BONUS ROUND 3 - GENRE FICTION

[a1c0bb]

this round is about writing prompts inspired by genre fiction, aka fantasy, crime, romance, horror, or sci-fi!

to submit a prompt or fill, reply to this post!

Fills can be in any format, and you can fill any prompt (even if it's your own or your teammates)!

for your prompt post title, please use the following format:
PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
if you are participating as a vote-only member, use this format:
PROMPT: VOTER

for your fill  post title, please use the following format:
FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
if you are participating as a vote-only member, use this format:
FILL: VOTER

Comments

PROMPT: VOTER

[yrindor]

The starships used to explore distant galaxies are dragons.

FILL: TEAM SUSELLE

[lyseandpurge]

"Here it is."

The book made a huge bulge in Noelle's pack, and she brought it out with great difficulty, as it was extremely heavy. The weight of it slammed into the dirt, despite her best efforts, with a heavy thud—crushing what sparse grass still clung there.

The book was genuine paper, heavily treated, each board-like page laminated several times. It did not hold many leaves for its size, but each one was filled with machine-printed diagrams and dense text difficult for Susie to read. To the two of them, who had never seen a tree, an object like this, made to last the generations between planets, might as well have crystallised from the dragon's innards, like a gemstone. It glittered, after all.

"It's sure got the stuff." Susie had already taken out her magnifying glass, and through the scratched lens was examining the contents. "How'd you get your hands on this?"

"Said it was for homework," Noelle replied with a little pride. As the Captain's daughter, she was one of the few who received the luxury of education. And through her, that luxury had come to Susie.

Hometown itself had never been as prosperous a town as the advertisements suggested. When the dragon that inspirited the river of imperial commerce had found its way at last to the planet, the crew had expected rich veins of copper, valuable sulfates, hydrogen pockets, an atmosphere laden with noble gases. Eagerly, the great ship had set its front drills deep into the planet's crust, piercing the mantle and drinking up the warm metals that slept beneath. Around the pucker of its bite had sprung up the festering boil of a mining settlement. That was Hometown.

Now, twenty generations down the line, and fifteen from the dragon's landing, its teeth were still dug into the rock, and its tail ribboned up into the sky two hundred kilometres, catching the undulations of the planet with a slow transverse waver.

"Like a leech," said Susie.

"Like a flag," said Noelle.

They were in agreement on this.

That was all that remained of the settlement's great hope. It would falter like Jamestown, perish like Roanoke. And before long, that dragon would unleash its head and float back up into the sky, taking with it all the books, all the breathable gases, and all the dreams.

"You think so?" Noelle asked mildly.

"Look forward to it," Susie replied.

Hometown had never known a school; never known a printing press; had a doctor but no hospital, railroads but no passenger cars. From the sheltered interior, and from the breath-starved exterior, these two children were present for the tail end of its demise. One would climb into the dragon's intestine when it finally departed.

"But you'll come too," Noelle insisted, more earnestly than ever. It was not a promise she could grant.

"Forget it."

Susie was idly fingering the leaves of the book. The two of them were unprotected from the star's radiation by the planet's thin veil of purple-blue. However, it was the only light by which she could see.

They had watched the last of the power poles get taken up by construction crews and brought on board the dragon's long, whiskery ramps just yesterday. Noelle had waved hello and asked the armed guard what was going on. Susie had hung back, right at the street corner, hiding in the folds of her jacket.

"But you'll be up there," Noelle insists again, with a little consternation. "With me. If we have to sneak you aboard, I'll do it. Do you think I'm all talk, Susie?"

Susie doesn't respond for a few seconds. Then, without looking up: "I know you're not. But... what if I say I have a better idea?"

Noelle blinks. "A what?"

Susie offers out the magnifying glass. There on the page, with the reflection of the sun glancing off it and making it doubly hard to read, is a beautifully complex diagram of an old engine.

Susie says: "I was just thinking, that thing's older than we are."

"Mhm."

"And it's got more of a future than we have, too."

"Uh-huh."

Noelle is not part of this "we". She understands this quietly and certainly.

"And you say we all climb aboard. We all jump on. We all make its future our future, and go where it wants."

The Captain of the dragon is Noelle's mother.

Susie looks very guardedly at Noelle. "If I say I have a different idea. Are you in or out?"

Noelle bites her lip. Her heart is suddenly racing with a strange anxiety. "I... what is it?"

"Need to know before I can tell you."

The two of them sit under the sky for a while. They look up at the ribboning shape of the dragon. Where they sit is the very edge of the drill-crater; any further out, there is no breath. Nothing that Noelle knows is out there.

Is that what she...?

Suddenly she whips her head around, and Susie is gone.

There instead, laid lightly and carefully on the sparse grass right beside the book, are three long objects. A rusted hammer, and two big iron spikes.

And—scratched into the inside cover of that priceless text, into the plastic—she finds the rough shape of letters:

"Think on it"

Noelle takes the items and shoves them into her pack, which bulges with the weight. Only she would not be questioned going in and out of the dragon while carrying so much.

The thin air seems cold, more than anything, as she descends the crater slope. It doesn't make it easy to think. But she's not thinking, really.

She doesn't have to.

It's all written in the pages.