#dailyprompt-2020 — Public Fediverse posts

Happiness is tailor-made.

What’s a book you never finished but still think about?

That is why, when someone tries to bring you down, it is a good sign: it means you are choosing what suits you and not someone else. Trust your gut and enjoy being unique, because only you know the reasons for every choice you make.

A twin to The Days of the Dreams.

The black fog slid across the terracotta floor of the tea shop like a living river of ice. Every glass jar on Moira’s shelves began to frost over, the dried herbs inside freezing white. The warm, comforting smell of chamomile and old paper was completely swallowed by the bitter scent of deep winter and ancient dust.

Toe, the black cat, stood on the very edge of the oak counter. He hissed, a sharp, angry sound, while Ashwaganda stood tall beside him, his orange fur puffed out like a shield.

“Stay behind me, Elio,” Moira whispered. Her breath was a thick white cloud in the freezing air.

Elio walked slowly out of the back kitchen. He was holding the heavy wooden bowl with both hands. The ossobuco and the fresh, golden pasta were steaming perfectly, radiating a deep, rich heat. The smell of the roasted meat, the sweet tomatoes, and the old wine fought against the cold fog, creating a wall of warm air around the chef.

“Where do I put it?” Elio asked, his teeth chattering from the sudden, unnatural cold.

“On the counter. Right between the two books,” Moira ordered.

Elio stepped forward. The shadows on the walls seemed to reach for him, long black fingers stretching out to grab the bowl. But the heat of the traditional food pushed them back. Elio placed the wooden bowl carefully onto the heavy oak wood, right between the dusty blue cover of The Days of the Dreams and the pristine white cover of its newly found twin.

The moment the bowl touched the wood, the black fog stopped moving along the floor.

Slowly, the fog began to rise. It gathered in the center of the room, pulling itself up into a tall, towering pillar of pure darkness. It had no face and no eyes, but Moira and Elio could feel it looking at them. It felt like a bottomless, starving void—an emptiness that had not been warm in a thousand years.

Elio took a step back, terrified.

Moira did not move. She stood tall, placed one hand on her blue book, and looked directly into the dark shadow.

“We offer you the memory of the hearth,” Moira said in a loud, clear voice. She remembered the words of the riddle. “We bring you the marrow of the bone, slow-cooked in the tears of the hills. We bind it with the golden sheet, stretched only by human hands.”

The towering shadow let out a sound. It was not a voice, but a low, hollow wind that rattled the teacups on their shelves.

The dark shape leaned forward, hovering directly over the steaming wooden bowl.

Elio grabbed Moira’s arm, ready to pull her away. But Moira shook her head. “Watch,” she whispered.

The shadow did not eat the food like a person or an animal would. Instead, it opened wide and breathed in. The thick, rich steam rising from the hot pasta and the roasted marrow was pulled straight up into the darkness.

As the shadow swallowed the heat, the smell, and the soul of the carefully cooked meal, something amazing happened. The pure black fog began to turn gray. The terrible, freezing cold in the room began to soften.

The shadow breathed in again, drinking the human effort, the patience, and the tradition that Elio had rolled into the pasta dough. The darkness turned lighter and lighter, until it looked like ordinary morning mist.

With one final, quiet sigh that sounded almost peaceful, the mist evaporated completely into the air.

The desk lamp flickered and turned back on. The frost on the glass jars melted into tiny drops of water. The fire in the back room roared back to life, filling the tea shop with warmth once again.

Ashwaganda stopped puffing his fur and let out a long, happy purr. Toe jumped down from the counter and started to wash his paws.

Elio slowly walked up to the oak counter and looked into the wooden bowl.

The ossobuco and the pasta were still there. But they had completely changed. The rich red tomato sauce was totally gray. The golden yellow of the egg pasta was dull and white. The meat looked dry as dust. There was no steam, no smell, and no heat.

“It took the life out of it,” Elio whispered, staring at the bowl in shock. “It ate the essence of the food.”

“It ate the memory,” Moira corrected gently. She closed the covers of both the blue and white books. “It was starving for warmth. You gave it a meal made with care, patience, and human hands. A machine could never have made a meal that could defeat a shadow, Elio.”

Elio looked at his flour-covered hands. He had always cooked for awards, for speed, and for modern perfection. But tonight, he had cooked to save a village.

