Prompt-of-the-Week Club

[Deleted]

That's awesome that you're using these as opportunities to develop your existing work! I do that too, on occasion.

Aww, these characters are cute! Bonus points for mentioning the Lake Champlain Monster. xD And "Lake Champagne", that's adorable. Very true to the way little kids misuse unfamiliar words. They sound like they have a really interesting family. What are the stories going to be about?

I was worried I wouldn't be able to do one this week, but Saturday miraculously freed up and I jotted this down before spending the rest of the day writing 4k words of my Grundo's backstory.

SPOILER: Click to show

the stars my deserters

She used to love the stars.

She could stare up into the wide night sky after everyone else had complained of the cold or made some other excuse and gone back inside, stand there alone and let the cosmos embrace her. The celestial spheres were her friends, she knew them by name and could tell you all about how Aldebaran was faring or that Betelgeuse was getting on in years but warm and kindly like a grandfather with solar-flare whiskers and she wondered what kind of sunrises Gliese 581 gave its world-children.

I asked her once, how she could not stare at the sky and feel so small and scared and unimportant.

She told me, “Because I look up and I feel loved.”

Years have changed her now.

She bends and hunches under the burden of numbers and logistics and knowing too much about a universe that she fears will someday leave her. No longer can she see the stars for their beauty, but as ticking time-bombs that inevitably will either detonate or fizzle out into deadness. Wherever she looks, she can only see the hypothesized ends of things.

The stars’ love is traitorous, she thinks. How dare they love her when they all know their fate—and hers. It is as pointless and petty as a teen drama and she has resigned herself to grow up and move on.

So now she cowers in the presence of the heavens, turns her eyes earthward and pretends not to notice and pretends not to be ashamed of how she’s jilted them, because it’s for theirs and her own good.

She’s always the first one inside at night.

She used to love the stars; now they terrify her.

As for musical prompts, sure, that sounds awesome! I hadn't even thought of that, but if you have any songs or lyrics you want to give as a prompt, go for it!

[Deleted]

Well, if no one's going to give a prompt for this week, here's one:

Refugee

[Sporty]

Sept 2, 2013 11:34:17 GMT -5 @surfersquid said:

Aww, these characters are cute! Bonus points for mentioning the Lake Champlain Monster. xD And "Lake Champagne", that's adorable. Very true to the way little kids misuse unfamiliar words. They sound like they have a really interesting family. What are the stories going to be about?

Haha, thanks! I actually don't have the family as a whole very developed yet - mostly just that the dad is a huge cryptid nerd and it really rubbed off on Jackie, although Evelyn mostly just thinks of that kind of stuff as cool legends. The stories are actually about Jackie joining a research team that works on an isolated island chain where a bunch or more-or-less mythological creatures live... so, kind of a step up from cryptids (I actually threw in the Brosno Dragon reference because of the name - in the series, one of her coworkers/close friends is the "real-life" equivalent of a dragon dragon, haha)

Your story is really something - I'm impressed by how much emotion and development you were able to put in such a short work! Very sad though I suppose the main character became an astronomer because she loved the stars so much and it ended up backfiring on her?

Cool, thanks! I'll see if I can find a good song prompt for sometime soon then And I've already got a couple possible ideas for what to do with this week's prompt, so it should be fun!

[Deleted]

Sept 3, 2013 9:30:14 GMT -5 Sporty said:

Sept 2, 2013 11:34:17 GMT -5 @surfersquid said:

Aww, these characters are cute! Bonus points for mentioning the Lake Champlain Monster. xD And "Lake Champagne", that's adorable. Very true to the way little kids misuse unfamiliar words. They sound like they have a really interesting family. What are the stories going to be about?

Haha, thanks! I actually don't have the family as a whole very developed yet - mostly just that the dad is a huge cryptid nerd and it really rubbed off on Jackie, although Evelyn mostly just thinks of that kind of stuff as cool legends. The stories are actually about Jackie joining a research team that works on an isolated island chain where a bunch or more-or-less mythological creatures live... so, kind of a step up from cryptids (I actually threw in the Brosno Dragon reference because of the name - in the series, one of her coworkers/close friends is the "real-life" equivalent of a dragon dragon, haha)

Your story is really something - I'm impressed by how much emotion and development you were able to put in such a short work! Very sad though I suppose the main character became an astronomer because she loved the stars so much and it ended up backfiring on her?

Cool, thanks! I'll see if I can find a good song prompt for sometime soon then And I've already got a couple possible ideas for what to do with this week's prompt, so it should be fun!

Ooh, sounds really fascinating! I hope you're having fun with it.

