Saturday Story Prompt Collections
2015
By Martha Bechtel, Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2015 Martha Bechtel
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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~*~*~*~
Writer's Block is no fun for anyone, but sometimes all it takes to get your Muses
rolling again is a prompt or two... hundred. Which I happen to have in these pages, so
welcome!
Saturday Story Prompts range from single sentences to longer chunks of prose
and are set in fantasy, science fiction, and generic genres. If you're not familiar with my
style of prompts, please hop over to my website (www.Martha.net) and checkout the
Saturday Story Prompts category.
All of these prompts are available for free on my blog, but this eBook is an easy
way to carry a whole year's worth of plot bunnies in one handy file. (Plus it doubles as
an awesome alternative to a tip jar.)
You're free to use any of these prompts, modified or verbatim, as starting points
to create your own for-profit works; however you may not simply republish them as
prompts.
~*~*~*~
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
~*~*~*~
2015.01.03
1. The walls around the city are barely three feet tall; nothing on this planet ever
learned to jump or climb.
2. Going partially deaf is more terrifying than he'd prepared for. His brain is all too
willing to fill in the emptiness with what it expects to hear, and his mind teases voices
from the static.
3. Running from your past is easy, it's your future that's harder to escape.
4. When they said ninety percent of the writing on the Internet was crap, they
were being optimistic. But somewhere in the archives was the data he needed, so if it
took him weeks or months to hone the search algorithms it was still worth the dig.
5. She has twelve souls under her watch, to guide and guard from the gates of
Hell. So every full moon when they lose themselves, she does the killing for them.
2015.01.10
1. Magic burns like hot peppers, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not.
2. "I worry about you," she said, tucking away a strand of hair from his face,
"You're too newly hatched to face this test."
"I am from a line of Kings," he objected. "I've been bred for this, it's what I was
meant to be."
"I hope so."
"I know so."
3. Two shadows trot along the ridge of darkness. Only a breath brighter than their
surrounds, they're ghostly echoes of what the dark used to be.
4. The world is full of noise, hundreds of things constantly demanding her
attention... So one day she turned it all off.
5. "I think you've missed the point. This isn't about the end of the world, it never
was. This has always been just about you and me."
2015.01.17
1. All children under the age of eight are simply known as 'Child.' Names could
only be used once and were too precious to waste.
2. "Mortals are rarely clever," said the dragon as he let her go. "So it seems I
should encourage the behavior."
3. Puppy season in the kennels is a constant torrent of noise. The sign language
that had been mildly useful before is critical now.
4. "I do know you," he said unruffled. "You pay your taxes early and drive the
speed limit and carefully follow all the lines you've ever been told to walk. Now I'm
asking you to break them."
5. Magic bound by 'Harms None' is actually more limited that people think.
2015.01.24
1. I waited for three hours, which was probably two and a half hours too long, but
it takes a long time for hope to die.
2. The cloth feels like air on his skin, featherlight and richly indulgent in a way he
hasn't felt for years.
3. "I hate to ask, but did it ever occur to you to tell them no? No, you can't use the
neighbor's kid as a human sacrifice. No, you can't make a pact with a demon? Because
honestly, it should have."
4. Shadows are static things in a world where the sun never moves.
5. The last time I was here the forest was on fire.
2015.01.31
1. Cooking is the one thing he can lose himself in. It takes all of his concentration
to handle the intricate dance of keeping multiple dishes going and in the midst of the
chaos he can finally forget.
2. There are years scattered among the bones, unused and forfeit. She gobbles
them up in greedy handfuls.
3. The winds on the tops of the mountains howl by them, tradewinds that spur the
constant cloud movement stratified below. Nothing survives here but the iron mountain
itself.
4. Laundry wasn't anything he gave much thought to before the transition, now
he's constantly aware of how many changes of clean clothing he has left.
5. The world is unfair, she knows that; she's lived through the proof too many
times to count, but it still catches her off guard.
2015.02.07
1. The ends of stories are often just as jarring as the beginning. After a lifetime of
facing sudden death at every turn, we stumble into wide undefined futures of peace and
happily-ever-afters.
