Part of the fun of the prompt challenge is the random nature of it. You send in a prompt, and you have no idea who is going to get that prompt, and even when you do know, you don’t know what they will make of it. Give a dozen creatives the same prompt, and you’ll get a dozen wildly different things back. We could have done that – a single prompt a week. But we didn’t. We made it into a bit of a game, a bit of accountability (you don’t want to let your challenger down), and a lot of fun.
| Prompter | Prompt | Promptee |
| Ray Krawczyk | What do we want? / Time travel! / When do we want it? / Doesn’t matter! | Cedar Sanderson |
| AC Young | The heralds of spring bloomed on the hillside. | nother Mike |
| nother Mike | There were daisies in the holes of the bowling balls. | Fiona Grey |
| Fiona Grey | She jumped down, and the scales of the dead snake dangling from her clenched jaws gleamed in the dying sunlight. | Ray Krawczyk |
| Cedar Sanderson | They call the wench Mariah | Becky Jones |
| Becky Jones | The dragon hunched into itself in the freezing rain. | Leigh Kimmel |
| Leigh Kimmel | She watches as the others board the bus which will take them home. She must remain here and make this place her home. | AC Young |
If you didn’t choose to join in on the exchanges, there’s always the spare prompts. Or! You could take your challenge prompt, and a spare, for an added fillip of excitement.
| Spare | Skydiving in a thunderstorm was not an easy sport |
| Spare | With the full moon shining, Change into a werewolf… Born to be wild… |
| Spare | The genome mapping team was a bit surprised when the Z chromosomes started showing up… |
| Spare | The solstice brought the annual moon swap. |
| Spare | When he turned over the driftwood, he never expected to find…. |
There are no minimum wordcounts. It doesn’t have to be fiction, or even words – you could make art, music, whatever floats your boat and sends you merrily on your way. We aim to provoke the imagination.
More Odds Than Ends 
This week my prompt challenge came from Leigh Kimmel: She watches as the others board the bus which will take them home. She must remain here and make this place her home.
I thought of two possible routes to go. One was someone having to move elsewhere due to a change of circumstances. For the other I remembered various stories about caretakers being appointed to look after otherwise deserted islands.
For the below I was inspired by the second of these.
—
It was time for Stage 3 in the colonisation of Atlas IV. Stage 1 was the founding of Atlantis, and initiating the farming of the land around it. Stage 2 was the founding of various towns across the temperate latitudes on Theia, and expanding the farmland accordingly. In Stage 3 the islands off the coast of Theia were to be colonised, and the fishing industry seeded.
Studies of the Crius and Hyperion oceans (with the help of the SSAE) had identified where the most productive fishing grounds were. As a result the first set of fishing ports had been planned, including one on the island of Selene, off the eastern coast of Theia.
Kevin and Helen Edwards had applied to be one of the first families to settle on Selene. There was a selection process, which they passed.
In preparation a bridge had been built from the mainland to Selene. Then the port of Corinth was built on the far side of the island. To make the island more sustainable flocks of sheep were imported (Selene was too far north for the poison meadows to be a problem, so no expensive genetic alteration was required). Finally the first few fishing boats (sail, with a petrol screw engine for when the wind wasn’t blowing in the right direction) were built and sailed to Corinth.
Today was the day. Kevin and Helen had boarded the bus from Atlantis along with the other founders of Corinth. At mid-day they had arrived. The various founders were shown around the port, including the central store (where food and various essential goods – including a small amount of petrol – could be obtained; but the island wouldn’t be self-sustaining for a while).
Then they were shown to their respective houses. The sheep farming families had properties just outside of town. Kevin was down to be a fisherman, with Helen and a number of the other wives running a fishmongers and fish smoking business, so they had a house near the docks.
Their house was a solid, brick-built, two-storey building, in the middle of a sea-front terrace with a small garden at the back. At the end of the terrace was the fishmongers’ shop. The fish smoking would be carried out in sheds in their back gardens.
Finally, a ceremony was held, with the founders of Corinth formally handed over control of the island of Selene. Immediately after the ceremony, all the dignitaries from Atlantis and the builders of the town got on to their buses, and headed back to their homes.
Helen and Kevin watched the buses head back towards the mainland. It was now the turn of them and the rest of the founders to make a success of Corinth.
Tonight Helen and Kevin would have a meal from the supplies that came with their house. Tomorrow Kevin would head out with the rest of the fishermen on his boat. When they came back Helen et al would take charge of processing the catch. In the short term all of the catch would be used to feed the island. Some would be eaten fresh, others would be smoked to be eaten during the off-season.
In time the farmers would also chip in with lamb when the flocks had young of the appropriate age. Until then the island would need to survive on the fish and additional supplies from the mainland.
Long term the goal was to export some of the smoked fish to the mainland, and eventually some of the fresh fish and lamb also. Once the values of the exports reached the values of the imports the island would become self-sustaining, and would grow, both organically and through immigration.
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[…] You can read all the prompt responses, or join in the fun yourself, over at MOTE. […]
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I managed a little bit of weird for my response this week. https://www.cedarwrites.com/2022/03/29/odd-prompts-time-travel/
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I made it! Barely. https://fionagreywrites.com/it-wasnt-much/
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Woot!
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[…] prompt today. I got caught up in editing Magic Abroad and only got to the prompt now. This week at More Odds Than Ends, my prompt came from Cedar Sanderson: They call the wench Mariah. The word “wench” sent […]
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A snippet of Davan and Pyldraras.
https://ornerydragon.com/2022/03/29/market-day/
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And mine is finally up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1122327.html. I knew it was going to be an involved one, so I got started early — and I was still running late getting it up. It’s somewhat similar to “Tell Me a Story” in having several different characters interacting with the same work.
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Do you see a comment by me? Every time I try to post it, it tells me I have already posted it? But I don’t see it?
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AC Young sprouted…
The heralds of spring bloomed on the hillside.
[Oh, drat, forgot about this. Let’s see. Flowers, or something?]
Harold loved watching the hillside over the farm. He could tell the seasons and the weather by what was growing, blooming, or turning brown and stiff there.
For example, right now, he could take a walk up there, and he’d see horsetails sprouting. Little grayish sprouts, kind of like little soft straws with rings of growth along their shoots, and a tip that looked like a bud or bloom. Pick them, clean them up, and they made a fine dish to eat. There might still be a few butterbur, although it was little late for them. And fern sprouts, curling up into the sun! It was so much fun when the heralds of spring bloomed on the hillside.
[well, that’s not too bad, as a snippet…]
Shelly loved it when the heralds of spring bloomed on the hillside. Her family had shaped them, and now each spring, they grew tall and opened their blooms to the breezes that played across the hill. When the breeze hit them, they each played their tones, like flutes, as the air blew through their hollow stems. It was a wild melody, with their harmonics cutting across the hillside and down around the farm….
[hum, that’s odd…]
[sorry, running late, so I’ll stop there…]
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Oh, good, using the other computer let me post it, at least…
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