That’s week 32 of Year 2, and the future stretches out in front of us, veiled in fog, shadowy hints of what might be flicker in and out, looming, while reality’s thin tendrils snake unseen at ankle height…
But at least there are prompts to anticipate when you’re stumbling forward in real life.
| Prompter | Prompt | Prompted |
| AC Young | The local theatre had put out the adverts for their latest production, “Seven Grooms for Seven Sisters”. Apparently it was an Amazon’s favourite musical… | Fiona Grey |
| Becky Jones | The small gargoyle sitting on the book case shelf was the only one laughing at your jokes. | Leigh Kimmel |
| nother Mike | The weather was bad when the witch got hit by a tomato plant flying in the winds… | AC Young |
| Fiona Grey | The grid pattern showing the safe path flashed once, twice, and then vanished. | Cedar Sanderson |
| Leigh Kimmel | You pull in at a rest area and in a nearby car you see…. | nother Mike |
| Cedar Sanderson | The old camera from the flea market had a roll of film inside. Once developed, the images… | Becky Jones |
Want to take part in the prompts but didn’t send one in last week? Grab a spare, and report your results back in the comments, where the future becomes tangible!
| Spare | The carnival opened with all the animals making their way down the main street playing their instruments. |
| Spare | On your first space voyage, you are not quite sure about the seatbelts on the toilet, but you decide to try to use them anyway… |
| Spare | Playing twister while trying to cast spells might not have been the best idea… |
| Spare | When you unpacked the puppet from Amazon, it started talking… and dancing, too! |
| Spare | When you looked in the mirror, you didn’t expect the tentacles. |
Keep in mind when you send a prompt to oddprompts at gmail dot com that there is no wordcount, it doesn’t even have to be written, and the point is to wake your brain up and engage your imagination. If this post can be done in less than ten minutes because that’s all the time there was? You can do a prompt response.
See you in the future.
More Odds Than Ends 
A prompt response…
Leigh Kimmel postulated…
You pull in at a rest area and in a nearby car you see….
The Spanish Inquisition! Because no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
I’ll try to get back later with another response.
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This week’s prompt came from nother Mike: The weather was bad when the witch got hit by a tomato plant flying in the winds…
So, a witch in bad weather gets hit by a plant. Lets see…
—
Amber looked out of the window. The storm was getting worse. Ordinarily that wouldn’t matter, but she was expecting a delivery of garden plants to expand her potion ingredient plots.
She’d ordered them from World Wide Witch, and that particular company prided itself on always delivering orders on schedule. She’d paid extra for griffon delivery – delivery by dragon had too high a likelihood of fire damage, and World Wide Witch didn’t reimburse for known delivery risks.
Yes, the storm was definitely getting worse. The clouds were blacker than a necromancer’s robes, the wind was stronger than ever, and the rain was falling at a 45-degree angle. Visibility was poor, not helped by the lightning striking every two or three minutes all around the house, each bolt in view lighting up the afternoon’s sky and destroying any night vision she’d built up.
The delivery was scheduled for some time in the next quarter-hour, so Amber couldn’t avoid heading out into the rain any longer. She put on her raincoat, then rummaged around in her first aid box, finding a vial of lightning tonic and slipping it into her pocket – just in case.
She opened the back door with care – just in case the wind tugged it out of her hands – and shut it behind her. Stepping out into the garden, Amber braced herself against the wind and looked up into the dark, rain-filled sky, steadily getting wetter and wetter as the rain slipped under her hood. Some old stories had magic users sending rain clouds skipping from village to village, and she dearly wished to have that ability now – but the magical power needed to work the weather was enormous, no single witch could send even a small rain cloud packing, let alone the current storm. She would just have to endure.
A slight darkening of the sky was her only warning before the griffon appeared, coming in to land in her back garden. Her order was in a wooden crate, with carrying ropes attached to each corner and held in its beak.
Another lightning bolt flashed down from the sky, nearly simultaneously with the near deafening thunder. The bolt struck the griffon on its back, and the griffon instinctively screamed in pain. The ropes slipped from its beak, and the crate started spinning through the air. The lid came off, releasing the plants carefully packed inside, which were caught by the wind. They went everywhere, a deadly nightshade plant just missing Amber to her left, before one of the tomato plants hit her in the right shoulder. Various plants collided with the house. The crate hit the ground to her right, the force causing it to break apart, with the pieces flying off at random.
