“Excuse me”, the waitress noted in passing, “you’re on fire”.
She wasn’t being complimentary to my appearance; my encounter suit was leaking oxygen again. I hate fluorine planets.
I swatted at the flame and stepped up to the bar. “Cylinder of pure H₂O please” I asked the barkeep. “and, uh, have you seen Captain Zhang tonight? I arranged to meet her here and…” I waved away another flame and applied a quick-seal patch to the crack in my armor “…I’d rather not wait too long; no offense but your bar’s atmosphere is not really my thing”
The witches secretly watched from the shadow of the moon.
In the marsh below, the king wheezed as he jogged past the Old Stump for the third time, wearing boots, breeches and muddy leaves. He waved a scepter in his left hand, and clutched a barely sedated badger in his right.
"Last month the Leaves foretold that his next child would be a son. Why did you tell him this was the only way--?"
"Because he was rude; I'm making him work for it!"
Théo savait qu'il n'y avait rien. Pourtant, il ne pouvait pas se concentrer parce qu'il avait l'impression qu'il y avait quelque chose là, tout près, une chose indéfinissable, une énergie négative. Puis il se dit que ce flux délétère était en lui, que ça ne s'en irait qu'un fois qu'il aurait jeté un oeil. Alors Théo regarda sous le lit, et bien sûr, il n'y avait rien.
Et blah blah blah, la blonde racontait sa vie à des interlocuteurs successifs probablement pas plus passionnés par ses histoires que ne l'étaient les passagers du bus. Elle se lamentait au sujet de tous les gens qu'elle devait encore appeler et le fait de n'avoir jamais une minute à elle, avant de conclure :
"- J'teu laisse parce qu'avec ce téléphone j'ai pas beaucoup d'autonomie."
"A plus d'un titre", pensa Simon.
There was a man who seemingly couldn’t die. He had survived numerous accidents, each with odds of one in ten thousand, including a ride down Niagara Falls, four plane crashes, a gas explosion at the factory where he worked, and several minor disasters with more than one survivor. After the explosion, he was fired and lived on a small compensation from his company.
When two mysterious devices landed in the middle of nowhere, inspecting them seemed impossible. Satellite images and long-range shots from planes appeared pixelated or out of focus. Several helicopters that approached the devices crash-landed, and every drone that came near disappeared from the screens. Clearly, this was a job for “Niagara Steve,” as the media had called him years ago. The army equipped him with a handgun, a camera, a radio (not expecting any of these to work within a two-mile radius of the devices), and a jeep, which he gratefully accepted.
At a distance of a hundred yards, he stopped the engine and turned off the radio to silence the static. He got out of the jeep, leaving camera and gun on the passenger seat. He slowly went to the the devices. A ramp descended, and he stepped up and entered. Seconds later, the devices vanished in the sky.
“WELCOME ABOARD. HOW DO YOU FEEL?” said a voice in his head.
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
“HOW DID YOU LIKE IT DOWN THERE? DID YOU MAKE CONTACT WITH THE DWELLERS?”
“They’re nice, but a little boring. Quite good at statistics, but lacking in imagination. Most of them, anyway.”
@VisualInspiration
When Toothbrush was old enough, Modem Song took him to see the spirit casks.
"The Old Tribe made spirits work for them. There, in the white tower. Then they put them in these casks. The spirits are still angry--feel the warmth? They give anyone who gets too close strange diseases. This symbol is an Old Tribe warning. There's good hunting here in the winter, but don't go near the casks."
The knight struggled out of his armor then strode toward the dragon, "I need to be crushed immediately."
The dragon shifted his massive body, waiting for the knight to lay flat in his nest of furs and fabrics. Then he gently rolled some of his mass onto the knight's, worriedly asking, "Rough day?"
"Rough week," sighed the knight.
"It's Monday!"
There was no response, the knight had already dozed off under his favorite weighted-blanket.
Christian passait son temps à chercher des objets petits et grands, qui dans leur infinie perversité s'évertuaient à le torturer en disparaissant volontairement dans le trou noir de l'oubli. Aussi quand le site internet intrusif afficha "Profession" en tant que champ obligatoire, Christian entra "Chercheur".
#WordWeavers 2405.20 — How did you settle on your antagonist's appearance?
Antagonists almost always are regular people with different agendas than the MC's. Rarely, they have a skewed sense of right and wrong or how reality works, which could describe a few MCs. In any case, I very much wish to prevent latching on to a stereotype as it will paint a divergent picture of what I want to represent and, far worse, comes with a subtext that I have no control over. Like the MC POV, I keep appearances vague so the reader can use their imagination, only less so because antagonists are seen and features important to the story must be eluded to. The MC will also make uncensored comments in her internal dialogue, aka 1st person narration.
In one case, the antagonist got her own side story as the POV. Note in the following #excerpt from Fledge, she has woken up with bodily changes (and amnesia). She self-labels herself as a chimera, a monster that's a combination of creatures but in her case parts of other people. She never states facial features, needs never say anything about hair color, or what we relate to as race. She does mention an in-story kind of human. However, the following feature is important to her "appearance" as it relates to the question, as well as the plot. She's squatting on a tree limb two dozen stories high...
He [her rescuer] pointed at the useless things on my back. "You remembered enough to shield your fall [...] using them. You're learning."
