The world becomes dark blue to you, as if that is all there is, the sky and the goggles darkening the unbearable brilliance of the sun to something tolerable--and keeping the alien flares from burning out your retinas or, if you're one of the unlucky ten percent, opening a pathway in your mind that lets them in and turns you into a traitor to your own kind, whether you want to be or not. Most pilots become so accustomed to wearing the goggles that they keep them on even once they've touched down again. I won't deny there's something about a steel blue, obscured gaze that all the girls seem to go for. That doesn't get me so much, since I *am* a girl, and one look from behind smoky blue goggles isn’t going to be enough to persuade your average pilot-groupie that she does like girls after all. Most of them don’t', you know, though they may have a close friend that they're willing to snuggle with a little bit to persuade the guys that they'll really be getting something special if they get her. Nah, I prefer women who know that they're women and know that they like women, without any of the dancing around and "oh I'm not really" that a pilot groupie would make necessary. They’re groupies--they're supposed to make it easy, right? Not so much for us fly gals. And there are plenty of us, given how much better we can stand up to G-forces at the rates necessary to match the alien fly--boys, I guess. Maybe they've got fly girls too. Can't say that I think much about it or that it matters.


Inspiration: A thumbnail-sized image of this: http://www.dvdklub.cz/dvd-obrazek/5611--Tmavomodry-svet.jpg though the main character looked female to me in such a small size.
Story potential: High.
Notes: Guess who's one of the 10%? And I'm thinking setting this in an equivalent time period to back when there were hidden lesbian clubs, and it was a prosecuted crime, and some of the best female jazz singers of the era flouted it, and...yeah. Jazz.

The click of the hammer pulling back made him smile. He'd got them then, and he knew it. They, of course, suffered from the natural misapprehension that they'd got him--or who they thought he was, a rich merchant traveling to see his squaw far out of town. He wondered what Frozen Deer thought of this whole scheme. She'd shaken her head at the incomprehensibility of the things he'd found important when he explained what he was doing. The bandits hadn't killed any of his kin or family, they hadn't killed the buffalo he hunted. She understood why he'd do it for the money, but part of what her job was was making sure that everybody had a guilty feeling when they took that as a reason for doing anything. And she knew that he'd see right through the shaking of her head. He'd been apprenticed to her for almost ten years, now, since he wandered into camp as a boy of a hair shy of fifteen, blood on his hands--

Inspiration: "Wind It Up" - Barenaked Ladies
Story Potential: Medium
Notes: If I *did* write it, I'd have to get rid of the Native American stuff--I'm so unqualified to get the culture and the mores and the mysticism and work it properly in with the sort of urban fantasy/new weird/western that this is.

When time slips, at first you don't notice it. You don't think anything's changed--most of the time. Most of the timeslips are small enough to shrug off. They mean you'll get a ticket for leaving your car parked too long, or have to explain to your boss why you didn't show up one day--just say that you're horribly ill with something that kept you so busy vomiting you couldn't make it to a phone. That's usually enough for them. You may find yourself in one of the bigger timeslips. That's actually what we're hoping for. If that happens, rest assured, the company will provide well for any family or designated beneficiaries that you have left behind--or ahead--and you will also receive very generous compensation. Of course, that's why we insist that you always carry with you the--

Inspiration:"Our Surprise Decision" by Burnside Project
Story Potential: High, actually. At least medium-high.
Notes: An interesting idea for story set-up, that could go any number of places, future or past. Past would be, I think, more interesting--but also would involve more research. Also, must decide how to play corporation--"Corporations Are Evil" would be too easy.

The girl's eyes began to bother him after the thirteenth hour. Surely, a small child should have fallen asleep by now, no matter how scary her surroundings. But she still watched him, carefully and tenty, her knees pulled up against her chest, her hair falling forward to veil her face, but her eyes remaining cautious and attentively on his face. He harrumphed in his chest and shifted sideways a little, so that he wasn't facing her directly. It wasn't exactly fun for him to be under such close scrutiny, and it was decidedly unfair, too, he thought. After all, he wasn't the reason that they were trapped there, and he certainly had nothing to do with why she'd been taken in. Heavens, he didn't even know who she was. He could only assume that she'd been swept in by accident. It wasn't her fault, poor beggar, but there was no--

Inspiration: "tenty" or "tentie" (Scot) Also I think the posts that stephdray's been making about the romance genre.
Story Potential: Er. Medium-high, but in a genre I haven't decided to commit to?
Notes: Really thought this was going to be science fiction, but it seems to be writing itself as Regency Romance. Hmm. How odd.

