Welcome back to Wednesday Words Reborn, Week 18! To honor P. T. Wyant’s legacy as an author and her incredible influence on my success as a writer, I am taking up the torch of continuing her flash fiction challenge. Every Wednesday I will be posting some kind of flash fiction prompt, hopefully just after midnight Eastern time.
The prompt might be a single line, a photo, a group of things to include, a question, some weird news of the week, a theme, genre category, an idea, or quite literally anything my twisted ADHD-addled mind can come up with. Hell, if I get callbacks and engagement, I might even choose a line or something interesting from a participant’s response as a prompt sometime. (With their permission, of course.)
After the prompt is live, the rest is up to you. This isn’t any kind of contest. At least, not in the near future it isn’t, and whether or not you choose to participate is entirely your choice. The goal here is simply to have fun and exercise that writing muscle with, say, no more than 500 words. You can choose to leave your flash fiction story as a comment below, or you can post it on your own social media of your choice. If you post elsewhere, I’d love if you dropped a comment below with a link for me to follow and read. You can also tag me across my various social media accounts (Twitter, BlueSky, and Facebook; all of which you can find under my Contact info) when you share your snippet. And if you post on your own blog, a ping back to the original post would be appreciated, though it’s not necessary. Share your #flashfiction tales with the hashtag #WWReborn across social media for others to browse and find.
Hey, if a prompt inspires more than 500 words, too, run with it!
This week’s question prompt:
Write a tale that centers around answering the question: What is your favorite season?
Now off with you, Darklings! Write with the frenzy of an overly caffeinated hamster on a wheel! Just don’t trip. Or maybe do trip. It might be more fun that way. As always, I’d love to see what you come up with!
**All stories written hereafter from this prompt are the property, both intellectually and physically, of the author.**
What an interesting prompt! I’m a little late this week, but I still love these!
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Ancient Earth History by Ashley Apples
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The stylus glided across the screen of my sketchpad like the bottom of a solar sail through an astral current. Slowly the lines connected, crossed, and formed the image of an Venusian Strider. A ferocious felidae creature with sharp fangs and three sets of legs that terminated with wicked claws. They were my favorite exofauna. Somewhere in the background of my consciousness I was aware that my teacher was giving a lecture on ancient earth history. Specifically, about the phenology of ancient earth.
Who cares? I thought to myself, ignoring the lecture to continue putting in the details of the Venusian Strider.
Wompwomp wa wa wompwah waomp. Was the background noise of my teacher giving her lecture. I paid it no mind.
“Womp wah womp …Bellin?” The background noise suddenly sharpened, becoming coherent. My name mixed in jerked me away from my drawing and I looked up at the hologram of my teacher to find her staring directly at me.
“Uh…” I gulped and placed my hand over the screen of my sketchpad, to dismiss the image I had been working on. “I’m sorry, Teacher Dorine. Can you repeat the question? I got lost in thought a moment.”
The blue translucent features of the hologram didn’t seem impressed with me. The hologram crossed her arms and leaned back slightly. She stared at me until I started to feel sweat bead on the back of my neck. My parents had threatened to take away my sketchpad if I was caught drawing in class again.
“Can you tell the rest of the class what the seasons of ancient earth were, and how they compare to the cosmic seasons?” The hologram finally asked.
I let out a sigh of relief and leaned back in my hover chair. I glanced at the floor to ceiling screen where my other classmates’ faces were. An array of other teens who were paying as much attention as I had before. That they were ignoring me made me more comfortable and I said, “Well. I depends on the culture, doesn’t it? But I believe that in general they had: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. Winter is similar to our Desolation period, when stars run out of fuel and become white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes. Winter was a cold period on ancient earth, where they were unable to grow food.”
“That is correct.” The hologram teacher said. “What about the season they called Spring?”
“Spring was when they began to grow food again right? When they planted seeds for eventual harvest. It would be similar to our Erosion period, where workers sent out cosmic dust, debris, and etc.. to begin the process of creating new stars. Then after that was Protoformation, where gravity and heat starts to form the debris and dust into new stars. That would be like their summer, right? A hot season where they start harvesting some things and plant more? And, um. Then there is our Formation season. Which I guess would be like their autumn. When the stars are fully formed and they can be harvested for energy? They harvested most of their food in autumn, right? Cause they had so many harvest rituals in autumn?”
The hologram nodded her head and she said, “You are correct in all of that, Pupil Bellin. One last question, what would your favorite season have been and why?”
I bit my lower lip and tried to imagine what ancient earth seasons would have been link. Eventually I said, “I think it would have been their Spring season, Teacher Dorine. Because I would like to experience rain.”
“Very good.” The hologram told me before turning away, “You may go back to drawing now.”
The hologram winked at me, and I gave a little gasp, but turned my attention back to my sketchpad.
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Like my “rules” say, there’s no time limit to my prompts!
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