Prompt: Dragons stalk the streets, puffing out smoke and clattering their mechanical wings

Quote credit: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Photo credit: Robert Dalton, “MojaveDesert Sand Dragon” (cc 2.0)

Prompt Credit: Unknown origin, found on Pinterest

At the first tremor, Jakov dropped the fabric bolt he had been considering and looked around for Clara. Another tremor, and people began to clear the market square, shouting and running in alarm. Where was the brat! Mother would kill him!

As the square emptied, Jakov ran into the center, turning slowly with sharp eyes focused at knee level, searching for Clara’s white-blond curls. He spotted her gazing up at sparkly suncatchers, and beyond her, the dragon’s head appeared around the corner.

Jakov froze. What could he do? No use to call out – the dragon would hear him, not Clara. He couldn’t run to her, or the dragon might attack them both. He couldn’t move at all, in fact, without the dragon’s metallic eyes latching onto him. No one wanted to attract the notice of a dragon.

Fear warred with anger. Why had the clockwork mages built the dragons and animated them to roam the city? Great metal-scaled beasts, they blew smoke when calm and roared fire when disturbed, leaving terror and destruction in their wake. The mages were long gone, but the dragons ruled in their stead.

The dragon’s head lolled left and right, searching for….what? Movement? Scent? Jakov knew the moment it saw Clara, and his heart stopped. The dragon lowered its head and stretched out its long, thick neck, moving closer and closer to Clara, who remained oblivious to the danger behind her. She lifted her arms and waved in a happy dance with the spinning suncatchers.

She spun around and stopped short when she came nose to snout with the dragon. A thin curl of steam wrapped around her. They stared at each other, unmoving. Clara reached out a hand and laid her palm flat on the dragon’s nose, then slid it up, leaning forward…closer and closer to those terrible long fangs.

Jakov wanted to turn away, before he saw his sister snapped up by the great beast. Instead, he watched with horrified fascination as she fearlessly stroked the dragon’s nose and along its cheek. The dragon’s eyes blinked shut, and it blew a gentle puff of steam around her. Clara’s fingers moved against the dragon’s scales, and Jakov knew she was signing. He wanted to tell her somehow, the dragon would never understand.

Clara leaned even closer and pressed her lips on the dragon’s snout. He fingers traced signs across its scales once more, then she wrapped her chubby arms around its nose and hugged it. Jakov felt hysterical laughter bubbling up inside. Before it burst free, the dragon pulled away, turned around, and returned through the street beyond, with a single flick of its tail as it disappeared.

Jakov raced to Clara and dropped to his knees, gathering her in a tight hug. She wriggled free and reached up to trace signs on his cheek, as their mother had taught them for as long as Jakov could remember. Dragon! Did you see?

Did he see? He wasn’t sure his heart had started beating again. Yes, I saw. Are you crazy? How could you let it get so close?

Clara cocked her head, curls bobbing in the sunlight. She tapped her fingers against his cheek, thinking. He waited. There was no rushing her. Dragon friend.

No, Clara! Not friend! Danger!

Clara pulled away, then grabbed his hand and signed once more. Friend. You’ll see.

She marched across the still-empty square, and Jakov watched her for a long moment before he jumped to his feet and ran after her. Ghods help him if she got home first and told Mother she had made friends with a dragon. Mother would kill him. Maybe he should go after the dragon instead.

#

And so, with a loving heart, I offer you

Namaste

I’ve heard many translations. Here’s one I love:
The light of the universe that shines within me recognizes
the light of the universe that shines within you.

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle
Music Playing	Sinners & Saints: The Ultimate Medieval & Renaissance Music Collection
Time writing	~70 minutes, including image/quote research
September word count	1,766

Prompt: someone cleans out their closet only to find something extremely unusual

“Davey, go pull everything out of the closet in your room. I want to wash the walls down before we put your stuff in there.”

Davey groaned. “But Mom!” She just gave him That Look and pointed upstairs. Davey stomped toward the stairs. When he hit the first step, his mother said, “Thanks, Davey. I really appreciate your help. Get the closet cleared out, and you can take a break and go look around the block for other kids, okay?” Davey refused to look at her, but he nodded and then continued upstairs.