She stared at him, astounded that he had the effrontery to question her judgment. "Yes," she told him, her voice cold, "I know that your sister has some difficulty dealing with the phantoms. That's why I'm sending her." He stared at her as if her head had sprouted snake's-teeth. "You know that she will be easy prey if you send her out on the moors, and yet you're doing it anyway? Why? Do you really hate our side of the family so much?" She narrowed her eyes. He was wrong, of course, but to attempt to discuss matters further would only make him think he had the right to question her decisions. He didn't. "She goes," she said. "She is the one we will send out onto the moors this year, to find her way--"

Inspiration: "effrontery"
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: The dictionary prompts have been treating me well and giving me interesting things lately! And I'm not sure why there are moors involved, but I like it.

"Poltergirl!" she screamed, sweeping through the room in torrent of tossed schoolbooks, whipped up sheets, and hurled soap. The candles didn't so much as flicker as she passed. At Madame Sherilyn's Academy for Young Poltergeists, fire was one of the more carefully guarded things. All the pupils signed waivers, of course, and their parents were usually so pleased to have them out of the house that they didn't ask further questions. It took only one drawer of knives flying through the air and embedding themselves beside your head to make you entirely willing to risk drastic measures in order to regain normality. "Polter-boring," whispered Maura, tucking her head under her sheets.

Inspiration: misreading "poltergeist" as "poltergirl"
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Cute setting, though.

The contagion was in among them and widely spread before they even realized what they were dealing with. At first, they thought it was only a series of tragic mishaps by alchemists and court wizards. It spread mostly at first in the poor district, where the inferior wizards held court, and where they often worked together because no one wizard was powerful enough on his own to accomplish anything in a meaningful way. The court wizards assumed that the poor wizards were destroying themselves for no reasonable cause, just because they were fools and idiots tampering with forces too big for them to understand. It took a while for the court wizards to understand that they, too, were dying and infected. The infection progressed in odd ways, and though court wizards stayed--

Inspiration: "contagion"
Story Potential: Medium-high.
Notes: An interesting setting for a short story or secondary storyline in a novel. A contagion of magic, spread through collaboration--preceding the Dark Ages, perhaps?

The smoke blocked out the sun, sending the day into a weird twilight not natural at any time of year. When Sheila saw the smoke rising, she dropped her spear and sprinted forward. She didn't notice when the rabbits fell from her shoulder. She didn't notice when one of her sandals' strap broke and she lost the sandal. She didn't notice when she ran right over a fallen spear that cut into the thick callus on the sole of her foot. She felt the pain, but only distantly. Her eyes were all for the scene of devastation that she knew lay on the other side of the ridge. Common sense kicked in belatedly, and she dropped to her belly and wormed her way up the ridge instead of charging over it as her heart demanded. At first she could not understand--

Inspiration: The word 'smoke' in a song.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Nothing new or original here. If I had a dollar for every "sudden devastation to home while away" scene that I've read, I'd be able to buy a new car. Probably fantasy, sci-fi, or alternate history, but really, who cares?

The oakum bit against his fingers as he untwisted the old ropes. He sighed and tilted his head back to rest it on a keg behind him. The ship needed oakum to plug its holes, and oakum was made by taking really old rope that couldn't be used anymore and picking it to pieces. Somebody had to do it, and it amused the privateers to make their gently-bred captive do it. He'd acquired a nice set of blisters. At first they'd bled and wept pus, but over the last couple of weeks they'd roughened up and he'd got a set of calluses that might even make him seem to be a seaman. The shackle around his leg would disabuse anybody of that notion, of course.


Inspiration: "Oakum"
Story Potential: Medium. Nothing for it, nothing against it.
Finished Length: ?
Notes: Meh.