Writer of Fantasy. Wielder of Red Pens.
This post has been removed. Why? Because it’s part of Paladin’s Legacy, book two of the Professor Porter saga. I swear, I’m working on it!
***
This week, Becky Jones prompted me with “the empty house stood waiting.” My prompt went to Padre, “the intergalactic mafia.” Check out more at MOTE!
“Do you like your new sponge family, Leila?” Admiral Zeke Farmanzeh watched Allie lean down with a shy grin down at their daughter, the same expression that he’d fallen in love with so many years and planets ago.
“I do, Mama,” the little girl said. The pert, upturned nose was the same as when the Cuddly But Trouble had launched, but the smile was now gap-toothed.
Another sign of his little girl getting far too big for his taste, even if her precious, fluffy blue bear the ship was named after still waited on her bunk. Zeke settled most days for being grateful that they’d worked out the gravity well problem. He’d tried listening to the physicists, but – well, he was but an engineer, and all he cared about was that spacers no longer came back weak and brittle. And long term stability – like family life – was possible.
A man could put up with a lot for some stability. It made him forget the stale air and uncertainty of ever returning to Earth.
“These were mine when I was a little girl, you know.” The larger blonde head bobbed closed to his daughter’s curls. They looked so much alike! “We could only bring them because they’re so lightweight, but I wanted you to have them.”
“This is Little’un, and this is Littler’un, and there’s the mama and papa and the dog. They don’t have names yet. Floofbear will help me name them tomorrow.”
His wife gave that smile, the one where she knew she had a secret. “Do you want to see what happens when they go for a dip in the pool? Let’s take them in your bath and find out.”
Water filtration, now that had taken a leap forward, too. Even if they still were on rations, and everyone knew it was recycled water. That ten percent fresh the techies had been able to bring online made a difference. It didn’t taste flat, anymore, even though it tasted the same. Water was water, but indescribably altered.
Zeke pushed himself out of his chair. It pulled itself back into the wall automatically with a whir as he headed for the doorway to watch his girls. These carefree, childlike moments would be increasingly fleeting, especially as Leila continued her advanced studies.
“You see?”
His daughter gave a horrified gasp. “Littler’un was the green sponge! And she’s bigger than Little’un now!”
“And when she dries, she’ll shrink back down again, and fit into her capsule. What do you think, will Little’un fit into his?”
The precious face scrunched in hard thought. “Yes. Because they’re different colors but the same material.”
“Nano sponges will do that, but real sponges that grow in the ocean won’t.”
A giggle. “Sponges are weird.”
“A little bit. Why don’t you join them in the bath?” His wife raised her face to his, and her eyes glittered with mischief. “I think you’re part weird yourself, thanks to your daddy. Don’t you think?”
***
Need context? I always wanted these things to repack themselves into neat capsules. Mostly so I could have reusable fun, of course.
Need part one? Find the intro to Leila here.
This week’s MOTE prompt was a trade with AC Young – Little’un and Littler’un trading in size, and magical dust mores. Check out his detailed response – and more! – out here.
But before you go, how about something completely different? My new short story, Santa Baby, is available for preorder along with a whole anthology of stories. About Santa. As a military operator. Because someone’s got to save the day.
I promise it’s ridiculous, in the best of ways. Cheers!
This short story has been removed by the author. Why? It will be published as part of the Professor Porter series of stories.
***
A snippet this week, inspired by nother Mike. Check out what AC Young explored with protective sea dragons over at MOTE!
“No, I definitely need to hit the bookstore. He let me take Magical Zoology II this term,” Mikhail said, and tipped back his battered cowboy hat with an absent hand. It didn’t match his school uniform, but he’d earned the sweat stained, sooty brim through hands now toughened by hard work with enormous livestock.
The calluses came with newfound confidence and efficiency in his spellcasting, which showed in his pre-term placement testing. It had only taken a quick narrowing of slit-pupiled eyes for his schedule to pass muster. Professor Hapburn had even flicked his tongue out in what passed for a pleased salamander smile when Mikhail demonstrated the strength of his camouflage spells.
Of course, Professor Hapburn’s sharp, orange eyes had also not missed the faint hoof print on the hat’s crown, either. Mikhail was certain of it, as certain as he was that he’d be asked to critique his own performance over a strong cup of tea.
Liza blew her bangs upward and tossed the rest of her hair out of her satchel strap’s way as she adjusted the catch. Her braid thunked dully against one of the fire extinguishers floating over her shoulder. “Come on, then. And of course he did. Why wouldn’t he?”