In front of Amber the griffon crash-landed, still squealing at the pain of the lightning burn. Amber rushed forwards and extracted the vial of lightning tonic. She’d brought it into the garden just in case she was struck by lightning, but it would work on griffons as well. (Not to mention that the last thing she wanted right now was to have to look after an injured griffon until the local vet witch could come and take it away.)
The griffon swallowed the potion, and it took a few minutes for it to take effect and the ugly burn on the griffon’s back to fade back to the creature’s natural gold fur. The griffon bowed its head in respect towards Amber, then took back to the skies.
Now Amber looked around at the chaos. It would take ages to collect up all the plants and figure out what had flown away to be lost forever or was too badly damaged to plant. She’d have to re-order them, but there was no point asking for a refund. By no stretch of the imagination could a storm at time of delivery not be a known delivery risk, and World Wide Witch didn’t reimburse for those.
Amber sighed. By the time she finished she’d be as wet as if she’d just got out the bath. But she wouldn’t get any drier by delaying things. She started to collect and catalogue the stray plants.
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Bravo! The story behind the prompt was that recently, during a storm of wind and rain, one of our tomato plants was literally lifting its pot off the balcony when I tackled it and laid it down on its side. I was chuckling about what might have happened it if had flown up in the winds… and remembered the witch in Wizard of Oz getting clobbered. But I really enjoyed this snippet. Now, what happens next?
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I’m afraid it’s probably something rather more prosaic. Something along the lines of: the storm has moved on by the following morning; Amber spends several days sorting out the mess the storm and griffon combined made of her garden and planting what new plants can still be planted (possibly finding one or two more along the way); she orders the replacements; they arrive safely; she plants them.
One or more of these steps may end up being more interesting than I expect, but we’ll see.
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Ah, but you know, she probably was expanding her potion plots for a reason? And now she has a griffon friend, too? So… who knows what might fall in her lap next?
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I love the World Wide Witch! What a great idea. So many possibilities…
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[…] is the summer going? And here we are in Week 32 of More Odds Than Ends prompts. I’m still feeling like I’m in some sort of weird stasis, but I think I’ve […]
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Leigh Kimmel postulated…
You pull in at a rest area and in a nearby car you see….
A Bag of Bones?
Henrietta had been driving for too long, so she watched for some kind of … there it was. A rest stop. She flipped the turn signal on, and steered her car into the parking lot. Not much here, restrooms, some kind of fast food, but at least she could stop the car and get out and stretch.
She pulled in beside another car, turned off the engine, and did just that. She stretched in the car for a moment. Then she pushed her door open and got out. She slammed her door, and glanced over at the other car. She blinked. What? Wait a minute, that was a big plastic bag full of bones in the passenger’s seat. No, it couldn’t… those were ribs, yep, a rib cage. And that was a leg bone. She was sure of it.
She looked around the parking lot. A moment ago, it had been just another rest stop, bright with sunshine, nothing to get excited about. Now, she wondered just who was watching her, and what they would do?
She opened her door and slid back inside. Then she dug her cell phone out and dialed 911.
“911, what is your emergency?”
Henrietta bit her lip.
“I need the police. There’s… there’s a bag of bones in a car here!”
“And what is your location?”
Henrietta squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s a rest stop on route 78 going west. Oh. I just went past Columbia a few minutes ago, so…”
“Are you in a safe location?”
“I’m in my car. Right beside the car with the bones.”
“All right. Please stay on the line while we get the police to you.”
Moments later, a police cruiser turned into the parking lot. It parked, and an officer got out and looked around. Henrietta opened her door, stood up, and waved. The police man walked over, looking around. She waved at the car beside her.
The policeman looked inside, and then nodded.
“Yes, ma’am, those are bones. Why don’t you get back in your car, and I’ll call it in.”
He unbuttoned his gun as he pulled out his radio and called it in.
Henrietta sank down in the driver’s seat and shook her head. This was not a rest stop, this was a horror!
(Well, that’s more of a story beginning…)
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Talk about the trip from hell!
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[…] got stuck this week and had no idea what to do with AC Young’s challenge at first. Hopefully I did it justice, […]
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Oh, bravo, bravo! Encore!
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[…] really should go read all the prompt responses, there’s some goodies! That’s the fun of More Odds Than Ends, we’ve got super talented people. You can join us, too, check it […]
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And I managed mine. Wasn’t sure there for a while today… https://www.cedarwrites.com/2021/08/17/odd-prompts-having-adventures/
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My effort went off into the weeds of metaphysics, and while I was busy with a convention and then the bookkeeping afterward, I didn’t have time to pull it back and get something resembling narrative out of it, as I relate on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1005080.html.
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