She comes to visit the museum most days that it's open. That's a little strange, but not so terribly unusual for a free public museum as large as ours. Like the library, it's a place where the public feels free to go when they have nowhere else to go. No work, no home? Go to the museum. They sit and stare at the paintings in one room for a while, and then move on to the next. Usually they don't cause any trouble, and they know that they're not allowed to sleep in there. She--is not like them. To begin with, she wears labels that I vaguely recognize from the fashion glossies I try not to indulge in while I'm waiting in the supermarket checkout. To continue with, the burns that ripple across half her face and down to her hand are quite distinctive. And to end with, she only ever goes to one exhibit: the exhibit of Russian artifacts. She goes and she stands in front of the glass case of one of them and strokes the glass with her melted hand. And she whispers to it. Once I got close enough to hear (being human and curious, I guess) and what I overheard gave me the creeps. She called the thing by name, and she talked about the executioner being worth it, and--just generally enough stuff to give me the heebie-jeebies. In Russian, too, and an old-fashioned kind of Russian that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't heard my grandmother talking in it as I grew up.


Inspiration: "Pyotr" -> http://www.maxilyrics.com/bad-books-pyotr-lyrics-faa7.html
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh.

In the countryside, most people know where to find the witch-queen of their district. She'll live in an isolated manor house, and she'll wear old-fashioned clothes, full-length dresses and cloaks, and she'll always be terribly gracious, but she keeps to herself. If you need to find her, you may have to pass through a maze or do favors for creatures in need of help who turn out to be critical to your success. In this city, you have to find your way through filthy sewers and abandoned factories, looking intently at every bag lady until you find the one who wears a crown. The bag ladies have figured this out, and some of them wear circlets just to mess with you, so you have to find the one who wears the *right* crown. Once you do, give her roses and a newspaper from tomorrow and she'll bless you--


Inspiration: The flickr pictures below: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23220271@N07/6880266245/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/scarroll99/6872506037/
Story Potential: High?
Notes: I'm not sure if the story itself would be that great, but I do love this opening.

Svetlana's second-to-last sister let out a scream that spiraled up into a peacock's cry, but Svetlana cowered under the firebird tree and covered her ears.


Inspiration: At a Minnspec meeting, I wrote this down for some unknown reason.
Potential: Medium, I guess.
Notes: My brain finds it to easy to go down well-worn quest paths for this idea. Avoid them.

They decorated the eggs with hot wax and dyes they'd made themselves, enriched with beet juice and the blood of their firstborn daughters, who pricked their fingers and bit their lips against the pain as they squeezed their bloodline into the dye. They scratched designs for prosperity and good harvests and happy marriages and the blessings of the Holy Spirit onto the eggs. They let the eggs rest overnight to dry the ink perfectly. Then they took their needles and drilled holes in the eggs, placed their lips over the holes, and sucked the rich yolks out. That was the most difficult time. There was always the danger that they would have to absorb a truly--

Inspiration: From the dictionary, the name of some Ukrainian town.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Somehow work in that this is why the women bloom and fade so fast, sometimes. But neat. I haven't seen something quite like this, and there's some rich traditions that could be used around the Ukraine and Russia and they've not been used overmuch for a while.