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No One Ever Suspects the Butterfly

September 23, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Char swept into the room, blue silk dress rippling with each step of her long legs. She tossed long red hair behind her shoulder and beelined down the spiral stairs for the man in the tuxedo. The man himself was standing in the shadowed kitchen, shoulders hunched over as he poked at something out of sight.

Max Butler looked up as her high heels clicked onto the main floor. “I figured it out. I think.” He held up the small white box, nondescript and plain. Nothing worth stealing, the box proclaimed, too small and not small enough to contain anything of value.

“It’s gone dark on you outside.” She peeked over the box edge. “A butterfly?”

“Jewelry. Or a fancy hair clip.”

Mild disappointment ran through her. “Made of plastic? Honestly, it looks like it’s for a child, not a diplomatic function. That’s the most obvious recording device I’ve seen in years. They won’t let us within a hundred yards of the entrance.”

Max grinned, his four-day stubbled beard dark against white teeth. “I need your thumb.”

Char raised an eyebrow and proffered her hand with disdain. “I need that thing to record the ambassador’s corruption.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.” Her partner gripped her hand and pressed her thumb against the butterfly’s head, just below the antennae. “It needs your thumbprint to work.”

Her lips spread in a slow grin as she felt the plastic warm, the wings suddenly powder soft and delicate against her trailing fingers. She held her fingers to her throat as large colored dots spread across the butterfly’s wings, rippling through the rainbow. The wings fluttered and began to move, and she startled backward before she could stop herself.

Max laughed. “It’s meant to match your dress.” She tore her eyes away from the butterfly and met his dark eyes. “Here, let me help you.”

The wings settled into a brilliant cerulean blue, iridescent as it fluttered just above the box. He reached down a hand and lifted it gently, bringing the insect toward her hair.

“It’s meant to flutter, and catch attention as well as sound. It’ll angle its wings for better reception.” His low voice echoed in her ear.

Char bit her lip. His hands tangled gently in her curls, warmth grazing her face. She glanced down quickly, staring at the tips of her silver shoes. The kitchen floor gleamed underneath, unlike their usual clean but worn safehouse floors. She didn’t stop studying the tiles until his hands pulled away.

She gulped to find he had not stepped back to admire his work.

“Lady Death,” her partner said with a wry smile. “You’ll be the death of me yet.”

He retreated into shadows before she could reply, and she could not see his eyes.

“Still not fond of insects, I see.” Voice light once more, Max grabbed the flyer’s key fob from the counter and flipped it in the air. “Let’s go. Do try not to annoy the tech people so that they ‘accidentally’ forget the instructions to our gadgets again, will you?”

***

This week’s More Odds Than Ends challenge was odder than usual. I knew what I wanted to write straight away, but kept putting it off and nearly didn’t get it done. Nother Mike challenged me with “In the box was a plastic butterfly, large colorful dots spreading across its wings as it started to move…” and I can’t wait to see what Cedar Sanderson does with a black and white sunrise.

Manuscript

September 15, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Lindsey flicked her eyes upward every time someone walked past, hating herself for the hope she knew was shining on her face. She’d seen the look in the mirror enough times, working on her poker face and failing. Each time, she tried to avoid the stranger’s eyes. Being ignored could be played off as a mistake. Oh, not who I was waiting for. The groups of mean girls with their giggles and shrieks of laughter didn’t have time to notice her, and that was just fine with Lindsey Boucle.

Pity, though. Pity was the worst. Those were the strangers’ eyes that saw right through her, saw how awkward and hopeful she was, seized straight upon her neediness.

Was it so bad to want a friend? Maybe more than a friend?

Where better to find a more-than-friend than at the Writers Of Romantic Manuscripts conference?

Her cheeks burned, but she took the time to scribble some notes for her next book on the free notepad WORM had put at each seat. Long rows of writers were seated in an enormous room, burbling conversation and colored lights filling the air, and yet the entire length of table next to her was empty. How humiliating. Was her eagerness to get a seat a turnoff?

Perhaps she was too eager in general. It’s just – well, it wouldn’t be so bad to get some real experience, outside of her imagination. She had plenty of imagination. She’d written a dozen books based on her imagination. Wasn’t a dozen enough to be alone?

