Daring to Drabble

[Lex]

Starting this as a place to post drabbles. Mine, yours, whatever! Everyone is welcome to post and share drabbles they've finished.

I've wanted to work on my writing but don't really have the mind for longer format stuff, so something short and sweet like a drabble seems to be the perfect place to start.

I've found a couple of prompt lists/generators that are fun and thought maybe they'd also help get the creative juices flowing if you're like me and don't really know where to start. These only contain G rated prompts.

52prompts.com/random-prompt-generator/
www.teachersnotepad.com/drabble-prompts/

If you have PROMPTS to share, that'd also be really cool! Just ones you personally like or lists/generators you use, I can add them here to keep track.

[Lex]

Here's one from tonight! The prompt was:

How were they supposed to build it with no instructions to be found?

Tilbur was the character picked via RNG!

Tilbur sighed heavily. These things weren't usually difficult for him. He'd spent many summers tinkering at models for his games and was mostly confident on how they worked, but this? This was a whole nother beast. On the table before him were hundreds of tiny bricks, laid out into color-coded piles of red, blue, yellow, and white. There were tiny decal stickers of banners and sigils, several tiny plastic flags, and even a miniature version of King Skarl himself... what was conspicuously missing, however, was a set of instructions. He supposed the old saying was true: Meridell Castle wasn't built in a day.

[van]

SPOILER: Click to show

"There's nothing but darkness left here," Rizomata whispers, staring at the spreading grey in her palm. The bloodshed outside her basement workshop echoes in her ears. "Nothing to lose."

She ties the copper wire to her ears, the wire trembling as it connects her to the draik statue—porcelain and glass, fragile yet enduring. The draik’s hollow eyes gleam with a cold, inner light.

The grey creeps up her arm, her flesh now numb. She exhales slowly, her breath rattling.

Rizomata pulls a string.

A sharp, electric jolt. Her mind snaps, plunging into the statue’s silent, waiting form.

She is gone.

Behold slightly spooky drabble about my alchemist draik...bot RNG just one I did. PS I am Luc but I got locked outta my other account.

[June Scarlet]

Storm swished her tail angrily. The Shadow Wocky had been caught stealing... again. Now she was in a cell, awaiting her fate.

Her fate, as it turned out, arrived swiftly, in the form of a Winged Kookith. "Pah, took ya long enough," said the thief as the Petpet quietly flew over with a set of key.

The pale Petpet said nothing in return as Storm took the keys, unlocking the cell door and striding out. "Let's get outta here, Silence," she said to the Kookith, who landed on the Wocky's head.

Down the hall, a White Draik stood guard, one who looked to take great pride in her uniform with its neatly ironed creases. Storm pulled a hood over her head and Silence and pointed down the hall. "Ya prisoner's escaped."

The Draik hurried down to Storm's cell, leaving a savory pie behind. Without hesitation Storm grabbed it. "Hey, wait! Thief, that's mine!"

Storm didn't have to turn around to know the Draik had spotted Storm as the escaped prisoner. Neither did Silence. The Winged Kookith swooped from beneath Storm's hood and rushed at the Meridellian Guard.

"Wha-" spluttered the Draik as the Kookith's wings filled her vision, trying to get the Petpet out of the way without harming her.

Then just as quickly, the Kookith flew away. The Wocky was gone too. And there was one more thing missing.

"My pie!"

[Lex]

June Scarlet June oh my gosh! I love this!

Poor Ralvy just wanted to enjoy her pie haha. But she is no match for the dynamic thieving duo of Storm and Silence

[Lex]

Rando prompt!
"You can never have too much cake"

Ralvy looked nervously across the kitchen. Globs of multi-colored icing were clinging to every visible surface, including several big chunks which were starting to drip messily from the ceiling. The metal tray where the cake had once sat was now upturned on the floor, empty of all but a conspicuous spear of blue and red buttercream. A blob of icing landed on the tip of her nose with a wet "SPLAT" as she watched Sebby sitting in the middle of the floor, hastily shoving what remained of the birthday surprise into her mouth. "I was only gone... for a minute."

[Kat]

"Someone takes astrology a little too seriously."