Thanks! I'm really pleased with how it came out, too. I think of the main character as having originally been a very loving, emotional person, but over the years felt like she had to repress emotion in favor of logic, and now she's logical and scientifically-minded to the point of not being able to feel love for anything any more because she feels like love is something impermanent and ultimately useless, and she feels like the cosmos does not have the love for her that she once felt it did, although whether that's because it really doesn't or simply because she's withdrawn her own love for it, she doesn't know and it just makes her more bitter.

Yep. <_<

Awesome! Can't wait to see! I have an idea for mine based on a book I've been reading for a history class--we shall see if I get around to writing it. Maybe I'll have another creative burst on Saturday.

[Sheik]

GUYS I DID IT
I MEAN, I'M TWO DAYS LATE, BUT I STILL DID IT.
*is a failure at life*

SPOILER: Click to show

It was a book. A book with tiny, elegant handwriting and a cover bound by leather. It was a book about historical events that had happened long ago, a war, or something of the sort. It had an author; the name was too foreign for her to pronounce.

It was, quite simply, just a book.

Adreana frowned. This wasn’t right. She touched the cover, waiting for the familiar tingle of excitement to course through her veins, but it never came. Alarm washed over her spine – but then again, perhaps she was distracted. Perhaps this nauseating feeling of horror would go away if she looked in the book. She reached a grimy fingernail into the middle of the silky white pages and read a sentence aloud, putting as much effort and emotion into it as she physically could. “Thousands flocked to the temples, hoping that the Gods would hear their prayers and save them from destruction.”

She waited.

And waited.

And waited a bit more.

By the stars. I’ve lost it.

Heat rushed to her cheeks, but she quickly swallowed her tears. “Alan!”

“Yes?” The footsteps that thundered up the steps were slow and deliberate; his wife was yelling at him most of the day, anyway.

She nearly pushed him down the stairs when she thrust the book into his arms. “I’ve gone crazy. Absolutely bonkers,” she wailed.

Alan took a brief glance at the title and dismissively waved his hand. “I see what your problem is. You’re not reading something violent enough for your taste.”

“It’s not that!” At this point, Adreana was too desperate to snap at him, although she would later make an effort to hit him with every bit of strength she had. “I just…it doesn’t feel magical anymore.”

“What?”

“I used to love reading,” she said. Her wavering words were laced with the sobs that she was trying so hard to hold back. “You saw, that was all I’d ever do. It used to feel exciting. Used to take me to places and let me step in someone else’s shoes. Now it’s just a bloody book!”

This was one of the rare times in his life that he was genuinely concerned for her. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he said, “Maybe you’ve just grown out of it.”
She hardly regarded his affectionate gesture, instead directing her attention to the thick volume he had put down. “I’m too young to grow out of things. What’s wrong with me?”

Twenty-seven wasn’t exactly young, but Alan didn’t say so. He gave her a reassuring smile and told her that she was okay, nothing was wrong with her. He left the room with another small grin.

What does he know? He’s an idiot, she thought in disappointment. She stared one last time at the book before the dull ache in her heart caused her to turn away. He was definitely wrong; she had gone crazy. What else would lose its appeal? Beer? Dear Gods, no, that couldn’t be allowed to happen. She was going to pray, and now. As she left the room, Adreana set her mouth into a thin line and placed the book back on the shelf, noting miserably that that was all it would ever be.

(This character was illiterate for a large portion of her life, so I decided to make her miserable by marrying her to a rival character, as well as making her find reading boring. I'm a terrible person.)

When I get home, I'll be sure to look at what you guys did with the prompt, so I'll just edit that in later due to me being pressed for time right now. \o/

[Deleted]

Heh, very interesting. I like the strong characterization, and it's an interesting concept that someone once illiterate could become bored of reading. I wonder why that would happen on a psychological level.

[Deleted]

So, uh... I wrote something for this week's prompt... and it somehow ended up being about World War II Germany. Erm.

Would anyone be offended if I posted it? It's nowhere near my favorite subject to write about, I'm not trying to glorify or be insensitive, but I had an idea based on a true incident and probably should have exercised my better judgement before moving ahead with it.

There's nothing objectionable in the strictest sense of the word (no direct violence, no swearing, no adult situations), but it does have, well... German protagonists, V-2 rockets, and moral complexity. I tried to be as historically accurate as possible but I'm not exactly an expert on this period, and I'd feel just awful putting up something not only pertaining to a very sensitive topic, but riddled with historical errors.

So yeah... should I even bother using this one? Or would everyone rather have me write something new really quick? I feel like I may have gotten too controversial for my own good, here.