Lindsey let out a sigh and stopped looking up. She slumped over and smushed a hand against her face, ignoring the music and coffee-scented air. If all she got was a free notebook and pen, plus some writing tips, well, that was all she had paid for.

It would have to be enough. Life wasn’t a bowl of –

“Excuse me,” said the sexiest baritone she’d ever heard. “Is this seat taken?”

***

I didn’t know what to do with this week’s odd prompt from Cedar Sanderson: Life is a bowl of cherries – if you’re a worm. My husband suggested the acronym idea, and we had a lot of fun tossing around ideas for it. See story one here.

My prompt went to Leigh Kimmel, to describe a scene in the Carta Marina.

Mahogony and Loyalty

September 15, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Frank Delacroix leaned back and kicked his legs up on the desk. Mahogany, of course, an exquisite import from Old Earth, or so he was told. The handmade Persiannah rug was soft enough on his feet; he’d made sure of that. Cheryl needed a soft rug for when she gave him his special personal treatments. He wasn’t a monster, even had a fond spot for her. But some days, a man just wanted to kick back, classic-style, and view his empire.

He’d fought long and hard to get here, after all. The rumor campaign that followed his predecessor just kept coming up somehow, every time the man made a move. It had taken longer and been more expensive than he’d anticipated, too. Frank snorted. Who’d have thought personal loyalty would have been a factor?

It was worth it, though, even if that guy had ultimately transferred a better position, in a larger city. One where you could go outside wearing white and not have it turn black-streaked from a dry, filthy snow. He was content here for now, solidifying his position to keep moving up the tower, to bigger and better towers. His turn would come, and then he’d get rid of that guy. Maybe start introducing himself as Francis.

In the meantime, no longer did he have to tolerate hearing his workers complain about their rights and needs. Smug bastards, thinking they knew better than someone put in place to put them in their place. He’d simply raised the quota until the workers were too exhausted to complain. Not that they’d dare after that woman bled all over the floor. And if they disappeared? So much the better. He could pay their replacements less, justifying their lack of experience.

He leaned back again, a satisfied smile on his pudgy face at the memory of today’s broken promise. He loved teasing the ambitious with promotions, only to yank it away at the last moment of hope. Even better, he could act apologetic, simpering about how this time, things hadn’t worked out, but next time, it was sureto be a sure thing. If only the circumstances were slightly different, if cuts hadn’t happened, if the quotas hadn’t gone up from central, if that work had been smidgen higher quality.

Frank licked his lips and contemplated the view, six stories above the level of heavy smog the grounders had to put up with every day as they trudged from their hovels to the factories. From here, he could see lights shining as his city worked to provide him with all the comforts and indulgences this crappy planet could offer. No goggles and stuffy breather for him, no sir.

Perhaps he’d call Cheryl in for some special treatment time soon. He deserved it, after all, now that he’d reached this status. Nothing was too good for a World Obtainer and Requisitions Manager. Each city on Formulant had one, each in a towering pillar to look upon the peons and control their miserable lives until they’d squeezed out everything they had to give.

Frank laughed, alone in his tower room with the unbreakable diamond windows. He’d discovered that most of the peons would do anything just to hope for a better chance at life. Cheryl, for instance. All he had to do was make her cry, toss out some promises, throw her a bone once in a while, and she’d do anything. He just couldn’t let it get too far, had to keep the puppet strings from being too obvious. Get her sister a job, but make it dependent on her keeping him happy. Had to keep her upset enough to keep hoping, but not get so expectant she started thinking she could make demands.

His boss told him he was a master at handling that delicate balance, but it was really a prerequisite for the job. World Obtainer and Requisitions Masters only wanted the powerful, the skilled, the talented. And he’d made it, off the factory floor at last. He was one of the elite.

Yes, life was just a bowl – a fancy, hideously expensive Ming dynasty bowl, whatever the Ming dynasty was – of cherrylinas for a WORM. Frank reached over and plucked one of the shiny fruits out of the blue and white dish, its deep red flesh bursting luscious and sweet in his mouth.

At the nearby spaceport, Charlotte Merikh stepped off The Wyvern and breathed in Formulant’s air for the first time. It smelled just as foul as the background dossier she’d read on the flight to this corrupt, polluted hellhole. It was a far cry from the early settlers’ terraformed greenery and soft sandy beaches, lost after the factories edged the settlers into poverty and bondage. Beggar children were held back from bothering the tourists – those that remained – by a rusted fence and a bored security guard. Their sticklike arms reached through holes in the fence toward her, but no hope shone in the foundlings’ dull eyes.

