The mud is deep this time of year, cold from the ice melt and thick as paste it tugs us back at every footstep. The king had wanted a omen, and apparently for once the mountain was happy to provide.

Whatever cheer the party had started with was long gone by the time they reached the sun rest. Only the king’s driving desire to see his questions answered by something more than mere mortals keep them climbing. Not that they hadn’t briefly debated the merits of letting him climb his own damn mountains without them, but the honor guard was the honor guard, little things like mud and weather weren’t supposed to slow them down.

There was the traditional petition of the mountain, followed by the traditional offering, followed by the traditional long ass wait as forces beyond their ken pondered the question. Or were just lazy. Right now the soggy, cold, and thoroughly bored honor guard was betting on lazy. It wasn’t completely unexpected for the mountain to take days deciding on a response, so they had already begun setting up camp at the base of the monument when the king came barreling down from the sun rest.

Apparently the mountain wasn’t too keen on the idea of railroad tunnels.

These snippits are copyright Martha McMahon Bechtel and may not be reproduced or distributed without express permission. All rights reserved.

Technotari Tags: Fiction, Fantasy

And again, we have seeds from the Days of Long Ago! (Well, okay, these are only a year or two old, but still… *grin*)

1. This is where the story ends, back where it began, standing in the ash and the mud and watching as the world burns.

2. For a long time he wished they had just let him wander, being lost was nothing compared to the suffering of being found.

3. Everyone knew where dragons came from; from eggs, from fire, from the islands of Illofan, but everyone was wrong.

4. And after everything was said and done, nothing had changed. She still had classes to pay for and finals to take, still faced twenty-six hours a week saying ‘have a nice day’ to people who rarely took the advice.

5. It was like watching the sky collapse, one sun after the other plunging behind billowing clouds of ash.

These story prompts are released into the wild per Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License, so sayth their author Martha McMahon Bechtel.

Technotari Tags: Writing Prompts