[Sporty]

I... don't really know, actually o.o; (Mostly because I keep trying to type out a response to your question and none of my responses sound quite right so I keep erasing them and starting over. Let's hope this attempt works) It sounds like you're not trying to "pick sides" or anything in regards to WWII here but instead simply exploring a concept/situation/set of ideas from a somewhat unusual choice of POV, so technically it should be pretty much fair game to post such a thing. Then again, it is a pretty sensitive topic, so it might not be the best idea simply because some people might not be able to entirely convince themselves that it's fair game. (I might not be able to entirely convince myself, to be honest. Stupid logic-defying brain...) Better safe than sorry, maybe? I dunno...

And the really weird thing is that I'm planning on writing what might be a vaguely similar idea (a story told from the usually-antagonists' point of view that will possibly lead to him planning to invade a country for reasons that, in his eyes, are completely justified), but because my character/situation is entirely fictional I'm not feeling nearly as squeamish with the concept as I am with your scenario .-. It's the fact that we're talking about real events and the strong feelings associated with them that's the real kicker, here. Perhaps see what the other folks think? *is probably being entirely useless right now*

[Deleted]

Yeah, good points. It's a bit late now, and I've got classes tomorrow, so it looks like I'll just let this week slide.

I, personally, do not find anything wrong with exploring the motivations of characters in a fictional universe... but I feel a lot more iffy about applying the same thing to real-world events (even more so to real people, probably one of the many reasons I dislike psychoanalytical biographies). There are still very strong feelings associated with WWII, not to mention the fact that it's still within living memory, so... I've been feeling guilty about writing this. Even if you pick a sub-topic that you think should be relatively safe, it's going to be a trigger for someone and I guess it's best to just not bring it up at all. The last thing I want is to grievously offend someone whose family members were involved in the events alluded to. (Although, my piece isn't so much trying to get into the head of an antagonistic figure--it's about a little girl whose father helps design V-2s, and how they and the rest of the engineers' camp are moving by train to escape the Russian invasion of Germany and try to defect to the Americans. Which did actually happen, and is why Wernher von Braun ended up in the US, spearheading the nation's space exploration efforts. /space history geek)

Anyway, hope you all had fun with the prompt this week. I'll try in the future not to pick something that can lead to sensitive subjects.

[Breakingchains]

*creeps in*

^ That sounds awesome, and I would probably sympathize with such a character. I guess there's a slim chance someone on here could have WWII triggers, but it's a common subject for fiction, and trigger warnings are a great invention. ^_^

Even if you choose not to share it, don't feel guilty about writing it.

*creeps out*

[Sporty]

Yes, I certainly agree that you shouldn't feel guilty about writing it. Just because some people could feel uncomfortable reading such a piece doesn't mean that it's a bad one - just that you were brave enough to explore one of the more delicate subject matters in your writing.

[Deleted]

Heh, I don't feel brave so much as I feel like I'm stepping on toes and breaking every rule in the political correctness book. But I also feel like this was kind of catharsis for having to read a little bit about this horrific period for one of my classes.

Well, here goes. Hope this turned out okay.

(Warning: WWII Germany)

SPOILER: Click to show

rocket child

Sophie wakes.

At first she thinks she is dreaming because she can hear the rustle and clank of equipment moving outside, but the chill of night still penetrates her blankets and Dietrich is fast asleep beside her. It doesn’t seem real.

Then she looks over and realizes their parents are gone.

“Dietrich!” Rolling onto her side, she shakes her younger brother awake.

He pushes her away clumsily. “What, what is it… let me sleep…”

“I think this is it!” she hisses, clutching the blankets tight as if she expects the entire cabin to uproot itself.

“Good, now I’m going back to sleep.” The dark-haired boy buries his face in his pillow.

He never gets the chance, though, because the door opens and Mama sweeps in, her golden curls in disarray around her tired face. “Get up, children,” she urges, gently but firmly as she bustles about the room, scooping things into a canvas bag: clothing, books, the little clock on the shelf. “We’re going on a trip.”

“Where to?” Sophie asks, climbing out of the bed. She starts for one of her dresses, but Mama snatches it up and hands Sophie her coat instead.

“There’s no time to get dressed,” Mama explains, bending over and wrapping Dietrich in blankets before hefting him over her shoulder. “Just get your shoes on and follow me. We’re going to Mittelwerk.”

“Mittelwerk?” Sophie follows Mama out of the bedroom and into the front room. The kitchen light is on and buzzing with electricity, but the counters are bare and Papa is nowhere to be seen. This still feels like a dream.

“So Papa can keep working on rockets,” Mama opens the front door and ushers her out into the cold, cold night, “with Herr von Braun.”