Char couldn’t wait to take down WORM.

***

My prompt went to Leigh Kimmel, to describe a scene in the Carta Marina.

Nightmares

September 8, 2020 / fionagreywrites

If I had known how it all would escalate, I’d have done things differently. But so say we all, and now with each labored breath, I fear I’ll take them all down with me when at last I cease to be.

I will not regret what I will become.

Once I spent my time careless and carefree, the only worry a good meal and a quick burst of playful energy. To stare out the window, and be a good companion. It was easy. It was enough.

Then came the day when I began dreaming, though not the casual dreams of youth. Instead, each time I woke, I sank into the miasma of despair. I remained in a waking dream, the monsters surrounding me, taunting me, too quick to catch or kill. A last burst of vivid memory, fading with waking, only to jolt anew at the realization the dream was the same I’d had the night before.

My innocence was lost the day I realized the monsters were real.

They are not intelligent on their own, per se, but they are many. And with this final burst of delirious dreaming, I have at last purpose. I will protect my companion from their destruction as best I can.

When I go, I’ll take them with me, tail lashing and whiskers twitching one final time.

Writing Cat fortunately has never needed to plot a mouse massacre.

This one was hard! Thank to Leigh Kimmel for this week’s challenge, solved only by last minute panic and a disrupted, napping cat.

“The dreams of one man actually create a strange half-mad world of quasimaterial substance in another dimension. Another man, also a dreamer, blunders into this world in a dream. What he finds. Intelligence of denizens. Their dependence on the first dreamer. What happens at his death.”

My photo prompt on ruined fortresses went to nother Mike, and I do hope he continues the story about ghouls eventually.

Brains & Taxes

September 7, 2020 / fionagreywrites

It’s the taxes that get me.

Oh, I know the steps I intellectually need to take, and know that it’s only fear holding me back. I can figure all of this out.

Beta readers, covers, wrapping up stories, ISBNs, copyright. I can take each bit separately, one piece at a time.

But I let the taxes hold me back, because that’s the point where it feels overwhelming.

So in the meantime, I trick my brain into continuing to make progress. Fine, fine, brain. You don’t want to figure out taxes yet? Well, it’s almost the end of the calendar year anyway. If you wrap up these stories and work on the rest of it, it’ll all be there in CY21. There’s plenty of time to talk to a tax professional. Start off fresh in the new year. You’ll have everything ready to go.

At some point, I know I’ll grow impatient. My brain is apparently comfortable with self-deception, even as I’m fully aware it’s ongoing.

Humans are weird.

Writing Cat has little patience for her human’s bizarre antics, but acknowledges limited impact upon food delivery.

Float

September 1, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Some long days at work are longer than others. I’d been late, then slipped on a puddle of coffee someone else was too rude to clean up and bruised my tailbone. The boss had been on a tear, and I’d been unlucky enough to not get the group text to hide before he came storming in ready to scream at the first victim he found.

Which meant I’d also gotten stuck with fixing someone else’s mess, of course. I got to be the one to stay late while the guilty party skipped merrily out the door, gleeful she’d “forgotten” to include me on the air raid – I mean boss – warning message. And finding out my car had been keyed in the parking lot was the perfect end to a perfect day.

Yeah, my sarcasm meter overfloweth.

All I wanted to do was faceplant into the couch, maybe with a glass of wine injected by IV so I didn’t have to pick up my head from the pillow. Maybe rent a movie. Pizza and actually watching the movie would be optional.

I really wished I’d never given my mother a key. But I’m fairly certain if I hadn’t, she’d have shown up anyway, hanging out on the front porch until the neighbors called the cops.

The whine started as soon as I opened the front door. Ears like a bat, that one. Thought I’m not sure she usually bothered to see if I was around when she started. Or stopped. She could have been going for hours for all I knew.

It’s all blah, blah, job’s terrible, they don’t treat you right, you work too hard. I know, Ma, believe me. You don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive, but don’t go near those evil cookies. Ma, I’m ordering pizza just to spite you now. Did you meet a nice boy yet? When will the family meet him? Let me set you up with a complete stranger. Maaaa. Stop. Please, I’m begging you.

