Menu

Subscribe

Just Add Prompt

A 4964-post collection

Challenge #00977-B246: Rictus

By the time one reaches adulthood it is almost reflex to give a sunny grin when someone points a camera at you. This can have unintended results.

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

"And worse, this creature had the audacity to bare its teeth at me!"

Adjudicator Shyn'len leaned over hir desk. "Have you had much education on the habits of humans, Cogniscent P'rel?"

"Uuuuuuhhhhh..."

"That's a nervous baring of teeth. It's not a threat or a show of amusement. And further to your complaint... humans are trained from youth to bare their teeth in a smile when looking into a camera. Or anything they recognise as a camera."

Cogniscent P'rel looked enquiringly at the human in question, who nervously nodded.

"You could probably prove it with flashcards," supplied the human.

"You mistook a weapon for a camera?"

"On the plus side, it might have saved my life."

Both aliens in the court shared a mutual eye-roll and a mutter of, "Humans..."

(Muse food remaining: 18. Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories! Or comment below!)

Challenge #00976-B245: Subverting the Assumptions.

The politics of light and dark are everywhere in our vocabulary… lightness and white is good and pure, black and darkness is corrupt and evil, the known is a safe and friendly comfort, the unknown is a strange and hostile thing to be feared…

So… subvert this, reveal whiteness and lightness as sometimes false and violent, and darkness as protective and healing, fear that which is known and find the unknown as natural and gentle, and so on.

(Prompt from ChaosWolf1982 on

Read more »

Challenge #00975-B244: The Guest

http://chokingonfeelings.tumblr.com/post/128277134565/my-friend-is-secretly-a-mythical-creature-clich%C3%A9

Four!

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Midnight munchies whilst couch-surfing is always a crap-shoot. You never know which one is going to be any extreme from "I only eat what I hunt" to "I'm a twelfth-level vegan and I've been raided fifteen times because of my hydroponic grain garden". And on the scale between Critter Hearts and Quinoa Crumble, I guess a fridge mostly full of blood packs kinda takes the cake.

Or

Read more »

Challenge #00974-B243: Entertaining Angels

http://chokingonfeelings.tumblr.com/post/128277134565/my-friend-is-secretly-a-mythical-creature-clich%C3%A9

Three for three!

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Mel thought it was a little weird that his boyfriend was moaning without him, and crept out of their shared bed to take a peek.

Cyrus was kneeling on the floor in their ensuite, but that was not what was disturbing. What was disturbing was the dazzlingly luminous and enormous wings that he was stretching and massaging.

The harness sprawled across the floor looked like

Read more »

Challenge #00973-B242: Outed!

http://chokingonfeelings.tumblr.com/post/128277134565/my-friend-is-secretly-a-mythical-creature-clich%C3%A9

And another one!

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Everyone was staring. Callie could barely move, but she still tried to scoot away from the boggling faces. They were afraid.

Fear leads to anger...

Even her best friend, Mekena, was retreating. She was the last of her human classmates to curl her fingers into a fist.

Anger leads to hate...

"...please don't?" Callie quavered. She knew what they saw. A monster from legends so

Read more »

Challenge #00972-B241: A Ghost of a Chance

http://chokingonfeelings.tumblr.com/post/128277134565/my-friend-is-secretly-a-mythical-creature-clich%C3%A9

Here we go again! Pick one!

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

I was making tea when she walked into the house as if she owned it. For all I know, she did. I'm... well... more sort of a 'permanent tenant'. Many have tried to get rid of me. It never sticks.

She wore black. I put the teapot down and said, "You're not one of those occultists, are you? You mind your candles,

Read more »

Challenge #00971-B240: During the Wee Small Hours on a Long-Haul Scavenger Vessel

“Why exactly do you need chloroform at 2AM?”

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

"Um. It's not for anything terrible. I mean. Not really terrible. Um. Sort of?"

Captain Mellier groaned and sighed. "How can something be 'sort of' not really terrible, Jones?"

Jones was twiddling with her fingers. "Um. You know the Oshit problem on board? Um. Well. We were -uh- experimenting? A little? With ordinary shipboard chemicals?" She managed a nervous rictus. "On the Oshits, I promise! Um. And... Baker? Um.

