Personal Favorite – Prompt Inspired

The Choosing of the Gods

The request for this prompt was merely “define this character”. I decided that her outward appearance of strength would not be what defined her.

I peeked through the tent flap and caught a glimpse of movement in the distance. A lookout. I shrank back to wait, then peeked out again. They would not stop me, of course, but neither would they leave me to myself. Finally, the way seemed clear. I rushed into the shelter of trees and darkness to the holy spring, the only place that was mine. Any other would be driven mad to walk here, they said. Perhaps it was true.

I looked into the water and beheld myself, painted in the patterns that marked me as the God-Chosen. I did not feel God-Chosen. Paint stained the water as I touched the surface, and it was like it washed the strangeness out of me. Suddenly I had to be clean. I scooped water, scrubbing the paint away. I rubbed my face and neck until my skin felt raw, and the paint bloomed into the water, carried away by the spring’s flow.

Finally, I saw my face reflected in the moonlight. This young girl, who was she? Not the God-Chosen of a tribe. The elder God-Chosen — my mother — said that the gods spoke to me through the spill of runes from my hands. But did they? My hands felt like a girl’s hands, clumsy and unsure. I heard no voices, and I made no promises as she had done. Perhaps it was for the best. The gods were capricious, and had used false words to toy with her before.

I touched the water as if laying my hand upon a friend’s brow, addressing my words to the reflected moon in the night sky. “My name is not Hesralta God-Chosen. I am Sryilla Tusfelt. I am a girl. And I am lonely.”

“Your mother was not lonely, at your age.” Continue reading “The Choosing of the Gods”

Sentences from Sentience

The moderator of a forum for humans, aliens, and sentient AI’s discovers a sentient in danger.

Due to the nature of this post, written in HTML formatting to mimic online forums, I had to make a choice. Either the whole HTML-formatted story can be presented on the main page as a preview, or none of it. With the prompt here to describe the story somewhat, I opted to keep this page orderly.

The Poop Train

Through a series of events, I somehow committed myself to writing a story titled “The Poop Train.”

I leaned against the observation glass and looked down at the bands of Jupiter from low orbit. After a moment, I pointed. “There. Right there. See it? Find that storm, the swirl on the equator; it’s just passing left of it.”

“What . . . that little ripple?” Maya looked disappointed. I’d promised to show her monsters, after all.

“Wait for it. There’s only one reason they come so close to the surface. Any minute now.”

We watched, and we waited. The bands bulged and tore as the gas serpent breached the atmosphere. It twisted and lashed, flinging an enormous crystal from its tail, with a motion like the crack of a whip. Bracing myself into a seat, I pulled a laptop over to me on its swivel mount, programming a drone to intercept the crystal.

“That was … but the storms! They’re supposed to be huge! How big was that thing?”

“That one? There’s no guessing how long, it’s rare to see the whole thing break cover at once. It looked to be a couple of dozen kilometers across, so maybe seven, eight hundred–”

“Eight hundred?!”

“–Kilometers long . . . they get pretty big.”

“But we’re safe up here?”

“Oh, yeah. It can’t breach a thousandth of the distance it’d take to reach us. That’s a lot of gravity down there.” I pushed out of the chair, floating to her, and folded her in my arms. As I caught her, our mismatched momentum started us spinning. I touched a toe to the window briefly, to steady the spin; a lifetime working in space, and such things were natural to me.

Not her, though. She was clumsy in space and had gotten caught floating without a handhold in reach more than once. The first time she had come on board, she leaped into the cockpit like she was diving into a pool, and struck her head on the navigation console. Now she was timid and ready to panic until I steadied us.

“What is that stuff? Why do they throw it like that?”

“It’s fuel for the tunneling drive, purer than any synthetic process can produce. It’s poison to them and can break down violently under pressure, so they get rid of it. They do a better job preserving their habitat than humans do.”

“So . . . it’s poop?”

“It’s Heisenium seven.”

“Yeah, but Heisenium seven is poop.”

“It’s not . . . alright. Yes. It’s poop. I’m the conductor of the poop train, all right?”

She giggled, her hands flattening against my chest. “Sorry I teased you.”

I could never stay angry at her. My eyes softened at her caress, and I was about to make a few interesting suggestions on how to spend our time in orbit when an orange star caught my eye, hardening my expression. I braced my back against the glass, pushed her towards her seat. “Strap in.” Continue reading “The Poop Train”

Murine Honor

If you’ve tried to ride a cat into battle, you should know it doesn’t turn out well.

Original

The enemy lined up in the distance. Their snarls and growls made me shiver, the tremble shaking me to the bones. “Steady on,” my mount purred.

