vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
average ⚖️

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.

Comments

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

When I was growing, I always considered our school "average," by which I meant unremarkable, middle of the road. We weren't one of the outstanding schools that always took home trophies in sports and awards in academics, but neither were we one of the schools perpetually teetering on the edge of disaster.

And then everything changed, when we got swept up in the Expulsions and it was off to Shepardsport with us. That was when I learned the problems with the loose, colloquial way we use words like "average." That word has a technical meaning in statistics, and given how life up here on the Moon is so heavily dependent upon keeping track of lots of data on various life-support metrics, we needed to know whether we were talking about the mean, the median, or the mode, and how any of them might be weighted.

[marycatelli]

The children whined as he insisted that he would have an ale or two.
Hans grinned and made flame hop up on his hands. One child noticed him, and was still. He sent it into the air, and sent other flames after it.
Minutes later, he had a small crowd of children, a handful of coins in a hat, and more people coming to stare.
He twisted the highest flame into a bird. Well, a vague semblance of a bird. But it was within the common run of things for entertainers at the fair, and more coins were thrown in.

[marycatelli]

Statistics are so important.

[marycatelli]

She had been at least a competent student. A merchant or a prosperous farmer would have been proud at her showing. Even many noblewomen did not reach her level.
She let her breath in and out. Unlike the game where her character was foolish and weak, and unwilling to study.

[marycatelli]

Her mouth pursed.
"Gray," she said. Then she folded her arms. "Well, it doesn't mean you are dull and average. None of us are. That's why they pulled us into this world. But gray is unusual."
"One way of saying unique," said Theo.
"That we know of," said Marcella, arriving.