Sophie likes the rockets. They’re big and loud and make the most terrific smell when they explode in a ball of fire and smoke, and best of all they hold all the hopes of space travel. Papa has taken her to test firings and allowed her to watch from a distance because she’s ten now and a big girl. Dietrich is only six, and although he likes the rockets too, Mama gets a certain curl in her lip and one of her eyebrows twitches whenever Papa brings up taking him to a firing. (Papa has admitted to Sophie that he thinks she is much more responsible than Dietrich ever will be, anyway.)

They walk through the camp, Sophie’s boots crunching on pre-dawn spring frost. “But where is Papa?” Slowly she becomes aware of shadows shifting through the night. At first she fears they’re ghosts, but they’re carrying flashlights and murmuring groggily to one another, and she recognizes Gretchen, and Carolina, and then other playmates and their mothers.

“We’ll meet with him at the train,” Mama promises. No one greets each other, no one exchanges glances in the somber gloom. Sophie is reminded more of a funeral procession than a trip. That thought brings her memories around to the burial of Lisa, Maria, and Stephan, and their mama and papa, not two years ago. Sophie had cried, not just because she had played with them and now they were gone, but because her ears had still been ringing from the explosions the night before.

“There’s going to be a train?” Dietrich finally speaks up from Mama’s shoulder.

“Mm-hm.”

The promise of a train perks Sophie up quite a bit. She’s been on one before, to move out here with Mama and Papa and Dietrich, but that was years ago. She looks forward to sitting on one of the high, plush seats again and looking out the window at farmland and mountains rolling by.

The train smashes her expectations. There are no windows, no cushioned seats. In fact, there are no seats at all—it’s all boxcars that smell like livestock and oil. Her face falls as she stares into the wood-slatted darkness.

“Ah… it’s not what I would have chosen, either,” an arm slips around her shoulder, “but it’s the best we could do on such short notice.” Sophie looks up to see Papa grinning disarmingly down at her, the collar of his long coat turned up, the brim of his hat blocking out the starlight. He hasn’t shaved and his cheeks and chin are covered in dark stubble. “But we are bringing a few cows!” he promises, escorting her to the door. “So you and Dietrich can have milk for your breakfasts.”

“Well, that’s good,” Sophie concedes, stuffing her hands in her coat pockets. “How long will it take to get to Mittelwerk?”

“About three weeks.” Papa glances around and then leans in close. Sophie can smell potatoes on his breath, a quick meal he must have gulped down before she awoke. “But you must be very quiet, all right? You and the other children can play if you don’t make too much noise. And if the train slows down or stops, stay very still and do not do or say anything. Understood?”

Sophie nods. It’s not hard to understand Papa’s directions. She doesn’t want more explosions and more burials.

“Good.” His work-creased face breaks into a smile again and he lifts her into the boxcar. “You can ride in this one, if you like.” Sophie scans the blank darkness and turns back to him, confused as to why he would have picked this car out for her.

“I’m going to check on Hilde,” Mama informs him, shifting Dietrich to one hip. Papa’s lips pucker, his head moves toward hers and Sophie knows what’s coming, and she makes a face and turns away, back to the shadows looking like a vast wardrobe trying to consume her.

She sticks out her chin. This darkness shall not conquer her—she will tame it. Hands outstretched, she steps forward, and her palms hit something cool and smooth and round. Her mouth opens in surprise and then spreads into a grin. This could only be one thing. Curling a hand into a fist, she gently knocks and a hollow echo rings back. Just a shell, not the entire thing, she notes. Probably smart. These things can be volatile when fully constructed. She has overheard stories of what happens when they strike in far-off London, and she has seen more than one of them explode on the test launchpad.

A shaft of light shines over her shoulder and makes a fuzzy ring on the painted metal hull in front of her. “Papa! You brought the rockets!” She spins around and wraps her arms around his middle.

He laughs. “Of course! The other technicians and I are going to need something to do so we’re not bored stiff on this ride!” Papa slides the door shut and begins piling hay against the side of the rocket shell, motioning for her to sit down next to him on it. “Everything will be all right, Sophie. I promise. Have you ever wanted to go to America?”

That strikes her as non sequiturial and makes her pause, unsure how to respond. “… I guess?” America seems like almost a fairy tale, something hard to believe in except that she knows its soldiers are within her country’s borders now. They scare her. But Russia scares her more.

Papa’s grey eyes twinkle in the dim light. “Perhaps, someday soon, we will live there. And you can get into a good school and build things even more amazing than this V-2.”

