Daily writing prompts from June 9th, 2008 to December 31st, 2022
Monday August 12th, 2019
The exercise: Write about: the life aquatic. With or without Steve Zissou. The boys had their fun at the Vancouver Aquarium today. Heading back home tomorrow.
Sometimes it's easy to work your prompts into my stories; sometimes I have to wonder what you're smoking and why you're not sharing any of it. Still, it sounds like your roadtrip is going very well, and no doubt Miles has decided he wants to be a diver when he grows up now :)
The life aquatic “Perhaps now is not the time,” said Narusheteli. Her face, though rounded out by fat, was still distinctly pixie-shaped and her smile was impish. “It would be nice to sit and chat though. There were four of you once, I remember; you are only two now?” She twirled her parasol, and just for a moment Famine saw bright yellow almond-shaped eyes peering out of the shadows inside it. “I have… I am still asleep. The stars are not yet right.” War wiped his hand across his brow, where a rivulet of blood had finally forged a way through his bushy blonde eyebrows and was trying to reach his eyes. It smeared away but began again undaunted at his hairline. “Still four of us,” he said. “Pestilence is--“ “Walking the dog,” said Famine. “She’s a hellhound. War breeds them. And Death is socialising without us.” Narusheteli’s smile grew wider. “Ah so?” The parasol stopped twirling and the blood around her feet swirled instead. The screaming started up again, only now more quietly, at the back of the mind and somehow more focused. “Indeed, I cannot sense his presence here at all. There are… winged shadows, little thanatophages, that flit around filling in, but the… unstoppable, inevitable monster is absent. Her summer dress constricted and flexed and both War and Famine realised that it wasn’t really a separate garment but somehow an extension of her skin. It rippled and corrugated, and then split open in seven places along her arm. Yellow eyes with red pupils bulged out looked sickly, like a boil had developed the ability to see. At her feet the blood swirl rose upwards as though a waterspout were slowly engulfing her and was thickening, solidifying slowly into a trunk-like structure. “What did you ask us here for?” said War. He hadn’t changed his tone of voice at all, but now the resonance was dulled and dimmed and there were more echoes that mimicked him. The church felt distinctly colder, though neither he nor Famine cared. “Stones have been lifted,” said Narusheteli. The church shook and dust poured down in tiny, dry waterfalls from the ceiling. “There was an agreement made in Ezcaray and I was invoked. They pressed me down, set stones atop me and bound me with thread harvested from oupir’ so that their secrets would hold. Now those stones are lifted and their secrets are mine to share as I choose. And I choose to tell you this in return for the knowledge that the Overarching Shadow is gone and Villameriel is mine.” Her voice had grown wetter as she spoke, and by the time she finished it sounded like she was gargling the words. She was expanding now, bulging out like an amoeba trying to split but only ever getting half-way, and there was a scent of ozone in the air. As she swelled and assumed a much-closer approximation of her true form Famine was reminded of deep-aquatic life he’d seen; things that handled such extreme pressures that travelling up by 50m was enough to radically reshape them. The accumulation of static electricity was standing all of War’s hair on end and he was starting to look like a dandelion puff. “Time to go, ho,” said Famine. He reached out to take War’s arm, and a brilliant, eye-searing white arc of electricity leapt between them. “Well that stings like buggery,” he said, making another grab for War. “Let’s go, Jean-Claude.”
2 comments:
Sometimes it's easy to work your prompts into my stories; sometimes I have to wonder what you're smoking and why you're not sharing any of it. Still, it sounds like your roadtrip is going very well, and no doubt Miles has decided he wants to be a diver when he grows up now :)
The life aquatic
“Perhaps now is not the time,” said Narusheteli. Her face, though rounded out by fat, was still distinctly pixie-shaped and her smile was impish. “It would be nice to sit and chat though. There were four of you once, I remember; you are only two now?” She twirled her parasol, and just for a moment Famine saw bright yellow almond-shaped eyes peering out of the shadows inside it. “I have… I am still asleep. The stars are not yet right.”
War wiped his hand across his brow, where a rivulet of blood had finally forged a way through his bushy blonde eyebrows and was trying to reach his eyes. It smeared away but began again undaunted at his hairline.
“Still four of us,” he said. “Pestilence is--“
“Walking the dog,” said Famine. “She’s a hellhound. War breeds them. And Death is socialising without us.”
Narusheteli’s smile grew wider. “Ah so?” The parasol stopped twirling and the blood around her feet swirled instead. The screaming started up again, only now more quietly, at the back of the mind and somehow more focused. “Indeed, I cannot sense his presence here at all. There are… winged shadows, little thanatophages, that flit around filling in, but the… unstoppable, inevitable monster is absent. Her summer dress constricted and flexed and both War and Famine realised that it wasn’t really a separate garment but somehow an extension of her skin. It rippled and corrugated, and then split open in seven places along her arm. Yellow eyes with red pupils bulged out looked sickly, like a boil had developed the ability to see. At her feet the blood swirl rose upwards as though a waterspout were slowly engulfing her and was thickening, solidifying slowly into a trunk-like structure.
“What did you ask us here for?” said War. He hadn’t changed his tone of voice at all, but now the resonance was dulled and dimmed and there were more echoes that mimicked him. The church felt distinctly colder, though neither he nor Famine cared.
“Stones have been lifted,” said Narusheteli. The church shook and dust poured down in tiny, dry waterfalls from the ceiling. “There was an agreement made in Ezcaray and I was invoked. They pressed me down, set stones atop me and bound me with thread harvested from oupir’ so that their secrets would hold. Now those stones are lifted and their secrets are mine to share as I choose. And I choose to tell you this in return for the knowledge that the Overarching Shadow is gone and Villameriel is mine.”
Her voice had grown wetter as she spoke, and by the time she finished it sounded like she was gargling the words. She was expanding now, bulging out like an amoeba trying to split but only ever getting half-way, and there was a scent of ozone in the air. As she swelled and assumed a much-closer approximation of her true form Famine was reminded of deep-aquatic life he’d seen; things that handled such extreme pressures that travelling up by 50m was enough to radically reshape them. The accumulation of static electricity was standing all of War’s hair on end and he was starting to look like a dandelion puff.
“Time to go, ho,” said Famine. He reached out to take War’s arm, and a brilliant, eye-searing white arc of electricity leapt between them. “Well that stings like buggery,” he said, making another grab for War. “Let’s go, Jean-Claude.”
Greg - AS I JUST SAID, you're welcome to skip days and write about something else :P
This, I think, is more of what I was expecting. Not sure where things are headed yet, but still most keenly interested in finding out.
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