“I understand now,” the chef said softly. He looked at Moira with true respect. “Tradition is not just about the past. It is about keeping the warmth alive for the future.”

Moira smiled. She took the wooden bowl of gray, empty food and tossed it into the trash bin.

“Now,” Moira said, tying her apron back on. “Since the shadow ate your dinner, how about we go into the kitchen and make another batch of that hand-rolled pasta? Just for us this time.”

Elio smiled back, his fear finally gone. “Only if you let me show you how to chop the wild mallow for the salad.”

“It is peaceful, Just like good cooking should be.”

Elio jumped back in fear. His flour-covered hands hit the wooden shelves behind him, knocking over a small jar of dried apple slices. The jar hit the floor, but neither of them looked at it.

The icy blue light from the white leather book grew brighter. It filled the dark tea shop, making the shadows on the walls look long and strange.

“Moira,” Elio whispered, his voice shaking. “What is happening? Books do not glow.”

“Stand back, Elio,” Moira said. Her voice was very steady, even though her heart was beating fast. She did not look away from the rusted iron box.

Toe, the black cat, let out a loud, angry yowl. He jumped down from the top shelf and stood on the counter next to Moira. Ashwaganda joined him. Both cats stared at the white book. Their fur was standing up, making them look twice as big.

Suddenly, the heavy cover of the white book flipped open all by itself.

Elio gasped and grabbed Moira’s arm. “Did you see that? There is no wind in here!”

Moira gently pulled her arm away. “I saw it. Do not be afraid. But do not touch it.”

She leaned over the counter to look at the open pages. The pages inside the white book were not yellow or creamy like her own book. They were completely black, like the night sky.

As they watched, glowing silver letters began to write themselves across the dark paper. The writing moved quickly, spelling out a message in the cold blue light.

Moira read the words out loud:

The twin wakes from the dark earth. The cook was called to the water. The old hunger returns to the hills.

Elio stepped closer, his eyes wide. He looked at the glowing words, then he looked at Moira. “The cook was called to the water? That means me. I went to the water to find the wild mallow. Are you telling me this… this magic book made me want to go there?”

Moira looked at him sadly. “Magic is like a magnet, Elio. It pulls things to it. It pulls people to it. You thought the wild mallow was your own idea for a new recipe. But the book was waiting to be found. It used you to wake up.”

Elio rubbed his face with his hands. He looked like he was trying to wake up from a very strange dream. “This is crazy. This is a quiet village in Italy. We make pasta and drink tea. Magic is not real.”

Moira knew it was time to share her biggest secret. If Elio was part of this now, he needed to know the truth.

She reached under the heavy oak counter. She pulled out her own book, The Days of the Dreams, with its dusty blue cover and the silver sleeping cat.

Elio stared at it. “There are two of them?”

“Yes,” Moira said quietly. “Mine is the blue book. I found it years ago. It helps protect Speranza. It warns me when danger is coming. But I did not know it had a twin.”

Moira placed her blue book on the counter, right next to the rusted metal box that held the white book.

As soon as the two books were close to each other, the air in the room felt heavy. A warm, golden light began to glow from Moira’s blue book. It mixed with the icy blue light of the white book.

The silver letters in the white book faded away. New words began to write themselves, but this time, the words flowed across both books at the same time. The writing started on the black pages of the white book and finished on the yellow pages of the blue book.

Light and shadow meet again. The gates of the old hunger are open. You must feed the shadow, or it will eat the village.

The light from both books flashed brightly, and then, suddenly, they both went totally dark. The glowing stopped. The shop was quiet again.

Elio was breathing heavily. He pointed at the black pages of the white book. “Feed the shadow? What does that mean, Moira? Feed it what?”

Moira looked down at her hands. They were shaking just a little bit. She thought about the warning. The old hunger returns.

“I don’t know yet,” Moira admitted, looking up at the worried chef. “But I think your cooking is going to be very important, Elio. And I think we are going to need more than just wild mallow to save Speranza this time.”

The Rabbit Paradox: How Fixing Australian History Handed Power to the Emus

If you could erase one event from history, what would it be?

