We are entering the season of holidays. Of fervid preparations, interruptions, shopping, bad cheer… What, it’s not supposed to be like that? Well, it is. Make sure you plan in time to take care of yourself. Remember that gifts are supposed to be tokens of your affection, not break the bank and leave you impoverished for the coming year until you do it all over again. A blank book, for them to write or draw in, and a link to this blog, perhaps. Creativity is rewarding!
| Source | Package | Destination |
| AC Young | Memo to the IT department: Please don’t move our computers around without asking them for their thoughts first. They get cranky, and then we have to suffer the consequences. | Becky Jones |
| Becky Jones | The gnomes marched down the middle of the street. | Padre |
| Fiona Grey | The fruit basket floated in midair before it gave a peculiar wobble. | nother Mike |
| Leigh Kimmel | It was supposed to be a game of harmless cartoon violence in the slapstick tradition, but something went horribly wrong… | Cedar Sanderson |
| Padre | “I don’t know if that was a cat or something worse.” | Leigh Kimmel |
| nother Mike | That dragster says his car can do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs… | AC Young |
| Cedar Sanderson | Suddenly the screen display appeared on the wrong screen | Fiona Grey |
and if you feel the holidays are just too hectic and you can’t commit to prompting, there are always the spare prompts, which an elegant ungulate delights in seeing put to good use. Make the Minotaur in his labyrinth happy, and select a spare this week.
| Spare | “Cupcake!” screeched the woman, flinging her hand with the ticket into the air with eager anticipation. |
| Spare | It was a bundle of riotous color filled with giggles. |
| Spare | “Cracking good time, ma’am,” the cowboy murmured with a tip of his hat. |
| Spare | The dinosaur eggs we picked up while camping are starting to hatch… |
| Spare | For the veterans! We thank God that such men (and women) lived! |
| Spare | When you live in a trashcan, even leftovers smell good… |
Finally! Remember the season is supposed to be of joy, thanksgiving, and celebration. Prune off the time wasters and count your blessings. Pull the ones you love in for a big hug, and don’t bother with the ones who don’t love you and you don’t love them. Family is who we choose and who chooses us.
More Odds Than Ends 
Y’a know, letting a dragon read over your shoulder takes a certain amount of courage, and patience, waiting for it to tell you to turn the page…
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and heaven help you if it reads faster than you do.
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… although I’d suggest that you’re safe until you leave the library – a bibliophile dragon wouldn’t want to get blood on all those books after all – but from that point, beware!
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This week nother Mike sent me: That dragster says his car can do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs…
—
“This is my dragster; I call it the Millennium Falcon.”
Greg was barely concentrating on the TV. His gran was watching an old documentary on drag racing – not because she was interested in drag racing, but because she just set the channel to 17, and watched whatever was scheduled from breakfast to dinner.
“Why the Millennium Falcon?” asked the reporter through the tele.
“Well… You know what they say. It can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.”
The young fellow on the TV looked extremely pleased with himself as everyone around him laughed. Even his gran chuckled, but whatever the joke was went completely over Greg’s head.
“What’s he talking about, Gran?”
“Have you never seen Star Wars?”
“What’s Star Wars?”
“Young man, it seems that you’ve got some serious gaps in your cultural education. I am going to have to help you fill them.”
Before Greg knew what was happening, his gran had opened one of her cupboards, got out a DVD, and put it into the machine.
The TV picture changed, music blared, and after the film company’s logo, text scrolled up from the bottom of the screen. Before Greg knew it, he was engrossed in the tale of Leia and Luke and Han and Obi-Wan and …
When the credits rolled, Greg looked at his watch, and realised that he’d stayed longer than he was intending to.
“Did you enjoy that?”
“Yes, Gran. Was that the only one?”
“No. There was a whole trilogy. Why don’t I show you ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ next week?”
“I’ll look forwards to it.”
Greg said his goodbyes, and headed off home. He’d visit his gran the same time next week.
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[…] week my More Odds Than Ends prompt challenge came from AC Young: Memo to the IT department: Please don’t move our computers […]
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[…] You can read all of the responses, or play along with the prompt challenge, over at More Odds Than Ends! […]
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I had a little fun with it, this week! https://www.cedarwrites.com/odd-prompts-a-juicy-big-tomato/
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I think it really does want to grow into a novella, or maybe even a series! Fun!
