Cedar Sanderson is doing N'inktober, so I'm going to follow along and do what I've been trained to do by the Raconteur Press Postcard books: come up with a story to match her visual prompts. I can't guarantee that I'll have a complete story for every image, but I'm going to at least try to come up with a scene, a start, or an idea!
Artichoke Lubber
“Easy, Callie!” Tom did his best to keep his feet under him as his little sister dragged him through the field outside the settlement. “You’ll trample something.”
Callie didn’t relax her grip on his hand, but she did slow down a bit, gasping for breath. It took Tom a half dozen more steps to realize she wasn’t out of breath, but sobbing silently. He dug his heels in and she jerked to a stop, wheeling around to face him, her dusty face streaked with tears.
“You… you… you have, have to come!” She snuffled and wiped her free hand across her face, smearing snot and tears. “They didn’t believe, believe me! But I know you will!” Her brow was scrunched up the same way his mom’s did when she muttered about “those idiots at the Settlement Bureau”.
Tom untucked his shirt. The hem of his Agricultural & Husbandry work tee was dirty, but still cleaner than his sister’s face. He wiped her tears away gently. “Believe what, kiddo?”
She jerked her hand away from his. “I am not a kiddo! I’m old enough for high school, if Mom and Dad would let me!”
This again. He fought back a sigh. “Look, Callie. You’re eleven. Another year isn’t much. You’ll be there in no time.”
“I could be there now! I know lots! I’m going to get into A&H just like you, wait and see!” She glared at him, hands on her hips. “I know what I saw, even if that… those stupid cargo at school don’t believe me!”
He scowled. “Don’t talk like that, Callie. We’re all colonists in this together.” Dad was fond of saying that, especially when Mom got a bee in her bonnet about the Bureau. It took Tom more than a few years to realize that his father meant it, and a few years more until he started believing it himself.
She glowered and him, then averted her eyes. “Fine. Can I still call them cows, though?”
“Are they hairy, mean, nasty, and smelly?” He screwed up his own face and wiggled fingers to imitate horns. Callie did her best to keep an angry face, but he could see her struggling. All it took was a wink and a “mooooooo” to get her giggling.
“Stop it!” She stomped her foot, but there wasn’t much in it. “No fair, making me laugh.”
“What? I was just making sure we were talking about the same girls.” He lowered his hands. “Now, come on. Tell me. Why’d you drag me out here? What wouldn’t they believe?”
Her giggles died off. She bit her lip, frowning up at him from under her short cropped hair. Tom held her gaze until she was finally ready to speak.
“I saw a grasshopper.”
Tom pursed his lips. “I can see why they didn’t believe you.”
“I did! I swear!”
“Kiddo.” The glare he got called for an instant course correction. “Callie. Callista! Look. We’re twenty light years from Earth.” He gestured at the fields around him. “Just like every other settlement, this is a dead world. The only living things here are what we brought.”
“We brought grasshoppers! I know, I saw it in your books!”
“Hmm. True. But.” He raised a finger. “They’re not due to be hatched & released for another decade, though, when we get to birds. We need a stable ecosystem first.”
“I know!” She threw up her hands in frustration. “But I know what I saw, too! Maybe - maybe one snuck through, somehow? An egg somewhere?”
“Unlikely. Not impossible, though. Tell you what. You take me where you saw it, and let’s see what we find.”
She blinked, nodded, and grabbed him, a quick, hard hug around his legs. “Thank you.”
He ruffled her hair. “Shut up. Let’s go find your grasshopper.”
He followed her through the fields in silence, each of them taking care not to disturb the careful rows of growing plants. It took them about half an hour to make it out past the broccoli and the potatoes, almost all the way the edge of the tilled and fertilized soil. Callie halted a stone’s throw away from the hard, dusty clay that stretched out to the horizon, amid a small patch of artichokes. The odd smell of fresh plants and loam mixed on the wind with the acrid tang of alien dust.
He didn’t bother asking what she was doing out here. It was on the other side of the settlement from the school and housing units. This was literally as far from her classmates as she could get and still not leave the settlement grounds. He’d spent his share of time out here as well.
“It was out here.” Her voice was low. “I was reading, an’ it jumped right in front of me.”
Tom looked around, then cocked his head. “There’s not much out here besides you and me, Callie.”
“Hold still!” she hissed. “It’s probably scared. Give it some time.”
He gave her a nod, then turned to contemplate the artichoke patch. The wind blew. He fought back a sneeze as some dust got up his nose, earning a glare from Callie. He counted to sixty before he leaned over.
“Not seeing anything. Maybe we can scare it out.” He straighten up and slowly separated his hands, then brought them together with a loud SMACK!
Nothing stirred in the fields. He turned to his sister, shaking his head.
Her eyes were wide, staring past him. No, at him. “Tom. Your shirt!”
He froze, then glanced down slowly. There, looking up at him from the hem of his untucked shirt, thick as his thumb and just as long, was a fat and sassy grasshopper.
No. Not a grasshopper. It had the shape of one, at first glance… but no grasshopper had three eyes and eight legs. As he watched, it blinked at him, each eye flickering shut in turn, before it twisted its head around like an owl. A long, pale pink tongue darted out from its mouth, flickering over scales, arranging its wings just so.
Tom moved as slowly and carefully as he could. The sound of the wind was dropped out by his racing heart. Please! Don’t move. Just stay there for one… second…
The grasshopper-thing must have felt him moving. It paused, tongue reeling back into its mouth. Without really thinking, Tom grabbed the corner of his shirt and flipped it up, capturing the insect between the folds of his shirt. An extra flip added another fold, trapping inside where it couldn’t get away.
Tom carefully worked the shirt up over his head, making sure not to crush his captive or let it escape. When he was done, he was holding a makeshift cloth bag fashioned from his shirt. He could feel the thing inside, jumping and scrambling about. There was a faint but decidedly un-grasshopper-like growling squeezing its way between the cloth.
“You got it!” Callie jumped and clapped. “I was right! I was right! It is a grasshopper!”
The light breeze was cold on his sweat-soaked skin. He forced himself to take a deep breath, then gave his sister a smile.
“Not a grashopper, Callie.”
Her smile fell. “Not a grasshopper? What it is, then?”
“Something a whole lot better, I think.” He paused for a second, thinking. “Romalea microchoros callista, I think.”
“Is that its name?”
He grinned. “It is now! Come on - let’s get this back to A&H. There’s a couple of scientists there who’ll really want to see your critter.”
Oh that is very good! And how did the mystery beastie know what a grasshopper looked like, then? I was a little worried about giving you just the artichokes and a Prairie Lubber to go on with, but you never fail to rise to the challenge.