2. She pays everyone to do her chores, a sibling black market that goes
unnoticed by the parental police.
3. I spent all yesterday fighting the urge to rearrange the silver collection. Again.
...Which means the dragon is coming back.
4. This is the legacy of the stars; a burning paranoia of being planet-bound. They
can't stand the idea of their survival being tied to a fragile chunk of rock so they are
nomads, but they survive.
5. "That should have killed you."
"I know, I don't, what--" he looked down in shock, cataloging the scrapes and
bruises and the unnerving lack of broken bones. "What happened?"
2015.02.14
1. He has a hard time letting go, even after time grinds the stones to sand around
him. Love doesn't come easily to Gods.
2. "It's not war until the public is uncomfortable." She said with an amused snort,
"Until that point it's just a 'conflict' or a 'peacekeeping mission'-- a show of force
someplace far away. Your job is to stop the bad guys, mine's to keep anyone from
noticing you're doing it."
3. Normal children have a multitude of yearnames to disguise them from the evil
spirits and keep them safe. I've only had one name, but the demons refuse to take me.
4. She loved repairing antiques. There was something immeasurably satisfying
about bringing the furniture back to its former glory. So few things were handmade
anymore, much less decades or centuries old.
5. Learning to walk on four legs is only slightly easier than learning to walk on
two. Mageforms don't come with the instinctual skills of true shapeshifters.
2015.02.21
1. There is in all of us, the seeds of darkness.
2. Dancing isn't a formal thing here, instead it's a series of ever evolving moves
passed on from town to town and invented on a whim. He lurks on the edges of the
happy chaos, too used to the regimented dance halls of home.
3. "I don't think you're listening to me."
"Good catch, I'm not."
"This is important, lives are at stake!"
"I know, why do you think I'm ignoring you? Let me work."
4. Robots can't do everything, at least not yet, so there's still plenty of work to be
done in the colonies. She might not be skilled, but she's one heck of a handyman and it
keeps her fed as she wanders the planet.
5. Sundown is beginning of their day, until the predators are asleep it's too
dangerous to work.
2015.02.28
1. "You have to ask twice," he laughed as she glared at the ashed remains of her
burnt offering," nothing immortal is listening well enough to hear it the first time."
2. The King's Dance is a dual, not a duet, and the courts can only watch as in
mandated silence as the new crown prince is chosen.
3. It's not that nothing happens here, there's always something happening no
matter how small the town, it's that nothing new happens. Everyone is settled into ruts
generations deep and it's going to take more than one teenager's wanderlust to shake
them loose.
4. Four miles later the last of the horses died.
5. It would have been a perfect job if it hadn't been for those darned owls!
2015.03.07
1. The tree has weathered a thousand storms, resolute against the winds and
rains that tore its brethren asunder.
2. "I thought I remembered you from somewhere," she said. "But to be honest I
didn't try very hard."
3. Seven locks for seven doors is a turn of phrase that means a possible
impossible task-- the princess isn't sure she's comfortable with people using her
imprisonment (and subsequent rescue) as slang, but royal decrees don't carry as much
weight as they used to.
4. They don't go to the shore for the sea, but the life along the sea. Rocky tide
pools and saltwater marshes brim with life and profit, if you know where too look.
5. Time is something I have to waste, but precious little ways to do so.
2015.03.14
1. He was dead for a few hours before he realized he'd stopped breathing. To be
fair, it wasn't something he'd paid that much attention to before the accident.
2. The road is nothing more than well-churned mud and they learn quickly it's
easier to fight the brush at the end of the fields than fallow in it.
3. "I hate it when people ask what one thing about your life would you change,"
she waved the remains of the croissant at me. "You can't change one thing, changing
anything changes everything. Butterflies and hurricanes!"
4. It's possible to keep time by the moons, but that involves more math than he's
willing to do as he waits for rescue.
5. The truth doesn't just hurt, it burns. So it's easier to find the small white lies
that say almost the same thing.
