As an artist looks at the world around them, they see it through two unique lenses. No one else has their eyes. If an artist, a true artist, cannot see, they listen, they feel, they taste and smell. Their perceptions pass through the filter of their mind, and what remains is what becomes art, writing, music, and so much more.
| Poster | Posting | Respondent |
| Cedar Sanderson | The precision of a scientist | Leigh Kimmel |
| Fiona Grey | “Ah, yes, the awkward silence best found in a large group of technology experts put in uncomfortable positions.” | Becky Jones |
| AC Young | On Scarlet, the chlorophyll-equivalent was red. | nother Mike |
| Becky Jones | The scent of plumerias floated in the air. | Fiona Grey |
| Padre | “Despite being warned, the child continued to stack block on top of block.” | Cedar Sanderson |
| Leigh Kimmel | “Dang, we’re going to need to spray for ants.” “That’s not an ant.” | Padre |
| nother Mike | Watch out for the curve at the end of the street, people fall into another world there… | AC Young |
Close your eyes. Open them. What do you see?
| Spare | “What are you doing here tonight?” |
| Spare | I did that already, but this time… |
| Spare | “Your nuclear stuff is here.” |
| Spare | “What do you do with a drunken tailor?” |
| Spare | “Why, some of my best friends are human.” |
| Spare | When we opened the box, the bats escaped… |
Learn to see, and your art will be better for it. Spend time watching the world, reading good books, learning about what lies beneath the obvious surface. And then, come back and put your prompt response enriched by this exercise into the comments. Don’t forget to email your prompt challenge to us, or a spare if you can’t commit.
More Odds Than Ends 
This week I was sent nother Mike’s: Watch out for the curve at the end of the street, people fall into another world there…
—
Len had just moved in to the village. His cottage was on the village’s only street, at the far end. Beyond the cottage the road headed into the local wood, curving to the left as it did so.
He had spent all day moving his stuff into his new cottage, helped by various friends and family. They had now left, and his new neighbour had come around to introduce himself. Now What-Was-His-Name was leaving, but he had one last piece of advice.
“Watch out for the curve at the end of the street, people fall into another world there…”
Len had no sensible response, so he just said goodbye and watched What’s-His-Name return to next door.
The next day was a Saturday. Len decided to prove his neighbour wrong, and headed out for a walk in the woods. It was a mistake.
As Len rounded the corner, he lost his footing, and fell through the road.
He landed on his face, on a path in the middle of a forest. He got up and looked around. The road he had been on had vanished completely, and the village and his new cottage were nowhere to be seen.
The only building was straight in front of him. It looked like a fancy house. There were three steps leading up to a green front door. All the windows were stained glass. It had three floors.
Len no longer had any idea where he was, and the most sensible thing was to find someone who knew and ask them. So he walked up to the front door and knocked.
The door was opened from the inside. Len found himself facing a beautiful … elf? She had long blond hair and pointed ears. Her eyes were bright green, and she was wearing a long blue gown.
“Have you fallen through the portal?”
Len was even more confused at hearing this. “I’m not sure what happened. One moment I was walking along the road, the next I was lying on that path and the road had vanished.”
She laughed – a high pitched tinkle. “So you did fall through the portal. Do you wish to return to your rightful realm?”
“I wish to return home, yes.”
“Then come this way.”
The elf turned around and led the way into the house. Len followed her and closed the door behind him.
The elf walked down the hallway and up a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs, she turned right and passed through a doorway.
Len followed her. In the room was a door. The doorway stood alone in the middle of the room.
“We take much greater care over the return portal than your world does over the one to our world. If you can open the door you may return.”
“If I can?”
“If. Each person who falls into this realm must solve the puzzle to return to their own. The guardian of the portal does not help.”
Len stepped past the elf and took a closer look at the door. The wood was covered with many metal bands, into which were etched many numbers, each next to a metal pin.
“Only a perfect ascending sequence will unlock the door.”
Without turning around, Len enquired “I thought you weren’t allowed to help.”
“Telling you the problem you need to solve does not count as helping.”
Len kept studying the door and its numbers. A perfect ascending sequence? He didn’t know what that meant. The numbers ranged from the small, such as 1 or 6 or 3, to the large, such as 7259 or 8128 or 10,296.
Wait a minute, there was something about 6, something he’d learnt at school. What was it? It was buried somewhere in the vaults of his memory. What was it about 6? It was even, a triangular number, the number of sides of a hexagon, a perfect number.
That was it! A perfect ascending sequence. An ascending sequence of perfect numbers. He touched the pin next to 6, and it sank into the door. What was the next one?
It was in the twenties, but he couldn’t just push randomly. He didn’t know how many tries he’d get, nor how to reset the door’s mechanism should he make a mistake.
Twenty was four times five, no that didn’t sound right. Four times seven perhaps? Yes, it was twenty-eight. Where was it, he hadn’t spotted that number yet. There it was. Len touched that pin, and it too sank into the door.
But the door hadn’t unlocked. There must be a third one. What was the formula again? Power of two times one less? No – power of two times one less than the next – but only if the latter was prime.
So what was next. Eight times fifteen? No, fifteen wasn’t prime. Sixteen times thirty-one? What was that? 480 plus 16, so 496. Had he seen that earlier? Yes, there it was, and the pin also sank into the door.
The door still didn’t open, so there must be another perfect number to be found.
32 times 63? No, 63 was a multiple of 3. 64 times 127? Oh help, that wasn’t going to be easy. 64 times 100 was 6400. 64 times 20 was 1280. 64 times 7 was, what was it? 420 plus 28, so 448. So the whole was 7680, 8080, 8128. Yes, 8128. He’d seen that earlier. Where was it? There.