"According to your horoscope, today is a lucky day for anyone born under The Dreamer, and you may even meet someone memorable!" the red Kyrii exclaimed, holding up the latest issue of the Neopian Times. "It also says you'll encounter good fortune!"

"Do you really believe that, Andrea?" Reuben asked, raising his eyebrows. "Today could be a lucky day for anyone regardless of their Altadorian star sign. I could point to any other horoscope, like the one for The Thief, which says, 'If you work hard you will prosper and gain new insight.'" The white Blumaroo spread his arms. "And it'd apply to me, too. My Altador star sign doesn't matter."

Andrea puffed her cheeks. "Aunt Olivia says the stars bear their own brand of magic, and tell us things we can only hope to know!"

"Like what? They're big balls of gas on fire in space?"

In response she smacked his arm with the rolled-up newspaper.

"Like directions! You navigate at night using the stars, don't you? Don't you think that knowledge the stars tell us?"

Reuben raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, you have a point. But...you know, today might just be a lucky day for me, after all. Maybe my horoscope is right."

"You think so?"

He stepped forward and put an arm around her shoulder. "Well, I met you, and I saw you this morning, and I believe you're very memorable. And, it's my good fortune to know you, Andrea."

The Kyrii stared at him, her cheeks becoming redder and redder until she just swatted him with the Neopian Times again.

[Lex]

One for Qortege, my korbat (who's haunted by ghouls after messing with a curse artifact):

Prompt was: I could really use a hug.

The line at the Coffee Cave was long, the barista slow, and I was doing the best I could to maintain my composure. A bead of sweat was trickling down my forehead, hopefully getting lost in my fur so that no one saw. Or did they see? Could they see THEM? These... things, silently crawling around in the shadows around me, following me everywhere I go. Every building I enter. Every corner I escape around. Sneering at me with wicked, sinister grins. It reminded me of my childhood, imagining monsters under my bed, crying for my mother who would hug me warmly and shush my fears away. But they weren't under my bed, and my mother wasn't here, though I still could probably use that hug. I would have to settle for a tall cup of black coffee.

[Sporty]

My local library is doing a kind of workshopping series right now for creative writing, and this week we focused on setting. The goal was to follow as many of a set of prompts as you wanted to quickly describe a setting in terms of how it affected or was viewed by your character, and I ended up making a short scene from the same setting as my recent book. The character whose point of view this is, Kris (who's basically a talking fox, hence some of what's mentioned near the end), is actually one of the characters from the book, but this scene takes place before the main "event" of that story and is actually something I might integrate into the larger novel I'm planning to write for this setting. Thought I'd share here, though it might be a bit long for a drabble lol

Brilliant sunlight filters through the trees, painting the valley floor in a dapple tapestry of warm yellow light and deep green shadows. It's a view that Kris has experienced countless times in her line of work, and though she has never tired of it, the light of the forest had long since lost its aura of unearthly majesty and become a kind of beautiful normal. She had not expected to be so different here.

Yet since she first set foot beyond Ironbrook, something in that light has become... magical. Otherworldly. She cannot place the sense exactly, but it is somehow different and new.

Kris isn't quite sure why -- if it's the simple idea of venturing beyond the space she's known all her life, or if the newness of the place itself has introduced a sense of newness to eyes that were far more accustomed to the mountains and forests of her home than she ever realized.

Or maybe, she has to wonder, something in that light is truly magical. They're still a ways from the nearest ley node, so the greatest effects of the Surge are not yet present. But that doesn't mean this place was untouched by raw magic. Could that be it? Some illusory or transformative property of the place that she can somehow sense but not quite name?

As she walks, Kris takes a moment to raise her muzzle and scent cautiously at the air around her. She and Quin have stronger sense of smell than the humans and drake of their group, and with her experience, maybe she'll detect something in the air that is not quite like home.

...But no. There is the fresh smell of trees and shrubs and recent rain, and the must of dirt and decay, and the faint musk of some hidden animal. A fox, she thinks with no small trace of amusement. Maybe it's scenting and watching her now, just as confused by these strange interlopers as she is by the slight off-ness of its home.