Saturday Short: Shiny

Saturday, June 13, 2020 at 3:17pm

I almost wasn’t able to write a short story today. The initial prompt I had given myself was Adwaita, a giant tortoise that was believed to be at least 150 years old at the time of its death. I eventually tore this prompt down to “just do something with turtles and time,” but still no characters or even situations suggest themselves. Eventually, Alex came to the rescue and helped me spitball ideas, and after lunch time I finally got going.

The resulting story is well within the flash fiction limits, but it’s one I’m quite proud of. The title is “Shiny,” and its a transcript of a delegation of human-animal hybrid species in some unspecified far-future time, after which all us humans have gone extinct.

I will almost certainly be adding this one to my next short story collection. So far, that line up is looking like this:

• “Hear Ye, Hear Ye!” (2,000 words)
• Beati Qui Inveniunt Feles (8,000 words)
• “One’s Own Medicine” (7,000 words)
• “Shiny” (875 words)

1. Karita (10,800 words)
2. Imtuz (9,700 words)
3. Umili (10,100 words)
4. Patyen (9,650 words)
5. Graats (6,050 words)