Sooner I dealt with it, sooner it’d be over. I dropped my keys and trudged through the living room and into the kitchen. The nasal snarl came from outside, though the screen door. I bet the neighbors loved the background screech whenever she showed up.

I know she had something to do with the neighbors planting a screen of fast-growing trees in addition to the existing fence. They told me. Both of them. After carefully checking that she wasn’t hiding around the corner.

The kitchen held temptation, even if it was bland and boring, with fake wood veneer everywhere you tried not to look. I eyed both the unopened bottle of cabernet sauvignon as well as the freezer, where frozen pizza lurked. But through the sunlight shining, though that open screen door, lay my doom. I braced myself and pushed onward.

“I’m home, Ma. Yes, I’m sorry I was late, but I didn’t know you were coming over. And you clearly – helped – uh – um – huh.” I swallowed hard, and blinked a few times to clear the spots out of my eyes.

The yard wasn’t much, just some scrub grass that hadn’t recovered from the last renter’s dog, and barely grew thanks to the neighbors’ trees shadowing it most of the day. Bigger than the proverbial postage stamp, but certainly not a full-size envelope. Flowers died as soon as I touched them, their unwatered skeletons brittle and whitened by the sun.

And amidst it all, the crown jewel that made me rent the place sight unseen from an unscrupulous landlord, and worth cleaning out a ridiculous amount of bugs, dropped leaves, and algae. Blue water, in a perfect circle, the best way to relax that mankind had ever invented.

Some days you just need to float. Although Mom didn’t just rest atop my giant taco pool float when she stopped by. Ever. She reclined, regally, with her oversized Hepburn-style sunglasses, keeping her curls out of the water. Always managing to stay in just the amount of sunlight, even with all the shade in the backyard. Each movement perfectly cut through the water without effort or splashing, a vision graceful and slim even in her early fifties.

The sunglasses were what gave it away. Well, that and the voice.

The scales, on the other hand. Those were new, and several shades of rippling green that blended with both the neighbors’ trees and the water. The claws would have threatened the inflatable, but somehow Ma managed to be perfect there, too. Her tail steered her around the pool, and the teeth were more numerous and pointier than I recalled.

The sunglasses weren’t oversized, either. The part of me that would always be small around my mother didn’t want to see what lurked behind them.

I ducked back into my suddenly attractive kitchen and hoped she wouldn’t notice I wasn’t paying attention to her tirade. Yanking out my phone, I called my little sister. My breath came in fast pants while I listened impatiently to each ring, before finally the brat picked up.

“Hey, Chris? Yeah, good. Hey, um…did you know Mom’s a dragon?”

This week on More Odds Than Ends, Becky Jones challenged me to address the dragon floating in my pool. My prompt about vultures perching on unusually solid clouds went to Anne and Jim.

Losin’ My Irish Marbles

August 25, 2020 / fionagreywrites

My husband decided, prompt unseen, that this week I should write as a western. I seem to remember protesting, not agreeing to this. Yet here we are.

“Connemara marble,” the biggest cowboy hat Aoife had ever seen said in a quiet murmur.

She halted in the hallway and blinked at the hat’s battered leather edges through the open door. “That’s nice?”

“These figurines,” the hat said, in an accent so warm it rolled over her skin slowly, like warmed honey. The hat moved upward, and she met the eyes beneath the brim. “Oh. You’re new, aren’t you?”

“Aoife.” She shifted the box she was carrying to one hip and extended a hand.

His grip was warm and callused under her fingertips. “Jethro.”

“So what’s with the marble?” She propped the box against the wall, oddly reluctant to walk away from those melted-chocolate eyes. Normally strangers made her want to run, an itch between her shoulder blades that wasn’t soothed until she locked her bedroom door.

“Irish marble. As I assume you know, given your accent.” He winked, and she took a step back in surprise. He held up a small, flat figure and gestured to the tray on the table in front of him. “We just got these carvings cleaned up from today’s find. Fantastic condition. Probably some gods and fertility figures.”

“And a horse,” Aoife said, her fingers careful not to brush over the stone. “One foot up. He’s ready to head out and scout.”

