vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
flowers 🌺

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]

Seen through a telescope at low magnification, a planetary nebula really does resemble one of the gas giants, hence the name their discoverers gave them. However, even the ground-based telescopes of the early Twentieth Century could resolve them enough to reveal that they were in fact masses of material flung out by dying stars, confirming the mid-Nineteenth Century spectroscopic findings, and the James Webb and other orbital telescopes shortly before First Contact gave us even more information.

Seen from inside, the gaseous shells have a complex structure that resemble the petals of a flower. There are a few harvester-ships out there, gathering rare elements, but the real action in this system is the star-lifting operation that is literally mining the dying star for materials essential to the war effort.

It's a good thing that this star is far enough from Earth that any light from it that reached us before First Contact had left before any Chongu mining interests got here. Otherwise, we could've gotten some very strange ideas about the life cycles of stars of this size, because everyone would be assuming they were watching natural processes, not acts of a technological civilization.

[marycatelli]

always complications

[marycatelli]

The brush grew upward. No flowers bloomed. She had grip enough on it for that, but -- she scowled. The branches only slowly reached outward, toward the lion.
"Violetta," said Augustus in exasperation, and then fell silent. She wondered if he blinked, but she could not stop to look at him.

[marycatelli]

Over the field of grasses and flowers, the tower loomed. It was not much taller than a full-grown oak.
It shuddered.
Clara cried out, and the other youngsters fell silent. Edur looked grim.
They all stared as the tower shivered, and fell, blocks of stone rousing up great clouds of dust. They tumbled over each other, and vanished into the dust.
Silence followed, but it took a long time for the dust to settle.
"I think," said Edur, delicately, "that we will need more careful judgment in where we go."
"At least they are afraid of us," said Stephan, stoutly.

[marycatelli]

"A merchant wants a fancy piece for his daughter," said Leonie, coming up behind Coralie. "Flowers and everything. I don't think we can afford for you to fuss about the books when that's possible. He'd pay a pretty penny for it."
Marguerite's breath eased out. Those were good for months.