Tag: writing prompts (Page 1 of 27)

Jania paused on her way to High Command. “What are you so happy about?”

A sneeze came in response, followed by a head of bright blue hair and a twitching red nose peering through a shelf filled with old-school ledgers and boxes. “You know how I had one of those nightmare recruiters?”

She studied Anahita, datapad resting on her uniformed hip, and wished she hadn’t asked. But the other woman had been sneezing all over the records since nearly the moment she arrived. “It’s been a while. Something about not warning you that the archives weren’t digitized?”

The other woman tossed her hands in the air and shook her head. “Honestly, I should have known. This is the backup archive. But I wanted off planet. And it’s not like I realized how many sentient species there were before I agreed to catalogue all the basic records.”

Jania’s lips started to mouth a rote response. Her leg even twitched forward before she managed to stop herself. “Wait, your contract is tied to what?”

“I have to catalogue all the basic records before I can go to digital,” Anahita said, and followed her words with another sneeze. “All the initial discovery archives – that weren’t already done, of course – and then I can finally transfer. To digital. Sweet, sweet, non-dusty digital.”

“And that’s why you’re happy.” Long fingers tapped the datapad.

“Only twenty more to catalogue.” Aqua and teal streaks bobbed with joy, then sneezed again. “Files, fortunately, not boxes of files. I’ve been counting down for months.”

Jania slowly slid the datapad into her haversack. “Want some help?”

“Just make sure you let me relish the last one sliding onto the shelf.” Anahita gave her a curious look. “You’ve never talked to me for this long before.”

She shrugged and chose her words carefully. “Adjutants are always busy. I’m on my way to see General Panamat anyway, but it’s nothing time-sensitive. This is a big deal for you. I’d love to be there to see him stamp your new orders.”

And make sure he does, Jania didn’t add.

“There.” Delight sparkled among the dust motes. Another sneeze. “Cryptid Astronomica. The first discovered is the last of it.

“Then let’s go see the boss,” Jania urged. She could only delay her news for so long.

True to form, General Panamat sealed Anahita’s orders with old-fashioned wax and seal, which would be promptly digitized as soon as she left the archive wing and its wheezing air filters.

“There.”

Anahita gave a halfhearted salute and darted for the door.

Probably to change into a less dusty uniform before reporting.

“I’ll have the recruiters look for a new one, Sirrah,” Jania began, datapad already back in hand. The General receded to a slowly purpling blob of anger. “Earlier this morning, the wormhole explorers revealed a new section, currently called A4581B, Earth-normal and likely to contain sentient life…”

“It was worth the bollocking,” she told her husband a few hours later, curled into their cramped quarters. “After all, getting her out of the paper archives was the only sanitary option.”

***

Well, it needs more detail, but that’s all for now.

This week’s prompt was from Leigh: Twenty more left to catalog.

Mine went to PulpHerb: “Oh, what a diabolical idea. You should join my weekly writing plot group.” “You mean prompt?” “…No.”

Find more, over at MOTE!

“I think you exaggerate how well-off we are,” Kate said calmly. Under a wide-brimmed sun hat, one hand yanked her braid repeatedly.

Ebz kicked a rock and chose to match her tone. His words portrayed exaggerated patience. With a hint of surprise, which was exactly what he’d aimed for. “Whatever could you possibly mean?”

She threw a cactus at him. Or maybe it was a tumbleweed, hardened by the desert sun. He wasn’t sure. Either way, it was filled with pointy things that hurt when they landed.

“Lucky that didn’t hit my face.” He tried for neutral, but this time the edge bit. Adjusting his sunglasses didn’t hide his nerves from the woman who’d been an airport stranger mere hours before.

“As if your face can save us out here, Mister Fancypants Actor,” she hissed. Kate threw something else – a rock, he thought, or petrified wood. This time he ducked.

“Look, before you find a tortoise to hurl at me, let me remind you that the news will obsessively follow the crash and get us found because I’m famous, honey.”