Below my normal right shoulder blade, a red-feathered monstrosity twitched. Adjusting my hips carefully, I glared left to see iridescent blue and purple feathers and down lit by the setting sun, better suited for a pigeon's breast. The day angel wing poked out, balancing, splaying breeze-rustled feathers to instinctively steady me. My blue "add-on" was larger than the red. Both went thwack to my back, acting as if they'd noticed I'd noticed my alien, unasked for, new limbs playing—behind my back—and hid. I had to steady myself with a hand.
Sa voisine était la frappadingue de l'immeuble. Quand Alice sonna chez elle pour lui demander de réceptionner un colis à sa place, elle la trouva avec un collier d'aimants autour du cou et une paire de ciseaux à la main. La voisine déclara qu'elle ne pouvait pas, parce que le soleil étant dans la maison de Saturne, c'était jour pour se couper les cheveux. Alice renonça à demander à quoi servait le collier.
“Emerald 457 Scaley this is Tower. You are clear to approach paddock 22 east”
Air traffic control used to be a fairly unexciting, though important job. After I retired and joined ATC Sans Frontières, I learned just how precarious air travel has made the life of dragons. Dragonkind was driven almost to extinction before ASF provided radio collars and traffic guidance.
“457 please also be advised of helicopter muster operations to your north. Our records show this flock is BSE negative. Good hunting”
Are you real? What are you, and what are you doing here?
Funny, I was about to ask you the same.
Me? I’m just a dirty n*** they wanted to lock up.
Why?
Who knows? Walking in the park? Wearing a hoodie? Ask the cops. I refused to get into the patrol car, and they gave me six years for rioting.
Bad thing.
Yeah. And you? A yellow rabbit with blue ears, electric sparks coming out of your tail. You’re just a hologram, right?
Touch me.
Touch you? Like this… ouch!
Mind the sparks.
This must be setup. They’re trying to see if they can drive me crazy.
No setup. Now listen, Charles D. Munroe: You won’t remember, but as a little boy, you helped me and my kin in a peculiar situation, and now we’re repaying you. If you want.
What? But I...
We’re getting you out of here. I’m pretty good with electricity and can override the electronic locks. I’ve already overloaded the cameras, so they might not notice your escape. But in the corridors, stay at least twenty steps behind me while I handle the guards, okay? Once we’re outside, we’ll take you to Canada, Mexico, or wherever you want.
I must be going mad. I’m imagining breaking out with the help of a plush animal.
Basically, I'm in solitary for the duration. (Don't never piss off no warden.) I'd be crazy if I hadn't found the gate.
It's in the cell, but you can only see it from certain angles. Go wherever you want; time stops while you're gone. Stay too long, it'll yoink you back.
I got no money 'cept what I can make on day job, so I'm "on a budget," but it keeps me sane while I'm doing time. Even if the clock stops while I'm gone.
Live. Laugh. Lie in wait beneath the murky black waters of the lake, wreathed in seaweed and smiling at the horrorstruck man in the boat with your sharp black flashing teeth as you snake your cold gnarled fingers around his wrist so tight the bones creak, pulling him down down down into the dark cold quietness of the foul rancid muck where you make your bower, watching all the beautiful glinting bubbles cascade up up up from his mouth as his scream dies with him
"- Un cocktail hihi. Nan un café, merci."
Arnaud arbora son sourire commerçant N°8, spécial connivence. La blague ne l'avait probablement même pas fait rire la première fois qu'il l'avait entendue. Demain marquerait les dix ans du bar, et il se demanda combien de fois il avait dû faire semblant, depuis l'ouverture de l'établissement au quinze du boulevard Viatcheslav Mikhaïlovitch Molotov.
Monsieur Raymond avait un âge certain. Le réparateur qui se présenta chez lui pour s'occuper d'une porte défoncée fut surpris par l'ampleur des dégâts causés par Wouiki, petit clébard fuyant. Il ressemblait fort à son propriétaire, dans une improbable convergence biologique, et le réparateur trouvait ça réjouissant. Un peu vexé, monsieur Raymond, pas du tout amusé par ses problèmes de porte, lui demanda ce qui le faisait rire.
Here in the Precrime Division we solve crimes before they happen. There’s a rumour that we use psychics, and it serves us well to let it spread uncorrected. Just between you and me, we mostly monitor search engines for queries like “statute of limitations” and “countries without extradition treaty”.
@VisualInspiration
A very rich merchant in Edinburgh fell ill. Every step he took exhausted him, his heart raced, he had headaches, and his back ached. He consulted several doctors, who gave him powders, pills, potions, and lotions, but none of them helped. Desperate, he wrote to the famous Dr. Ironbeard, who lived many hundreds of miles away on the south coast of England. Dr. Ironbeard replied, asking the merchant to list precisely what he ate and drank throughout the day. The merchant responded with a long letter.
In his next letter, Dr. Ironbeard wrote, "Sir, I am quite certain I know the cause of your unwellness. Unwittingly, you have swallowed a tiny lindworm egg, which is slowly growing inside your stomach. I can remove it, but you must come to my home. To prevent it from hatching and releasing the lindworm, you must not ride a horse or travel by carriage; you must walk on foot. Furthermore, you may eat nothing but dark bread and raw vegetables."
So the merchant began his journey south on foot. In the early days, he needed to rest after just five miles, but each day he covered a longer distance, and his illness gradually disappeared. When he finally reached Dr. Ironbeard’s home, he was completely healed. Smiling, he handed the doctor a pouch full of money. Then he turned around and walked back home. #writingprompt #microfiction