“There’s a secondary intro course he threatened to make me take, if I didn’t stop being so skittish around the more sensitive creatures,” Mikhail answered. “You can’t let the werewolves smell fear. Say, why do you still have those two following you around, anyway?”
He drew his head and shoulders minutely away from his friend as they dodged their way through the hall of returning students. The extinguishers had changed their positions around Liza’s head. There was something menacing in the movement, almost…offended?
“They’re part of the family,” she said casually. “Besides, look.” Liza shoved a crumpled piece of paper into his hand. “That’s cool, right?”
“Maths, herbology, magical gastronomy,” he read aloud. “I have that one, too. What’s wishuu?”
“Djinn combat.” She let out a huge grin that blinded him in its intensity. It wasn’t just the sunlight streaming from the open main doors of Wisurg Magical Academy.
“Clamp it down,” he cautioned, then reached a hand to catch her elbow before she could stumble down the entrance stairs. He let go almost immediately. “Hey. Uh. Hey. What’s wrong? It’s a beautiful day. I thought you were happy to be back?”
“I am!” The words were a scream. Tears streamed down her face. Liza sank to the stone pavement and sobbed into her hands. “I am so very, delightfully happy!”
He took a step back. “Um. If you say so?”
A hand clapped onto his shoulder, along with a wheezing noise that was half laugh, half resigned sigh. Mikhail turned to find Chef McCreedy in full whites. Any adult, he decided, was better than dealing with girls crying. “Sir, I don’t know what happened. One minute, we were headed for the bookstore and everything was fine.”
“Aye, and the next, the sobbin’ and cryin’, eh, boyo?”
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “That.”
“The finest of rotten traditions.” The chef wiggled thick eyebrows down at Mikhail. The reminder of caterpillars was strong enough, he feared they’d crawl off. “A back-to-school jinx. She’ll be righto in a moment, I b’lieve.”
Even as he spoke, Liza stopped her crying. She lifted her head so rapidly, she bonked her noggin against the hovering, concerned fire extinguishers. “Guys, I’m fine.”
“Good,” he began, then watched in astonishment as she gave the fire extinguishers reassuring pats, as if cuddling nervous puppies.
“She’s not talking to us, boyo,” Chef McCreedy said, and strode off with another bearpaw swipe at Mikhail’s shoulder.
***
This week’s Odd Prompt was from nother Mike: It was a bright, sunny day, but all he/she could do was sob and cry…
I can’t wait to see what Leigh Kimmel does with: The sphinx had waited for centuries for the right question to be posed by a petitioner.
Come join the fun!
(Pssst. Mikhail and Liza’s original story can be found in this anthology…and look for more, coming soon!)
Izz stared out the porthole and into the void. Slipspace held the stars at bay, shrouding glimmers of light in fog and haze. She trailed a finger down the side of the metal rim, feeling the grooves cold against callused fingertips hard-won from hours of rewiring Monster‘s electrical systems.
Not the computer systems, oh no. Greaves insisted she needed practice first, an insistence the illegal artificial sentient enforced with mild electric shocks. Practice that didn’t make the long journey to salvage any less boring, and interfered with salvage inventory.
It made her wish they were close to arrival. Sometimes, after all her dreaming, she wished for nothing more than to see the stars again.
“Break’s over.” The chirrupy voice broke into her fugue from the loudspeakers. “Ready to rewire console number four?”
“There’s nothing I’d like more.”
“Lovely.” Syrup couldn’t be sweeter. And Izz was left wondering, yet again, whether her ship didn’t understand sarcasm or habitually ignored it.
***
This week on MOTE, nother Mike prompted me with: When you wish upon a star…
My prompt went to Leigh Kimmel: “What do you mean, I’ve been upgraded to a hurricane?”
This post has been removed. Why? Because it’s part of the Professor Porter saga, currently in progress.
***
Leigh Kimmel prompted me over at MOTE this week with: “After many years you return to one of your favorite childhood vacation spots and discover…” Check out what AC Young explored with the water pig races in the prompt trade over at the hangout for the odd prompts!
Merrisai tapped a button on the side of her headband and settled with a sigh into the harbor water. For once, the faint sheen of oil from shipping traffic floating atop the gentle, lapping waves didn’t make her wrinkle her nose with disgust. This, at least, was normal.
She flipped her tail, careless of the water splashing the corporate samurai. Unless he was about to break conditioning and violate orders, he was about to get soaked soon enough.
“I never understood SeaCorp,” the man said, studying what lay in the distance. He did not move to join her, nor did she expect him to do so. The blurred visage of the floating castle rested on the horizon, perpetually out of reach for the uninvited.
