Something I found difficult to type.

You’ve mentioned having Aspie kids before. As an Aspie myself, with a little brother who is also one, I’d like to see you show the world (or at least, your readers) why Aspies and Auties (Autistics) are not “broken”, nor are they “just trying to be difficult”, nor are they “emotionless sociopaths” or “shoving [your] face in [their] differences”, “making excuses” or even “just whinging.”

I want to see how Aspies and Auties are all different from each other. I want to see how they are different to Nypicals (love that, btw) but different does not equal bad. I want to see how even when we’re struggling to comprehend something a Nypical considers basic and easy, we’re not stupid or “retarded.” I want to see it shown that there are things we grok instinctively that are considered something you spend weeks teaching a Nypical to do.

Most of all, I want to see how even radically different points of view and thinking processes, to the degree that neither side can easily understand how the other could even come _close_ to thinking that way or seeing the world in such a manner, are not necessarily wrong and in fact can be necessary to solving a problem.

I want to be transported to a world where no more will a gamete-donor say to the parent of an Aspie or Autie child “send ‘em to me for a fortnight, I’ll beat it out of 'em.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got something in my eye… – RecklessPrudence

[AN: I prefer “Autistes” (pron: AW-tees-ts) for folks like my kids and I who are riding the ASD rainbow]

(#00302)

They called her 'Lizard’ on a good day, and it wasn’t related to her name. Ellie stared. She stared at things, she stared at people. Once something had her focus, it or they had her rapt an unblinking attention, sometimes for hours at a time.

It took days to explain to Ellie that you didn’t follow people to watch them.

Jon was used to it. Being her big brother got him on the inside circle to a wondrous place only Ellie could see. He held her when she was very little, smiled at her unblinking stare as she contemplated the significance of his face while she chewed on her hand.

He got his first glimpse of Ellieworld when she started yelling at the Numberjacks, solving their number-related problems before they were quite done explaining the problem. She was two. Other things annoyed Ellie, like new things happening. She hated changes of plans and would carefully explain the old plan as a need.

She cried for months about the loss of her favorite cup.

But not everything Ellie loved had to be in order. She delved into animated worlds of wonder, and spent a lot of her waking hours inside them.

Jon could see the appeal of worlds where everyone was friendly and nobody judged anyone on how they coped with the world.

And when he wasn’t busy with things of his own, he’d try to teach Ellie how to blend in with the Normals. Sometimes, it went well. Other times… well… Ellie put on her earmuffs and sang her way into Ellieworld and nothing more could be done until someone could coax her out.

None of his friends understood her. How hard it was for Ellie to step outside of her wonderful self-place and run the risk of encountering horrible people in a horrible world. Every time he bought Ellie somewhere, to test her new coping skills or to help her observe Normals in their native habitat. It rarely ended well.

This time, it was one of the good ones.

Jon had done the idiot thing and listened to a pretty girl. It was supposed to be a spooky camp with nothing going on except some inconsequential scares and perhaps some illicit sex.

And then the aliens turned up.

They woke up in a maze. All things considered, it was a heck of a lot better than waking up in an experimental lab minus all their clothes.

Everyone was freaking out, but Jon went to Ellie first. Because Ellie was humming her Ellieworld song. She had her hands over her ears and she was rocking.

She clung to him like a vice. “It’s bad here. I want Froofy.”

Jon tensed in anticipation of the cackles from his contemporaries. But they never came. “Froofy isn’t here, Ellie. Would you like to hold my coat, instead?”

Vigorous nod. “Mm-mm…”

“I’m gonna need my arm back, okay?”

“Mmmm…”

He got himself untangled and made an impromptu replacement Froofy with easy, practiced movements. Ellie would be calming down quickly, with something soft to hold.

Carrie was staring. “Man. I wish I had a Froofy…”

Jon shrugged. “Well, we’re Nypical. We have to do without.”

“Nypical?” sneered Scott. “Is that what Lizard calls us?”

“Her name is Ellie,” said Jon. “And no. Psychologists call us Nypical. Short for Neurotypical. I’m cool with it, and it’s easier to say. Got it?” It was a habit, now, to add a fist in the air as an emphasis to the idea that opposition to his concepts would not be tolerated.

“Awright, there’s no need for that. I got it.”

