The lady in the embroidery hoop smiled wistfully out at the shop as cherry blossoms fell forever around her face. Usually, Marigold thought that cross-stitch pictures were rather chintzy and not worth keeping, much less doing herself, but she found herself drawn to the simple portrait of a Japanese woman captured in the cross-stitch. She wished that it had been a painting or a photograph, of course, but the cross-stitch still managed a sort of enchantment that made her want to keep it. She reached out to pick it up, then winced and cried out when something stung her finger. Sticking the injured digit in her mouth and sucking on it, she flipped the embroidery hoop around and saw that the needle still dangled from the back. Now her blood stained its point. She reached out to pull it out, and another drop fell from her finger to the cloth backing. She winced again when she saw the blood stain the white cheek of the Japanese woman. Now she'd have to buy it.


Inspiration: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151910681098978&set=a.50444823977.62137.769533977&type=1
Story potential: Low
Notes: Meh.

Her pinky stump throbbed when the weather changed, and sometimes when weather not of this world changed. She didn't think it was actually the scar that did that, just her own mental projection--a storm of a kind was the reason she'd had her finger cut, and so she projected her subconscious detection onto the scars. She could always rationalize away that she'd seen certain signs, because in hindsight, no matter what kind of storm it was, there were always signs.

Except this time.

She'd listened when her pinky started throbbing worse than it had ever before, and she'd gone and hidden in the o-san's restroom, taking her sword and lifting up the tatami mat and quickly carving out a hole in the floor so she could hide under the floorboards with the tatami mat settling back over the floor.


Inspiration: Short story titled, "Pinky the Invisible Flying Pony Who Saves The World." True fax.
Story Potential: High. I wanted to keep writing.
Notes: Some sort of ceremonial knife was used and some of the knife's specialness rubbed off. Plus this fits in with the "great sacrifice is required for power" sort of thing. After whatever entirely unforeseen, hint-free disaster this may be, her next step will be to find the specialist who removed the finger, to find out what's going on. Don't keep the o-san part. That's not even a word. Unless somebody's name is o. Though Osan is a city, and apparently also means giving birth.

The mikado had been restored to power by the invaders. Nobody really knew what to think of this, least of all the mikado, who had been only a little boy when the invaders had come and fought a decades long war that destroyed the world, killed his entire family, and left him living on the street and singing for his keep. Singing, he insisted against the raised eyebrows of those who knew how young boys forced to live on the streets usually earned their keep. Yet, when asked to sing, he would only ever shake his head and say that there was no need, and the singing was only for if there was need. Some wags made jokes about "flesh flutes," but though the mikado had no experience with ruling in the past, those who made the jokes, and those who laughed at them, had disappeared--

Inspiration: A historical entry about the mikado being restored to power.
Story Potential: High? Ish?
Notes: It might be too much of a jumble of things. The Japanese emperor, an alien invader, a royal heir restored, some magical singing power...or all these disparate elements might be a good thing.