He knew the last word had negated his point before the scorpion hit his nose. At least it was long-dead and dried, rattling in the hand he’d brought up too late to defend himself.

“Mmm,” he said, and tested a leg between two perfectly white teeth, which had cost hundreds to achieve and maintain their supposedly natural color. “Who knew deep-fried scorpions could be so tasty?”

“Again you exaggerate,” Kate snapped. “As if we had oil to deep fry. Those damn ration bars might taste better deep fried. They’re certainly worse than a dried scorpion.”

“What?” At her silence, Ebz raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow, or what had been one a plane crash and a scorpion ago. “Nothing about how it’s not actually hot enough to fry a scorpion?”

“No,” she said, and squinted toward what they’d hoped was a road, one not nearly as close to nearby as they’d thought. “It’s definitely hot enough for that.”

***

Hmm, well, I’m told I took nother Mike’s prompt – Who knew deep-fried scorpions could be so tasty? – far too literally and they’ve already made this movie. I suppose this could be a tasty treat for a group of aliens, although that might simply be literal in a more fantastical setting. Perhaps they’re wanting to eat a spaceship named the Scorpion?

Regardless, my prompt went to AC Young – find it here!

The old woman poked the fire with a singed stick, letting her skirts skim dangerously close to the coals. She’d long since learned that the natural fibers wouldn’t catch easily, and the goats that wreaked havoc on the harvest still streaked across the plains in abundance.

If they’d been able to stay in contact with Old Earth as planned, they’d have had a thriving textile export trade. Alas, the journey had been wreaked with fear sufficient to terrify a young girl.

Even now, Alice thought. It had been sixty years since her parents had shoved her stumbling across grease-scented tarmac reflecting white-hot engine heat, promising to follow. Sixty years of daily prayers that her parents would follow. Sixty years of daily prayers that they wouldn’t follow a second ship, that the first ship, her ship, had escaped their surveillance.

Sixty years since she remembered her parents’ faces, if truth be told, which is why she would not admit the words aloud so as not to make it true. Though Alice supposed it wasn’t, because that’s not counting cryo time, because no one ever did.

Long enough to forget the need to stay wary. Long enough for tales to begin the slow fade into legend, for the colony’s elders to pass on.

Her grandchildren were old enough to know the truth, now, and to understand the need to fear the shining omens in the sky that beaconed an arriving starship. From the stars came invaders, coming to claim what she and so many others had fought valiantly to build.

She settled into the rocking chair her adopted uncle had carved for after the news of her firstborn, smoothing her skirts over her knees with long practice. Once, it had been unfamiliar, a far cry from the silky unnatural things that had sustained their journey here.

She cleared her throat and stared into expectant eyes. “We grew up in fear of robotic kind. To be fair, we came by it honestly. That was until the appearance of the biotech…and that’s when the robots saved us.”

Dead leaves rattled in the freezing wind. June glanced upward, distracted by the moaning of two branches rattling. “We’re almost there.”

“Good.” Peter waved a hand at a bit of nothing that turned into something vaguely glimmering as it stuck to his palm. He rubbed it against a nearby oak trunk. “The sunset’s letting me clear the cobwebs from this clearly oft-ignored path, my lady, but it’s also a bit of a time marker.”

“Say it with that Irish lilt all you want,” June answered. “I’m aware that looks like a haunted trail. That’s intentional.”

“Seems likely to work.”

***

Hmm, that’s not quite working. Let’s try that again.

***

Dead leaves rattled in the freezing wind, skittering across cracked pavement, scurrying under June’s truck like paper-light mice.

The sudden damp chill suited the New Hampshire evening as well as her mood. Her morning had started as gloriously as the sunrise, or at least had been filled with copious quantities of caffeine and hope.

Brittle laughter rose in her throat before she smothered the outburst, as inadequate for the evening as her leather jacket now seemed.

She’d come into the semester filled with optimism and a slight sense of confusion, armed with her father’s syllabi and memories as guides to fight a desperate battle to prove herself before getting mistaken for a student yet again.

