Words, words, words… communication is so much more than words, if you are standing face-to-face with someone. You can say so much with your face, the angle of your body, the way your arms are crossed. In text, conveying those deep subconscious meanings are difficult. The author needs to know what they are doing, and then the reader does as well, to interpret the author.
| Source | Rumor | Monger |
| Becky Jones | Turned out, the concert venue was a portal to another dimension. | Leigh Kimmel |
| AC Young | The ceremony was delayed by the rain. | Cedar Sanderson |
| nother Mike | She knew she was in trouble when her magnetic gel fingernail polish started picking up paperclips, thumbtacks, screws, nails, and other metal trash… | AC Young |
| Fiona Grey | Dragonlets rained from the sky amidst the wafting leaves. | Padre |
| Leigh Kimmel | All we did this week was make up for the past two week’s losses. | Fiona Grey |
| Padre | “The foot’s a game.” | Becky Jones |
| Cedar Sanderson | “Who do you think you are?” | nother Mike |
Take a spare. What does spare mean to you? How many meanings does that word have, anyway? Not to mention when you get into the idioms…
| Spare | Everything seemed normal, other than the Coopers hammering horseshoes, the Smithes baking bread, and the Bakers making barrels… |
| Spare | The viola’s strings vibrated, but the room was empty. |
| Spare | Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow; creep forth the petty tyrants day by day. |
| Spare | The TSA guards weren’t sure what to do when they discovered the alien baby in the suitcase. |
| Spare | Listen to the crows! And watch their murder… |
Come back and use your words in the comments! Let us know just what you mean, and mean what you write.
More Odds Than Ends 
I love the winged cat in the header image.
My response this week is up: https://acyoungauthor.substack.com/p/the-audit
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applause, applause! Very nicely done!
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Mine’s up on my substack.
https://professorornery.substack.com/p/tea-party
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And now mine’s up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1561059.html. It was fun to return to an old world I hadn’t worked with for a while.
I would’ve liked to linger in it a little longer, but I have deliverables I need to finish, so I need the evening to work on one of them.
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[…] My prompt went to Padre, with raining dragonlets. Check it out over at MOTE! […]
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Cedar Sanderson spread the rumor…
“Who do you think you are?”
[who’s asking? And why would this be a question? Hum… oh, oh. I had a vague memory of a song with that in the lyrics or title? Looks like almost everyone has done something like that… or at least lots of folks. ]
Harold sighed as the stage lights turned off. He shook his head and turned away from the reporters and cameras.
Somewhere, in the back of his head, that question from the floor so long ago still echoed.
“Who do you think you are?”
He had stuttered and answered with something about being a democrat, and from Maryland, and other trivia. But the question burned deep into him, and made him think, the rest of that day and late into the night.
“Who do you think you are?”
Six words, but they raised a mirror on your very self. Where you could see all the mistakes and flaws.
“Who do you think you are?”
He nodded. And took a deep breath, and promised himself that tomorrow, again, he would be the best he could be. He would work to make his supporters’ lives the best they could be. And he would try.
Because that was who he thought he was.
[hum, maybe…]
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And mine is up now. https://open.substack.com/pub/cedarlila/p/odd-prompt-rainfall
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Wow.
Grabbed me from the start. I was a bit confused on Nea’s species, but that is a minor thing.
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Fiona Grey offered up “Dragonlets rained from the sky amidst the wafting leaves.”
Dragonlets rained from the sky amidst the wafting leaves. Becky tried not to step on any of the little ones, mostly successfully.
She was fairly certain the dragons didn’t care about losing a signficant number of the babies as they produced sizable numbers every year and like fish and lizards and quite a few other creatures, they spawned massive numbers of babies every year, but only a handful survived to adulthood. Which was good, because the dragons were the dominant predator on the planet and too many dragons were almost as bad as too few. She still didn’t want to scrape them off the bottom of her shoe if she could help it.
The reproductive cycle of the great dragons of Beleg V was fascinating. Every year they flew up into the sky for a great mating dance. It was an incredible sight to see the planet’s apex predator wheeling enmasse, high in the sky, selecting their mates, and then consummating their relationships for the year.
No one knew why they chose this method, though humans had been studying it for centuries, almost since they had discovered the planet, but there were theories. Becky was working on another one, based on their evolutionary history and the xenopaleontology that was just starting to be done.
She ducked quickly under a tree as another batch of dragonlets floated down from on high where they had hatched in their floating eggs. She looked on as several of the local bird-equivalents darted in and grabbed a number of the babies just as they hit the ground.
Becky returned to her thoughts. There had to have been a more dangerous creature than the dragons on the ground that had driven them up into the sky for their mating rituals. She just had to find it…
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