“My captor speaks,” murmured Merrisai. She could taste the bitter words on her tongue.
His sharp glance stung. “My name is Canyon. You had a choice. My employer wishes to ensure you keep your bargain.”
She smoothed a nanoscale that had caught on concrete earlier today to hide shaking fingers. Given enough time in the water, it would lay flat again. It would heal.
Unlike her sister.
She looked toward the floating castle and changed the subject. The waves splashed against her bare stomach. “The tide comes. I’ve called a floating fish for you.”
“That’s how we get there?” He raised a skeptical eyebrow, the perfect representation of the gritty city initiate.
Merrisai tossed neon hair and gave him a wicked grin. The one filled with pointed fangs designed to terrorize prey, that she and Seesai had practice together as girls. A wave of disappointment floated over her bravado as he failed to flinch. “No, Captor Canyon. The path into SeaCorp’s secrets is not through a diving airfish. Nor is it as simple as managing to travel to the floating castle.”
She pointed into the distance, at the deepening indigo clouds. The wind already scraped at her face with increasing intensity. “No, samurai. Tonight we ride the storm.”
***
Leigh Kimmel and I traded prompts this week. She’s working on “The line of kings spanned unbroken for 2,583 years, until….” and prompted me with The Doors’ Riders on the Storm this week, which fit well as a snippet I’ve been working on. Check out more at More Odds Than Ends!
Falona grasped her heavy skirts in a hand heedless of the servants’ long work to press the fabric and darted up the stairs with unseemly haste. Already the air was clearer as she neared the balcony, though the memory of overwhelming perfumes nearly drowned out the delicate scent wafting from the rose trellis.
As always, Eddwyrd had beaten her there. She slowed her steps to a more decorous pace, though she suspected he didn’t inform her father nearly half of what she put him through. Her head bodyguard took each briefing from red-faced, sputtering guard with remarkable aplomb. The worst she’d ever seen him do was keep a white-knuckled hand on his sword as her antics were recounted anew…although the few times he’d given her disappointed looks were so memorable, she flushed with historic guilt.
He was gripping that sword with the same unnatural tension now, though his disappointed gaze was focused on the rose trellis that wafted inward as clearly as the sound of racing boots behind her.
“Sir! Commander Eddwyrd,” gasped the voice behind her. “The princess -“
“Has escaped the ballroom,” Eddwyrd gently cut the man off. “It is a ritual, I’m afraid, reenacted upon each new guard. You did well in coming here to find me rather than creating a panic.”
His pointed gaze prompted her into a curtsy, eyes down to hide the dancing laughter threatening to spoil the ritual. Protocol always made her want to giggle. “I apologize, Sir Willhylm. I felt the need for fresh air and forgot to alert you first.”
Eddwyrd gestured to the other man. “Alert the gardeners, please. The nightroses are beautiful, but the trellis is a security hazard. They will need to replant.”
The man nodded and left, his boots echoing on the white and black marble.
Commander Eddwyrd pulled his bushy eyebrows together. “Aren’t you getting a touch old for this, my lady?”
She tugged her shawl around her shoulders until it was uncomfortably tight. “It felt…desperate. Too loud, too bright, too much. I didn’t like it.”
Eddwyrd was quite still. “I understand.”
She tossed the shawl over the rail. “Besides, balls are boring.”
His dark eyes twinkled. “May it ever be so.”
Falona let her giggle out. She looked up at him with eager impatience. “Did you bring it, Uncle Eddwyrd?”
“I promised you the stars, my lady, and where better than from our typical balcony?” He pulled a tube from his jacket pocket and handed it to her with both hands.
She peered through the end and studied the palace’s reflection in the harbor. “It doesn’t look any closer.”
“It requires lenses to function.”
Falona turned in a swirl of green silk and let out a gasp of delight at the round discs he held in an unfolded scarf several shades darker than her dress. “These will let me see the stars?”
“Ship captains use them, Princess. The same captains you will someday send on trade expeditions and explorations.”
She scuffed a dancing slipper’s toe against the floor, but her foot skated over the polished surface. “And to war.”
“Yes, my lady. If you must.” He fitted the lenses into the tube quickly and bent to hand it back to her.
Her small fingers closed upon the tube, but he didn’t let go. His narrow face was grave. “I shall do my best to advise you upon matters of defense and war, should it come to that. Years from now, of course.”
Falona reached up to touch her adopted uncle’s face. It was sharp with stubble and stiff with the hidden tension she’d seen before. “You will be first among my advisors.”
He laughed, and rose, his face disappearing into shadow. “None of that, now. Come. Let me show you the moons. It is a special night for them, after all.”
