Setting: Mostly unknown, post-apocalyptic. Fantasy? Science Fiction? I don’t know.
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“‘What big teeth you have, grandma,’” I quoted as I looked at the rows of long nails sticking out of board that was clamped to a bench in the workshop.

Unfortunately, I saw neither the calculating look of the workshop’s owner nor the wolfish grin that spread across her face before she replaced it with a sickeningly sweet simper, and said, “What a delightful child!” while patting my cheek fondly.

I stiffened. I wanted to grab the woman’s hand and twist it in a lock, but my guardian placed her hand on my shoulder just then and leaned close to my ear as the woman wandered away, talking about her wares.

“You don’t know how close you are to the mark, child.”

I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks, but I knew better than to sass a guard of the yellow order.

“Look at how she walks, how she does her work.”

I grudgingly returned my attention to the owner of the shop, but soon I was fascinated. She walked with nearly regimented precision and when she swung the wool comb down, I could see how she had trained with weapons before, and how she considered the comb as just another weapon.

My eyes widened as they moved around the room, noting the many combs and hackles, made of steel spikes resting in wood, the spindles, poking up like sharpened stakes, even the brushes, with teeth stiffer than anything I would let near my head.

“She is a textile master. Her order is highly sought after for their skills. It should come as no wonder that for an apprentice to be sent out on their journey, that they must have the fighting skills to keep themselves safe.

“Besides, you didn’t think it would be easy to shear a wolf, did you?”

I tried to detect if my guardian was pulling my tail, but if she was, she kept her own counsel.

It was a small effort to not step back as the woman I now realized was a warrior walked back toward us, but it was still an effort I noted.

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Just over 350 words, but I’ll accept that for now. Still trying to not be sick. I’m hoping that things are looking up (and that I don’t cough myself out of sleep again tonight).

Here is my restart of my own, personal Write-a-Thon challenge. The first part is an exercise in writing and is me writing about me and my thoughts; it is a slice of my day. The second part is a world setting exercise. I have thought about a story seed and now I’m trying to find fertile soil to plant it in so that it can grow.

They aren’t really SF&F stories, but I figure that getting some writing in is what is most important right now.

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The crust was in the freezer, her stomach was full, and everything was lined up how it should be. Thoughts still flitted through her mind, though. The tickle in the back of her throat, the gazpacho that she hadn’t started, how long it would take to make the quiche filling. They were all things that had nothing to do with what she told herself that she wanted to do.

Why did writing provide such a challenge? It was a dream of hers. Something nearly pie-in-the-sky. If she started writing and she was bad at it, what would that mean? Would her life crumble?

She coughed angrily. As if her life would crumble just because she couldn’t write. How silly. She’s spent years studying to be a software engineer, and who cares that she was slated for testing rather than development? She made good money.

But, there in the back of her head, was the voice that kept saying that it wasn’t happy. That it wasn’t doing what it wanted to. It wasn’t making a difference, it wasn’t working hard enough, and that’s what it wanted to do. And then, another voice, saying that it was tired of keeping to someone else’s schedule, tired of worrying about when to go to work and when to take lunch and how long it should take.

That’s true, she thought. What was it that was said on the self-help teleconference earlier? If it doesn’t make you happy, why are you doing it?

Why was she doing it? Well, money, of course. She made more than enough to start paying back her debts. Not that she was making much headway yet. Was the work fun? Sometimes it was. When the anxiety over time didn’t step in, or the longing to be doing something else. She supposed that the fact was that it didn’t make her happy on a day-to-day basis.

So, what if she could make money by doing something else? Or what if she could look at what she was doing now in a way that made her happy?

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World Setting

What if curiosity didn’t kill the cat?

What would the cat become? A dragon. Dragons are cats that curiosity couldn’t kill.

Cats have such tales. Of great cats that had gone on to become great dragons. But it has been centuries since a cat has taken up the challenge.

Why? Is it because humans have become technologically advanced? Has that killed magic? Or did humans become too good at killing dragons? Or did the knowledge of how to become a dragon get lost? Or did cats lose the culture which insisted that it is possible? or the lore?

There are still dragons. Most of them have drawn back into the in-between, where cats can see them, but most humans cannot. Most of the dragons are not true dragons, however. They are more spirits of the elements. Cats lost quite a bit of lore during the plagues of Europe, when they were killed because people thought that they were the cause. Humans did become good at killing dragons, but, as said, dragons withdrew to hide. True dragons were far-between before humans started killing them, and now that cats have lost their lore of how to become dragons, they are even harder to find.

Cats have nine lives. They have to finish the dragon trials before they run out of lives in order to become a dragon.

Since this is also about lore that the cats have lost, do they have gods and goddesses that have been forgotten? If cats can see in-between, what other things reside there, besides dragons? Do those things hate technology? Do they love it? Does a cat have to live in the country to hear the old tales from spirits that are in-between? What would a city cat hear from a country stray that has made its way into the city?

So, I’ve joined Clarion’s Write-a-Thon, which I will tell you about in my next post, and I pledged to do 500 words a day. On the first day, I got around 270 words and haven’t done a damned since. Today is day 8. So, here is my first attempt.

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Day One

Writing prompt:
This story takes place IN MODERN TIMES
…in A BUBBLE
…found ON AN ANCIENT LAKEBED.
The story centers on A MADAME/PIMP
…who comes up against A PILOT.
At some point, someone discovers A CONSPIRACY.

Their people had survived by avoiding the warm bloods. In the early days, they had lived on the spires in the lake while watching the warm bloods kill and eat each other. As the lake receded, their people adapted, finding underground caverns where there was enough water to breathe, bathe, and raise their young. When the lake bed turned to sand and the sun beat down, the spires started to crumble, and while the elders hemmed and hawed over their future, the younger generation took control to stabilize their caverns and build their cities even deeper under the new desert.

Now, thousands of years later, the families of the Rainbow Caverns were facing a new threat from within their own number.

Fleck disturbed some fliers as he put his contraption down on the ledge. A contraption. That’s what his mother called it. He smoothed his hand across the taut, oiled leather and spines of the nearest wing. It was his ticket to freedom, not a contraption.

He adjusted the straps and attached his harness. All of the flaps were well-oiled and they moved freely as he pulled the wires. He had never been up this high before.

Fleck stepped off the edge, scared for one moment that he wouldn’t, or that this step into his future would be his last, but as the wind rushed around him smoothly, he thought of how wrong he was.

—

Water was worried about her son. As the elder of the Painted Flower, she couldn’t afford his antics to become public knowledge. The ladies would never respect her if they knew of his radical leanings.