#dailyprompt-2121 — Public Fediverse posts

“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.

Hot Italian Summer moments surfing the waves

Superstitious? Me? Pfft… Unless the Universe is Listening.

Are you superstitious?

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Am I Superstitious? Let’s Just Say… It’s Complicated.

This morning, my son and his buddies threw out a dangerous question: “Are you superstitious?”

Now, logically, I want to say no. I don’t walk around tossing salt over my shoulder or fearing black cats. But if we’re being honest… I also refuse to say things like “Wow, nothing has gone wrong today!” because I know the universe is listening.

So, am I superstitious? Let’s just say I respect the possibility of unseen forces—but I’m also not afraid to test them.

Let’s break it down.

1. The ‘Don’t Jinx It’ Rule (AKA, I’m Not Stupid)

You ever confidently say something, only for life to immediately slap you in the face?

🔹 Example: “Ugh, I never get sick.” Boom—suddenly, I’m drowning in tissues and self-pity.
🔹 Pain Level: 9/10. Because why does the universe have to be so petty?

✅ How I Handle It: I knock on wood. Every time. Even if it’s fake. Even if people are watching. If I forget? You best believe I’m mentally whispering “no jinx, no jinx, no jinx” to undo the damage.

2. The ‘Something Feels Off’ Rule (My Sixth Sense is Real)

I don’t know if it’s energy, instinct, or just years of experience with people being sketchy, but if something feels wrong, I listen.

🔹 Example: Walking into a place and feeling an immediate, unexplainable sense of nope.
🔹 Pain Level: 10/10 if ignored. Because the ONE TIME I brushed it off, I ended up in a situation I never should have been in.

✅ How I Handle It: If my gut tells me to leave, I leave. No debating, no justifying. The last thing I need is to become the main character in a bad horror movie.

3. The ‘Ghosts? Prove Me Wrong’ Rule (I’m Ready for This Fight)

Unlike most people, I don’t fear ghosts, Ouija boards, or haunted places—I’m fascinated by them. Do I believe in spirits and the paranormal? Not really.

But am I willing to test it? Hell yes.

🔹 Example: While some people refuse to step foot in a haunted house, I’m the one saying, “Alright, if something’s here, show yourself.”
🔹 Pain Level: TBD. But honestly, if a ghost did prove me wrong, I’d be more excited than scared.

✅ How I Handle It: If the supernatural wants my attention, it better bring receipts. Until then, I’m keeping my skepticism and my curiosity wide open.

So, Am I Superstitious?

Let’s put it this way—I don’t live in fear of bad luck, but I also don’t poke the bear (except when it comes to ghosts, apparently).

If knocking on wood, trusting my instincts, and challenging the unknown keeps things interesting, then I’m all in.

Now, tell me—are you superstitious?

Or are you the type to laugh in the face of fate?

Drop your thoughts in the comments… but if your luck suddenly changes, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

NSFW Ink Dreams: Where Would You Put Yours?

What tattoo do you want, and where would you put it?

Some people want a discreet infinity symbol on their ankle.
Others want angel wings between their shoulder blades.
Me?

I want the Joker and Harley Quinn… tangled in sin… on my inner thigh.

Yes, you read that right. I already have six tattoos—each one a slice of my story—but this?
This one’s going to be my masterpiece.

Why settle for basic when your thighs are prime real estate for chaos, colour, and the promise of a little danger?

Why the Inner Thigh, though?

Well, darling, that’s easy.

It’s hidden… until it’s not.

It’s intimate. Naughty. A secret meant to be earned.

And every time I cross my legs or shift in bed, I’ll know there’s a beautiful madness resting just beneath my skin.

The Joker, smirking with toxic charm.
Harley, wide-eyed, wild, loyal in all the wrong ways.
The ultimate ride-or-die pair—etched into my flesh, just inches from all the fun.

Honestly? If you’re going to mark your body forever, make it interesting.
Make it tell a story… or whisper one between parted thighs.

More Tattoos. More Mischief. More Me.

My body is already a canvas of secrets and symbols.

Not just to look.
But to wonder.
To imagine what else might be hiding underneath the lace and leather.

So, yes—my Joker and Harley thigh piece is still in the works.
But the rest of my skin? Hungry. Ready. Waiting for the needle to tell another scandalous tale.

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What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

Daily writing prompt

Let’s see now… there is only one thing that fits the spirit of this question fully that comes to mind. When I was a kid I had a paper route. One day while walking up Nelson Ave in Tewksbury I found a cassette tape on the ground. It was a C120 which you didn’t see too often. That means the tape was 60 minutes long on each side. You didn’t see them because in order to fit that much tape into the cassette they had to make the tape extra thin. Too thin, as it turned out. They used to wear out quickly and break easily. Anyway, I took this cassette home with me and gave it a spin. It had AC/DC’s Back in Black album on one side and Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil on the other. The Crue record didn’t do anything for me, but Back in Black absolutely lived up to the hype. I kept that tape just as it was and played the shit out of the AC/DC side.

I just Googled the release dates of those two records. Back in Black came out in 1980 and Shout at the Devil came out in 1983. That means at the time I was at least 12 years old. That’s about what I remembered. The Crue record must have been very new when it was dubbed onto the tape.

That’s probably the most interesting thing I’ve ever found and kept. I can think of two more things that I found and bought. Both were at used record stores near Harvard Square. First, I found a cassette for sale that had a bootleg of a Big Dipper show that was originally broadcast by MIT’s radio station, WMBR. The station simulcast a show that they played on campus for some reason. That was awesome, but the bonus that made it extra memorable was a few demos that were tacked onto the end. Two members of Big Dipper had previously been members of The Volcano Suns. They never released anything officially, but this demo was definitely that Volcano Suns line up. It even include a song that Big Dipper would record themselves a few years later. It was like finding a little piece of gold.

At a different used record store near Harvard Square I found a copy of The Blake Babies’ self released first record, Nicely Nicely. At that point the record had never been reissued anywhere, so it was the real deal. I had to pay too much for it, but the price I paid was still less than what you pay for an album on vinyl today. I still have it. It’s upstairs in the living room with the rest of my vinyl collection.

So there you have it. One thing I found and kept and two things I found and bought. Nothing really interesting, but they were the first things that popped into my head when I read the prompt so there you go.

https://robertjames1971.blog/2023/11/16/finders-keepers/

#dailyprompt #dailyprompt2121