Read more »

Challenge #00970-B239: One Agumentative Walk Following a Bad Spill

“Please put me down it’s just a sprained ankle"

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

"Mikug seeing way human go down. Mikug knowing is pain-of-death."

Reeva sighed. "Mikug forgetting self is Deathworlder. Self is fine. Self has to strap it and limp for a while."

There were drawbacks to working with heavy-grav cogniscents, and this was one of them. "Mikug taking human to mediks. Mediks helping."

The only language they shared was Broken GalStand, which made understanding a little more complicated. "Mediks

Read more »

Challenge #00969-B238: The Unstoppable Human

“So what if I broke my arm I’m still doing it.”

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Kri'ki had assumed it was yet another bizarre human ritual. Elis had sent her off to fetch hard, stiff, long lengths of metal. Then ductape. Then she had to assist in binding one of Elis' forelimbs to some suitable struts and build a harness to immobilise the limb.

"Which festival is this for?" asked Kri'ki. Humans celebrated the most peculiar things at the oddest times.

Read more »

Challenge #00968-B237: One Bland Morning in an Infectious Diseases Lab

“Please stop petting the test subjects.”

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

"Aw, but they're adorable."

"Only a human would find a cage of Oshits 'adorable'..." Brantid sighed. "I cannot allow you to become attached. They are sacrificial subjects in my study on the prickle-hide plague."

"You're giving them prickle-hide? Ouch. Poor iddle spidies..."

Do not kill and eat the profitable mammal... Brantid restrained herself, barely. Chloë, the human hired because she was immune to both Oshits and the plague, was proving more

Read more »

Challenge #00967-B236: STEVEN!

“I may have accidentally sort of adopted five cats.”

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Baby Rose was investigating the nutritional quality of her own fist again. Connie gently encouraged her to chew on the pediatrician-recommended teether that her mom insisted all babies loved.

Rose gnawed on it once, twice, and then looked up as if to say, Why would you betray me like this, mother? and promptly spat it out.

"Yeah," she sighed. "Try telling Gram'ma that. You try telling gram'ma. No,

Read more »

Challenge #00966-B235: Consult the Tea

More about the mentioned-once Captain’s Cup

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Working with humans was always a rocky path...

Bal'thox watched in confusion as her human captain installed a small heat plate near the Captain's chair. Humans had been all over this ship. Adding insanity upon insanity.

Certainly, some of them worked. Like the gravity generator that was half technology, half cargo cult.

Others mystified. Like the twin, plush representation of six-sided die that now dangled above the main screen. And

Read more »

Challenge #00965-B234: A Nice, Hot, Cuppa

More about the mentioned-once Captain’s Cup

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Throughout the Galactic Alliance, one common factor became well known. There is no instrument more sensitive than a cup of hot beverage next to the Captain's chair.

Captain Eloise Fortescue put things together first, and had a habit of keeping a nice, hot, cup of tea by her captain's chair. And of course it helped that humans were the only ones who had gravity generators as standard technology.

Which allowed

Read more »

Challenge #00964-B233: Where Have All the Dinos Gone?

http://immaplatypus.tumblr.com/post/128003023050/bethosaurus-sunslammerdown

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

[AN: For those of you who can't be bothered following the link, the text reads as follows:

OP: What if aliens visited Earth during the Jurassic Period, found it to be occupied with a bunch of mean, giant lizards and thought "Well, fuck this planet" and never came back?

1stReply: what if when humans went out into the galaxy all the aliens panicked because if the dinosaurs tiny fur snacks

Read more »

Challenge #00963-B232: Love and Hate and Love Again...

Dunno what this is from originally, but I saw it on Tumblr in a few places, and figured you’d make something awesome from it…

—-

“They say ‘You can’t love someone unless you love yourself first.' Bullshit. I have never loved myself. But you - oh god, I loved you so much… that I somehow forgot what hating myself felt like.”

(Prompt from ChaosWolf1982 on Tumblr)

There were days, aching days when the rain made his entire, misshapen body

Read more »