Just Add Prompt

A 4758-post collection

Challenge #01302-C207: Free Falling Water

Someone from a desert community or space community - anywhere where water is an extremely finite resource - visits somewhere like England where it falls from the sky on a semipermanent basis. -- Gallifreya

If there was one thing that freshly-minted Sahra Johnston would never get used to, it was the fact that she had her own space yacht. With a crew. And cabins enough for not just her entire family, but the crew's as well. Not that the Galactic crew had any more than three babies at any time. But, assuming that they were allowed to breed like Hevun's humans, there would be cabins enough for everyone.

The second thing to get used to was her duties. She was no longer allowed to crawl through access tunnels and fix things. In fact, her security personnel frowned on her going anywhere near access tunnels at all. Instead of being useful, they took her around in plush, fancy suites to other plush, fancy suites and to go and see what Terra and her colonies had to offer.

Which included a visit to Earth.

The Sol system had one two-way wormhole, somewhere between Saturn's orbit and Jupiter's. Of course, there was a minor Galactic Market station there. Monitoring traffic and making sure nobody brought unwelcome biota to Earth.

From there, it was a slow cruise of a week or two to the small, blue-green rock that had started a lot of problems for a lot of people. Most of their money came from tourists who went to see the planet that launched a million colony worlds of varying sanities. The rest of their money came from people wanting to use Sol's abundance of one-way wormholes for profit.

Sahra's first stop was a tiny island called, depending on who you asked, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, or England. And her first impression of the place was... somewhat awe-inspiring.

Her first view of England was through the window of the spaceport in Heathrow, and it was besmeared by water. Falling. Out of the sky.

Mining Station had weather anomalies if the space was big enough. One of those phenomena, she and her friends had done to create 'miracles' to frighten the Tu'att away. But this was real water. Falling out of the sky.

She ran out into it, her bodyguards trailing behind. Fresh water! Clean water! And they just let it fall down on everything! The Tu'att masters had figured out exactly how dirty water could get before it made their human slaves sick, and let them have that. Even for washing.

Sahra got soaked, and she didn't care. She did object when one of the bodyguard put an old-fashioned weather shield between her and the falling water.

"Have you never seen rain, before, Ambassador?" said a guard.

"Nuh," she said. "Should'a tole me they put this on. I'd'a wore sum'pin water-frien'ly."

The guard sighed a very Mama-like sigh. The sigh that said, This child needs to learn so very much...

(Muse food remaining: 17. Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories! Or comment below!)

Challenge #01301-C206: Per Ardua Ad Astra

'Fire in the Sky.' Specifically, the filk song by Dr Jordin Kare, released in '91 but remastered in '04. This song moved Buzz Aldrin to tears on national television when he first heard the remastered version, apparently. There was a competition to make a music video, and this one won. I first found the music video, a few years ago now, and I've never forgotten it. -- RecklessPrudence

"You were there for it, weren't you?"

Shayde looked up from her Kung

Read more »

Challenge #01300-C205: Sense Askew.

*air horn sound *

*second air horn sound *

"This isn't deodorant" -- Gallifreya

He looked at the can. It looked like a regular, everyday bodyspray. Yet when he pressed the spray button, an air horn noise came out.

It shouldn't even be able to do that.

Come to think of it, the towel only looked like a towel. It behaved more like tissue paper, falling apart in his hands.

The toothpaste looked and smelled like toothpaste but... it was aoli. At least it

Read more »

Challenge #01299-C204: Explosive Food

Popcorn, either as an edible explosive or semi mindless entertainment. KnitNan

The human had hung up a hand-made sign - Explosive food preparation in progress before they produced a device and a package of dry, yellow seeds.

"Your pardon, cogniscent An'dee?" said Plyq'ix. "What is meaning, 'explosive food'?"

Andy had a very simple explanation. "It goes bang."

"Dangerous bang?"

"Surprising bang. Harmless, but surprising."

The machine whirred into life and the grains poured in. For a while, nothing much happened but rattling

Read more »

Challenge #01296-C201: Coat of Paper, Coat of Fur

"And she swore she would never eat another strawberry!" -- OohLookShiny

The assembled crowd of children turned to stare, open-mouthed, at the Silent Princess. Her name, insofar as anyone could understand her pantomime, was River. And she was living under a curse.

Beyond that, and her dislike of strawberries, everything was up to anyone's guess.

River shook her head and her hands danced. They danced to say, You have everything wrong, but they danced to people who did not understand the movements.

