Those birds were the only splash of color in the landscape of white that surrounded them. White lake, white mountains, white sand. I felt a little clutch of fear for them when we released them into that emptiness, as if it would devour them. It couldn't, of course. That was ridiculous. There was no other life that might devour them, and we had tested the soil and the water and the air and the fish and the few lacy white weeds that grew in the sand or clung to the rocks of the mountains. It had all come back clear. Our flamingos would survive and prosper, so long as there was fish to eat and a safe place to sleep and the right temperature, and they had all those things. We'd even implanted little time-delay release capsules with supplementing vitamins and minerals under their skin, though from the results we'd gotten from the fish and the plants, they shouldn't be needed. No accounting for flamingo taste, though, and so we had done this just to give them a little extra to tide them over. We would come back in a year and see how they were doing, that was the plan. There were other places with niches that seemed to fit some of the earth-specific species we'd carried with us in the library through the long dark years--centuries, really, though it was still hard to conceptualize that!--that we traveled to this place. It felt wrong knowing that the first wave of settlers would probably be able to hop through as easy as a trip to the moon, once we put up the wormhole terminus.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/enniovanzan/9158179304/
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: More setting than anything else. But they come back, and the flamingos that are newborn have no color, but the fish that ate the dead ones have gained some. (Much like flamingos' color depends on diet in the first place.) And that is a Weirdness.

Isolate, she moved among them, yet not one of them. Thick plastic gloves separated her from all she touched, and she saw the bright colors of spring through the warped plastic shield of her helmet. Her parents were still brave enough to keep her living at home, and even to hug her on special occasions, with a carefully inspected security shield between them. At her birth, they could have chosen to abandon her to live forever in an institution with the other unfortunates. They had not, and she would forever love them for their attempt to give her a somewhat normal life, as if one of her kind could ever truly have a real life. Still, even if she was only invited to two balls, and even if she could do nothing--

Inspiration: "Isolate" by Paradise Lost
Story Potential: High. Really high, particularly in conjunction with the other one I wrote recently about a person naturally immune from the plague and therefor sentences to body-carrying duty during a plague. Or maybe better not associated with it.
Notes: Plague, contagion--genetically activated or an unfortunate infection? A disease that is everywhere, but can only cross to humans through a vector human that lacks the initial resistance? And sort of a Southern Gothic sci-fi atmosphere...belle of the ball, hanging Spanish moss, perpetual damp, damsels fair, gentlemen gallant, and a creepy layer of some sort of cruelty beneath it all? Hmm. Perhaps the last goes too far.