“Yeah! I want to build space stations like Herr von Braun writes about!” A distant low rumble fills the air and the boxcar lurches and moves, but Sophie’s soul is among the stars and barely notices that she’s rapidly leaving the place she has learned to call home.

“And someday you will!” Papa promises, tugging playfully at one of her sandy pigtails.

Sophie sighs and leans against him and their friend the rocket. The boxcar’s slats are too tight for her to see outside and it’s making her feel a little queasy, but she has Papa and there will be milk in the morning, and America looms beyond the horizon of her mind like the sun that has not yet risen. She yawns. “Tell me about the stars again, Papa?”

“Of course. As you know, there are many types of stars: big ones, small ones, some very hot ones, many cooler than our Sun, red and blue and orange…”

She falls asleep and her dreams fill the heavens.

So, anyone have a prompt for this week?

[Deleted]

Oh, right, we need a prompt for this week.

How about:

An archaeological discovery

... Yeah, my Asian Civilization class is rubbing off on me. <.<

[Sporty]

*tentatively pokes head in* Sooo... it seems the story that I was supposed to finish last Monday fell prey to a mixture of laziness and not having as much time as I thought. Normally I would have just let it go for the week, but I was already maybe halfway through by the time the day ended, so I was determined to finish the darn thing. Of course, a week of continued busyness and distractions and having my most prolonged time on the computer when it's too late at night to think properly enough to write, and here it is finally finished this next Monday .-. Gooo Sport...

So. Yeah. Here's my story for the Refugee prompt:

SPOILER: Click to show

The poor faeries, they always said.

Hirok snarled as he tramped through the undergrowth of the ever-thickening forest. He could have been walking back beside the others, the councilmen of the Haunted Woods and those who had been permitted to join them at the meeting. He didn’t care to. He could have gotten back more quickly and easily on his wings, seemingly tattered as was normal for a mutant Draik’s yet every bit as powerful. He didn’t feel up to it.

The faeries had been through so much, they said. Petrified for a good few months, demonized by a mad sorceress who had once claimed to be their friend. And now they had finally woken up to see their kingdom very nearly reduced to rubble. How hard it must be on them.

At least the faeries still had their kingdom. Hirok would have thought that, for all her apparent talk of the good of petkind, Xandra could have chosen a properly uninhabited area to dump the blasted city onto. Instead, he and his neighbours were forced to seek refuge in the heart of the Haunted Woods, of all places.

The Draik let out a low breath, a trickle of smoke held within betraying his agitation.

Hirok looked up as he shoved aside a particularly thick tangle of branches and stepped into a small clearing. Nearby, one of a handful of fire pits was burning to keep out the perpetual gloom of the Woods, as well as its beasts and dark spirits. Further back, some unoccupied tents and quickly-constructed houses filled up the rest of the clearing.

Only two or three pets were present – most of the dozen or so who had been living in the space that Faerieland currently occupied had gone to the meeting, and it seemed Hirok was one of the first back. At his appearance, a burly Halloween Uni who had stayed behind stood and trotted up to him.

“What news?” the Uni, Ander, croaked.

Hirok snorted. “Glory Hollow is lost.”

Ander raised an eyebrow. “’Lost?’ So the council has simply given it over to the Faerielanders?”

Hirok hesitated. “No. But it has given them as much time as they deem necessary to rebuild and move. It will be years before we’re able to return, at the very least.”

Really, calling it a council stretched the term a bit. The Haunted Woods was anarchy at its core, with the possible exception of a couple mayoral towns. The council existed mainly to keep the Woods’ more vicious denizens under some semblance of control, as well as maintain the nation’s boundaries. Glory Hollow – the opening in the forest where Faerieland now rested – was just by the inner southeastern boundary of the Woods.

The fact that the council had failed in what was very nearly its sole duty was a large part of what aggravated Hirok, and he could tell that Ander knew it. Even so, the Uni merely shrugged and replied, “I suppose we will have to wait, then. Syrena mentioned something about living in Delvia for now. It’s not far and is supposed to be quieter than Neovia, so –”

Hirok cut him off with a pointed glare. “Is that really are you expect us to do? Hole up in some little town and wait?” he asked, a low growl in his voice. “Glory Hollow is our territory, not theirs! The faeries have plenty of magic with which they can move their kingdom, and I don’t trust them not to linger for far longer than they ‘need’ to rebuild.”

“And how do you propose we address that?” Ander snapped. “By rushing out and taking on an entire country by ourselves? We need time to ensure that your suspicions are correct, and to prepare our response to the situation.”


Hirok fell into silence and eyed his companion. Ander had a scowl on his face, yet something in his expression was... expectant. He knew what they would have to do.