If humanity had a single, golden lever to undo one moment in time, the gut instinct is always the catastrophic: wars, plagues, assassinations, or the burning of ancient libraries. Yet, history has a cruel way of teaching us that removing a monster often leaves a vacuum for a worse one, and curing a plague early might shift the balance of populations into brutal famines.

If I could erase one single, deceptively small event from the tapestry of time, it would be the 1859 introduction of twenty-four wild European rabbits into Victoria, Australia, by a well-meaning English settler named Thomas Austin.

Austin famously remarked that the introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting. That single afternoon of nostalgic homesickness unleashed what became the fastest mammal invasion in biological history. Within decades, billions of rabbits had swept across the entire continent, stripping away root systems, turning fertile valleys into desolate red dust bowls, starving native marsupials to extinction, and warping an entire nation’s ecology forever. Erasing Austin’s little wooden crate of bunnies would save tens of millions of native lives, protect the fragile topsoil, and spare generations of farmers endless grief.

Yet, tampering with time never goes cleanly.

When the temporal distortion device hummed to life in our subterranean laboratory, the logic felt airtight. We targeted the Victorian docks in October 1859. The mission was surgically simple: intercept the shipping manifest, quietly drop the crate of twenty-four rabbits overboard into the English Channel before departure, and allow the timeline to settle into an era of green, unbroken Australian flora.

The machine whined, a sound like tearing silk, and reality collapsed inward.

The immediate side effect was not silence, but an aggressive, screeching shift across the digital fabric of the universe. In an instant, the timeline tried to stitch its threads back together. Whole economies that had been built around rabbit-proof fencing, Australian agriculture, and outback ecology collapsed and rearranged themselves into new digital systems.

Across modern offices, computer terminals flickered violently. Systems crashed as the cascade of historical variables forced every piece of modern infrastructure to rewrite itself on the fly.

Deep inside a nondescript government office in Melbourne, an overworked web developer named Liam sat frozen in front of his monitor. His screen was screaming in crimson errors. The sudden temporal divergence had corrupted every major public service network. The national infrastructure portal was offline, throwing chaotic status codes across every browser window.

Liam’s heart slammed against his ribs. The server room in the hallway began to wail with warning sirens. The internal logs read that if the central administrative interface was not rebuilt and validated against web accessibility standards within ninety seconds, the entire national emergency communication grid would lock out every operator in the country.

His breath caught in his throat. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, slick with cold sweat.

He had to remember the core principles of building an accessible, unbreakable system before the failure cascade went critical.

Every single page needed an informative, unique title that placed the most important details first. He slammed into the code, hammering out structural markup to convey pure meaning, ensuring screen readers and automated engines would never get lost in a flat wall of visual chaos.

Thirty seconds left.

The screen blinked with an ominous warning: Input Validation Failure.

He had to ensure the forms were forgiving of human error, clearly showing where problems occurred and suggesting corrections instead of locking panicked users behind technical jargon. He added meaningful text alternatives to every operational graphic, ensuring that critical interactive buttons possessed distinct visible states for mouse hover, touch, and keyboard focus.

Ten seconds. The room went pitch black, illuminated only by the frantic white glow of his monitor.

Liam hit the tab key, verifying that every single control could be reached and executed by a keyboard alone, bypassing every broken mouse driver and failing touch panel across the continent. He mapped the high-contrast palettes, ensuring foreground text stood boldly apart from the background.

Three seconds.

He held his breath. The entire room went dead silent. He pressed the final compile key.

The sirens stopped. The screen settled into a crisp, clean, perfectly accessible white interface. The red warnings vanished. The emergency broadcast system was alive and stable.

Liam collapsed backward into his chair, letting out the breath he felt he had held for an eternity. The world was intact. The ecosystem was saved.

Then, the first digital notification of the new, altered reality pinged on his dashboard:

Notice: Due to the total historical absence of European rabbits across the continent since 1859, the wild emu population has grown unchecked and now legally commands seventy percent of the Australian Senate.

A life full of passion and tradition

DIES WITH MEMORIES NOT DREAMS

Learning to Build Healthy Boundaries in Relationships

“Not everyone deserves unlimited access to your heart.”

For a long time, I believed that being a good person meant always being available, always understanding, and always giving people the benefit of the doubt. I took pride in being dependable. Whether at work, as a mother, a colleague, a friend, or a partner, I wanted people to know they could count on me.

