanh Nu Leyla rolled onto her belly and looked at her small stash of jellybeans lying plump and sweet on the lawn. Leyla counted them again because she likes to count, then she said, “I think the black ones taste like coughing.”
Kevin Kevin Caine (he did not have three names like Leyla, but he loved the idea so much he went and gave himself his own name twice) contemplated. He did this while staring at his own small pile of jellybeans. Shortly he picked up a red one and pronounced its flavour as “Round.”
Leyla nodded.
“An also, the green ones taste like trees.”
Leyla echoed, “Trees.”
“What do you think the white ones taste like?” asked Kevin Kevin.
The two four-year-olds propped their chins on their hands and kicked their feet in the grass and for a little while contemplated this question. Eventually they came to an agreement. White jellybeans were gross and they tasted like bug blood and throw up.
So of course they ate those first.
“There’s always something a little magical about cypress, don’t you think?”
Aisling waves her arms wide, as if to include the whole plantation. Maebh shakes her head and laughs. “You know they’ll be too tall in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and you’ll be complaining that they block all the sunlight.”
“I’d rather have that than the torn ground and burned-off trunks sticking up like broken bones.” Aisling stretches with her back against a tussock, facing the sun that already hangs low enough to kiss the horizon, warming her translucent skin. “It’s good to see the forest coming back. Even if it’s temporary.”
Maebh frowns at her sister. “I don’t know.” She sighs, barely disturbing the specks glittering the air. “I think the forest’s permanent recovery needs a hand.” She waves her hands at Aisling and mischief glints in her eyes.
“Those hands, you mean?” Aisling sits up. “You want to interfere?”
Maebh nods but sees doubt in Aisling’s face. “Listen, we’re wood nymphs. In my experience these humans don’t know forests like we do, and they never will. They’ll grow one type of tree then just as the trunks get old enough to be interesting, they’ll cut them all down again, burn the remains and start over. Makes no sense at all.”
“All right. If we’re careful not to get caught.” Aisling laughs and jumps to her feet.
As daylight fades, the sisters tread lightly between the saplings, tracing a path round and round in a spiral out from the plantation centre, disturbing the rows and columns of uniform saplings. Some they move out of line with a simple wish. On others they lavish spells that replace them with grand oak or gentle ash or elegant beech or steadfast plane. Maebh insists on a stately hornbeam because the name makes her laugh. Aisling spends the last of her magic to conjure up a glorious chestnut with broad, five-fingered hands already spread to reach for the sun.
By the time pale light peers over the other horizon, the forest is transformed from a densely planted monoculture to a mixed species haven that already has a dozen kinds of birds singing about it. Maebh yawns and swats away a bee with a wave of a grubby hand.
“You know we’re going to get in trouble for this, don’t you?” Aisling says as Maebh stretches and sets off back toward their own remnant of the great forest that once covered the land.
“It’s fine,” Maebh replies with a giggle. “I always blame the elves.”
They approached slowly, cautiously, as was their wont. Overly cautious, perhaps, for all appeared quiet now. Still, there was no need for haste, and they would not be rushed.
From afar, there was little enough to be seen—a wide expanse of flat, open land. Bare, dusty, devoid of life. Euthalia squinted against the glare of the sun and pointed. “There?”
Chloe followed her gaze. Something black and jumbled poked up out of the gray-brown earth, marring the horizon. “Yes, there.”
They proceeded at a leisurely pace. There was no road to speak of, just tree stumps and a shallow, sullen stream to lead them on.
As they closed the distance, the jumble sorted itself into the burnt-out skeletons of wooden buildings. A small, isolated settlement, brought to nothing.
“The trees here were magnificent,” Euthalia said, gazing back at the forest that once was. “They must have made fine homes.”
“They were,” Chloe murmured in agreement, lightly stroking one charred post with a finger. Then her lips twisted. “Fine homes, with fine folks living inside them.”
Fine folks," Euthalia echoed, her tone matching Chloe’s now sardonic one. They exchanged a knowing look: the fine folks who tried to settle here had laid claim to land that was not theirs to own. They were greedy for the bounty offered by an untamed frontier but oblivious to the dangers of its inherent intractability.
Fine folks, who paid the price for their hubris.
“How did it start?” Euthalia asked. Chloe shrugged.
“A poorly tended cooking fire, like as not. You see how dry the wind is, how it blows with scarcely a pause.”
Euthalia could see it in her mind’s eye: A spark, floating for a moment, then lighting on a fluttering curtain. Just a spark but it was fanned into a flame, then whipped into an unstoppable conflagration that destroyed, not just the tiny cluster of houses too close together, but the whole of the land round them. All the trees, all the vegetation—gone.