“Very well,” Hirok said. “It seems we have no choice but to be patient for now.”

The Draik took a deep breath. So the Haunted Woods council wanted to sit around uselessly? Fine. He would simply take matters into his own hands.

And when the time came, then by Fyora – or rather, in spite of her – he would take back what belonged to the Woods, and he and his neighbours would suffer refuge no longer.

Awkward timing aside, I liked how this turned out more than I thought I would! It could use some polishing, but for now I don't really feel up to it after all the craziness, heheh.

Actually, it's possible that some of you here might recognize the characters (or at least Hirok) and situation. Like I kind of mentioned in an earlier post, Hirok is the main villain from one of my previous stories, an NT series titled Unbreakable. It would probably go without saying, then, that I don't actually agree with his handling of this situation - mostly because my headcanon does include a reason as to why the faeries really can't move the city until they finish rebuilding. Getting into his head for this little backstory-thing did help me to sympathize better with the Glory Hollow residents, though (it's really just a pretty bad situation all around, I suppose *shakes fist at Xandra*), so if I ever make another story involving Hirok or Glory Hollow or whatever, having this perspective will really come in handy

[Deleted]

Hehe, don't worry about it. This is definitely a "if you can get around to it" kind of thing. I'm glad you finished, though! Finishing things, no matter how small, is a great accomplishment.

Anyway, very nice job! It's always interesting to see things from an antagonist's viewpoint, and I'd never even thought about what the fall of Faerieland must have been like for anyone living in the area. And I like the idea of the Haunted Woods being essentially an anarchy--seems fitting, considering how many lawless beings run amok in that place; the council is a great touch too. I enjoyed the implications that Xandra wasn't really as benevolent toward petkind as she wanted to think--it was just a convenient excuse for her megalomania and her actions obviously hurt Neopets rather than helped them, even in ways not covered in the plot such as dropping Faerieland on their home. The imagery was very well done. Nice work! I got a good feel for Hirok's character even though I haven't read Unbreakable, so job well done on that point.

And here's mine for this week! 

SPOILER: Click to show

the burning words

“I’ve located another burial site,” Ritter mentioned to me as I swung into his dust-brown Jeep.

“Oh?” I hoped my tone conveyed enough interest, but out here I felt like the wind could snatch away every molecule of water in your body if you left your mouth open too long. Already I needed a swig from my water bottle.

The pause gave him time to continue. “Yeah. It’s pretty distant, up against the northern basin rim.”

My lips and the bottle parted sorrowfully. “Uh-huh?” The high desert sun beat down on us without mercy as we drove, the wind wasn’t much cooler, and I wondered how we hadn’t been baked alive or melted into the sand by now. But humanity was apparently at least a little hardier than that, judging by the people who’d endured this weather every day of their lives for millennia. We passed by a few of them, long-robed and head-wrapped, urging their goats out of our way.

“I didn’t even know it existed until yesterday. The locals don’t like to talk about it. They say…” He gripped the steering wheel with his leathered, freckled hands, skin that looked like my own pale complexion would in a few years if I persisted in wearing short sleeves to these digs. “They say every so often, somebody wanders out there looking for a lost animal. When they come back, they’re not quite themselves. They’re sick. Sometimes they die soon after.”

I scoffed, as any reasonable scientist would, and tossed my chocolate braid over my shoulder. “The sort of thing that would happen to anyone who walked around a desert for days on end.”

“Heh, yeah.” It was hard to miss the catch in his voice. “It’s… kind of developed into an old wives’ tale. Those who survive, when they’re coherent, babble something about ‘burning words’.”

I glanced over at his earthy features, hidden in the shade of an old baseball cap. “Come on. It’s like King Tut’s tomb all over again. I’ll tell you what, if we get a flat tire we can blame it on the ‘burning words’.”

Ritter rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, the motion extending to his entire head. “Just… be careful out there, Charlotte.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

An hour later and we were far out into the sands. The jagged, ancient mountains crowded around us like children clamoring for attention, but we were more interested in what apparently lay at their base.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked, vaulting out of the Jeep, my hiking boots sinking into fine grain. I held my hand to my sweaty forehead as a makeshift visor, scanning the monotone terrain for any deviation. It was hard to make out landmarks when the sun had bleached everything the same pale gold.

“On their way,” Ritter explained, leaning against the hood of the car but taking off his hand a moment later, muttering angrily at the hot metal. “Thought we could do some preemptive looking around.”

I shrugged. “Fair enough. Let’s start at those—I think they’re cliffs.” The two of us began hiking through the sands, glancing at every dark rock and scrubby weed we passed by, like beachcombers on an endless shore where the ocean was on vacation.