But there is a quiet danger in living this way.

When we become accustomed to carrying other people’s burdens, we sometimes forget to ask who is carrying ours. We become so skilled at understanding others that we stop paying attention to our own needs. We mistake self-sacrifice for love and patience for compatibility. Then one day we find ourselves exhausted, disappointed, and wondering why our relationships feel unbalanced.

Healthy boundaries are not walls built to keep people out. They are gates that allow the right people in while protecting our peace, dignity, and emotional well-being.

One lesson I am learning is that love should not require constant proving. The right people do not need endless demonstrations of loyalty before they choose to stay. They do not leave us guessing about our value. They do not take our kindness as permission to give less in return.

A boundary says, “I can care about you without neglecting myself.”

It means recognizing when effort is one-sided. It means refusing to chase people who consistently fail to meet us halfway. It means understanding that being understanding does not require accepting behavior that hurts us.

For someone who naturally nurtures others, boundaries can feel uncomfortable at first. Saying “no” may feel selfish. Speaking up about our needs may feel demanding. Walking away from unhealthy situations may feel like failure.

In reality, boundaries are acts of self-respect.

They teach others how we expect to be treated. They remind us that our time, energy, and emotions have value. Most importantly, they help us distinguish between people who appreciate our kindness and people who simply benefit from it.

Healthy relationships are built on reciprocity. Both people contribute. Both people listen. Both people make room for each other’s dreams, struggles, and growth. The relationship becomes a shelter rather than a burden.

As I continue growing, I want to stop measuring my worth by how much I can give. I want to measure it by how well I honor myself. I want relationships where I can be loved not because of everything I do for others, but because of who I am.

Setting boundaries does not make us less compassionate. It makes our compassion sustainable.

And perhaps the most important boundary of all is this: never allowing loneliness to convince us to accept less than we deserve.

Because the right people will never ask us to shrink, chase, or prove our worth. They will recognize it, respect it, and cherish it from the beginning.

That is not a fantasy. It is the standard.

💖💖💖

The Myth of Having it all…

Every beautiful life has invisible invoices attached to it.

Some people imagine “having it all” as a glittering shelf of achievements.
A high salary. A healthy family. A passport full of stamps. A peaceful home. A career that matters. A love story that survives airport goodbyes and exhausted Mondays.

But the older I get, the more I realize that life is not a department store where everything fits neatly into one basket.

Sometimes, having it all simply means learning which pieces of life are worth carrying at the same time.

For years, I thought “having it all” belonged to people who never seemed tired. The ones whose lives looked polished from the outside. People with effortless marriages, successful careers, beautiful homes, stable finances, and perfect balance. The kind of lives that photograph well.

But real life, especially for people like us who built ourselves from survival, does not move that way.

Real life looks more like an airport terminal at midnight.

You carry too much.
You lose things.
You wait.
You miss flights.
You arrive exhausted.
And still, somehow, you keep going.

As a woman living alone in another country, driving daily between responsibilities, handling quality issues, leadership decisions, audits, deadlines, family concerns back home, and still trying to preserve small pieces of softness inside myself, I often wonder if “having it all” is even humanly possible.

Because every season demands a sacrifice.

When career is flourishing, time becomes expensive.
When peace finally arrives, opportunities sometimes slow down.
When finances improve, exhaustion quietly moves into the spare room.
When you choose yourself, someone may accuse you of becoming distant.
When you choose others, parts of yourself begin disappearing silently.

Life keeps presenting us with negotiations disguised as dreams.

And maybe that is the truth nobody says loudly enough:

Nobody truly has it all at the same time.

Not completely.
Not perfectly.
Not forever.

The woman traveling alone while posting beautiful sunsets may still cry quietly inside her condominium after work.
The executive with authority may secretly fear retirement.
The mother who gave everything to her children may suddenly wonder who she became outside of sacrifice.
The couple deeply in love may still struggle with timing, distance, or silence.

Every beautiful life has invisible invoices attached to it.

Still, I do not think this realization is sad.

I think it is liberating.

Because maybe “having it all” was never about possessing every possible good thing all at once.

Maybe it is about reaching a point where your life finally feels honest.