He didn’t remember the house, but Cassie said they had come to visit their grandparents when Davey was two, before Daddy went to Afghanistan. She remembered a Christmas tree in the living room, and the pass-through window from the kitchen to the dining room. That was eight years ago. Daddy was gone, and now his parents, too. He didn’t understand why they had to come live in this stupid big old house.

There were four bedrooms on the second floor. Davey and Cassie were in the back two. She shared a bathroom with Mom, which meant Davey got the second bathroom all to himself. That was pretty cool, he guessed. He had a big walk-in closet, too. But it was filled with his grandparents’ junk, like the rest of the house. They were trying to go through everything. Mom called it organizing. It felt more like moving stuff from one room to another. But Davey knew better than to argue when she was slinging That Look.

They’d already gone through all the clothes, so Davey turned on the closet light and started pulling things off the shelves that lined the wall opposite the door. None of it was very interesting to him, as he carried armload after armload out into his room and spread it on the floor. When he got to the top two shelves, he pulled in his desk chair to climb up.

Reaching up to the top shelf, his hand knocked against something hard that scooted away – he followed it and clasped his fingers around a small box. Tugging it off the shelf, he carried it down and sat on his bed to open it. An old style cigar box, with pictures criss-crossed in a collage. Davey lifted the lid and peered inside. A handful of baseball cards, a few letters, a fishing lure, and a man’s ring with a tiger eye stone. Davey slid the ring on his finger and picked up the cards.

Cassie burst through his bedroom door. “Davey—”

She looked around in confusion. “Davey? Oh, Mom is going to kill you for sneaking out, you brat!” She backed out of the room and disappeared down the hall.

Davey pulled off the ring and stared at it. “Wow. What was that?”

Dogs in House	Houdini, Brindle
Music	Santana on youtube.com
Time writing	40 minutes, distracted
May word count	1,047

Prompt: After the Fall

“Jase? Jason! Mom said come on—”

Jason looked up as his younger sister Bethany threw open his door. She stared open-mouthed as he swept the items on top of his desk into the center drawer and slammed it shut. He glared at her. “Honestly, Bebs—”

“Honestly? Jase, a techhead? How could you? What if someone saw you? What if they took you away like Daddy? What would happen to Mom and me?” Bethany burst into tears and ran from the room. She ran into her room and slammed the door shut. Jason sighed and followed her down the hall. Coming into her room and closing the door, he faltered at the sight of her standing in the middle of the room. She hugged her arms around her middle and stomped her feet. He’d taught her that trick. Let the anger chase away the sad. After Stacey died…

Jason knelt behind her and wrapped his arms around her in a big hug. Leaning his forehead against her shuddering back, he said, “I won’t get caught, Bebs. I promise. It’s just…there’s so much…I just want to see if I can make anything work.” She tugged away in his arms, and he picked her up with a squeeze. “Besides, you’ll scare away anyone who comes looking for me with that scowl,” he teased, tossing her on the bed and tickling her.

She shrieked and threw pillows at him, then climbed up and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Please, Jase. Be careful. Tech is bad.”

He hated to hear her parrot the party line. Hated that they taught it in school. Hated that their dad had been cuffed and carted away for trying to tinker with medical equipment when their older sister had been dying and no one could do anything about it.

Now. The technology had been lost over two hundred years ago when the Peacemaker virus swept through all the interconnected systems throughout the globe. It had been lights out for everything with, well, lights. And in the Aftermath, all tech became the enemy.

But their father, a doctor trained in a real medical school, knew stories about technology that did wonderful things. Saved lives. When Stacey got sick and he couldn’t cure her, he went looking for options, and found rebel techheads in an abandoned hospital who showed him some of what they’d been able to restore. Not much, with no power grid. But he brought back a few tools he thought might be useful.

How did they know? Did someone tell? Men showed up in the middle of the night and took him away. Stacey got worse. Then she died. If the tech could have saved her, how was that bad? Jason ran away from home and found other techheads. When he came home three weeks later, their Mom didn’t ask any questions.