Read more »

Challenge #01295-C200: Pray What You Eat Lets You Live

Fast Food franchises for Aliens. -- Anon Guest

Excerpts from A Traveller's Guide to Galactic Spaceports[Written before the advent of Unsuitable Food]:

If you are the kind of person who does not eat what they cannot identify, then beware. You may starve to death. Once you leave the realm of your familiarity, you will find all manner of things that could be edible if you are brave enough to face it.

That said, beware of attempting to purchase anything living. There

Read more »

Challenge #01294-C199: As the Station Turns

Aliens are exposed to Soap Operas and get hooked. -- KnitNan

Storytelling was not a new thing. Those species with the gift for inventing stories were more likely to find welcome, despite their status amongst Galactic Society.

Only humans had managed to conceive of a story with infinite potential to continue.

Some alien species had managed to decode the Terran transmissions, and eventually decoded the language as well. They thought it was an anthropological study of one particular human clan.

What they

Read more »

Challenge #01293-C198: Those Who Remain

Prompt: A segment of the population does not believe anyone ever walked on the moon. Some probably do not believe their species ever gained space travel. What happened to them when so many members of the population left for the stars? -- Anon Guest

Space was hard to ignore for a conspiracy theorist. It was impossible for humans to leave the Earth. Simply impossible. The fact that so many of their fellow humans were doing it was not a fact at all.

Read more »

Challenge #01292-C197: The Best Place by the Fire

http://haberdashing.tumblr.com/post/146903793739/my-fever-thoughts-the-last-two-days

There's got to be one species that's impressed by storytelling even if it's not solely humanity's "thing" in amalgam -- Gallifreya

One good thing you can plausibly state about humans is that time spent with them is never boring. Of course, that was their chief combination of blessing and curse. They were never boring.

Most species took to space for reasons of economy. Things on their homeworld were no longer easy to obtain. Yet there

Read more »

Challenge #01291-C196: Bat Rogers in the 22nd Century

I finally found the full text of this!

http://somebodiesdaughters.tumblr.com/post/118571240112/spacebat

This brave little bat has multiple video tributes on youtube (this one's my favourite, even though there's probably better ones, it's the one that's stuck with me), at least one song written specifically for them, a website, fanart, posts every year saying that we have not forgotten them, and multiple news articles about them (the one I first read, waybackwhen, was titled 'Shuttle-Riding Bat Dies

Read more »

Challenge #01290-C195: Early Confusion

"There's a ladybug in my room!"

"Did you really call me at 3AM to tell me that?"

"I'm about two seconds away from burning this place down!" -- OohLookShiny

It took Cal a minute to recalculate what the hell Ch'v'th was talking about. "...no. No. Absolutely not. No. Don't."

"But the ancient rhyme of your people..."

"...does not tell you to set your house on fire. You tell the ladybug that her house is on fire."

There was a slight pause and

Read more »

Challenge #01289-C194: Sure it Followed You Home

A zbornak is not a pet. Yes even if it looks like a space horse and is wearing a saddle and bridle. Now let's bring her back where you found her.

Man I wish we spoke the same language... How do you apologise for your kid in pantomime.... -- Gallifreya

[AN: Language has never been a problem in WOY... interesting, that]

Sylvia knew they weren't in the Kan'zass galaxy, any more, but this took some kind of cake. First she'd lost Wander,

Read more »

Challenge #01288-C193: The Nature of Strength

Wander is supernaturally strong and doesn't realise this is a big deal -- Gallifreya

She saw it, now and again, whenever things got really tight. Wander could and would carry the weight of a world on his back. And once, he literally did it. Okay, so it was a small planet, as planets went. But that wasn't the point.

He either didn't know his own strength, or he hid it most of the time. It was only when he forgot himself that

Read more »

Challenge #01287-C192: So Like Immunity

The immune system is constantly walking the razor thin edge between doing sweet fuck all and killing you as collateral damage in an apocalyptic war. -- RecklessPrudence

They said that humans were much like their own immune system. Q'voth took that to mean that they were proof against anything that wanted to kill them. There was no way that a direct attack would work.

Therefore, Q'voth played the long game. Ingratiating her people with the humans. Infiltrating their everyday life. Whittling away

Read more »

Challenge #01285-C190: 'Imaginary' Friends

1) http://solitaria-fantasma.tumblr.com/post/146478879812/maroonknight14-oh-mother-of-darkness-concept-a Superman (or another super-hearing entity) and the child who has them as an imaginary friend

2) Parent thinks child has imaginary friend. It's not imaginary. -- Anon Guest

1)

"...mom puts shredded pizza cheese on top of the store lasagna? And that makes it super good? She likes it 'cause of how we can feed the whole fambly for seven dollars."

Shawna peeked in on Clemaine, who was sitting by her window and talking

Read more »