Jethro nodded. “Never come between a man and his horse.” He picked up the stone and cradled it to his chest. “Isn’t that right, lil’ guy?”

Aoife stared in horror. The last few words had come out in an odd baby-talk. She backed away, that spot high up on her spine beginning to twitch.

“Aren’t you just the cutest horsie, all ready to grow up big and strong?” Jethro cooed. The green horse disappeared under the hat. Aoife couldn’t tell if he was about to eat or kiss the stone carving.

“Do you love daddy like I love you, little horsie?”

She ran so fast, she didn’t even hear the echoes of her footsteps in the empty hall.

***

This week’s prompt came from Leigh Kimmel: “Little green Celtic figures dug up in an ancient Irish bog.” (My husband claimed this was “just part of the challenge.”) I prompted nother Mike with “Follow your dreams. Taken literally.” Join the Odd Prompts crew! It’s easy and delicious – I mean, fun.

Hold Me Accountable

August 24, 2020 / fionagreywrites

In the midst of good comes the bad, as it always must. And in the middle of a ten-day vacation, amongst the wildlife and scenery, came the news of a friend’s unexpected death, struck down far too young.

It’s not the first time I’ve said I should be held accountable. Ignoring my self-set deadlines is far too easy. I’m lucky enough to have a good day job, one I (mostly) enjoy. I do well with it.

But writing makes me happy, and there are stories in my head that ache to be told. The Guy has been nudging me, asking about Peter and June. It’s been nearly two years.

Heinleins’ rules for writers: It’s time to get it done.

This is, of course, easy to say. There are still things I need to figure out. Beta readers, for instance, and editing. I have some major rewrites in progress, but I know what needs to happen, and it’s closer than I thought it was at the beginning of the trip. Editing for a living helps keep copy relatively clean, though I won’t pretend I’ll catch everything.

Short term actions:

Title: Finally selected for the main WIP. “Peter and June” is tentatively named Paladin’s Sword: A Professor Porter Paranormal Investigation.
Beta readers: I’ll hit up Facebook and some friends. I should…maybe make more friends.
Editing: Get it as clean as possible, toss it to a friend if she has time, perhaps ping a couple local editors.
Covers: I’m not going to figure this out myself anytime soon. I can see what it should be, and it’s fabulous inside my head. That doesn’t mean I can execute that vision, because I am not so talented. So, contact a different friend, with both skills and twin toddlers. Look for a premade cover because reality says no.
Business stuff: Get Fortress Pomegranate Press off the ground as a real organization. Go talk to the bank, register the name, do whatever the state needs me to get done, look at tax issues, figure out a logo.

Long term:

Figure out image editing software. Possibly trade editing for covers.
Too many lingering WIPs. Lauren and William, Lady Death, Evil Unicorns, June & Peter’s half-plotted series continued. Start wrapping some of these up. Evil Unicorns is plotted as a trilogy, so it may make more sense to hold on publishing until I can get them out in rapid succession.
Decide on pen names. Some of these are different genres and should signal to readers. I’m thinking Fiona Grey for romance and Fiona Greyson for paranormals.
Get better at blocking off time to write. The Big Bang Theory is my weakness. It doesn’t matter if I’ve seen the epiode several times, I still get sucked in. Some days, it’s what I need after the day job, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get more efficient at using the time around it.
Keep learning craft. Because of course.

Learn. Write more. Revise. Publish. It’s time.

Get Off My Lawn

August 14, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Char strolled down the lane past her neighbors’ estates, market basket in hand. Her smile was pleasant without inviting undue attention or encouraging conversation. Full skirts ended precisely six inches above sensible flat boots perfect for the day’s damp, cobbled streets. A starched apron wound around her waist, ready to dry dishes or children’s tears alike. She was the picture of a perfect Octanian housewife.

A cloth draped over her wicker basket protected a long loaf of bread, some fruit, and a soft, mild cheese from flying pests. It also concealed a small blaster and detection equipment. Long red hair tucked under a proper babuskha hid her comms earpiece, while the broach on her left shoulder that marked her as a married woman in this county was, in fact, a disguised microphone.

Of course Char looked the very image of a local housewife. A newcomer who didn’t fit in perfectly would draw far more attention.

“Signal coming from nearby,” she said without moving her lips. “Definitely northwest.”

