1. This is where things change– these next few words control their future. Only it’s not about saving the world anymore, only how badly they’ll destroy it.

2. “Do you know what time it is?” He grinned over the counter, hands conspicuously behind his back.

“I swear, if you have what I think you have–”

“Da-da-da Banana Time!” He unloaded the bag of groceries with a flourish of unrepentant glee. Only Darren could sneak ice cream sundaes into the house without fearing mom’s wrath. Being the baby of the family has its benefits… plus the rest of us get ice cream, so we can’t complain.

3. Cats are well known for being able to see spirits. Mittens was fine with that, it was the part about spirits being able to see her that the kitten found unnerving.

4. There are levels to pain and she worked her way down through each one, unraveling as she went.

5. It was easier to live in forests than the wide open plains. After a decade shipboard they’d grown used to enclosed areas and the unending horizons unnerved them. Yolan took it hardest, always pushing himself to go a little further from the shade, furious when the sense of impending danger finally sent him scurrying back.

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

1. Because the best adventures are the ones you don’t see coming.

2. There’s a silence here, hiding in-between the cracks, a distant echo of the times when I was alone. Memories muffled by the tread of booted feet and the crumble of debris, torn loose as they chip away my shell. I wonder sometimes what they think they’ll find. My children have done their work too well, no one alive remembers me. The dead –whose memories are twined among my latticework– shift in the darkness, muttering to themselves.

3. It’s oddly comforting, the feel of warm earth between fingers and toes. Maddy could weed with confidence now, finally certain in here ability to tell arboreal friend from foe. It was oddly ironic how unprepared they’d been, even with a thirty year trip to prepare themselves. They’d stocked the ships with all the knowledge they needed on how to survive, but it had been all intellect and no application ’till they finally touched down. They’d been schooled to expect the unexpected, but Humanity had forgotten just how unnerving the unfamiliar was. [USED 10/12/08]

4. They saw the world as a web of electromagnetic fields, a blue-green net that sparked and shimmered in the dark.

5. Port is wine, and port is left, and port is safe haven in a storm, but for ships of the line, that thin starlit line, port is the slanting roll of guns; up and to the left, where there is no up and no left, and they fill the vacuum with silent fire.

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