“How did it end? What happened—” Euthalia paused.
“The settlers? Some perished, some did not.” Chloe’s voice held a measure of pity that surprised her friend. “I cannot say which were the more fortunate. The ones who survived were surely broken—badly injured, blackened with soot, and stinking to high heaven of smoke and burnt hair, burnt flesh. And all their worldly possessions were lost. Even if they recovered, they would be forever scarred in body and soul.”
Euthalia sighed. “A great deal of time has passed. Do you think the survivors will return?”
“No. Others will come, however.” Chloe smiled sadly at Euthalia’s moue. “Yes, I’m afraid so. In my experience, there are always more.”
“Humans,” Euthalia said with disgust. “They ruin everything.”
“Not everything. Come.” Chloe gave the anthousa a hug and led her to a patch of unscorched ground. “Start here, my young friend,” she said. “Cast your seed, make the flowers bloom. I’ll go plant some trees. Let us put this place to rights, begin the healing process. Before long, the land will be lush and green again.”
With an encouraging nod and smile, the dryad retraced her steps; back to the forest that once was, and would be again.
(A/N: In Greek mythology, anthousai are flower nymphs, dryads are tree nymphs)
When the university told me my new roommate would be from the Frost Nebula I was worried at first.
But Mbr’x turned out quite different from what I expected. A bit weird, sure, like sometimes they stood in the middle of the room without sound or movement for hours and I still have no clue what that was. Sifting through data? Defragging? Sleeping? Other than that, they were friendly and quiet. They spoke 25 Earth languages and were ridiculously delighted by everything I did.
The university gave me a pamphlet with cultural misunderstandings likely to happen and I guess they gave Mbr’x one too, because those misunderstandings never did happen. The ones that did happen were so absurd that clearly nobody could have seen them coming.
The first one occurred on Mbr’x’ first Wednesday on Earth. I was out with Klara and my phone rang.
„Your friend fell over!“
“What? Who? Fell over? What happened?”
Did they mean someone fainted?
“The tall, silent one! They just fell over as I was talking! What do I do?”
The tall one? Why was a friend of mine there? Did someone come over? Do we have a tall neighbour?
“Are they breathing?”
“How do I know?”
“The stomach is moving up and down?”
“Which part is the stomach?”
“The soft part in the middle.
“No, it’s not moving!”
“Okay, okay. Um… first aid. Shit!”
“Paul!” Klara stared at me and I put the call on speaker.
“Yes, sorry, sorry. Recovery position… no, breathing first. Okay, if they’re not breathing, you need to do mouth to mouth resuscitation!”
“Mouth to.. what?”
“Breathe for them. Into their mouth.”
Klara was waving and trying to get my attention.
“What?”
“Head-tilt and chin-lift manoeuvre!”
“Shit, yes! Mbr’x, you need to grab their chin and move the head up.”
“Which part is the head?”
“The round thing at the top.”
“Which one?”
“What? There should only be one.”
“There are… twelve. And some are in the middle.”
“Twelve… The fuck?”
At this point, my brain simply refused to work. Klara’s clearly did not, because she gently took the phone from my hand and started to talk to Mbr’x. My brain tuned back in when she told them that this particular friend didn’t need to breathe, they just needed to be upright again.
And that, my friends, is how my roommate from out of space, on their first Wednesday on Earth, tried to resuscitate my dieffenbachia.
“In my experience, sometimes you need to get a little lost to find out where you’re going.”
This was advice given to Kel by her grandmother, a round little lady with grey hair that frizzed out in 800 different directions, all at once. Kel’s grandmother had raised her, and had never given her bad advice.
Kel had been wandering around the galaxy with no permanent place to call home, no family left to take her in, not even her own ship. She just took any job that would pay her, and that would let her travel to the next port. Always looking for the next thing.
“What are ya smilin’ about, darlin’?” Kl’yd was tracing circles on her shoulder with a sprig of the greenish-silver plant that was growing up the side of the building that housed the bar and their apartment. They were out on the balcony, watching the city snuggle itself down to sleep for the night. “You look all wistful and far away.” He brushed a stray lock of her own curly, grey hair off of her face.
“I was thinking about my grandmother, and something she told me once about needing to get lost to find your way.” Kel smiled and leaned into Kl’yd’s side, putting her arm around his waist.
“You feelin’ lost?” He gave her a squeeze,
She remembered her gramma’s words now, because she realized she had been feeling lost for so long. Right up until she walked into Kl’yd’s bar.
“Not anymore.”