2015.03.21
1. Life sneaks up on you with tiny changes that don't seem so alarming until you
try and wake up, but don't.
2. Cars are vanity items, there are too few roads to drive on.
3. Everyone is born with a set amount of magic and once it's gone there is no
way to get it back... at least that's what science has told us.
4. "Normally I love it when a plan comes together, but to be honest I'm still leery
of calling this a 'plan'."
5. Flames play along her hair, just faint enough to see, but never enough to burn.
Memories of another death that cast echoes on her current self.
2015.03.28
1. There are certain disadvantages to having large flying herbivores and
carnivores. Thankfully most of them land to eat.
2. Growing old is more luck than anything else so the 'wisdom of the elders' isn't
something that ever occurred to them.
3. The world tilts between spring and summer without ever dipping into fall, much
less winter. Everything grows nonstop and its exhausting to keep up with the harvests.
4. Painting the house lifts her mood so they can tell by the ways the colors
change what kind of month she's having.
5. No matter how many ships they send out, how many worlds they colonize, and
skies they fill with satellites, space if still, on the whole, silent.
2015.04.04
1. She doesn't want to go off into the world and seek her fortune, there are plenty
of fortunes here at home.
2. They invent games to play on the long trips between the stars. The ships travel
faster than messages can follow, so there's literally nothing new unless they create it.
3. Half-formed ideas run rampant until she hunts them down. Plot bunnies
bouncing off mental walls, caught and cataloged to make them safe.
4. "Don't think of it as exile, think of it as a vacation!"
5. They stumble across the last of the horses grazing in a dead-end street, a sad
thin reminder of what could have been. After a moment it turns away leaving them alone
in the dust.
2015.04.11
1. His word was literally law, every statement unquestionable and irrefutable...
Hence the vow of silence.
2. It takes two shots to kill a dragon, one for the heart and one for the brain.
3. Her time runs out just as she crosses the street. The sudden yank offline
disorients her just long enough for the EMTs to swoop in and grab her without
resistance. It never occurs to anyone to ask how the ambulance got there so quickly.
4. "I think you made a bad decision," she said finally. "I'm your mother and I love
you, but I can't agree to this."
5. Hearts break, that's what they're meant for.
2015.04.18
1. "Don't stop," he said. "Never ever stop believing that you're really alone in an
empty room. Because the moment you doubt-- you aren't."
2. The beat is catchy even if the language is unfamiliar and they end up dancing
their way through first contact laughing as they work out the kinks.
3. The dogs are all as black as night, silent shadows that run along beside the
horses as they flee.
4. He spends a lifetime learning the secrets of the universe and in return it gives
him a thousand lifetimes to enjoy it.
5. She tries to explain that the world isn't dying, but it takes them a while to come
to grips with the idea of winter.
2015.04.25
1. For the first time since the war enveloped us, the skies are silent.
2. His days begin and end with the clock-like hum of the sleep pods as they sing
him in and out of cryosleep.
3. The windows of the cell are too high up to see out and the meager patch of
sunlight never creeps far enough down the wall to touch with more than his fingertips.
4. We don't shift shapes as werewolves do, but instead merge beings with our
animal bondmates. It's a partnership, not a possession, so we choose our other selves
with care.
5. There's a shadow by the doorway that hasn't moved in an hour, but somehow
she can see it breathing.
2015.05.02
1. Colors are the first things to go as her sight fails over into the shared mind.
2. "I never thought you were stupid," she said angrily, "not once in all the time I
knew you did you ever appear incompetent or dimwitted-- but now, NOW!"
3. Their stories are meant to teach or inspire and are recited with a ritualistic
cadence than Hollywood has been hard-pressed to duplicate.
4. The fort rises from the treeless plains in a sudden upsweep of timber and clay.
It was built it from the wreckage of the wagons, brought over the mountains a
generation ago as their grandparents fled the armies of the Dark.
5. It isn't pain so much as pressure, but the sudden sharp changes are enough to
keep him from sleep.
2015.05.09
1. "Memories and dust are what built my foundations," the building said. "You can
make powerful concrete from the past."