I took a breath, calming myself, reaching forward to scratch behind his pointed ears. “Nerves like steel, whiskers like wind.” I repeated the battle mantra, imagining the steel in my bones. It was a pretense, imagining strength where there was none – I knew how easily my bones, tiny in comparison to the enemy, would break. And yet, it worked. I was calmer, and ready. Continue reading “Murine Honor”

Impression

‘Camping’

This is the second story in what I call the ‘Soul’ series, based on artwork by Kleg.(DeviantArt)

Artwork:RV, by Kleg(DeviantArt)

Original

The RV – and me, laying on top of it – came into sight on the laptop’s screen as I piloted the drone up the hillside. My fingers danced over the keyboard, angling the camera to keep the RV in view. I eased the drone into the corridor that the road carved through the forest, and had it shed altitude as it closed in for a landing. As it settled to the roof beside me, I saw myself through the drone’s camera, shadowed but illuminated by the laptop’s screen. I smiled to see myself, and I watched my lips twitch into a smile. I’d never quite get used to that. I turned onto my side to dismounting the camera from the drone, connecting it to my laptop. I heard the ping that indicated the footage was downloading. Continue reading “Impression”

Expression

This is the first story in what I call the ‘Soul’ series, based on artwork by Kleg.(DeviantArt)

Artwork: City Lights, by Kleg. (DeviantArt)

Original

I picked up speed down the gentle incline, leaning into the wind as the skateboard carried me faster and faster. At his hour there were few pedestrians out, and I slalomed back and forth, weaving past them. A shout, a curse, a whimpery gasp of fear as I whipped by pedestrians. I ignored them.

My hair streamed in the wind. The air tasted like freedom. And my mastery over the board under my feet, the hard-won affinity for this extension of my body, that tasted even better.

Then I was there. I pivoted my board and slid until I reached a full stop. I kicked the nose up and lifted it, slipped it through the cargo netting on my pack. My other hand raised the camera from my hip, holding it before me.

I took a moment and absorbed my surroundings. Behind me, cars whizzed up and down the overpass. The sun was setting, and I stood in the single place from which I could see the entire city. From this angle, I could see fragments of the city beyond and around every high-rise and office building.

Headlights crawled up and down the roads, and the building lights shone, turning on and off. There was not a single cloud, and the wind off the mountain had swept away the smog, leaving only a faint halo around each bright city light. I was not going to get a better shot.

Continue reading “Expression”

Retirement Plans

Um, no. How about we don’t, and say we did…

Artwork by Tomislav Jagnjic (ArtStation)

I stared up at the living mountain before us. We rode atop a ridge, and we could look at the spiral emblem on its ‘face’ without craning our necks too far. When we got close, we’d have to climb its body just to attack the top of its toe.

“So . . . that’s the thing, huh?”

Jamon looked on with me, nodding once. “Yup.”

Continue reading “Retirement Plans”

Inseparable

Hello, sister.

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Hello, Sister by Sakimichan(Deviant Art)

I frowned over the maps, with my head bowed under the weight of a kingdom. The Mirsken Hain were still pressing my southern borders, hard enough to cost me soldiers and morale, but not hard enough to convince The Nine to take up arms. They worried too much about setting a precedent of bending to the whims of humans. The First thought we could maintain an iron border forever.

In the meantime, my people were paying the price of complacency. None of the other eight kingdoms were bound to send soldiers to my border if we were not at war, and the crisis was not yet dire enough for me to plead for aid. But eventually, action would be required.

The Hain had allies protecting almost every border but the one shared with my kingdom, and could devote the full force of their military to a campaign. I knew that they wanted the southern mountainsides and the diamonds that were being mined there. They would take almost two hundred square miles of territory to hold the mountains and two hundred more to secure them. But to reveal their plans I would have to explain how I learned them, and that would put my sister at risk.

Continue reading “Inseparable”

Timid Reaper

You run a night school for assassins. The other professional assassins loathe you for turning customers into self-sufficient killers. You would get frustrated by their constant attempts on your life, if they didn’t make for such good lessons for your students…

Original

I strode across to the podium, before the diagram of the human skeleton and circulatory system. The class was small, ten people. I found it to be my optimum class size. Any more and my students began to look like a forest, not trees. Any less, and I might have trouble with my payments.

“Well? Anybody?”

One tentative hand rose up. She was a slip of a girl. Her demeanor was timid, her hand trembling in the air. None of her classmates took her seriously. They were new, yet. Not all of them quite realized that I wasn’t here to teach them how to fight, but how to kill. Ellen’s ‘fragile flower’ act would serve her well.

Continue reading “Timid Reaper”

Trauma Entertainment

The World is a peaceful place. Everyone is Happy. Nothing Bad is happening to anyone. Every person has everything they need. Everyone is well mannered, and Mean people do not exist.

Original

I heard the scream and looked around. Nobody else seemed concerned. People walked up and down the street, nobody looking up. There it was again. “No! Stop! Get off me!”

It was coming from the alleyway. I rushed into the darkness, my eyes taking a moment to adjust after the bright sunlight. He was tall, muscular, and there was a tattoo of an eagle straddling a swastika on his bald scalp. In his free hand, he twirled a knife with a shocking degree of skill.

“Just relax, little peacock, it won’t hurt as–” I barrelled into him, hard. The knife skittered across the pavement, musical as different surfaces of it struck the pavement. Continue reading “Trauma Entertainment”