Fay wiped her eyes. “O God, we’re going to die…”

“We are not going to die,” said Jon. “If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead. They’re testing us. So we gotta pass. And we’re going to pass together, right?”

“Even Lizard?”

“Especially Ellie,” said Jon.

Which was a good thing, because Ellie figured out more of the labyrinth ahead of them than the rest of them put together.

By the end of it, they were all using her name.

What met them at the exit was a lizard. A lizard in clothes. It matched Ellie stare for unblinking stare.

At last, Ellie said, “You’re what they call me.”

The lizard nodded. It pressed a button.

“You have seen the worth,” said a mechanical voice. “If you vow to educate others, you will be rewarded.”

Jon was the first to step up. “I’ve been trying to teach folks since I was old enough to work out Ellie was special.”

The lizard handed him a little remote. It had two buttons. Enter and Exit. And a hole for a lanyard.

One by one, his friends stepped forward. Some promised to try. Some admitted they might fail. But they all got the little remotes.

Ellie got hers - and a lanyard - without such a promise.

Of course. She taught people just by existing.

And then they were back at their camp as if nothing had ever happened.

Ellie was the first to try the Enter button. The portal that opened showed a glimpse of another world. Jon knew it on sight, even though he had only ever heard about it before.

They each had a door into Ellieworld.

The trick, Jon realized, would be in wanting to leave.

[Muse food remaining: 15 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Proooobably a Mad scientist, rather than the regular kind

I am somewhat preoccupied telling the Laws of Physics to shut up and sit down. – RecklessPrudence

(#00301)

It took Kev most of the year to work out that Katie Walker was smarter than she seemed. When the dawn came, it was like watching a gigantic fusion energy generator rise over the horizon.

She was coding in her notebook again. Gibberish to Kev’s eyes. She used to count and mutter when writing in there, now, she just wrote in a way possessed.

“Katie…”

“In a mo. I’m preoccupied tellin’ the laws o’ Physics to shut up an’ sit down…”

Kev watched the pen as it jinked around. Studied the attitude of intense concentration in her face. She was doing everything she could to seem like one of the guys. Messy hair. Loose clothing. Even some of her mannerisms were carefully calculated to be feminine, but not feminine enough to bring her into trouble.

And it worked on everyone except Hackmeyer. The professor was almost four times her age and he still treated her as if she were open for grabs.

“Hm. Hm. Hm-hm-hm. HM!” A final stab at the page and the notebook vanished into her knapsack. Which she guarded like a lioness. “And done. What’s happenin’?”

“You’re going to show him up, aren’t you? Make everyone see he’s been a big fraud for -what- forty years?”

“I was thinkin’ sixty-three…” a rare, cheeky smile lit her face.

He wanted to kiss those cheeky lips. But Katie was sixteen. He was not a skeev or a perv like Hackmeyer, and had blacked a few eyes of guys who had even joked about becoming one. “It’s gonna be a big show, innit?”

“Oh aye. Fireworks. Dancin’ girls. One elephant. And maybe a unicorn…”

She wasn’t a mad scientist. Merely a very cross physicist. Kev had to wonder what would happen to anyone if she ever got angry.

“I want to help,” he said.

Kev could easily spend the rest of his life falling in love with her smile. He made every plan in the back of his head and it started with helping her against Hackmeyer. His grades could go hang, if it meant getting Hackmeyer the fate he deserved.

It was almost a shame that Kev did not remember what happened to the best-laid plans of mice and men.

[Muse food remaining: 16 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Weapons-grade Vocabulary.

My stomach is in my throat right now. It’s trying to spit acid on the parts of my brain that remember reading that message. – RecklessPrudence

(#00300)

It had been an ordinary chat in Shayde’s office until Blenkinsop arrived with the lead-lined lockbox.

“Oh joy, it’s a nastygram from Greater Deregulation. Fan-fookain’-tastic…” She got out and donned a pair of gloves, goggles, and a filter mask.

Then, with ceremony and aplomb, carefully opened the box.

Blenkinsop hid behind Rael in his chair.

Never before had a paper envelope been treated with such clinical care.

There were no suspicious powders. No vectors for infection. Yet Shayde was behaving if this letter, printed on expensive cellulose, was radioactive.

“Eff, eff, see, bee,” she recited. “Dubya, zed… that’s a new one… Ex? Yikes.”