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[…] Thanks to Cedar for the screen swapping prompt! Can’t wait to see what nother Mike does with a fruit basket! Find more at MOTE. […]
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Becky Jones suggested, “The gnomes marched down the middle of the street.”
Joe lay absolutely still under his ghillie suit. He knew he couldn’t be seen. The tangled brush under the trees, the shadowed woods around him, and the bushes between him and the road ahead made it very difficult to distinguish him from another bush.
But he knew that the enemy would be looking with more than their eyes. He didn’t have much experience with working with their new allies, but he recognized that their senses were… different. Not just smell and sound. He had no idea if they could see into the infrared or ultraviolet, let alone whatever magic would allow them to sense.
Magic… He almost shook his head, then stopped himself. The world was a far stranger place than he had ever realized. Fantasy creatures had lived on the edges of humanity and among them for generations. Only a few people knew of them and what they did. But with the threats that his country was facing, they had been brought into the military and now he was supposed to put them through their paces.
With a self-discipline born of long hard practice, Joe let his eyes track down the length of the street, not moving any other muscles. The column of fantasy creatures was finally in sight. Two centaurs were in the lead while a squad of elves covered the flanks. The gnomes marched down the middle of the street, watching the flanks as well, while a small squad of dwarves brought up the rear.
The column was just coming even with him when a small cough to his left and across the street caught everyone’s attention and the smoke grenade landed square in the middle of the road, between the lead centaurs and the platoon of gnomes- the signal to start the ambush. Joe pulled sighted down on the column with his rifle and pulled the trigger. Paint rounds from him and the rest of the ambushers slammed into the gnomes. Not all of them went down and a scattering for fire from their submachine guns lanced back toward the woods on both sides of the column. Joe grinned and continued to pour fire into the enemy.
Suddenly he felt his head jerk back and something trace across his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the glimpse of dark green talons holding a pen of some type, a simulated knife. Then a voice hissed in his ear, “Tricksy, little human. You think you can hide from us?”
Joe shook his head. They’d got him. Actually, it looked like they had gotten his entire team. Then, the column of enemies wavered slightly and vanished, revealed for the illusions they were. The After Action Review on this was going to be interesting.
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Oh, I like this! Figuring out how to most usefully deploy magic allies would be… interesting.
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And now mine is up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1439465.html. It didn’t go quite the way I was expecting, but I’m thinking it’ll be at or near the beginning of the second volume of Sharp War Blues, Lisa’s series.
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Fiona Grey postmarked…
The fruit basket floated in midair before it gave a peculiar wobble.
[i keep thinking of someone floating a basket of fruit in a stream of air, like a ball, and then, of course, someone tries to take a piece out or add one, and… we got wobbles, my friend… but I’m not coming up with any story around it, darn it! Okay, how about the fledgling magician, trying their best with levitation? Or maybe…]
Hector was surprised when Grandma yelled at him. Then he looked over at the Thanksgiving table, and his eyebrows shot right up his forehead, while his chin dropped.
“Hector! Tell me you didn’t pick any of those special melons I told you to stay away from?”
He bit his lip. They had looked so good, floating a little bit above the vines on the ground, and he thought they were ripe, so…
“Only a few, Grandma.”
She waved at the table.
“Well, see what you’ve done!”
The fruit basket that had been sitting on the table now floated above the table. As he watched, the fruit basket floating in midair suddenly gave a peculiar wobble.
“Grandma, I guess I know why it’s floating. I mean, those melons are full of gas that makes them float. But why is it wobbling?”
She shook her head.
“If I had to guess, the gas is slowly leaking out from where you cut the vine. Which means the basket is going to drop, sometime. Probably right in the mashed potatoes! So, let’s try to get that darn thing away from the table.”
She grabbed a towel, and started flapping away with it. Hector grabbed another towel, and joined her. The breeze from the two of them slowly made the floating basket drift away from the table. As soon as she could, Grandma ran around the table and grabbed it.
Then she started laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
She chortled, then looked at Hector as she held the basket under her arm.
“Oh, I was just remembering. Your dad did the same thing to us, about 20 years ago. Except we didn’t get the basket clear in time, and it dropped right on top of the gravy boat. So we had gravy everywhere!”
Hector started laughing then. He could just imagine it!
[okay, that’s kind of cute. Although now I want to get the bioscience folks to try growing gas-filled melons!]
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