TBC?

Dogs in House	Brindle, Houdini
Music	Chorus frogs
Time writing	~30 minutes
April word count	1752

Prompt: Suddenly able to hear others’ thoughts | the illegitimate son of a king | is stalked by a jealous admirer

I wonder if he’s awake yet, the lazy bastard.

Sima Zhou stiffened at the table, where he was transcribing saying of the late Emperor Wu Di. He was a bastard, that didn’t bother him. But he wasn’t lazy! He’d been up before the thin streaks of dawn filtered in through the thin rice paper covering his window. His fingers were stained with ink as he painstakingly paid homage to the great man he remembered simply as Grandfather Sima Yan.

“Enter,” he commanded stiffly, and the door to his room opened, bringing the scent of fresh jasmine tea and his favorite spicy duck eggs. He glowered at the serving woman as she set his breakfast table. But she was perfectly polite and efficient, concentrating on her work and not giving any sign of disrespect. Had he imagined it?

“After breakfast, I will want a bath,” he said curtly, and she bowed with folded hands above her forehead.

As if it matters if he smells like jasmine or pigs. Did he hear a laugh as she carried her tray out of the room?

Voices followed him through the morning until he thought he was going insane. He finally sank into the hot water of the bath and let the water cover his head.

How I long to lie beside him…

Sima Zhou shot upright, spluttering. Was there no peace? And who said that? He thrashed in the water, looking all around the bathing chamber, but it was empty, as he had commanded.

If his brother had an accident, he would be appointed heir. He would thank me…

Sima Zhou shouted, “Who’s there?”

He was frozen with terror. If something happened to Sima Lun, he was as likely to be accused as appointed. He climbed out of the pool and dried himself quickly, struggling into his robes without waiting for the servants.

He had to find whoever was thinking such dark thoughts and convince them otherwise. But how?

To be continued, perhaps

Dogs in house	Houdini
Time writing	~35 minutes, including research
December word count	11,035

Prompt: You need heal

Thanks to Miao Zhang for permission to use his beautiful image, “You Need Heal”!

Colm staggered through the mist, stumbling over roots and crashing into tree trunks, slashing with his short knife at brambles that clutched at his bloody, ripped tunic and wrapped around his heavy black leather boots. He’d lost his sword when the largest thug cut through Connor’s throat, continuing his swing to block Colm’s desperate lunge. The killer’s heavy sword slid along Colm’s blade and jarred against his wrist. Hand numb from the blow, Colm dropped his sword as he staggered back and fled.

Colm blinked the blood and tears out of his eyes and saw his brother fall again and again and again. He grabbed a thick sapling and doubled over, spewing vomit mixed with blood. He fell to his knees and sank backward until his head hit the ground. “Connor,” he cried out. “Connor!” A whisper. “Connor!” The sound might not have left his lips.

He woke, aware that time had passed, but not how much. The light seemed no different through the thick fog. His wounds still burned, and he felt dizzy, the earth rocking against his head in time to his aching heart’s beat. “Connor,” he groaned, rolling his head to the side, searching for the strength to sit, to stand, to move.

His eyes fastened on the wooden staff planted against the thick layer of fallen leaves, then past it to the dark green leather boots that wrapped around impossibly slender calves. He didn’t move as his eyes travelled up those legs, bare to the hips but draped in delicate vines. An ornate belt wrapped around a waist he could span with his hands. He carefully swept past deep cleavage and broad shoulder plates to a delicate face paler than her long pink hair. He didn’t know which was more mesmerizing, the curve of her lips, the blaze of her green eyes, or the slender pointed tips of her ears that gently curved away from her head.

“You need heal,” she said in a silver-toned voice, swinging her staff down in front of him. It was topped with a blazing orb of green and yellow light. Colm tried to lift his hand, to speak, but he couldn’t move.

“You need heal,” she said again. His eyes were locked on her face, and he realized her lips had not moved. His eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled back in his head. The last thing he saw was the light radiating over him.

To be continued, perhaps

Time writing	~20 minutes
December word count	7,941