dragonfly cattail sunning
in gentle summer winds
watching my lips trace
the curve of your calf
to the plop of a turtle
moving from sitting logs
to taking plunge for a swim
Kasumi-no-Kuni — flash fiction
This piece is based on the flash fiction prompt posted earlier and follows my personal guidelines as described in this post.
Subgenre: Silkpunk / Ghost-Tech
Rin looked out over the Land of Mists from the tower she kept her watch from, a tower built entirely of unmarked rice paper and bamboo where she slept when she needed rest, and where she ate when she was given offerings by visitors coming to pay their respect to the memories of the ancestors — those memories captured in the paper of the lands proper. True to the name, the mists and clouds flowed through the city with only a single living resident, that being Rin. The white fog snaked through the streets inked with the stories of ancestors, often obscuring the memories unless someone were to stand before them.
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Kasumi-no-Kuni — flash fiction
casting runes — 09feb25
dagaz poling across
the lake of mists
following the scent
of apple blossoms
in seeking an
island's far shoreA rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.
Today’s rune is dagaz, which has been translated as “daybreak”, that transitional moment between night and day. By extension, it might also be interpreted as “twilight” and is representative of liminality, transformation, the space between worlds, and suggests walking in both the material world and otherworld.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
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casting runes — 09feb25
Flash fiction prompt — 09feb26
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash I thought I’d start sharing those flash fiction prompts generated by AI that I find compelling enough to consider attempting to write about for my own purposes in case any of the folks dropping by here are tempted to try their hand at the prompt as well.
It would be fun to see how others approach these prompts and contrast/compare the output.
Feel free to skip these posts if you feel you are not the target audience; if you choose not to participate, there is no need to let us know about your preferences and opinions about these prompts or the use of artificial intelligence to generate writing prompts.
Today’s prompt:
Subgenre: Silkpunk / Ghost-Tech
Plot Elements to Include:
- The Object: An ornate silk kite that flies without wind, pulling its handler toward “emotional ley lines.”
- The Setting: A floating city constructed entirely of paper and bamboo, held aloft by the collective memories of its inhabitants.
- The Conflict: A “Memory-Scribe” discovers a blank spot in the city’s archives—a day in history that has been physically cut out of the paper foundation.
Target Length: < 2,000 words
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Flash fiction prompt — 09feb26
casting runes — 08feb26
jera back to the begin
& been mistaken in
taking flint for fire
wraps & rags
wound 'round wrists & arms
time again to strike steel
for sparksA poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.
Today’s rune is jera. Jera is translated as “year”, and has also been translated as “harvest”. This rune is representative of cycles, the “wheel of the year”, the union of opposites (implied by the summer half of the year ending, winter half of the year beginning), balance, as well as cause/effect relationships.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
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casting runes — 08feb26
absurd obscenity
why is it absurd to sing
of having a dream where
he kissed your knees?
i would kiss your feet just
to sing such a dream —
and everyone would find
my acts even more obsceneTo like, click comments or:
absurd obscenity
casting runes — 07feb26
ansuz finding myself at ash
i can ride branches
i can ride roots
i can also sit just so
the call comes of stone
and of deep, so
it's there my spirit
will dwellA poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.
Today’s rune is ansuz, which has a core meaning “a god” (intended to be Odin), “mouth” or “breath”. Odin is representative of many, many things… in this case, ansuz is most representative of the mouth/breath (speech) that gives life to poetry, magic, song, language, and spirit — largely inseparable in the Viking worldview — and Odin is considered the supreme master of these intertwined concepts. By way of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, the rune is named æsc, which is translated to “ash”, a tree associated with Odin and is representative of resilience and strength.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
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casting runes — 07feb26
Dead zone — flash fiction
See my notes in this post about the prompted flash fiction pieces on this site about personal drivers and rules I use while writing them.
Plot Elements to Include (all prompts and genre randomly suggested by Gemini AI):
- The Object: A heavy, brass-bound radio that doesn’t receive signals from this decade.
- The Setting: A city perpetually covered in coal-dust fog where sound is regulated by the government.
- The Conflict: The protagonist discovers a “dead zone” where the fog clears, revealing a sky that hasn’t been seen in fifty years.
Genre: Dieselpunk / Alt History
“Gimme your ETA for finishing Delta sector baffler maintenance, Zed-Ought-Three-Stroke-Seven-Ex. We’ve got a situation in Epsilon and you’re needed immediately. Dispatch over.”
Cinder let dispatch stew for a few moments before responding. She’d been done fixing the bafflers ten minutes ago but had quickly learned that being too much of a go-getter in City Maintenance just go-got you more thankless tasks and a fistful of disgruntled coworkers to boot. No one liked a brownnoser, including the bosses because then they had to find more make-work for you and explain to their superiors why that was the case. And if their superiors thought there were inefficiencies in the system, they would reduce the workforce to account for those inefficiencies, keeping only the overachievers, who would then be saddled with more work than they could handle on their own. Let no good deed go unpunished was the unofficial motto of the dome maintenance worker.
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Dead zone — flash fiction
A few notes about stories & prompts
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash As I mentioned a few days ago, I am going to try to increase my output of short fiction on the site to stretch out those muscles in that part of my brain which have atrophied somewhat in the past few years.
I feel that I should provide some disclosures before publishing many more stories and to make clear what my personal rules are, and to set expectations about what you see in the coming days. Rather than post a few disclaimers for every story, I thought I’d point to this post. It is intended to be a living document and I will modify it as needed to clarify or correct its contents.
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A few notes about stories & prompts