2. The fall sky is full of clouds and migrating birds, but the flocks are so massive
she can't tell where one begins and the other ends.
3. Dogs follow the caravan like sharks behind ships.
4. Holidays and vacation make her nervous. Her everyday routine is gone and
someone else dictates when and where she will be-- she feels untethered.
5. A child's birthday is a joyous celebration of beating the odds. An adult's
birthday is a stark look at how much they contribute and how much they consume.
2015.05.16
1. Fish are boneless jelly-like things made of flexible cartilage and air pockets
that stiffen when needed.
2. It's more like chemistry than magic, there are standard recipes for everything
from healing wounds to creating light and everyone with the the right materials can
bypass the laws of physics.
3. I often wondered why she left, the cottage was as close to prefect as I could
imagine, where else was there to go?
4. "No one cares! They didn't care when you started this whole mess and they
certainly don't care now that it's over. All we care about is surviving, not whose fault it
was."
5. There's a joke that "those who can't, teach" but ability isn't always translatable.
Sometimes Peter Pan is the only one who gets to fly.
2015.03.23
1. The best thing about running an inn is all the adventures come to him. It's
chaotic, but never boring!
2. There are too many things to do and not enough time-- so she triages reality
as the storm grows nearer.
3. Everything they try fails and in they end they are all infected. There is no
immunity, no vaccine, and only fully infected children survive those first fragile hours
after birth. No other ships can land and they can't be allowed to leave-- in a single
generation my home become a world of the dead.
4. The soup is barely even flavored water, but it's warm and plentiful and it's
easier to starve while feeling full.
5. "Why should I tell you anything? You'll just get mad-- you always get mad, no
matter what you promise."`
2015.05.30
1. "I told you never to follow me."
2. Every day she makes new resolutions and every night she breaks them.
3. It's been passed down from generation to generation, wrapped in a
disintegrating shroud of myth and legend that only hint at what lies inside. A relic of an
ancient war waiting patiently for an attack that will never come.
4. For a second her brain insists it's just a spider, but the legs have too many
joints and it moves with a fluidness that's distinctly alien.
5. The cat is fuzzy around the edges with quantum probabilities.
2015.06.06
1."No one leaves these woods alive."
"I know," he said, unfazed, "I wasn't planning on leaving."
2. Children only have two kinds of silence: Asleep and Up To Something.
3. There are no true pets here, every animal works to a specific purpose as
decreed in the holy writ. Every spring those that fails the tests are fed to those that don't
and by this tempering the strength of the whole improves. The War made them weak,
but the Word will make them strong again.
4. She was fine until the ghosts started following her to work.
5. That isn't how the story ends, but he's told it often enough to know that no one
wants to hear the truth. So he tells them lies and they applaud and buy him supper and
the dead go unavenged.
2015.06.13
1. It wasn't until she was dying that she remembered she was only pretending to
be human.
2. There were two grandfather clocks in the hall, one for the future that could be
and one for the future that would be... and on Tuesday they both stuck midnight at the
same time.
3. "Names mean nothing." She said curtly, "You can call a rabbit a horse till the
sun goes down, but it still can't pull a plow."
4. For the first time in their lives food is everywhere, more than they could hope
to eat in a hundred lifetimes, and it changes everything.
5. "I wish someone had told much how much it would hurt to watch them leave."
2015.06.20
1. Dragons always traveled in pairs, one above, one below, but this dragon was
wandering the forest alone.
2. I promised my mother only one thing in my life, that I'd never grow up to be like
her. Tomorrow I break that promise.
3. The crowds here aren't anything like the ones at home, they're larger and
more focused, but also infinitely more polite.
4. "Everyone picks something to be good at," he said dismissively, "sports, art,
science-- I just picked something a little less ordinary."
5. The mist swirled around her like a dying thing, clawing against the spell with
grave-damp fingers.
2015.06.27
1. Dogs travel with you, cats travel in tangent arcs.
2. "Stop thinking with your heart!" The alien grabbed the gun from Marc, but the
refugees had already scattered into cover. With a curse it flung the gun back at him.
