Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Stir the pot of ideas, and what connections do you make? What stories emerge from only a few ingredients, spilling over into the world as wisps of steam and sizzle atop the blaze? What have you reaped this harvest?
Er, or just send an idea to oddprompts@gmail.com, and put “spare” in the title if you don’t want a flat trade. We share, too, if you want to give an idea a go. No one’ll mind if you tie a prompt to the back of your broomstick and take it for a whirl about the skies.
Right. On with the prompts! Here are your trades.
| Prompter | Prompt | Prompted |
| Cedar Sanderson | The dragon perched atop a pile of books, clutching a kitten and looking scandalized. | Leigh Kimmel |
| Fiona Grey | 3,000 years from now, archaeologists discover the Corn Palace. | Cedar Sanderson |
| AC Young | When you opened your exotic pets practice, you didn’t expect to be called out to deal with a mythical creature’s toothache. | Fiona Grey |
| nother Mike | Whoever hung a talking magic mirror in the ladies room at McDonald’s certainly knew how to create a ruckus… | AC Young |
| Becky Jones | “Well, he’s a direct descendant of Hercules, so yeah, he’s a bit crazy.” | nother Mike |
| Leigh Kimmel | The little red car sped right past your vehicle. You looked down into it and saw… | Becky Jones |
And here are your spares:
| Spare | What’s in the basket? |
| Spare | “Nah, you’ll see. Death by taco isn’t that uncommon.” |
| Spare | The quill glowed in the dark, and she couldn’t help but notice that it was a real feather… |
| Spare | Having a pet elephant in the living room does make people talk… |
| Spare | The teacher just smiled when she heard that students were using an app on their cell phones to text each other during the online classes, and said, “I thought their writing skills were improving.” |
It might not be Shakespeare, but there’s magic in creation. See you in the comments.
Header image by Fiona Grey, Clifton, Ohio
More Odds Than Ends 
In this week’s rotation nother Mike supplied me with: Whoever hung a talking magic mirror in the ladies room at McDonald’s certainly knew how to create a ruckus…
We have a starting point and an end point, we now need a middle…
—
Rose and a group of her friends, including both her boyfriend and her best friend, were on a mates’ afternoon out to town, and had popped into the local McDonalds for a mid-afternoon snack. After she had eaten Rose made the fateful trip to the toilets.
After doing the necessary, Rose stood in front of the basins and put her hair back into perfect order. She barely noticed that the central mirror had been replaced with a much more fancy-looking version. By habit she murmured the immortal lines “Mirror, mirror on the wall / Who is the fairest of them all?”
To her surprise the new fancy mirror answered her in verse:
“My Lady Thou art exceeding fair;
In Thine own mind Thou art the most fair.
Yet the closest to you
Thinks that that is not true.
He thinks your best friend is much more fair.”
“What?” she said out loud in shock and surprise. “Please tell me this is a trick, a game.”
“I am compelled to speak only truth
As long as I remain under roof.
Annoyingly my curse
Means I must speak in verse
And drive my friends to become aloof.”
“But if you speak truth then…?”
The mirror sounded amused:
“Your boyfriend often averts his gaze
And sends a long secret glance sideways.
While she hasn’t been caught
As she always says naught
She’s been gazing back for many days.”
Rose suddenly turned on her heels and headed purposely out of the toilets. Behind her the mirror gave one final verse:
“My greatest pleasure in all my life
Is to create much trouble and strife.
I take no joy in peace
And wish for it to cease.
I hope for disputes to become rife.”
Rose was too focussed on the fury that the mirror had ignited to listen to it. She stormed out of the toilets. Before long the sounds of a blazing three-way row could be heard in the depths of the ladies’ loos.
The mirror made one final pronouncement, sounding extremely pleased with itself:
“Those who listen not to my warning
Will come to regret it ere morning.
And yet I worry not
And never care a jot
For I love to see discord dawning.”
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Wonderful!
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Exquisite! Applause, applause!
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That’s great!
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[…] here in Week 31 at More Odds Than Ends, I got my prompt from Leigh Kimmel: The little red car sped right past your vehicle. You looked […]
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So, here’s what I came up with.
http://ornerydragon.com/2021/08/09/whos-driving/
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And I’ll bet the dogs were apologizing for that crazy cat! Nice!
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Oh, so that’s what my cat is up to!
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Looks like the dogs picked the right chat-ffeur.
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[…] This week, AC Young prompted me with “When you opened your exotic pets practice, you didn’t expect to be called out to deal with a mythical creature’s toothache.” […]
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Minotaur, centaur, unicorn…all kinds of tales, just waiting for the vet to tell us about them… and then there’s the stories about trying to get assistants!
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[…] can read all the prompts and responses over at MOTE, and you can play along as well! See you […]
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And I have mangled the prompt, because no time, to fit it into what I’m supposed to be working on. https://www.cedarwrites.com/2021/08/10/odd-prompts-corn-palace/
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Mangled, got creative in fun ways, same thing.
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I have a little bit up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1001677.html. I’d wanted to write more, but came home to way too much work to do in one day. Will write it lager, when we’re not running from one convention to the next.
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Becky Jones teased…
“Well, he’s a direct descendant of Hercules, so yeah, he’s a bit crazy.”
I had trouble getting traction on this one. Not sure why…
Anyway, here’s the third splinter…
(Another cut…)
The mayor shook his head as he listened to the phone.
“So, he’s at it again? What’s he done this time?”
The voice on the other end sounded angry and amused at the same time.
“Oh, he got that old thong out and waved it in front of a tour group off the interstate at the diner. Tried to tell them it was Aphrodite’s girdle or some such. Gave them a long story about how he got it off her. I happen to know he stole it from Henrietta Kimberly’s clothesline! Anyway, a bunch of the tourists took pictures with him and the girdle.”
The mayor blinked and looked at the phone.
“That’s not so bad, really…”
The voice added.
“Yeah, but he keeps telling them that he is a direct descendant of Hercules! Out here in Iowa? He’s gotta be crazy.”
The mayor shrugged.
“Well, he thinks he’s a direct descendant. I mean, that’s part of him being about half-crazy. And you have to admit, he does some good things. I mean, he cleaned out the whole livestock barn all by himself after the county fair, and didn’t even complain about it. Said it was the Aegean stables, and just worked away at it.”
Now there was laughter at the other end of the line.
“Yeah, but what kind of an image is our town going to get? Having some half-crazy guy running around waving a thong in front of the tourists?”
The mayor smiled.
“Actually, I suspect the tourists may start coming here to meet our very own Hercules. Now, what else can we suggest he do for his labors?”
(okay, that one has some possibilities…)
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