It took Rael a few minutes to realize that she was reading the initials of the expletives. “Just how toxic is this… ‘nastygram’?” he wondered.

“Last time I mmmm read one?” said Blenkinsop. “My stomach rebelled and mmmm attempted to kill my brain.”

“Boils down tae 'die in a fire’. They’re slackin’ off this week.”

“What did you do to offend Greater Deregulation?” Rael boggled.

“I breathe,” answered Shayde.

[Muse food remaining: 17 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

In response to a sight.

Can somebody help me find my retinas?
Last I heard, they were screaming and trying to hide under a table.

I leave it to you to determine if the sight was physically, emotionally, or mentally traumatic. – RecklessPrudence

(#00299)

She had been intending to say, “I’m no tryin’ tae escape, ye ken, but somethin’s gone wrong wi’ the air in there.”

She only got as far as, “I’m no trying’ tae–” before she realized she’d shadow-hopped at exactly the wrong time.

Sherlock was in the shower.

And now, thanks to shadow-hopping, so was she.

“AIIEEEEKK!”

“Aw fook I’m sorry!” Shayde clapped her hands over her eyes. “I didnae mean it!” A brief hop, this time to a shadow somewhere outside that very personal space. She daren’t look after seeing too much of Sherlock than she ever wanted to. 

But there was a moving shadow. The shadow of something alive and mobile.

“Anyone else around? Can somebody help me find me retinas?
Last I heard, they were screamin’ and tryin’ to hide under a table.” This failed to elicit a laugh.

Something warm and wet touched her leg. It came with whiskers and snuffling breath.

Oh. He had a pet.

“Well now I look stupid and rude…” she muttered to herself.

“Attempting to escape,” Sherlock began.

“Na. Na. The intercom’s busted and the air in me cell’s gone funny.”

“Funny.”

“It made me a we bitty loopy,” she explained, hands still over her eyes. “Probably why I couldnae ken where ye were. Speakin’ of, have ye got yer pants on, yet? This is killin’ me elbows…”

[Muse food remaining: 18 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

So, how’re those plotbunnies coming along?

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – RecklessPrudence

(#00298)

Walter had left his house unlocked. Everything inside was in more disarray than usual. There was no sign of Walter and, most alarming off all, the cage was empty.

The cage that contained possibly the most dangerous creature in the world. Correction, the cage that had contained, etcetera. Which meant that It must have got out.

Take a breath. Keep calm. Look at the evidence. Track them both down and remember to grab the re-enforced net and the chain mail gloves. One bite was more than plenty.

How Walter could withstand them on a regular basis was a permanent mystery. But it was his resilience that made him the best guardian/captor of the beast.

Properly equipped, Lorraine followed the trail of wreckage from Walter’s flat, down the fire escape, through several shady alleys and half a park. She finally found Walter in an old subway station. It was an unpopular stop, even amongst the homeless, so Walter and his own version of armor went unseen and unremarked, down here.

The last time It had got out, the news about It was almost as disastrous as It was.

Walter called It Fluffykins.

“Great, you’re here,” Walter smiled. He’d had a glancing relationship with reality ever since It turned up in his life. He may have had one, before, but Lorraine never knew him before he went weird. “Shall we flip for Bait Duty?”

“You be bait,” Lorraine decided. “You’re used to it.”

“I hate being bait.”

“But you do such great work at it,” cooed Lorraine. “Here. Have a legal brief on proper office conduct. You’re waiting for the 5:57.”

Walter groaned theatrically, but took the brief and sat on a bench in the middle of the lonely platform like a pro.

Lorraine concealed herself almost from view behind a column bedecked in disintegrating flyers.

It was fast, but It could never resist boredom. That was one of the reasons It was attracted to waiting rooms, bus stations and train platforms. Areas of boredom were irresistible. And so was someone being bored.

THERE! A streak of purple and pink, racing across the area where Walter sat, ploughing through each and every perplexing word of the brief. Lorraine knew better than to swipe at the first pass.

A second blur. A nearby trash can wobbled and -yes- she could see Its fluffy pink tail behind it. One more pass…

A third. It was focussed solely on Walter, now. Hungry for boredom.

Lorraine ditched her noisy shoes and crept up on It, net ready.