She’d wound up with a sword, fought off literal living dead men, and turned it to her advantage. Whatever waited for her – and Peter – in the tunnels was linked to the universities’ ominous miasma of increasingly strange and bloody events.

Surely, she could handle a single man being obnoxious.

Straightening, she gave the ancient, battered truck a reassuring pat.

The dean might be intent on driving her away from campus, but she wasn’t going anywhere. It was time to find out why.

“As soon as I have a spare moment,” she said out loud, and swung into the driver’s seat.

***

Well, that’s better, or at least more satisfying. Thanks for the twofer on dead leaves, Becky! My prompt on the dragon upgrade request went to Cedar, and check out more over at MOTE.

“Evans,” came the bark in the space station’s corridor.

Major Lindsay Evans couldn’t have stopped the automatic turn on her heel to respond if she’d tried. Not after three tours working for the same gruff general. He might be a pain, but she knew his quirks—and his skills at war were, she hoped, learnable to a close observer paying attention.

“Sir,” she responded politely, and waited, fingers hovering over datapad and thankful they were in a no-hat, no salute zone. General Farrokh tended to dive right into the weeds and skip over protocol, which was fine when it was the two of them in his office and otherwise awkward as she held the salute until he noticed. Usually with a deep sigh of exasperation, but he was the senior officer; it wasn’t like she had a choice.

His lack of pretentiousness was why she liked the old bat, even if it was partially for the sheer entertainment value of seeing his other subordinates squirm with discomfort. He—and now she—took great pleasure in ensuring things got done, with just enough politics to sneak past official censure.

“What’s the count?”

She tilted her head at his office door, then followed him into the entryway and his inner sanctum. Closing the door, she kept her voice soft. “Forty thousand, Sir.”

He sank into his chair and growled. A wave of his hand indicated she should sit.

Yes, she thought, he did fit the old photos of leaders with cigars. A shame they weren’t permitted on station thanks to all the air filters and fire risks, but someday, planetside, she was getting a photograph. It’d be a retirement gift, whenever the day came. Whenever the war was over.

“Forty thousand,” he rumbled. “Damn.”

Lindsay straightened. “Sir, I’m afraid I wasn’t clear.” She cleared her throat, punched her datapad, and mirrored the display to the aged screen with a fingerprint dent in the lower right hand corner. “The past week has been rather disastrous, boss. There’s no denying it was a complete Charlie Foxtrot.”

“Forty thousand men and women every day.” His hands covered his eyes in momentary denial. “Every. Damn. Day.”

She sat in silence, staring at the screen’s undeniable data.

“There’s little enough that can be done from a position of power,” Farrokh rumbled finally. He leaned back, tugged a battered locker door open, and from inside the vast depths pulled a bottle filled with amber liquid. “You learn that, when you’re in power. You protect who you can. You fight losing battles to protect those you can’t. You do what you believe, long as you can.”

He poured two glasses. “The thing I hate, and have the least amount of patience with, is the backroom dealing that breaks a good plan into something untenable. Politics that don’t understand reality.” He nudged a tumbler toward her, as quietly furious as she’d ever seen him. “The need to always take one more step up before you can actually fix things, only to find out that you’ll likely never reach the heights you need, because the system tends to win over any one individual.”

The glass was cold in her hands, the bourbon smoky with a hint of stone fruits. She held it in trembling hands, worried her numb fingers would let the treasure slip.

“To our honored dead.” General Farrokh saluted her and drained his glass. He faced the data, stoic.

She did the same, savoring the burn.

“This loss was preventable,” came the whisper, and she realized that he was crying, a single tear that symbolized terrible resolve. “This — this, I can fix. This, I have the power to do. I can’t save the dead, Evans. But I can keep it from happening again.”

***

This week’s prompt was from Parrish Baker, who is now responsible for everyone’s Blue Oyster Cult earworm (which is exactly as it should be, as that song is an epic classic): 40,000 men and women every day.

My prompt went to TA Leederman: It had been a firefly moon, and that meant…