vignette

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
curved

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term.

Comments

[marycatelli]

Lunette glared at her hands. It would be so much easier if she could shoot around corners, to not expose herself to unneeded danger. Vile villains as dangerous as any in the world would come to this city. Better to fight them without falling.
But the rays were not curved.

[marycatelli]

The current flowed onward, bearing them gently down the river's curved course. In the quieter corners, waterlilies bloomed white and pink, but their boat never shifted toward them.
Then the river widened toward a lake. The boat slowed. Something gleamed ahead of them, and Autumn wondered whether it was dawn.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

A bit of steampunk dark fantasy:

"So just what is that thing, Tesla?"

Astonishment hit Tesla like a physical blow. How had Edison joined him at the rail of the observation deck without his noticing?

More to the point, how to answer that question in terms acceptable to a man who had no use for theory? Edison had only one response to an obstacle: throw everything at it until he found something that stuck. At times Tesla wondered if Edison was even capable of absorbing any information from a scientific journal, a technical paper, anything save his own hands and eyes.

But the steady gaze of those very eyes made it clear Tesla would not be permitted to evade the question. And it wasn't even a mater of Edison having those three bully-boys at his back, but of professional standing and reputation between two of the world's greatest living inventors.

Tesla picked up a rectangle of pasteboard from a nearby table. "Recently a German scientist by the name of Einstein has argued that space is not flat, but subtly curved," he bent the pasteboard into a shallow U-shape, "and that curvature is responsible for the phenomenon we call gravity, and explains why planets and moons follow curved orbits, why planets are round. However, it appears that the good Herr Doktor did not go far enough, for he assumed that the universe we observe is all that exists, all that can exist. Instead, there is another kind of space, on that gravity does not merely bend, but folds." Tesla snapped his hands together, so fast that the pasteboard buckled in the middle to form a sharp angle.

"And that device of yours out at Wardenclyffe managed to knock a hole into it?"

Tesla was so astonished to see Edison not only comprehending a highly theoretical explanation, but drawing a useful conclusion from it, that it was only by main force of will that he was able to keep his mouth from falling agape like a fish. "That would be a rather crude way of putting the situation, since the mechanism appears to operate more akin to bridging a gap between two isolated electrical conductors. But it certainly does a capital job of conveying the urgency of the situation."

[marycatelli]

What a charming fellow Telsa was.

[marycatelli]

The road curved around a hillside, and ahead of them were peasants on the road and, for the first time, a clear sight of the castle they headed toward. Banners hung from it. Then, many of the high ranking clergy and councilors had come there.
Like they were needed there.

[jbellinger]

Her eyes said the path still stretched perfectly straight ahead, but her feet and her balance said she was walking in circles.

She stopped and reached for the tree. The birch branch beside her was farther away than it looked.

She knew better than to step away from the path.

[marycatelli]

Wise move.

[jbellinger]

She slowly turned around. Instead of birch forest stood white oak, and a path that ascended a mountain, growing steeper as it rose beyond the oaks into the pines and then scrub and snow.

There was no sign of the red inn.

The sound of leaves died away. Everything waited.