Incomplete – Page 2 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Maria and the Space Dragons Investigate #1 – October 2024 instalment

To catch everyone up:

Our protagonists, an autistic human named Maria and their supervisor, Lah-Shah, who is a member of an alien species known to humans as ‘star dragons’, have been sent to investigate possible illegal actions in a newly inhabited planetary system. The organisation they work for is an intergalactic association of species deemed sentient enough, and humans are the newest, most junior members, after several hundred years of contact.

Lah-Shah has deposited Maria on the plant, pretending to be a research student interested in xenobiology, while he searches the system for the signs of an earlier team sent to do a thorough review of the planets for sentient life, who haven’t been heard from in a month.

Maria and the space-dragons investigate #1 – September 2024 instalment

Chapter ten – Maria – On Aurox

The carriage shuddered to a holt. The aurochs screamed again. Maria felt the creature’s pain shudder through the vehicle.

“Come on Doc, this is our stop.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“You will be soon.” McLintock grinned.

“Thanks.” Maria responded, doubt showing in the lines of their face.

The steps dropped down, orange light and damp air filtered in, lighting up the face of the major, Collins, and the other soldiers. They looked grey and exhausted to Maria.

Maria and the space-dragons investigate #1 – August 2024 instalment

Did you know you can generate AI art images on WordPress? I didn’t but I wanted an image for this post, because Maria takes their investigation down to the planet of Aurox.

Maria and the Space-Dragons #1 – May 2024 instalment

We continue the story at the tundra base, as Elder Pjang-Nich explains why Maria and Lah-Shah have been called to the distant base.

Chapter 4 – Pjang-Nich explains

Pjang-Nich whistled, a light-screen appeared above the table. A star map lit up on the screen, tool tips showing their location and the location of their target. It was some distance across the galaxy but still easily done with the jump gate system. Pjang-Nich clicked her tongue a couple of times, the screen shifted and zoomed in on the target system.

A star, bigger, older, redder than Ascend’s star, surrounded by two rocky planets and two gas giants. The rocky planets orbited each other. The first gas giant orbited close to the star, while the second gas giant seemed to be nearer to the star than expected, with dozens of moons, squeezing the rocky planets between them.

Maria and the Space-Dragons Investigate #1 – April 2024 instalment

Hello, it’s the second Sunday of the month and this is the April instalment of my little story.

Maria ponders the existence of a secret base.

Chapter three – Maria

Maria got to their feet, muscles stiff and complaining after so long in high altitude flight, head whirling from the burst of radio waves and mostly empty stomach threatening to empty itself all over the chilly stones of the landing pad. They turned their back, allowing Lah-Shar some privacy to shift. Maria grimaced as his bones and muscles made a cracking, slurping sound. They heard her friend growl quietly with the pain and irritation that shifting caused and felt a moment of distress for their friend.

Maria and the Space-Dragons #1 – March 2024 instalment

Alright! We’re back with Lah-Shar and Maria’s adventures. This time we get some insight into Lah-Shar’s life and thoughts.

Chapter two – Lah-Shar

Lah-Shar felt the air change as they came closer to the base. He’d seen planets with ice sheets miles deep that extended almost to the equator. He’d seen planets that were tidally locked, one side burning the other freezing. His own planet, Ran-Nang, the one he was an egg and youngster on, had a warm damp climate except for the desert for 20 degrees either side of the equator. Ascend was chilly by Ran-Nang standards, but humans found it comfortably warm.

16th April Prompt: Early morning mists

I don’t know where this came from, I used to have a bit of an obsession with the Peninsula War, so probably that influenced this story nugget.

An Incident in the Peninsular War Napoleon Entering a City - Robert ...

The men appeared out of the mist, early summer sun colouring it blood red. Like their jackets. The sun glinted on fixed bayonets and shako badges, the colours lost somewhere above them.

The red coated men marched in line towards us. How many were there hiding in the mist? We heard their orders shouted from one end to the other. Above us all, on the ridge that hemmed in the valley and herded the mists that sat over us, was their General. He sat on his horse, beneath a tree, surrounded by his commanders. They watched us, and their men. I don’t know what they saw that we didn’t, but it made me nervous.

We waited for orders. I looked round for my commander. Would they send in the cuirassiers first? Those heavy horsemen would chop the British to shreds. Even the river wouldn’t slow their charge. They’d have no time to form square, and if they did? My gunners would have slaughtered them where they stood.