"This nurturing thinking is counterproductive, you are ill-evolved for conflict."
"Yeah, you keep thinking that," Marc muttered.
3. Looking at the sky you'd swear it was seconds away from a downpour, but it's
been that way for days without a drop.
4. Two men show up at my door a week after my mother’s death. They are polite
but firm and I find myself buried in the minutiae of survivorship.
5. One day the tide came in and never left.
2015.07.04
1. By the time they can get to her they'd lost all hope, but Ro's magic has trapped
her at the cusp of death. She looks peacefully asleep, entangled in the horror of her
wounds.
2. My life is marked not in days or years, but in the slow churn of progress
around me.
3. The metal ship is unnaturally steady. Without the pitch and roll of it's proper
wooden cousins, I hardly feel that I am at sea at all.
4. I never asked to be a dragon.
5. Nanniebots are everywhere, a thousand phantom mothers that keep the world
afloat while we are at war.
2015.07.11
1. My mother was the only one that cared if I came home, so I made sure never
to disappoint her.
2. The music rises from the orchestra pit, a fog of soft woodwinds punctuated by
sharp darting flutes and the deep rumble of the drums.
3. "I very specifically didn't promise you anything." he said, brushing her hand
away in annoyance. "I thought I had been clear on that point."
4. Living in glass houses turned out to be a lot easier than they imagined
5. The dogs are very faintly wrong in a way she can't quite place, as if they were
simple pretending to be dogs.
2015.07.18
1. There are forty-seven steps between the front door and the mailbox and she
counts them every day until the letter comes.
2. The spell is a simple one, but it's that simplicity that works against her now.
3. Sixteen is too young to die, if you believe the laws.
4. The river runs cold, even in the height of summer. Ice water from the glaciers
pours down in a constantly stream of unpolluted, but freezing water
5. "Did you ever mean it when you make those promises?" She watched the kid
walk away from them, new hope putting a skip in his step.
"I always mean it," her companion said, "but keeping them is harder than you
think."
2015.07.25
1. "We hate to call them expendable," he looked down at the dog fondly, "but
realistically-- we're all expendable when we need to be."
2. There is nothing as humbling as realizing you've been stood up.
3. Magic is everywhere, but in dilute amounts too weak to feed even the smallest
spell. Thankfully being able to tap that power is an evolutionary leap that both plants
and animals have made, so the colonists need only to step into the apex of the food
chain to reap the benefits.
4. The lumbering beasts are hard to classify in Terran terms. The closest she can
come is a pig crossed with a jackrabbit, but the resulting mess is easily the size of a
water buffalo. Thankfully all the report asks for is 'Is there life?' with no explanation
required.
5. It's a blindingly bright day, the kind where you have to fight to remember how
cold it really is outside.
2015.08.01
1. The world is still fuzzy and off-kilter, but at least it's not the suffocating
blackness of before.
2. Fire, iron, and wood: these are the three elements of my town. Water is
scarce, stone is nothing by iron oxide, and scrub trees are all that manages to grow.
3. She builds skyscrapers out of tin cans and Tupperware, a metropolis of
scavenged dishes.
4. Two things end up saving the world: dumb luck and abject stupidity.
5. No one noticed when he left, the chaos of the fire was too enthralling and
without anyone directly assigned to watch him it was easy enough to escape.
2015.08.08
1. Before the war, I would have punched her back.
2. Herd animals are more apt to kill you than predators. They don't care if you're
edible or how dangerous you are-- all they care is that trampling has always worked
before.
3. "Sit down, sit down." He offers the best of his chairs to the guest, who remains
standing with a frown.
4. For fun they've built a massive useless window across the spaceship's bow,
kept safe with magic instead of science, just for the horrified looks from other ship's
engineers every time they dock.
5. She can't hear their screams anymore over the sound of the wind.
2015.08.15
1. The vulture is massive and its dark wings conceal most of the body as it
defends its prey.
