Fast Fiction Challenge: Thistle Sting a Little
Title: Thistle Sting a Little
Word: swallowtail
Challenger: elfie_elfie
Length: 200 words exactly As if a light had been switched on, I was suddenly, shockingly, conscious. And moving.
As my wings stretched out, I noticed that... hold it - wings?
What the hell was I doing with wings?
I tried to look down but my head wouldn't move, familiar muscles and tendons simply not there.
Instinctively, I slowed in flight, and floated down what seemed a long way, but was, I realised with mild surprise, a short distance, made larger by my relative smallness.
Yeah, I don't know why it wasn't more of a surprise.
A butterfly.
Not just a butterfly, but a swallowtail, complete with osmeterium, which I could feel rising behind my head. It's funny, all the books said that the secretions smelled disgusting, as a deterrent to predators, but I couldn't smell anything at all. But Christ! No one ever considered how much the damn thing hurt to use.
It hadn't occurred to me, of course, to wonder precisely why it had extended, and it didn't... until the shadow of the forked structure on the pond's surface was superseded by the shadow of a much larger shape.
When I saw the wasp, I just remember thinking "you're an ugly bug--"
© Lee Barnett, 2006
Word: swallowtail
Challenger: elfie_elfie
Length: 200 words exactly As if a light had been switched on, I was suddenly, shockingly, conscious. And moving.
As my wings stretched out, I noticed that... hold it - wings?
What the hell was I doing with wings?
I tried to look down but my head wouldn't move, familiar muscles and tendons simply not there.
Instinctively, I slowed in flight, and floated down what seemed a long way, but was, I realised with mild surprise, a short distance, made larger by my relative smallness.
Yeah, I don't know why it wasn't more of a surprise.
A butterfly.
Not just a butterfly, but a swallowtail, complete with osmeterium, which I could feel rising behind my head. It's funny, all the books said that the secretions smelled disgusting, as a deterrent to predators, but I couldn't smell anything at all. But Christ! No one ever considered how much the damn thing hurt to use.
It hadn't occurred to me, of course, to wonder precisely why it had extended, and it didn't... until the shadow of the forked structure on the pond's surface was superseded by the shadow of a much larger shape.
When I saw the wasp, I just remember thinking "you're an ugly bug--"
© Lee Barnett, 2006