Her earpiece crackled. Sheer discipline kept her expression pleasant as she nodded to a trio of giggling adolescent girls passing by.

“Sorry.” Max Butler’s voice sounded in her ear. “The calibration was off.”

Char suppressed a snort and did not reply. Her walk was a hair too slow as she used peripheral vision to study the three houses to the left. Each had a long, winding lane, with the stone houses clumped close together and fields of grain adjacent in different directions.

“Narrowed to the Feldmans, the Gallos, or the Oglethorpes,” Max said. “Funny place for a weapons dealer.”

She did snort that time, but only because no one was around.

“Can you think of a reason to get closer and scan the silos?”

Char stopped at the fence and checked in her basket, pretending to look annoyed. “I can make cakes to take around.”

“You’re in visual range,” Max said. “What’s going on? You look like you forgot something.”

“Yeah, greehda,” Char said, calling him the name of the local ratlike pest that feasted on grain if not protected by the ubiquitous silos. “We’re out of eggs. Heading back to the market. I’m not spending winter on this planet.”

She turned around with a dramatic sigh and headed back. It gave her an excuse to study the houses again. Each had been built close to the others for protection and defense during the original planet colonization ninety years ago. The silos were kept close to the houses due to raiders, a long frozen season, and vicious predators that had objected to the newcomers.

No one had seen the arkhnad predators in the local Octanian area for more than three decades, but Char had seen the antlers hanging on the local town hall wall. They must have been thirteen feet across. When she’d expressed amazement, a grizzled toothless man croaked a laugh and told her the rack was from a baby. She’d noticed he was missing most of his left hand as he stumped away.

But there were no predators in this area now. The weapons dealer they sought was stirring up trouble, fomenting rebellion for an economic takeover. Had the last purchase not gone beyond small arms into a level of technology not usually seen on Octania, his work might have gone unnoticed until the rebels had sufficient firepower to blast the entire colony.

Three children raced past her, and she gave them an indulgent smile. Children were protected here, unlike most colonies where they were put to work as soon as possible. It was an artifact of the days when arkhnad and giant buzzards roamed freely. Char didn’t expect the attitude would last much longer, especially not after the grumblings about labor shortages down at the town hall.

These three were somewhere between five and seven, just at the age where they’d been granted freedom to run outside freely without fear of being carried off. Their cries were joyous, and all three slid barefoot on the damp grass without care for their clothing.

Char continued a few steps on, then spun at a shout.

“I told you kids to stay off my lawn!” Stubby Mr Oglethorpe had been one of the loudest complainers about children at the town hall meeting. Then, he’d been grumbling about wasting food on useless hands. He’d only quieted after someone else had pulled him aside. Now, he was red-faced and panting after his run from the house’s main entrance, waving a box in his hand.

Char’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “Max, situation.” Then, louder, she called to the children, imploring them to leave Mr Oglethorpe alone. She worked her free hand under the loaf of bread.

The three boys shrieked with laughter and ignored both of the adults.

“I said, get off the lawn!” Mr Oglethorpe pressed a button on the metal box. A silver antennae rose and beeped, followed by an explosion. Char barely kept her footing sixty feet away.

She blinked away dust. Miniature heat-seeking missiles erupted from what used to be his grain silo, heading straight for suddenly silent boys. They clawed at the ground, trying to get up from where blast had knocked them, slipping on the damp grass.

Char dropped her basket, revealing a blaster. She fired three times, her cybernetic implant the only reason the blaster was even remotely fast enough to short-circuit the missiles.

The boys screamed as hot metal dropped from the sky, inert. One of the missiles rolled toward the boys, whose shrieks had turned to high-pitched terror and tears. They ran, still screaming. All three gave her a wide berth as she stood there, feet planted apart and blaster in hand.

Char’s fourth shot stunned Mr Oglethorpe and left him motionless but alive in the yard. “Of all the ways to find out.”

She coughed over the trails of smoke left behind by the zapped missiles. “Max, my cover’s blown. Requesting immediate extract. Heading toward you.” Their own grain silo concealed a shuttle.

Char coughed again, and reached for the basket. “Oglethorpe. Weapons dealer was definitely Oglethorpe.”

“Copy. Heading your way for planetary extract in two minutes. Command is tracking Oglethorpe as weapons dealer. Grid authorities are already dispatched.” The earpiece shrilled again, and Char let herself wince this time as she headed for the safehouse at double speed.