2. 'Shots fired' means different things to different people, but I'd worked with
McCarthy long enough to know it really meant 'I'm hit.'
3. Never tell a Wyvern the truth.
4. The lights in the house are always dimmed so the shadows that scurry from
corner to corner are harder to see and easier to ignore.
5. "You should have picked someone else," he said in lieu of an apology. "I told
you that when we started."
2015.08.22
1. Ghosts are only the memories we keep, the dead have no need to linger.
2. The safeguards only allow him to dodge, no matter how potent the attack. Until
they officially choose sides, the computers can't classify the locals as lawful combatants
in the war.
3. I used to be scared of space, the vast never-ending emptiness of it, but once I
got out there I found there were plenty of more important things to fear.
4. The bird is all colors and no colors at once, an ever shifting prism of glass
feathers and polished steel.
5. A half-marathon seemed like a good idea at the time, but apparently they
weren't kidding when the guides warned that 'training is required'.
2015.08.29
1. He hides his life under the stage makeup and costuming, burying his past and
present under the comforting blanket of borrowed sins.
2. Two lights hung on the horizon. Then one. Then none. And with the darkness
came the end of the war.
3. "It's not us versus them!" She objected.
"But it is!" He slammed down the sword hilt he was working on. "It's exactly that. I
know you don't want to believe it, but it's high time you got your head on straight."
4. I learned a long time ago to stop wanting things.
5. The unicorns are small brutish things, compact and packed with muscle.
Virgins or not, they all quickly learned to avoid them.
2015.09.05
1. The sun rose and set behind a thick cloud bank, the only hint of daylight was a
band of deep rose hue that crept across the sky.
2. I was ten when I died, which is older than most of my kin.
3. "Computers are finicky things," she thumped the side of the server at it
grumbled at her. "Don't mind their lectures on 'garbage in, garbage out', sometimes they
just refuse to work."
4. Magic lingers in the inanimate without the constant churn of life to wear it
away.
5. Some days I feel like I've forgotten more than I ever learned. Classes fade into
obscurity almost as soon as they are over.
2015.09.12
1. Rockrats have gnawed the path away leaving only scraps of wood where the
giant timbers had been.
2. New starts happen every moment of every day and he could start over, put
aside this life and begin again... but he doesn't.
3. "If no one listens to you, why do you keep doing this?"
"Because they could start and as soon as I stop even that paltry hope is gone."
4. It's easier to lead dogs than men. There's no cultural taboos to fight, no
traditions to argue with, she is Alpha and that's all they need.
5. Emails pour in like vultures after each loss, a constant reminder minute by
minute of what could be --will be-- in the coming days.
2015.09.19
1. The stars take our best and brightest and grind them to dust.
2. "The best stories start with 'if only,'" she said, carefully unwinding the yarn.
"Always trade for those, if you can. Never barter for what did happen, at best those tales
are just old news and at worse are full of lies."
3. You can buy anything in the bazaar. Nothing is illegal in these winding streets,
but in a very carefully controlled way, so as not to offend.
4. Distance weapons are dishonorable, inherently evil in their very nature and
she shivers as she touches the bow.
5. Wavelengths aren't quite the same here and colors are flatly muted, some
shades missing altogether. It hasn't seemed to bother the plants, but the resulting offcolor jungle makes for a surreal landscape.
2015.07.26
1. Sharks prowl the foot of the castle's cliff waiting for the next Year King to fall.
But it's been three years since she took up the crown and her faith is still strong enough
to fly.
2. The sky is a flat endless blue with only the faintest hint of shading at the
horizon. It looks fake, as if some scene painter had run out of time and simply given up.
3. It's a stupid joke. A stupid, unfunny, pointless joke, but it's been such a long
week he can't stop laughing and after an incredulous pause the others join in.
4. The world doesn't pause so much as simply pass her by, time continues on
without her leaving her adrift in memories.
5. I went for a walk one day and never came home again.
2015.10.03
1. You aren't supposed to fire people by text message, but she really wasn't sure
what she'd expected.
