MagiStream

Poking around the Tea House, I saw Kestrad's thread 'Enter prompt, receive poem' and thought to myself, "Why, that sounds like fun!" So I decided to shamelessly copy her. :3 If you post a little prompt with a character or phrase or idea or what-have-you, I'll write either a short poem or a short flash fiction (a little story as short as I can make it) about it. This should be fun! cx

Kestrad actually stole the idea from someone else in the tea house too...

Me first! Prompt: "Leaving the dream"

Have fun with it!

Sorry wrong thread

Ooh, good prompt, Kestrad. >:3 Lessee... Okay, here's a poem AND a flash fiction! =D Both quite rough and unedited, of course. =P The flash fiction went more like 600 words, though; I was having too much fun with the prompt, I suppose. X3

"Leaving the Dream"

And if I stand here a moment longer,
Will that make the difference?
The air tastes like a knife

At the back of my throat, cutting
Off any baby words.
It's the taste of fear

That hangs over me now,
Trembling here at the edge of the dream,
Pressing my lips to reality

And flirting, laughing at the world,
A frozen testament to the power,
To the pleasure of slumber.

“Okay, look, you're officially overdoing this whole dream-catcher thing."

Jane rolled her eyes and turned back to her work, ignoring her imaginary friend Glock. Okay, well, he wasn't technically an imaginary friend any more. He'd been upgraded to “One of those tricks of the light you see in the corner of your eyes" now, which was apparently a big deal for the Figments. She wouldn't exactly know.

"I'm just going to give this guy a little nightmare," she replied to Glock, putting her fingertips gently on either side of the sleeping boy's temples. Damn, he was pretty. Jane's mouth twisted at the corners; in her absent-minded examination of his face, her feet had begun to fall through the floor. She stepped up again like pulling her shoes out of the mud. “That's so disconcerting, by the way."

Glock shrugged, making his feathered wing-arms rustle like paper. “I don't make up the rules."

“Right, right, whatever. 'Ethereal non-being, go thou and dream the dreams of others, be thou their shepherd, guard, and guide, and keep thou the evil from infesting their minds in the night.'" She rolled her eyes. Anything written on a papyrus scroll was bound to be melodramatic. “I get it. I'm just saying, I don't like this whole moving-through-objects, out-of-body-experience thing. Why can't I just be invisible and walk around?"

Glock sighed and rolled his huge blue eyes. It was funny that he was named after a gun; when Jane was little, the fact that her imaginary friend was a guardian angel annoyed her and she tried to give him the most violent name she could think of to toughen him up. It hadn't worked. He was still just a gigantic ball of pushover.

Jane looked back at the boy, sleeping in his bed, snoring lightly, drooling just a little at the corner of his mouth. “Besides," she told Glock, “he stood me up. I don't get stood up a lot. So this sort of thing won't happen very often."

Glock shook his head solemnly. “But you already went into your mother's dream and planted that idea about the vacation, and your friend Nadia, and--"

“Shut up. Last time tonight, I promise." Without waiting for another admonishment, Jane took a deep breath and stuck her fingers inside of Nathan's head.

He was dreaming about zombies or something; she realized that right away. Standing in the middle of his dream, she could see Nathan bunkered up with a woman who appeared to be Jennifer Aniston, who was rubbing her hand over his shoulders while he shot at approaching dead people like a champ. Jane rolled her eyes. He was a human-shaped ego, and even his dreams knew it. Still, he was gorgeous; you couldn't be that gorgeous without developing overactive self-confidence.

That didn't mean Jane forgave him for standing her up for their date. But still.

His dream was easy to turn into a nightmare; all she had to do was reach out with a ghostly palm and knock the bullets out of his gun; when he tried to fire at the next approaching zombie, there was only a bang with no bite. Jennifer Aniston turned into a shrieking harpy of his mother shrieking, “You're firing blanks, my boy! Firing blanks!" Jane could feel Nathan's mind beginning to recoil as the zombies approached, and with a smile, she left the dream.

Glock was shaking his head at her, but she grinned and patted him on the shoulder. At least, her intangible hand made a sort of strange hovering up-and-down motion over his shoulder without actually touching him. “C'mon, you worrywart, let's go home. I need to get some actual sleep for myself, I think."

Glock gave her a critical look but said nothing and the two of them passed through the wall.

Ooh, very nice! I love the poem and the story both. The story especially was very entertaining--and you did a great job of characterizing everyone in 600 words, an impressive feat!

(600 words isn't really considered a lot for flash fiction, is it? At least, for the flash fiction class I took this past semester we were supposed to aim for under 750 words...)

Hai, Furthuurz~

I posed this in Kestrad's thread too, but I hope she doesn't mind. Been having this word stuck in my head for days, and it'll be fun to see what two writers can do with one word. (Not that I can write, anyway. xD;;)

Prompt :: Dystropia ah, wait, wait. Changed my mind, try Utopia instead.

/shot

@Kestrad: Why thank you. *takes a bow and bangs head on keyboard* Ouch. Erm, yes, 600 words actually is a bit short for a flash fiction; they can really range from anywhere between 2,000 words to 7. One of my favorite sudden fiction stories is just a sentence: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Hemmingway, I believe. *sobs*

@Kriever: Ooh, loverly. >:3 Utopias are fun. Lessee, since it'd be a bit easier to write a story about that one, I think I'll stick with a poem for it. c: Yikes, that was more morbid than I thought it would be. >.> Hope that's relatively non-insane/clear to others... Zoinks.

"Utopia"

Perfect little fracture, straight and broken as glass
At its edges. I can see a whole world in your split
Arm, spilled as a gutted deer on my lawn.

I can see the blood, people on your veins, their streets,
Busy, working, humming their songs of camaraderie soft in their throats
Going to their familes and jobs, their idyllic lives of bread and skin,

And then you fell from the tree and the city was snapped
Into two perfect pieces, a utopia of chaos, a
Disarranged lovely madness. Pain sobs in all our mouths.

Hmm. What can you do with the word: ocean
:3

Oh yes, I've read that story too. Arguably the best six word story ever written. Hemingway, why so brilliant *_*

Prompt:If a wolf could tell you his story