The riparian nomads were known to the water spirits, and vise versa. This did not help their popularity in the communities that they visited. Anyone untouched by the same kind of drownings, sudden floods, and other waterborne calamities was not viewed popularly, no matter that their caravan barges held all manner of useful things and their plays, put on by torchlight on the wide boards of their barges, brightened dull lives. Oh, they were looked forward to, but they were not exactly trusted. Who knew what evil bargain they'd struck with the sylphs to allow them free reign of the rivers? The sylphs knew. So did the nomads. They knew, and their eldest sons knew. Sometimes the boys came back from their year beneath the water moonstruck and unable to concentrate on anything else until they fell over the railings--

Inspiration: "riparian" - related to or living on the bank of a natural river or watercourse.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: I like the idea of a culture of water-gypsies with a dreadful bargain, but that's background, not a story. Basically, I was writing along and naturally the locals are suspicious of the outsiders, and the outsiders are poor misunderstood--but no, wait, what if there *is* a dreadful bargain?

The woman was everything he'd ever wanted, finer even than the horse that he'd had his eye on in the marketplace. He knew that her price would be much higher, too, and so he immediately spun on his heel to go to his father. His father gave him part of the funding, and he sold his second and third horses, fine beasts that he'd saved many moons to be able to purchase, without a second thought. He must have her. He had seen the glint of defiance in her eye beneath the submissive bowing of her neck, and he'd seen the ropy scars along her knuckles and the roughening of strange callouses along her hands and feet, her elbows and her knees. He knew that probably her first action on being brought to her owner's house would be to kill him--or try to. He bet that she could easily defeat him. He was no warrior--

Inspiration: "Oully" by Natacha Atlas
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Would make a good, sorta-subversive romance. A variant on the slave woman and big strong warrior that wins her gently. Make her the barbarian warrior captured in battle and him the unwarlike (unfit?) nomad who purchases her when she's put on the slave block, and then--?