2. Venom drips from the dragon's fangs as it yawns, decorating the boulder with
splashes of gold. Its mouth stretches wide enough to swallow even the largest of the
pack beasts in a single bite. All they can do is wait and hope it falls back asleep.
3. The war is an ever-present context in a way he'd forgotten from his childhood.
It shows every conversation, every breath.
4. The seasonal migration of the tribal bands is marked by crops, planted months
and sometimes years ahead of time. For as long as she can remember food has always
been there to welcome them home, until today.
5. "You won't forget me", he said dismissively, "don't bother trying."
2015.10.10
1. The whales breach from the ocean in spiraling arcs, turning the vampiric
leeches to ash in the scattered heartbeats they are above the waves.
2. Life is made of nothing but regrets, countless hours spent staring into the
darkness before sleep claims us replaying everything we could have– should have
done.
3. In retrospect the fact her ex-boyfriend could never connect to her home
wireless really ought to have been a sign. She's not sure if the sign was leaning more
towards 'your boyfriend is an ass' or 'your network has developed an artificial
intelligence and thinks your boyfriend is an ass'.
4. She just looks at me for a moment and then turns away. The I told you so she
doesn't say burns worse than salamander's fire.
5. The shadows are darkest right after midnight.
2015.10.17
1. Four words signal the end to generations of war.
2. It had never occurred to us that when management joked that someday robots
would be doing our jobs they were serious.
3. Dragons were massive solitary creatures. Territorial and ravenous they each
held dominion over vast tracts of land that shifted with their hunger.
4. Valentine's Day was the last time I saw my mother.
5. The fog rose twice a day, once at dawn and once at dusk. For those few
moments the horrors of the valley faded away and she could pretend that they were
safe.
2015.10.24
1. The world feels as if it's stuttering, stumbling through strobe lights, but no one
else seems to notice.
2. He was a collection of other people, mimicked behaviors and learnt
interactions. Nothing about him was real anymore.
3. Step by broad step they build the temple from a wide square base, further and
further up until the stones can go no higher.
4. "Can you stop crying?" she asked, more curious than annoyed.
5. The moons are dimmed, but not fully gone.
2015.10.31
1. They're heroes, at least for the next week or so, and they revel in the chance
to final soak in the approval of their peers.
2. Her world begins with a gunshot.
3. There are colors fur just shouldn't come in, he thought, slightly queasy at the
sight of cats dyed to look like macaws playing tag along the fenceline.
4. Shards of glass are everywhere, still sharp enough to cut after all these years.
5. "'I'll do better next time' only matters if there is a next time." She pulled the bag
up over the edge of the cliff with a grunt. "Sometimes the first chance is the only chance
you get."
2015.11.07
1. The winds come only at dusk, bringing fireflies dancing down from the hills.
For a brief moment it turns the valley into a field of stars. It's the closest she'll ever get
to going home.
2. The best way to annoy telepaths is to get a song stuck in your head, the more
inane and catchy the better.
3. Growing up in a small town wasn't the horror the other college freshman keep
assuming, but after the first dozen introductions she gave in-- it was easier to nod and
play along.
4. Food is life, but not in the way he expected. Hunger is the one thing powerful
and persuasive enough to break through the control spells.
5. "If you listen you can hear hope dying. A thousand voice crying out in-- ow!" he
yelped as she slapped him.
2015.11.14
1. The Apocalypse sounds like silence.
2. Their shadows flicker and twist independently of the light as the false heat
shimmers of magic intensify around them
3. "Stop trying to change your life all at once," she said with a wave of her halffinished danish. "Be like the bird and the pebbles."
"Pebbles?"
"You know, with the water in the glass and how it drops pebbles until the water is
high enough to drink? Don't drop boulders, don't drop sand, drop pebbles."
4. There are rules for war in polite society and he spend the years of preparation
making sure they were engraved on his heart. He meant to keep what he conquered,
unlike his father whose legacy was a trail of ash and bones.
5. Every year the leaves pile up in giant mountains ranges across the backyard
and Father vows that this year will be the year he cuts all the oak trees down.