Where your career reflects your values.
Where your solitude no longer feels like punishment.
Where your income supports your freedom instead of destroying your health.
Where your relationships feel safe enough for silence.
Where you can sit alone in a café after a long day and feel neither empty nor incomplete.

That, to me, feels closer to abundance.

Not perfection.
Not endless achievement.
Not a social media version of happiness.

Just alignment.

I used to think strength meant constantly proving I could carry everything. Now I think wisdom is knowing what deserves to stay in your hands.

Some dreams can wait.
Some people cannot come with us.
Some versions of success are too expensive for the soul.

And perhaps the most beautiful part of growing older is this:

You stop chasing a life that impresses strangers.
You start building a life that allows you to breathe.

Maybe that is the real definition of having it all.

Not owning every dream.

But waking up one ordinary morning, somewhere far from where you started, and realizing that despite the losses, disappointments, heartbreaks, delayed plans, and sacrifices…

you still became someone you are quietly proud of.

A woman, carrying both ambition and tenderness across borders.
Still hopeful.
Still evolving.
Still choosing to live fully, even when life refuses to become simple, already sounds like a remarkable life to me.

💖💖💖

Di 30 cosas que te hagan feliz.

Hay treinta cosas que no puedo olvidar , treinta cosas que por muy pequeñas que parezcan forman parte del inventario de los recuerdos que cada persona invocaría por algún motivo en específico generando en ellos una ola de recuerdos gratos y a la vez de sentimientos.

Si fuera a decir treinta cosas que evocaría sentimientos de alegría comenzaría con el simple sonido de las olas del mar ,ver como esa marea sube y baja chocando una y otra vez contra los arrecifes dando la impresión que fuera arrancar de los cimientos a cualquier objeto puesto en su camino , caminar por encima de la arena mojada y que la propia agua salada toque tus pies , sonaría maravilloso aunque si le incluimos una puesta del sol en ese espléndido paisaje le daría un mejor toque . Si el clima estuviera nublado a punto de llover evocaría elegiría , Si ! , como no aunque en otras personas llegaría la tristeza para apoderarse de ellas en esos momentos , para mí sería un momento de satisfacción absoluta de ver como las gotas de lluvia recorren por la ventana o incluso después de haberse calmado el clima deja ese aroma a tierra mojada después de la lluvia y que muchos ignoran su palabra , Petricor una hermosa palabra si me lo preguntaran . Esta sería otras de las tantas cosas que me alegrarían : encontrar nuevas palabras y declamarlas al aire diciendo incluso el origen de este vocablo proveniente del griego «petros» (piedra) e «ichor» (el fluido que, según la mitología griega, fluye en las venas de los dioses) todo esto en forma de susurros para que las palabras pueda entrar en las mentes de los poetas y escritores como una brisa pasajera .

Con todo ese ambiente dibujado en la mente también sería acogedor escribir un relato sobre cualquier acontecimiento con el único fin de tener un motivo para ir a descansar bajo la sombra de un árbol frondoso en un bosque ,admirar el paisaje mientras camino con mis pies desnudos sobre hierva mojada por el rocío . Y desde allí recordar todos esos pequeños momentos desde despertar junto a la persona que amas , cantar bajo la ducha aquella canción que no sale de tu mente o simplemente escuchar una emisora de radio para no sentirte tan solo , incluso detalles como una simple caricia queda tallada en tu alma o ver una película cualquiera con la familia sin importar cuantas veces las hallas visto porque sinceramente esos insignificantes destellos valen la pe na, hacer la receta que tanto le gustaba a tu mamá , dar un abrazo a quien lo necesite . Perteneciendo todo esto a una pequeña lista de cosas sencillas, cosas agradables , pequeñas cosas que llenan el alma .

◦ Dormir hasta tarde ,escribir una carta a la nada , hablar de arte ,pintar los sentimientos del alma en un cuadro ,recitar los diez poemas mas hermosos a la persona que amas ,bañarse en un rio ,hacer origami , provocar una sonrisa , hablar con viejos amigos a la vez conocer a nuevas personas siempre mirrando a los ojos fijamente a una persona porque los ojos son las ventanas del alma , pero sí miras con atención no podrán engañarte .

Si llegaste hasta aquí significa que me leíste.

Gracias por leerme.!!

https://polotman.wordpress.com/2024/08/05/treinta-cosas/

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