Day 242 Writing Short Stories

Teal

The fallen leaves caught fire behind her. The teal flash happened again, and she rolled out of its way behind a fallen stone altar. The flashes kept happening as someone she could see kept firing at her. She switched her visor’s display to infrared, seeking any heat source. There was none.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she repeated.

An automated security system was the last thing she wanted to stumble into in the alien jungle. Especially as she was alone, she had been foolish enough to think it was okay to deviate from the group, as they hadn’t found any sign of the aliens or intelligent inhabitants for over a week now. She had been more adventurous each day after their landing on the planet, even when they found remnants of a civilization. But it was her luck to find something active and dangerous when others hadn’t.

She pinged her team’s intra and waited for a response.

Her visor displayed a message that the message couldn’t be sent. Something was blocking it.

She knew exactly what was blocking it. The teal flashes had ended, but that meant nothing. She still had to get out of her, to the spaceship, and report others.

She picked up a rock and threw it into the air. It was instantly shattered over her head.

“Fuck,” she let out, and took her gun out of the holster.

Based on the direction of the flashes, the thing that was shooting at her was just beyond the trees at the temple-like structure that had drawn her to the place initially. Meaning it had to be a defense system, as she already figured out.

She rolled another rock onto the ground level. This time, there was no flash.

She took a deep breath in and started crawling through the vegetation, praying to all the gods she didn’t believe in keeping her safe. She didn’t quite believe in religion or its deities, but traveling in space with technology that relied on physics to remain the same in the vast universe, going to alien planets, even a sane person would start to believe in something. She had seen too much not to. But what that something was, she had no clue. She called it the saint of the space travelers. Never aloud. Never to anyone else.

The saint kept her safe this time. When she was back on the narrow jungle track where she had come from, she got up and pinged her team. This time, she got an instant reply, and she could relax a little. Her commander was sending the drones to survey the temple. She was to sit and wait until everyone got there.

Riddle

What coats the wearer, but is always cold?

Dare

A girl kisses a boy as a dare. I skipped this one.

The prompts are from the book A Year of Creative Writing Prompts.

Oh, riddles. It was so hard to wrap my head around building one, but I got one in the end, and while I’m not happy about it, I’m proud of my first riddle ever! I found a site that teaches how to write riddles. It had simple instructions.

Lately, I have been stuck with my sci-fi book. I haven’t been able to decide what to do with it and how to deal with the fact that my editor couldn’t continue with me. I’m not sure why I have been postponing making decisions about it and taking action. Everything feels too overwhelming. But this morning I took a baby step and decided on a direction. It feels good to have a plan. I have to execute it.

Now, I will go to clear my head at the local pool.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a clear day!