She lunged just as It pounced, catching it neatly in the net with a cry of victory.

“O God. I nearly had a heart attack… You got it?”

Lorraine looked briefly at the net, where Fluffykins was growling and snorting like a demon caught in a cassock. “No, Walter, I let it go. Of course I caught it.”

Walter ignored the sarcasm and swapped the brief for the net. “Aaaw, da poor widdwe fluffy-wuffy-kinnnssss…”

Bleh… “I think it chewed its way out again. You really need to start making a better grade of Plotbunny cage.”

Walter shrugged. “My fault for having an unusual pet, I guess.”

[Muse food remaining: 19 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Death and Ding-Dong Ditchers

Don’t knock on death’s door. Ring the bell and run. He hates that.

Bonus points if you have Death be somewhat Pratchettian. – RecklessPrudence

(#00297)

“What is this? Another bubble-reality? Why is everything shades of black?”

“Aw fook,” growled Shayde. “This isnae a bubble. It’s a pocket.”

“There are pocket realities?”

“Aye, where d'ye think I keep all me shit?”

Rael glared at her. “Seriously.” He sighed, picked himself up, and dusted himself off. “How did we even get here?”

“Remember the thing I was telling’ ye not to do?”

“Ye-es…?”

“Ye did it anyway, didn’t you?”

“Uhm…”

Shayde vented a noise of anguish. “Fookain listen tae me, sometime…”

“Ah. There’s a house. Maybe whoever lives here can help.” He started towards it at a brisk trot. The sooner he was out of here, the better.

Shayde overtook him at a desperate run, put herself in his path, and moved to stop him. “WAIT! I figured out where we are!”

“And?”

“And this is Death’s backyard!” Evidently, this was reason for distress. “Ye don’t just waltz up tae Death’s Door and ask fer directions. An’ ye definitely don’t knock.”

“So… what do we do?”

*

Death’s Doorbell did not go “ding dong”, and even if it did, it would be the sort of ding and dong that came from the chthonic depths of the most demonic tomb available.

But Death was a little classier than a mere “ding dong”. His doorbell played a riff from Mozart’s Requiem. But there were still heavy elements of  ding and dong in there, because doorbells everywhere are cheesy.

Rael was quite shocked when Shayde grabbed him by his collar and dragged him into the shrubbery.

A wizened old man with a permanent drip on the end of his nose opened the door and looked around. He muttered a curse and vanished behind the dread portal.

“Albert,” whispered Shayde. “Always good tae know which Death I’m dealing with.”

“Which Death?” echoed Rael. “Will there be a point in which I understand your ramblings, or will I have to surrender to the madness, first?”

“Aw shut it. Just be glad ye’ve got a guide…” She dashed out of the bushes, pressed the button again, and fled back into hiding.

“You do know that this is the exact opposite of making sense, yes?”

“Ssh.”

They watched from hiding as ‘Albert’ reappeared and snarled at the empty air, and vanished once more with a, “Someone’s playing silly buggers, Master…”

For a third time, Shayde zipped out of hiding and activated the dismally cheerful little tune before hiding again.

Silence there, as Poe wrote, and nothing more.

“Should one of us go out again?”  Rael whispered.

“I DIDN’T BUY THAT DOORBELL AS A TOY, YOU KNOW,” said a voice from behind them. It was exactly the kind of voice one could expect out of Death. The skeleton in black robes was cliche, but the blue stars in the eye sockets were new.

Shayde emerged first. “Had tae be sure I had yer undivided attention yer honour.”

Death looked her up and down and sighed like the wind on the steppes. “OH BUGGER,” he said, “IT’S YOU AGAIN.”

“On the plus side,” offered Shayde. “At least I’m asking permission before I nick yer horse.”

“That’s not at all diplomatic,” Rael muttered.

The blue stars turned his way. “THE NEXT TIME THIS ONE WARNS YOU ABOUT SOMETHING ELDRITCH,” he said, indicating Shayde. “PAY ATTENTION.”

“Rude much?” muttered Shayde.

“Yessir,” said Rael. “In my defense, I don’t really have a belief system.”

“NEVERTHELESS,” said Death. “KATIE KNOWS THINGS. ESPECIALLY ABOUT THE THINGS THAT MAKE NO SENSE.”

