Fionagreywrites

Week 25 of Odd Prompts

This week will need to be creative. What do you do with 25 pounds of peaches? What do you do with a whole lot of creative writing prompts?

…what happens when those disparate activities combine, and you make very odd pastry art?

Fortunately, there’s also sharing! Join the odd prompts crew, pull up a chair or a rolling pin, and take a gander through this week’s selection.

Want to trade? Email oddprompts@gmail.com and send in a prompt. That’s it!

Cedar SandersonThe golden interior of the red rose glowed and scintillated.Fiona Grey
AC YoungHe looked out of the mouth of the cave, saw the rain, and shuddered. He hated flying when it wasn’t dry.Becky Jones
Becky JonesThe puddle winked and glittered in the sunshine. Reflected in the puddle was…AC Young
Fiona GreyThe headbanging accordion player turned out to be…nother Mike
nother MikeTheir romance revolved around sentient cacti with purple polka dots…Leigh Kimmel
Leigh KimmelThe night light took the form of a tiny wizard with a glowing staff.Cedar Sanderson

Don’t want to trade? It’s cool. You can still have all the prompts. Just put “spare” in the title. Provide inspiration for others! Snag a spare! Double up on a different take on someone else’s! There are no rules.

SpareThe new intern worried about working the night shift in the emergency room. Then the supernatural patients started showing up…
SpareThe new Governor of the Rainforest Region wondered what he’d done that the Dragon Emperor would punish him so.
SpareThe gun in the apartment mailbox had clearly been fired.
SpareWhat kind of person would raise chickens in a weekly apartment?
SpareThe cottage was half-hidden behind the pirate ship.

Nothing catches your fancy this week? We’ve got archives, you know. Lots of ’em. No peaches here; prompts don’t go mushy when they’re old. Ideas are what ripen.

See you in the comments!

17 comments

  1. This week Becky Jones supplied my challenge: The puddle winked and glittered in the sunshine. Reflected in the puddle was…

    My first question was what was reflected in the puddle. Then why would whatever-it-is be seen first reflected in the puddle – perhaps because whoever-it-is is climbing uphill.

    —

    I hiked up the slope, looking only at the path immediately in front of my feet. As I did my mind wandered…

    I live in a mountain valley. My village is the last settlement as a visitor heads upstream.

    On the left-hand side of the valley upstream of the village is what we call ‘the ledge’ – I’m not sure what the geologists would call it. It is a flat strip of grass sited half-way up the valley’s side, split in two in the middle by a stream-eroded gorge. Just before the gorge there is a small mound on the edge of the ledge.

    The mound doesn’t look natural, but the scientists haven’t got around to studying it yet. In the meantime it’s a bit of a tourist attraction. There’s a path up the gorge that leads to the mound, and all summer people hike up it in dribs and drabs to take their photos and selfies.

    Yesterday and the day before it rained almost continually. When the rain finally stopped this morning we looked up the valley, and the mound had changed profile. A few of my neighbours and I chose to head up the valley to see what had happened.

    As we had approached the mound we saw that there had been some form of landslide. We couldn’t see what had slipped looking up at the ledge from the valley floor. So we picked our way through and around the mud, and headed up the gorge.

    The path up the gorge is reasonably steep. About halfway up to the ledge it doubles back on itself. It finally crests the ledge just to one side of the mound. Fortunately the landslide hadn’t fallen onto the path or we may never have made it up onto the ledge.

    Time to get back to the task in hand. Only a few more steps to go. Then I turned the corner.

    The first thing I saw as I raised my eyes was a puddle where the side of the mound should have been. Something was reflected in the surface, something that glittered. Then I looked further up.

    Half of the mound had sheared off and most of it had headed down into the valley leaving only a little on the ledge. The slip had revealed that the mound was hollow.

    It was what was inside the mound that was reflecting in the puddle in the morning sunlight. My first thought was that it was a pile of gemstones: sapphires, emeralds, rubies and so on. Then I noticed that they were too large. They weren’t jewels. They were eggs. Each of them was at least as tall as my knees.

    I stopped dead, only moving forwards to let my friends onto the ledge and see what we’d found. The mound was a nest, constructed by some sort of large reptile. What sort I had no idea.

    We had to get the experts in to have a look. I just hoped that the eggs were no longer viable. If not, who knows what would hatch out of them…

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  2. Fiona Grey prompted…

    The headbanging accordion player turned out to be…

    A classical musician who had decided that making money was more important than being in the orchestra? An escapee from the … hum…

    A Night At the Opera?
    By Mike Barker

    Gil sat down at the bar, with a beer and a shot of dark rum in front of him. He glanced around, then poured the dark rum into the beer. A quick swirl, and he took a sip. Ah, now that was fine.

    He looked around again, taking his time now, first at the bar with stools, and some others looking at their drinks. Then at the few tables on the floor. More like campground tables, plywood on sawhorses, with benches. Probably easy to replace after a fight or something. And easy to move out of the way. Then at the small stage on the other side of the room. That’s what made this neighborhood bar a little different, they brought in bands.

    Up on the small stage, the band for the night was setting up. Drum, guitar… wait a minute, an accordion? Now that was unusual. Gil waved his hand, and the bartender walked over.

    “What’s the band? What kind of music?”

    The bartender chuckled.

    “Believe it or not, they do heavy metal. And that accordion wails. Just wait, you’ll see.”

    Gil shook his head, but took another drink of his beer, and turned around to watch.

    Moments later, the band started playing. Wow! First the guitar twanged. Bang, bang, bangbangbang, bang. Repeat. Then the drums joined in, echoing that beat, beat, beatbeatbeat, beat. With crashing cymbals! Then they repeated. And now the accordion player stepped forward, one step, and raised his accordion, and… wailed! He wove chords around the melody, and they drove that song into the bar, and the walls all shook to the beat. And he banged his head sideways, rhythmically. It was wonderful! And when he played a solo on that accordion, everyone in the bar, they all clapped along… really fine heavy metal, like some mix of fine vintage Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Metallica.

    Then Gil noticed the accordion player’s feet. He had sandals on, but… those toes. Wait a minute. Gil blinked, and looked at his hands. Yep, yep, he had the scales on his hands. Darn it, the headbanging accordion player was a lizard of some kind.

    During their break, Gil called HQ and told them what he had found. They thanked him, and said, “Yep, it’s true. The headbanging accordion player turned out to be an escaped mutant Gila Monster, but he promised he just wanted to have fun…”

    So, Gil drank his reinforced beer slowly, and enjoyed the show.

    As the accordion wailed.

    The End (for now)

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