ambiguousprompts

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #93

The future had come and gone, but its cities looked much the same.

It wasn't that there hadn't been progress. Technology had moved on. Cars could fly, for example - just not legally, at least not over built-up areas. They'd thought about virtual roads, extending the map across another dimension, but it was far too much red tape. Locals complained. Petitioned. Nobody on the fourteenth floor wanted traffic outside their window.

There were laser guns, too. No bullets. Efficient. Auto-targeting. Naturally silent. Except silencers were largely illegal, so the manufacturers added back an artificial gunshot sound; in the vein of digital cameras with shutter noises, or the engine roar of an electric car. Technology had moved on, but people hadn't. Laws had been written, plans had been drawn, on the basis of the limits of the time. It was too much work to tear that up and start anew.

It wasn't that people disliked the new technology. They found it very exciting, until they counted the sunk cost of the existing infrastructure, how many things depended on each other, how hard it would be to retrofit new features to existing stock. The fire of any impassioned Luddites was nothing to the cold indifference of the status quo. The city may as well have been set in stone. Like a lobster, it could no longer grow within the confines of its skin. It needed to shed. To build its foundations anew.

It was overdue a disaster.

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #92

"Really?" she protested. "I'm old enough to be your mother."

She could have added grand- as a prefix, but even she didn't want to acknowledge that. At one point, she would have courted this sort of attention. She had relished it, in her prime - this dance of flattery and coy refusal. But that had been many years ago, and it was foolish to pretend that this young man, as beautiful as he was, still wanted what they'd all been looking for back then.

"You're almost old enough that you couldn't be," he pointed out, dropping the act.

"That isn't helping," she told him. "But now, if you're quite finished trying to seduce me... what is it that you really want?"

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #8

She prayed only in the quiet moments. The morning, when she rose in bathed in the silence of an empty house. The evening, when she returned to the darkness of that void. The times in between. The spaces between breaths. The gaps between prayers.

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #91

The mist came down from the mountains, and the elk came with it. It was a dismal morning in April - at first light, or as much had suffered through the moribund cloud - and they meandered down the slopes like shadows retreating from the coming of the day.

She watched on from her window as the waded out into the surf: their antlers at first aloft like sails, then becoming driftwood, then shipwrecks jutting out between the waves. They became thronged with seaweed, weighed down with foam - and, disappearing from her view, descended to become a nest of coral on the ocean floor, a bone-bleached reef through which the little fish might dance.

That had been the first day.

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #90

He was lightly armoured, and sneered as she limped into the arena.

"Full plate? Do I frighten you that much?"

"I'm only frightened for my clothes," she said, her voice echoing inside her helmet. "I'm told that you can stain. Wearing this, what's left of you will wash away in tomorrow's rain"

"And the visor?" He kept his voice as steady as his sword-arm, but the curl of his lip was gone.

"For visibility."

"By limiting your line of sight?"

"Exactly," she said. "I don't want to get your blood in my eyes."

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #89

"Please," he begged. "Where's your humanity?"

"Right here," the sovan said, tightening her grip on the sword. "This is the most human thing I've ever done."

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #88

"You know," he said. "When Mark Antony died, Cleopatra took her own life, left outnumbered and alone. But somehow even she didn't miss her mark as badly as you."

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #87

"How dare you address me in that way! I am the Mouth of the Authority! My words are those of the Emperor himself! I speak with His unholy voice!"

"Then kiss me with His tongue," she said, unrepentant, undeterred. "Let the teeth of Oblivion taste my mortal lips. Smite me with His embrace, and break me upon the rocks of His mercy."

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #86

It was mostly a wishing well in the sense that it was in a desert, and everyone's first wish was for water. But it had other secrets, for those who knew to ask.

"I hope you are keeping well," the letter began, and he was. There were several of them, dotted around the world; well-keepers, there to guard over their mysteries and keep their waters from running dry. They kept in correspondence, trading stories of visiting well-wishers, and warning of those who came with poison in their hearts.

Their wells were difficult to find, but there were always those desperate enough to make the attempt. The pilgrimage up a mountainside; a wish-list hand-delivered to the North Pole. Most visitors were well-intentioned, hoping for health, wealth, happiness, or some variation along those themes. But some requests were beyond the pail.

"Danger approaches," the letter continued. "I trust that you know what to do."

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #85

"It looks worse than it is," he told her, washing up. It couldn't have looked much better; he spoke through a stream of blood, and even his voice sounded bruised by the hit. "The nose is the crumple zone of the face. It's there to absorb the impact."

"I'm not sure that's true," she said. "But even if it is... I think your face has just been written off."

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #84

The transformation began at midnight - at least, that was the theory.

The artifact had been calibrated to its own time zone. But for Hailey, it was 3pm, local time - undermining some of the magic, but making it much easier to prepare.

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #83

"What do you mean, deal with him?

"You play cards, don't you? One of you can cut him in half, and the rest can distribute him between you. Use your imagination."

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #82

Harf had everything he'd ever wanted, and it had only cost him everything he'd had.

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #81

The thing about being a confidence trickster? The confidence needs to be real. You can wear another man's face, his clothes, his habits, but you need to bring the guts yourself. You can't be comfortable in someone else's skin if you aren't comfortable in your own.

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #80

It is one hundred years since our children left, laments the record in Hameln's chronicles - but they were lucky. Their children merely disappeared. Ours want us gone instead.

It is one hundred years since we've been at war.

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #79

"Turn your phones off at the door," the chalkboard said. It was that sort of restaurant: all rustic furniture and old-fashioned charm. "Switch off from the outside world. Talk to each other instead."

That was their whole selling point: people came to enjoy the gimmick, the atmosphere, which would have been ruined by a single person on their phone. As such, the restaurant didn't rely on patron self control. For all the simple farmhouse façade, a decidedly modern arrangement in the roof ensured that signals in and out were blocked, in case one of the customers was tempted to cheat.

When the apocalypse arrived, they were some of the last to know.

[ambiguousprompts]

Prompt #78

Queen Asarfa was princess shopping.

There was nothing wrong with being childless. She was the Queen, and nobody could tell her otherwise. Many other Queens had done it before her, including some of the greatest names in history. They had died without leaving an heir, and the throne had simply passed to their uncle, or nephew, or been fought over for years in a brutal civil war.

Asarfa wanted a different sort of legacy. In her case, it was a cousin: second, once removed, but not quite removed enough. He had the next strongest claim to her crown, and was always hovering around the court, in case she dropped it for him to pick up. They'd wanted her to marry him, first of all, but that was never going to happen. He'd have tried to take control, and the throne only had room for one.

But she hadn't married at all, nor produced any closer relatives, and now he was due to inherit from her anyway. He was born to win either way; whether she accepted his advances, or rejected everyone, it was only a matter of time before he got what he really wanted. Asarfa resolved not to let that happen. Having resisted his clutching for power in life, she wouldn't just concede it to him in death.

Absent a late suitor, adoption was the only option left. She could find an heir or ten, import some if she had to, to put some distance between her and the vulture at her door. The more the better, she was starting to decide: a dozen young ladies made princess, in the hope that at least one would prove themselves a worthy Queen.

But she had to find them first.