Len pushed the last pin, and there was a click. The door opened. But all Len could see through the now open doorway was the other side of the room.
“Congratulations, you have solved the puzzle. Now you must step through to return to your world.”
Len took one last look around, said goodbye to the elf, and walked through the open doorway. One moment he was in the room, the next moment he was walking along the road, just around the corner from his new cottage.
Len returned swiftly home, vowing silently as he did so never to explore the woods again.
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Ooh! Very nicely done! So that’s where the portal goes…
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Lucky he knew math! I would have been stuck!
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AC Young posted…
On Scarlet, the chlorophyll-equivalent was red.
[Aha, the setting for a SF thriller about the little colony that could? ]
The first settlers on Scarlet loved walking in the red fields and red forests, but they also found it useful to separate the new plantings of Earth-style growth from the native plants. At least while they were growing, the Earth plants had their typical green foliage, while on Scarlet, the native plants were more red, since the chlorophyll-equivalent was red.
[well, that’s an infodump style… maybe…]
Kelly shook his head. He had promised Jennifer that he would try to bring her the makings for a Christmas wreath, like she remembered from Earth, long before. But on Scarlet, the plants had red foliage, even during the summer. Finding some kind of evergreen or vine with green foliage was not easy. Still, he had promised, so he set off again. Maybe over in that little valley, where the stream ran?
He slid down the side of the valley, looking at the trees, all flaming red. But he thought he saw a flash of green in the undergrowth. So he started to walk forward, which is when the dolby jumped out and bit at him. He jumped back, and pulled his knife out. Darn it, he knew dolbies had traces of green sometimes in their fur, why hadn’t he been watching for one?
The dolby snarled, and he sliced down and caught a paw. The dolby shook it, and slowly backed away.
Kelly waited, knife ready, until he was sure it had left. Then he shook for a few minutes. But there, underneath the trees, he saw green on the ground, too. A bit of digging turned up a vine, with green leaves mixed in among the red. He ended up with a coil of the vine and its leaves.
When he set out for home, he thought Jennifer might be happy to use this to make her Christmas wreath, especially after he told her he had to fight a dolby to collect it!
[okay, that’s kind of interesting…]
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[…] positions.” While I gave her: The scent of plumerias floated in the air. Get yourself over to More Odds Than Ends to see what she and everybody else did with their responses. If you feel like joining in, grab a […]
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It can’t be… the response to so many fact-based reports by so-called intellectuals holding onto their theories with both hands and closed eyes… fun!
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[…] Check out more over at More Odds Than Ends! […]
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And just who (or what!). Has a question out there? Nice cliffhanger!
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[…] You can read all of the prompt responses, or take part in the challenge with me and others over at More Odds Than Ends. […]
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I managed a little something. https://www.cedarwrites.com/2023/08/15/odd-prompts-design-of-ages/
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Ah, yes! Building on building on building… reaching for the stars? Fun little bit!
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Got it done and actually on time this week!
Leigh Kimmel prompted me with:“Dang, we’re going to need to spray for ants.” “That’s not an ant.”
William yawned. The scent of spices hung in the air, mixing pleasantly with the lingering bready warmth of the pizza they had ordered in for dinner, several hours ago.
It had been a long day and the two of them were still working. The sun had set some time back, but there was still cleaning that needed to be done. William was trying, but he had hit his wall a couple hours back. Elizabeth? She was still organizing the kitchen.
It was probably fair. It was her domain and things were not up to her standards. Granted, it was always a chore to arrange things the first time, let alone rearrange things to the way you wanted them when they were put in their place by another woman, and, in this case, a grandmother who had been dead for five years. His grandfather had tried to keep it up, but the kitchen organization was hopelessly corrupted by a layer of maleness and age that could not keep up with the tasks at hand.
He looked up from his wandering thoughts when Elizabeth paused and looked down. “Dang. We’re going to need to spray for ants.”
William looked down, too. “That’s not an ant.” He looked closer. “I don’t know what it is, but it definitely isn’t an ant.”
He reached down and picked it up. It was not an ant, though it had an insect form with the three body parts and six legs.. It was more mechanical looking, with legs and shell of metal and some kind of light or camera or something where its face should be. It almost looked like a miniaturized spybot, but he had never seen or heard of something this small.
A split second later, he dropped it as it suddenly scorched his fingertips. It glowed briefly red, then white, before vaporizing in a blob of metal and the sharp scorched scent of ozone. “Someone doesn’t want us looking at that,” he commented.
Five seconds later, his cell began vibrating in his back pocket. William didn’t recognize the number, but he answered anyway. The timing was too much of a coincidence, and telemarketers usually didn’t call this late at night.
“Good evening…”
“Ah! Mr. Parker. I’m glad you picked up.” The thick Russian accent on the other end of the line sounded genuinely surprised that he had answered. “I have a… proposition for you.”
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Oh, oh! And you thought computer spam was bad? Wait for the robo-ants….
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And now mine is up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1388199.html. I’d wanted to get a lot more done, but my attempts at something larger and more detailed foundered — and it didn’t help that a lot of my time and emotional energy is going to a super-special submission opportunity to a magazine that never has open submissions. It’s got a hard deadline at the end of the month, while I have a convention to sell at which will eat eight days of the remaining time, and I really don’t want to let this opportunity slip through my fingers — or do a botch job on it instead of a good enough one that, even if the editor doesn’t buy that story, he’ll see me as someone to invite to submit stories to future issues.
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Go, go, secret project! Yay!
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