“Nobody really calls me that, any more,” said Shayde. “Will ye help us, please?”

Death nodded.

*

They woke up in the very cargo bay where he’d been experimenting in the first place. Surrounded by forensic and security teams.

“And just where,” demanded a very exasperated Lyr, “the flakk have you been? I thought you were dead! And I’m never that wrong.”

“Ah. Well. We were in Death’s realm fer a bitty while,” Shayde began.

Lyr held up her hand. “I don’t want to know. This is another weird inter-dimensional phenomenon I can’t comprehend and don’t want to. Get yourselves checked out, just in case. And then report to Sherlock.”

“What? What did we do?” demanded Rael.

“Three perfectly ordinary wooden crates somehow turned into gravity-challenged purple sheep.”

One of them trotted by, attempting to graze off the wall on which it was standing.

“This is somehow your fault and Sherlock would like to know why. And if it’s reversible.”

Shayde accurately summarized their situation in two words. “Well, fook.”

[Muse food remaining: 20 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Found this somewhere.

I know you can’t drink most alcohol, and I’m leery of too much of the stuff myself - but I can’t help but like this quote:

I ran screaming out of adolescence, and when I hit the border somebody gave me the legal right to drink. It’s all just finely tuned memory loss since then. – RecklessPrudence

(#00296)

“And why can’t such a fine lady as yourself go out dancing with a fine gentleman such as me?”

Gah. Barrow was laying it on thick, tonight. “One, yer no’ that fine,” said Shayde. “Two, I still havnae forgiven ye fer the disintegration’ dress incident. Three: ye smell like a stale pub.”

“You have to understand, fine lady,” he still plastered on the Blarney. “I ran screaming out of adolescence, and when I hit the border somebody gave me the legal right to drink…” His view down memory lane suddenly became laced with Lovecraftian horrors. “It’s all been finely-tuned memory loss since then.”

“That explains way too much, ye ken.”

“…yeah…” he agreed absently.

“Tell ye what… I’ll send ye somethin'… an’ then we go somewhere sober.”

“M'lady, I vow to wear anything you send with grace and aplomb.”

Shayde loved the look on his face when she smiled like that. It was all she could do not to cackle like an evil scientist. “Good,” she purred.

Of course, it would all lead to another stint in Sherlock’s cells. But then… what didn’t?

[Muse food remaining: 21 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

The whole set

Since submitting those corallaries scavenged from around the net, I find it interesting to contemplate what you could do with the whole, original, set.

You probably know them already, but just in case, Clarke’s Laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

– RecklessPrudence

(#00295)

Katie had tried to explain what she was doing. Unfortunately for her, what she was doing went way beyond her Professor’s range of expertise.

Mind you, Hackmeyer’s range of expertise went little further than Newtonian Physics. It wasn’t hard to go over his balding head. Terms like “dimensional membrane” and “quantum tunnel” were so alien to him that she may as well be trying to explain it all in Welsch, for all the good it did.

And, to add insult to injury, he spent the entire interview staring at her breasts.

Katie couldn’t help pondering that she’d be getting worse if she was over eighteen.

Nevertheless, it was testing time.

She, Kev and Dave had triple-checked all the setting arrays. And kept Hackmeyer safely away from them in a shielded observation chamber. Not that Katie expected any radiation to happen - the geiger counters were all for show - but having Hackmeyer in the same room as a machine that could pierce the fabric of reality was equivalent to having a small, hyperactive child in the same room as a delicately-balanced display of fine china.

“Right,” she announced. “Let’s do this.”

Kev and Dave were on the less important primary and secondary arrays. Carefully flipping switches and watching dials.

The air filled with colours. Sparkles. An illusion caused by the Quantum Tunneling device bending the dimensional membrane they were living in.

One by one, the important needles came up to the butter zone. Katie put her hand on the big lever and watched the last one.

Almost…

Almost…

NOW!

She’d later find out that she’d cut herself, pulling that last knife-switch. She didn’t even feel it at the time. All three of them stepped back from the machine as the universe…

…blinked…

…and with a faint hum, the power from another dimension came into theirs, flipping indicators into the green.

Katie was not the only one jumping around and shrieking like a little kid.

And then Hackmeyer, the quintessential party-pooper, had to rain on their metaphorical parade.

“Is that it?” said his voice over the intercom.