Suddenly I noticed a slight change in ground texture, nearly hidden in the shadow of a scraggly bush. “Hold up. I think I’ve found something. Looks like it’s wood.” There were no trees around here, that was for sure.

Gently, I tried to nudge it out of its resting place and into the sun. It was, indeed, a piece of wood about as long as my forearm and twice as wide, weathered and worn. And blank.

“Flip it over?” Ritter suggested over my shoulder.

“Yeah.” I let the irritation come through in my voice—I was just about to get to that. Crouching down, steeling myself for the heat, I gently reached out with my fingertips and flipped it with as much finesse as a master chef cooking a pancake.

The other side wasn’t blank—it was engraved and painted in red with symbols of some kind, although they were cut off where the wood had snapped in half probably ages ago. “Well, this is a good…” I began, although for some reason words suddenly seemed slippery. I blinked to clear my mind, wondering where the sudden eye strain had come from. I was more used to the sun than this, I thought.

“Yeah,” Ritter said, although his voice was a little slurred, as I realized mine had been. “What does it look like to you? Tocharian?”

“No… no.” I blinked again, unconsciously standing up to distance myself from the artifact. I didn’t need reading glasses, and certainly not for letters two inches across. “Stroke shape is all wrong. It looks more like…” It didn’t look like anything, I realized as I ran through my mental roster of writing systems. “It’s not Tocharian,” I could at least affirm. Somehow that made me more uneasy than excited.

“Should we dig here?”

“No.” The words came out unbidden and I turned away from our little find, shuffling uncomfortably. That was when I saw it, cut into the crumbling rock face ahead: a stone doorway.

Ritter had followed my gaze. “There?”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s try there.” My colleague began loping toward the cliffside, and I followed, after committing an archaeological cardinal sin and surreptitiously using the side of my foot to cover the wood fragment with sand. I’d come back for it, I decided vehemently. I’d make myself look at it again.

The thick relief pillars supporting a faux lintel were only worn-down shadows of their former glory, cut down by long years of ceaseless grit-filled winds. The stone door itself was taller than even Ritter by a good eighteen inches at least, cracked and crumbly. Any engravings on it were long gone, I noticed, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

“Say, think we can get this open ourselves?” Ritter wondered, going up to it and pushing tentatively on fragments.

“Maybe…” I caught myself and snorted. I was being stupid. Where was my explorer’s spirit? Since when was I superstitious? I balled my fists and marched up next to him. “Yeah. Let’s give it a try. Maybe if we can take out the top fragments first, we can prevent the entire thing from collapsing on us…”

The process seemed to take hours, especially since my back was itchy with sweat and Ritter wouldn’t stop whistling songs I think my grandma listens to. “See anything?” I asked when we’d removed down to Ritter’s eye height.

“Nope, still too dark. Let’s keep going.”

After that it was easier, and we left the last two feet of rock intact mostly because we were exhausted by that point and we could simply step over it. In front of us was a tall, narrow tunnel sloping downward.

“After you, my good sir.” I gestured like a butler.

Ritter bowed with a flourish. “No, after you, I insist. Doctorates first.”

I laughed and produced a flashlight from my shoulder bag. “Fair enough. Let’s go.” The walls were blank and rough-hewn

“Unusual that there’s no inner door,” I murmured as we walked—mostly to drown out Ritter’s whistling. “Although I suppose that outer gate would have sufficed to keep out scavengers and tomb robbers, in most cultures it’s the norm to—what’s this?“ Twenty feet down, the tunnel had suddenly opened up.

I scanned the area with my flashlight. The vault in front of us was a burial chamber, no mistake about it, but everything the light touched – tapestries, carvings, painted pottery, and the stone dais supporting a giant of a time-blackened mummy with a mane of long, bright orange hair – was covered in what appeared to be the full, unbroken forms of the type of lettering we’d found out in the sand.

And they hurt. There’s just no other way to describe it except that every time I looked at them my head and chest would start to squeeze and swim, I’d feel like flames were dancing at the edges of my vision, and coherent thought escaped my grasp. I didn’t understand, but understanding wasn’t a priority right now. I turned and leaned against the wall, shutting my eyes tight and trying to forget the sight—and that’s when I heard echoing footsteps retreating and a bloodcurdling yell fill the air. “Ritter! RITTER!” I shouted desperately.

I sprinted out into the sun behind him, my legs threatening to collapse with each footfall, barely able to launch myself over the remnants of the door. There was no way to explain what I had seen. The very shape of the characters somehow felt mind-bendingly impossible, like they were drawn in more dimensions than my brain could fathom. Even thinking about them brought back a lingering headache.

