Last night, I was feeling like I was running on one cylinder and running out of gas, but I play this writing game, 4theWords, and I really wanted to move up one step on the leaderboards for battles.
Which meant 4 130-word (or so) battles.
So I asked for suggestions on Mastodon, and this is what came of it.
Well, technically, two of these weren’t even from suggestions…
But anyway! Words!
📝
Filling the Boots
He woke and shook out the cards.
He looked at his room while he let the cards fall into a pattern. Simple place, no ornament, plain blankets, small bed.
Two formal outfits over the chair, both his size. The boots were comfortable but also in very good shape.
“Am I trying to protect someone?”
That was always the first question. The times when he woke and the answer was “no”, those were the weirdest.
The card he picked up was the Knight Protector.
“Are they my lover?”
It was hard, to fall into a role with a lover. But it had its benefits, moments of a life he’d otherwise not see.
The card was the Maiden.
“Thanks,” he muttered. Those weren’t his favorite jobs.
“Well, then, does the Nightmare love them?”
The Nightmare had been chasing him across lives – or he’d been chasing it – for longer than he could remember.
Sometimes it wanted to be his friend. Sometimes he ended up protecting /it/. Sometimes it tried to kill him.
He was harder to kill than he ever looked. The thing had only killed his body once, and that had been a fluke.
The clear sky of night looked up at him.
“They’re a moon-sleeper, good.” He lost some of his tension. The Nightmare, when it was in love, was jealous and violent. Those weren’t fun assignments.
He only had a few more questions to ask, then he could take on the mantle of his new life.
“Is someone else in love with them?”
The swain.
“Oh, the million gods, no.” He sighed. “All right. Where is the nightmare?”
He never asked that one first. Maybe he should start.
The card showed a simple room, no ornament, plain blankets, small bed.
inspired by this toot of @daHob https://tootplanet.space/@daHob/993796 (see also here.)
📝
Early Change (Fae Apoc)
He wasn’t supposed to be there that day.
He wasn’t even supposed to be in that city that day.
The string of bad luck that had led to Paul being after school, in detention, instead of in Florida, bored to tears by the Mouse but Not At School – it defied belief.
But here he was. Here Tom Harnor was. And here was his face, one more time, getting shoved into a locker because face it, chorus kids weren’t known for their muscle mass.
And he opened his mouth, to swear or something, and he just let out a note. It was a ridiculous note, low and rumbly, and it felt like the whole building was shaking.
No, the whole building was shaking, and Tom wasn’t hitting him anymore, and his tail – his what? His TAIL was lashing like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo..
Paul smiled. He didn’t feel nice about the smile, but he did feel good. “Paul /smash/.” he muttered.
~
To @skysailor‘s prompt.
📝
AU Addergoole Ghost Story
Creepy, Mind Control
Professor Solomon considered Cya thoughtfully. “Yes, of course. You always want to be careful when using Intinn. Think of it as a scalpel. And you’re performing, in essence, brain surgery. You want to know exactly what you’re doing before you do it, and you want to consider all of your reasons for doing it as well. It can certainly be abused – but it can also be a very useful tool.”
Scalpel. It wasn’t that Cya didn’t take in all of the professor’s words, it was that one word in particular stuck in her mind. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“Now, let’s start with some basic exercises.”
Five weeks later, she had enough tools to do the surgery she wanted. She woke herself up late at night seven nights in a row and, slowly and carefully, she rewrote Dysmas’ mind to be what she wanted. A real boyfriend.
~
Out of a line of RP where Leo and Cya were discussing – 50 years later – why they’d gone with specific Mentors, and what if Cya had gone with Solomon.
🖥️
https://joinmastodon.org/ is a good resource if you’re interested in mastodon, or check out https://tootplanet.space/about/more, the instance (community/URL) of Mastodon that I am on and one that is friendly, welcoming, quirky, and artsy.
ooo, filling the boots [and mind control as well] intrigues! would love to read more. reminds me of a sort of Tarot flavored Memento 😛
I was thinking like Fantasy Quantum leap, but both work!
But what ARE toots and Mastodon? Prompt sites, or…?
*points cheerfully at the links*
Mastodon is a twitter-like interface that is open-source and federated, that is, hosted across many individuals’ sites (instances). A toot is a tweet, more or less, except quite a bit longer.
• let the cards fall ^ a pattern.
^ in
• The series of bad luck
-> string
> That’s the idiom, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a series of (singular or non-count noun)
• instead of in Flordia
-> d ⇄ i