“I’m gonna kill ‘im,” she muttered. “I’m gonna kill 'im, an’ I’m gonna make it look like an accident.”

“I’ll help,” said Dave.

“I’ll hide the body,” said Kev.

[Muse food remaining: 22 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Yet _another_ corallary.

Any sufficiently analysed magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE! – RecklessPrudence

(#00294)

“This thing is full of crystals… and silver wire… is that a bird feather?”

“Can you fix it?”

“At this point, I can’t even tell what’s broken.” She tapped a crystal and noted a musical chime. Also that some connected crystals illuminated from within. “Hmnh…”

“That was an expensive noise…”

“I think I can figure it out in an hour… Give me two to try, anyway. If I can’t fix it, I can at least isolate plausible causes of error.”

*

“You improved it?”

“Once you figure out the rule set, the rest is golden. And speaking of gold, did you know that some of your golden augments were iron pyrite forgeries? Iron and magecraft don’t mix, you know. I cleared out the salt and smudged it, just in case. And I found this little darling in your dimensional matrix.” She indicated an iron cage beset with wards, where a grade one Imp sat chewing a chicken bone. “Dunno how useful or useless it is, so I contained it.”

The mage boggled. “That’s amazing. Those bloody Elves kept trying to add surcharges… Talking about getting parts from Tanigushema.”

“Sold you the gold augments?”

“Those bastards!”

“Yup,” she cleaned the gunk off her hands. “Never trust a repair place where they make the most business out of spare parts.”

The mage gave quite a significant tip.

But what the hell was she going to do with six wishes?

[Muse food remaining: 23 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

A corollary to Clarke’s Third Law

Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand it. – RecklessPrudence

(#00293)

Through a series of unfortunately predictable events, they were now stuck in the middle of nowhere with inadequate camping supplies, a cubic meter of marshmallows, three idiots and a whole bunch of electronica that was out of their service area and therefore as useful as a meringue umbrella.

Miri didn’t bother listening to the arguments since they had got cyclical. What she was bothering with was something useful. Several somethings useful, like preparing a camping area, gathering combustibles and constructing some individual shelters that at least one of the idiots would be sneaking out of to attempt sex with another. And, vitally important, collecting an array of the right kind of rocks.

“Nice campsite,” sneered one of the idiots.

“How are you gonna light the fire, loser?”

“Why did we even ask you along, loser?”

Miri picked up the correct two rocks and, hardly bothering to look, struck sparks with them. “Because I had the car,” she said, then gently coaxed the flame into life.

“Whoah.”

“Dude.”

“Are you magic?” said the cheerleader. “Please don’t curse us?”

And why would I bother when you’re clearly doing such a great job of it on yourself? thought Miri. “Just remember that I saved all your stupid asses and we’ll be fine.”

Next on the list: finding something to eat that wasn’t marshmallows. Miri gathered some long, straightish sticks that she had sharpened to a point. “Now. Who wants to hunt for dinner?”

“We got marshmallows.”

“I’m vegan.”

“Hunt? Like… kill an animal?”

Sigh. Sometimes, she wondered how folks like this managed to keep breathing every day. “Okay. One: Marshmallows aren’t vegan. They’re made with gelatin. Which is made from animals. Two: Thanks to Roy the Cheerleader, those marshmallows are nearly gone.”

“I only had a few,” he said, eating another handful.

“Three: The only edible plant life out here is prickly pears or peyote. I don’t recommend either. Four: We’re going to need some real calories to survive the night, because it gets cold as fuck in the desert. Any questions?”

She really shouldn’t have asked.

“Whaddayamean marshmallows aren’t vegan? It says ‘organic’ right here on the packet…”

“What’re those sticks for?”

“Do I get a bow like Katniss?”

“Is it okay to be on a diet?”

“If there’s no plants, doesn’t that mean there’s no animals either?”

“Are we gonna have to like, eat bugs?”

Miri sighed and handed out the sticks. “The pointy end goes into the thing you want to kill. Animals can eat a lot more of the plants out here than we can. You can have a bow the minute you finish making one. And if you don’t learn to shut up and do what I tell you, dinner will be bugs and not bunny. Got it?”

“Hahahaha… Bugs bunny!”

Oh God. Why did she ever agree to this?

[Muse food remaining: 23 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]