Ritter was outside, cavorting on the sands like a madman. “Make it stop!” he screamed, slamming his fists into his head as tears rolled down his cheeks. “Make it stop!!”

I reached out and hooked him with my elbow around the middle, pulling him to the ground. As he hit the sand, I splashed water in his face and he coughed and sputtered, finally growing quiet although his chest was still heaving and his limbs twitched occasionally.

“Ch… Charlotte…” he panted haggardly.

“It’s okay. I’m here. We’re outside. We’re away from the… from the writing.”

He swallowed hard. “Is that what going insane feels like?” he whispered.

I looked down at his hazel eyes, wide with fright like a hunted animal’s. If that was what losing your mind was, I felt so bad for everyone who’d ever permanently snapped.

Presently Ritter sat up, dusting his hands on his knees and tilting his head away from the tomb. “What was that.” His inflection was flat, hollow.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

He looked over at me, seemingly aged twenty years. His easy smile was gone, replaced by solemn wrinkles. “Some things are better left undiscovered.”

We trudged back to the Jeep, taking a roundabout path over a dune to avoid the wood fragment. I didn’t want to approach the thing again. Just knowing it was there was giving me the creeps even though I could no longer see it, like it was going to suddenly emerge from the sand zombie-style and drag me down to the abyss.

“It was a false alarm,” I decided as we climbed numbly into the car.

“Mistaken information from the locals,” Ritter agreed, his eyes fixed longingly on the horizon. “They were actually talking about one of the other sites we’ve been working on.”

“Yep. Nothing out here.” Nothing, I reminded myself, trying to shove the memories out of my mind and replace them with the sight of infinite sand and sun.

Nothing but the burning words.

Yes, I know the two protagonists are stupid. They're supposed to be. <.<

Further explanation that is also spoilers for the piece:

SPOILER: Click to show

This actually takes place in the mythos of the novel that my friend and I are working on. As the world is entirely his creation, I asked him for permission to write this, and shared it with him when I was done.

The "burning words" are the written form of Ethereal, the tongue of gods, demigods, demons, and sundry other types of extradimensional-supernatural beings in the novel. In spoken form, it causes mortals great mental discomfort just to hear, and if directed at them with no protective measures will most likely drive them insane and/or kill them outright (the term "your head will explode" is used several times in the novel and it's never really made clear whether that's figurative or literal...). The main protagonist of the novel, however, can hear it with no ill effects because she possesses a neural implant that makes nearly every language on Earth, including Ethereal, sound like modern English.

She has no augmented ability to read other languages, however, meaning that she still suffers the effects of looking at written Ethereal. Although in the book it just rather vaguely says that the letters "hurt to look at", my personal theory (that I haven't really discussed with my co-author yet) is that the characters exist partly in the dimension supernatural beings come from, and drive mortal brains insane trying to comprehend them (which may be the case with spoken Ethereal as well).

The germ of idea for this story came from when my co-author and I were researching the tall, fair-haired, proto-Celtic mummies found in the Tarim Basin in the desert of northwest China (we like to research random subjects of interest), and he mentioned that the mummies look a lot like they could belong to the fictional-hypothetical race of two of the major characters in the novel who are half-gods and know Ethereal (in fact, the reason the heroine's implant translates Ethereal is because one of these characters helped design it). These two half-gods sired a lot of progeny (not between themselves - they're twin brothers - but with mortal wives) and my co-author and I thought it would be really interesting if one segment of their offspring, whom they might have taught Ethereal as a matter of culture, settled in the Tarim Basin and naturally buried their dead there. If they had employed Ethereal in their burial customs (an example of this is actually presented in the book)... well, it would be a nasty surprise for anyone excavating the area thousands of years later. That being said, this piece is not about the historical Tarim mummies, but about another, completely fictitious culture who in this mythos inhabited the northern Tarim Basin at one time.

Update: Additional info from my co-author:

SPOILER: Click to show

"The written stuff are called runes, because they're not so much words as conduits of communication. You look at them, and they send their message. If you're not made for it, it can cause you to go insane because it messes with your head. If you are made for it, you understand it, thus preventing immediate insanity."

So yeah. I write a lot and then I write a lot about what I write. <_<

So, anyone have a prompt for this week?

Erf, I try to get another prompt up before Tuesday, but I was pretty busy yesterday and plumb forgot.

So, this week's is:

Periwinkle

Also, if any of you are artists, you should check out Ginz's art challenge that runs along similar lines as this writing challenge! I hope to see some of you there!