Velyum’s third moon was just rising, in all her blue and white striped glory to dominate the night sky. Soon the palace would put out the lanterns, as reflected light would shine near as bright as the sun. “Great hippo, Uncle Eddwyrd! Riskli looks like liquid. Like when Maman puts cream into her caf’fe every morning, before it mixes together.”
“The artificers debate whether it is liquid or gas,” Eddwyrd told her. “But don’t neglect Warso or Shadd.” The smaller moons shown perpetually, and could be glimpsed in the sky even during the brightest of sunlight days. “You see? These two are made of dirt and rock.”
“Who dug the holes on them?” she demanded without removing her eye from the scope.
He laughed gently. “Those craters have been there for generations, my lady, and artificers with enormous lenses, far more powerful than this, say they are only -“
She turned then, as his voice stopped, in time to see a fourth moon, bobbing along with a hiss and a flare of released gas. Faintly, Falona could see white sparkling dust drifting downward from the balloon as it floated across the docks and toward the palace.
“What in hippopotamus?” Eddwyrd spun her around and snatched her shawl from the balcony rail, wrapping it around her face until only her eyes were unconcealed. “No. Leave your mouth covered. No matter how hard it is to breathe.”
He snatched the scope out of her suddenly nerveless hands and tucked the scope back in his pocket without bothering to disassemble it. The dark green scarf he tied over his own face. “Damn the traitorous gardeners. We didn’t factor in those raging balloons. All our estimates were wrong.”
His eyes were focused on the lawn, where shadowy figures with enormous heads – no, heavy masks covering mouths, eyes, and nose – crept closer.
“Take my hand. Do not let go. We run for the tunnels. Do you understand?”
She didn’t, but nodded anyway. And tried to shut her ears as the screaming started, her hand clenched in his until she could no longer feel her fingers.
****
This week was interrupted by a thing. So here are some images from MidJourney as an answer to my prompt from nother Mike, which I’m playing with alongside what feels like everyone else these days.
I ran out of energy after a few attempts.
What I pictured: An open refrigerator door, with a bowl full of red Jell-o, and a line of velociraptor tracks running away. (I even had an archeological story to go with this, but it’s not happening tonight.)
What I got? A bento box of dinosaurs. But hey, it’s fun. Still, these might be the worst results I’ve gotten with MJ so far.
And that’s it for tonight. Check out a whole lot more and better over at MOTE.
“Mama?” The high-pitched voice came from down the hall, followed by the pitter-patter of tiny feet moving at speed on wooden floorboards. “Mama. Mama!”
Ellen set down her knitting and opened her arms to the flannel-clad missile headed toward her lap. As much as she’d never imagined it would become the norm, her rocking movements and soothing backrub was automatic after years of practice. “What is it, sweetie?”
“Monster under the bed again,” a muffled voice said into her sweater.
She suppressed an eyeroll, even though her husband silently laughed from where he sat across the room reading the latest mystery novel. He kicked up sock-clad feet and pulled the book closer to his nose, a silent signal that it was her turn.
“How about I tuck you in and sing you a song?” She switched to running her fingers through Elizabeth’s hair, a move her daughter called “tickle-good.”
“‘kay.” Her daughter kicked tiny feet in footie pajamas, looking all the world like a living teddy bear.
She oofed her way up from the rocking chair and carried Elizabeth down the hall. “You want me to check for monsters when we get there?”
The small head nodded, another precious moment she’d vowed never to regret. No matter how many monsters her miracle found.
“All right. Do you want to see?” She always offered, and Elizabeth always refused.
Tonight was no exception. And for once, Ellen was quite glad of that.
She backed away slowly. “How about a treat, and you sleep with Mommy and Daddy tonight?”
“‘kay,” came a sleepy voice.
She edged back into the living room. “Psst. Psst!”
Drake looked up in surprise. “What’s up? Spider?”
“Dragon. Under the bed!” Ellen tried to keep her voice low and calm. Her heart raced, and she adjusted her grip on Elizabeth with sweaty palms. “I can see the snout.”
His mouth opened and shut several times before intelligible words came out. “I’m not sure how to remove a dragon…”
“Well, it’s a baby,” she hissed. “Tiny snout.”
“Oh,” he said, and set his book aside. “No big deal, then. I’ll take care of it straightaway.”
“You will not!”
He paused.
“Baby dragon,” she explained. “Alone. And mama will be looking.”
This week’s prompt came from Becky Jones, and I had so much fun with it! Mine went to Leigh Kimmel, who’s guided by runestars this week.
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