The enemy marched towards us, crossing the shallow river that ran through the centre of the valley. That was foolish, there river was a good defensive line. This close I could see them clearly, their flags finally out of the mist.

They weren’t interested in taking a position and defending it. They came on.

Finally, a runner arrived, with orders.

FIRE!

15th April Prompt: Hurricane

There’s a weather theme with the current crop of prompts. I was going to write something else entirely, but then I realised I was thinking of tornadoes not hurricanes and had a rewrite. So this is only a part of a story. I do sketch out at the end where it goes though, I just haven’t written the rest of it yet.

Description Shutters Locked in Preparation for Gustav New Orleans.jpg

“Don’t mess with those.” Florence snapped at her niece, Jenna.

“They’re only shutters.”

“They’re hurricane shutters, and very hard to find here. Don’t mess with them. I need your dad to put them up for me.”

Jenna rolled her eyes at her great aunt but stepped away from the pile of wrapped, wooden shutters.

“We don’t have hurricanes here, Auntie Flo.”

“There have been.” Florence shoved a coffee table across the carpet, positioning it in the centre of the room. She bent to check for scratches.

“No, there aren’t ever any hurricanes. Hurricanes happen in hot, wet places; we did it at school.”

“They taught you wrong then, or your teachers aren’t very old. There was a hurricane just before I left to live in the Caribbean.”

“Auntie that was thirty years ago. And a freak too. You’ve lived abroad for too long.” Jenna’s dad, Sean, laughed as he walked into the living room of the sheltered housing complex bungalow Florence had rented when she returned from her years in the Caribbean. Sean was carrying a box of hardback books, acquired in the months Florence had stayed with his family since her return.

“Where do you want these, auntie?”

“On the kitchen table. No, not there. There. And don’t scuff the table.”

Sean shifted the box a few inches, turning back to his daughter and aunt when he was finished.

“It’s survived thirty years in the Caribbean, a long trip back and six months in storage, I’m sure it’ll cope with a box of books.”

“You don’t know that it hasn’t been damaged.”

Sean sighed. It was going to be one of those days.

The story continues with a house warming, and Sean being nagged into putting up the hurricane shutters. During the party a freak storm blows up and the shutters come in handy after all.

14th April Prompt: First snows of winter

This one is set in a future of of drought and flash floods, of hot summers and non-existent winter.

The first snows of winter arrived in March, several months too late.

We’re used to it by now but the old people say it used to happen in October or November. The rivers are already shallow and the reservoir is a puddle. When the snow came we were trying to break the clay up in the garden because mum wants to plant another olive tree. The snow wet the ground, but dried within minutes.

Mum showed me photographs of her great-granddad playing in the snow as a kid, with plastic boots and a hat on. A wool hat, with a bobble. We don’t get snow anymore, but, boy, does it rain! It doesn’t stay long, it just runs off the surface, and takes the soil with it.

We went on a day trip to the sea once, no one in the school believed there used to be more land out there.

5th April Prompt: Care Worker

I’ve been working on some of the prompts I missed during the first two weeks. Most of my scribble is rubbish, but I’ve come up with the start of something using the ‘care worker’ prompt.

“What do you want? Who are you?” A grey eye watched Brenda from between door and its frame, the gold chain stretched across Mr Jones’ nose.

“Hello, Mr Jones. It’s Brenda, from Central Care Services.”

“I don’t know you.”

“I was here on Tuesday.”

“No you weren’t. It was that young lady Sheila. You’re a crook trying to talk your way in.”

Brenda ignored the charge, used to some variation on the same thing being levelled against her every time she came to Mr Jones’ flat. It changed depending on what he’d read in the Daily Mail that morning.

“Sheila left six months ago. She went to work at the hospital. You came to her leaving party at the community centre.”

“I didn’t. I haven’t been out in weeks. Nobody takes me anywhere.”

“We went to the cinema for Senior Screen on Tuesday morning.”

“What film was it?”

“Dambusters. You remember the bouncing bombs.”

“I was in the air force you know.”

“Yes, I do. You showed me your medals. We went to the memorial service a month a go.”

“At the Memorial.”

“Yes. You looked very handsome in your uniform.”

“Oh I was, turned all the girls’ heads I did.”

I have no idea if this is going anywhere. I have a lot of respect for care workers, it’s an hard job and undervalued, not to mention regularly underpaid.

The prompts for 14th and 15th April have a bit more potential so I’m going to see what I can do with them and I’ll post later or tomorrow. I also have a couple of book reviews coming up, one for a book about Newgate prison and another about asylums in 19th century Britain and Ireland.