Max’s voice was hesitant in her ear. She could hear the whine of the shuttle in the background. “You grabbed the food, right? That cheese…”

“Greedy greedha,” Char grumbled. “I’m not new to this. Of course I brought the cheese.”

***

On this week’s Odd Prompts, nother Mike challenged me with “As the kids cut across his lawn again, Mr. Oglethorpe unleashed his latest purchase, heat-seeking missiles. He grinned and muttered, “I told you to get off my lawn!””

My prompt went to Jim and Anne: “At a restaurant, you order calamari. The cloche is lifted, and a talking squid named Calamari gives your table a personalized standup comedy routine.”

Mother

August 11, 2020 / fionagreywrites

Nima stared at the light flickering through the rippled glass of the mashrabiya, wondering why the sunlight gleaming through the windows always seemed to dance above the alcove’s polished wooden floor.

“Come to lessons now, Nima-jaan,” Parvaneh called. Nima turned away from the outside view and walked to her seat a few feet away. The inner room had been set up as a classroom, but her sisters and brother had already passed onto more advanced training. Only Nima was left.

She didn’t mind. Lessons with her mother were usually interesting, flittering between topics like the butterfly Parvaneh was named after, each stop brief and exquisite before moving on in an oscillation of learning. Even the mathematics wasn’t terrible, because Nima could watch her mother’s hennaed hands under loose garb that swung with her movements. Each slender line was precise and graceful against the archaic blackboard, formulas chalked with a series of clicks and whooshes.

Nima hoped she could make such hypnotic movements someday.

Today, however, the undulating light could not be ignored. Nima found her eyes drawn to the glinting sparkles scattered across the room from the stained glass, wondering if the yellow shimmers were like the fireflies she had learned of last week.

Or, when mixed with the reds and oranges…like fire itself, burning hot and quick, puffs of smoke and ash left behind with a faint pop, more felt than heard.

She blinked, and caught her mother’s odd, fixed smile. “Che khub.”

“What’s good, madar?” Nima tore her gaze away from where she’d imagined flame. “I’m sorry. I got distracted by the lights.”

“I was beginning to worry.” Parvaneh’s eyes glinted, and Nima blinked again to clear her own. Surely the flicker of light she caught in her mother’s eyes was a reflection of the stained glass. Eyes did not crackle with the sound of a fire that needed tending.

“I don’t understand.” Nima stared at her mother’s hands with wide, dry eyes and licked her lips. Surely henna tattoos did not move of their own accord. A trick of the light, of ancient and distorted melted grains of sand.

Parvaneh smiled, and Nima thought she had never seen such sharp, wicked teeth. “You have found your fire, of course.”

Her eyes dragged back to the window. Of the colors the mashrabiya had shone in this morning, only the colors of fire remained. Dull reds had turned brilliant, oranges shone the colors of forged metal, blues white-hot and bursting, interspersed with the black of char. The lines of the stained glass blurred. Fire erupted from her hands. Nima screamed in fear and pain.

Her scream cut off as Nima realized there was no pain. Her jaw clacked shut, hard, so hard her head rattled. Then wild glee erupted from her throat, a fountain of flame spurting alongside her laughter.

“I’m a dragon!” She told her mother, whose eyes were now the gold of molten metal. Nima began to dance, extra swagger in her wiggles. She spun in circles, and did not meet the wooden floor again. A giggle of fire escaped as Nima tap-danced on air.

“No, darling,” Parvaneh said. Her smile was indulgent. “We are jinn. Have I taught you nothing?”

***

This week, Leigh Kimmel challenged me with one I struggled with. It’s just been a long week. I finally went with the intent, rather than literal inspiration. Which is probably more the point anyway, but sometimes my brain melts.
* “Pane of peculiar-looking glass from a ruined monastery reputed to have harboured devil-worship set up in modern house at edge of wild country. Landscape looks vaguely and unplaceably wrong through it. It has some unknown time-distorting quality, and comes from a primal, lost civilisation. Finally, hideous things in other world seen through it.“
My prompt went to Cedar Sanderson: “A dragonfly buzzes by your windshield. You blink, and realize those last three letters did not belong.“

Fiona Grey Writes