vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
middle 🏃‍♀️‍➡️

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]

Someone was playing "Stuck in the Middle with You" on speakers that must've been on their last legs. I could just barely make out the words through all the distortion and crackling. Par for the course at an event like this.

Since we'd been scruffed, we weren't supposed to have any unsupervised gatherings -- but with a war on, the Kitties weren't going to be too excited about authorizing something done purely for fun. So someone would find a large empty building and the news would pass, literally word of mouth because we couldn't be sure how much the Kitties' AI systems could pick up.

There was always the risk that someone would nark, and we'd all get busted. Even setting a lookout might not protect us, unlike the old war movies we used to watch.

But for kids our age, the risk was part of the excitement.

[marycatelli]

Ah, life!

[marycatelli]

They turned their attention to the descent. The rocks provided foot holds, which proved essential to keep from falling.
No one talked except to ask for help.
Honor handed down Clara and then Stephan before finally coming down to the level ground below. Her heart hammered as they went on.

[marycatelli]

He worked his way down, red, orange, yellow. Through the middle fires, the heat steadily rose. Green, blue, violet. The heart steadily rose. Then he had seven fires burning, first the colorless one, and then six colors. He glanced at them, to be sure they were watching.
The eighth one rose. Colorless as the first. And hotter than any of the ones before it.
"How odd," said Emalie.
"Oh, it is the thing of light," said Helena. "That Master Octavien was talking of."
Augustus snorted. "So that's what he meant."
Violetta nodded, slowly. That did make more sense. Hotter colors.