2015.11.21
1. Her life is filled with the shadows of things she could have done and that's
darker than her brother's shadow will ever be.
2. The atmosphere is heavy with moisture, enrobing the valley in an endless fog.
It seeps into every porous surface, leaving their fingers permanently wrinkled and their
clothing a sopping mess.
3. "Marshmallows are basically candied air," she said licking the remnants of the
toasted goo off her fingers. "I like the ways these people think."
"You'd have a hard time breathing it," he pointed out, making sure the campfire
turned his own puffs of white into tasty charcoal. "But you're right, I'll take a planet with a
sweet tooth any day."
4. He waits until the last possible minute to tell her he's leaving, but even that
brief memory of grief is enough to turn the following years' joy to dust.
5. Success is measured in the number of cats you own. The more cats the more
rats, the more rats the more food-- the only crazy cat ladies here were the rich ones.
2015.11.28
1. She lived and breathed her art, saturating every moment of her life with a joy
he could never emulate, only admire. She loved him, he knew that, but he would never
come first.
2. Their stolen swords are sharpened to an edge meant for flesh not steel and
they dent and deform as he parries with the improvised rebar staff. It's brutally effective,
but his heart breaks a little as he watches his uncle's masterworks destroyed.
3. Seeing the future is a curse, not a gift, but I do my best to turn it into one.
4. "Think of me as a magical life coach," the ferret said as it curled around her
neck. "Or fairy godferret, if you must, but I am no one's 'familiar'."
5. I would have preferred to die alone.
2015.12.05
1. "Can you promise me it won’t ever happen again?" His finger never wavered
from the trigger.
After a long moment she stepped back. "No."
2. There is an ethics inherent to magic that the scientists weren't expecting, an
unexpected variable that plays havoc with their experimentation.
3. It's a forest, but there aren't any trees.
4. Dragons wrap themselves in borrowed lives, adding their victim's pasts and
futures to their own. Which is why most prefer to take the very young over the very old,
adding empty years instead of memories.
5. The mist is so fine she can barely feel it, but it's too heavy to be fog and it
reminds her of the sea.
2015.12.12
1. When the time came to graduate, I stayed home to seek my fortune.
2. Snow wraps the buildings in insulating blankets and the houses, half-buried in
the hills, are warm, toasty retreats from their chores.
3. "This is where we part ways." She stood at the edge of the bridge unwilling or
unable to cross. The reason didn't matter.
4. With two opposing suns, the difference between night and day is negligible.
The colony has adapted by taking naps instead of nights and life goes on.
5. My mind is constantly lying to me, thanks to an inherent chemical imbalance.
But over the years I've learned to filter out the chaos and adapt. So in retrospect I really
was the right man for the job.
2015.12.19
1. No one misses her more that he does, but even his sorrow fades over the
years to a dull ache.
2. 'Fire begets fire' was the closest saying the tribe has to 'turn the other cheek',
but they quickly notice it's used as a promise of violence rather than gentle admonition.
3. Some days even the idea of work, the act of trading life for money, is so
unbearably foreign that she can't help hitting the snooze alarm one last time.
4. Six people crawl out of the wreckage, but the colony can only support three.
They don't tell them immediately, they've learned it's better to wait until the newcomers
understand before they ask who is willing to die.
5. The closer you get to a system the thicker the shipping lanes get, out here in
the emptiness between the stars we're down to a comfortable single file.
2015.12.26
1. The false sun rises green above the ocean, its light meant only to keep the
dying world alive for one more year.
2. "I don't think she meant for us to die," he said as the survivors looked out
across the wasteland where they had been abandoned weeks ago. "I think she thought
we'd survive, somehow. Immortals forget what it's like to live."
3. The early morning hours make the world seem off-kilter, as if the suburbs were
truly dead instead of asleep. Streetlights cast hazy pools into streets filled with fog and
nothing else.
4. The days pass by with increasing speed. Every step further the research takes
them the giddier they become.
5. Travel is faster than it used to be, decades now instead of centuries, but few
people are willing to trade their lifetimes for the stars.
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