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Hello I'm from BYOB and I want to play, also uranium phoenix i hope you have fun with my prompt  I'm in pls be nice i am new
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Aug 17, 2020 18:42
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| # ¿ Jan 24, 2025 10:39 |
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Hey when am i allowed to post my entry, i might be out of service much of this weekend
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Aug 21, 2020 03:07
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I never learned to read or write so please be kind  Thanks for the neat prompt owlhawk911   Sitting Here posted:Contributor Steer 1,046 words I pushed the fronds of a dark green fern aside as the muddy smell of melting snowpack blew to me in a chilly wind. The wind subsided and it was back to the smell of cow dung, which was no less enjoyable to me. I had come to visit my neighbor's cattle, always a joy. I emerged from the dense forest into a broad meadow, green hills and snowcapped mountaintops now in view, a patchy misty rain suddenly interrupted by sunshine. Pardon... "Pardon?" Oh no. As the word left my mouth, I was in the frosty green hills no more. I was instead where I was, which happened to be a broad depression of acrid yellow dust that was once called the Great Slave Lake. Before me was a miner, but not a living one. I knew it to be a STEER model 6-46 automated extraction unit, named by someone with a sense of humor at the PomTec corporation, who like everyone saw a bovine form in its four anchor posts, hulking two and a half meter steel frame, and head-shaped vent hood. The great dusty basin was dotted with them, roving around sometimes, mostly still, like cattle grazing on a grassless field, instead pulling yttrium and neodynium from the earth with their extraction hoses that a further sense of humor could see resembling an udder. Then there was the cowhand, the miner-minder, the man who had asked me what brought me over this way, pard. A tall man with a weathered face, a wide hat to keep back the cruel sun of the long summer days, company demin, goggles and mask caked in dust around his neck. I must tell you I have always been prone to a sort of involuntary reverie, flashbacks you could call them, mercifully always to kinder times and pleasant memories. As yet they had never gotten me into trouble, but here I was, an arm's length away from PomTec company property, backpack full of rare earth that was not rightly mine. He eyed me warily. "Folks been rustlin elements around these parts. Not much else round here either, so I'm askin again, what brings you this way?" "I was thinking about cattle. Real cattle I used to know." I've never been good at lying so I began with truth and moved on to half-truths. "I was on my way to Yellowknife, and seeing these funny things got me to reminiscing, and next thing I knew I was getting real close for a look. This is public land, eh?" "Real cattle you say?" he asked with an incredulity covering for an almost boyish excitement. "Before the drought." Disappointment took to his face, the kind where you know you shouldn't have been so naive to begin with. "Down in BC a ways, when it was still green." "Well it's public land but not many folks come through it. Y'ain't supposed to get within 5 meters of a Steer." "A what?" I fibbed. "What is this thing anyway, if you don't mind me asking? They really do look like cattle out here." He chuckled and began a long exposition, clearly a man proud of his trade and the honest living he made. Of course I knew how each hose of the udder forced its way as much as 500 meters underground, how it dispensed a patented slurry that dissolved most of the rock to leave behind the precious rare earth elements needed for who knows what, how those valuable nuggets were pulled up the hose and deposited into a locked chamber to await pickup, how the cowhands drove around in small all-terrain vehicles - enclosed by necessity of dust storms - to refill this slurry and collect the product and to herd the Steers by adjusting their automated roving pattern as needed. I pretended to listen as dutifully as I could. I most certainly pretended I didn't know how to open the locked depository and pull out the goods. Somewhere around the vent hood I was in the hills again, now closer to the friendly cow, her curious head-cocked look like a puppy wondering if I had come to feed her, rumbling the ground as she trotted over to me, the oddly pleasant smell of distant drying cow dung, the flick of her tail as a fly landed on her hind, the halved apple, reaching my sticky hand out with a flat palm to offer a nice treat, The laughter of the cowhand? poo poo. The chemical smell of the yellow dust and my hand outstretched before the vent hood. "Feedin the cow, that's a new one to me." I suppose I had made a joke I didn't remember. "Just be careful your hand isn't there when this red light goes on, 300 degrees is nothin to be trifling with." "Ah, right." He gave me a weary look of someone who had not been shown much friendliness, someone trying to dispel their suspicion. The looked turned to concern and I realized he was looking behind me. I turned around and saw the approaching wall of dust. He glanced at my inadequate mask, already clogged from the last storm. "Why don't you hop in," he said. "No sense being out in a duster. I'll give you a ride to Yellowknife." He paused. "Been lonely out here a while anyway." "Kind of you," I smiled. Before I put my backpack down in close quarters I intended to make sure my stolen goods were buried well below my clothes and bedroll. So I rifled around in there and chuckled another not-quite-lie for cover. "I'd offer you some grass for the ride, but um, let me check." The nuggets, the non-smokeable ones made of neodynium and such, now safely at the bottom of the bag, I pulled out my empty glass pipe. "I guess I'm out." He smiled. "Not supposed to on company time, but I've got some flower in the truck if you won't tell anyone." A fine crop it was. For nearly two hours while the dust was too thick to drive, we relaxed in the safety of the enclosed all-terrain vehicle, seats down, just barely enough room inside for two to lie on their sides, telling stories and laughing, high as two kites in a windstorm.
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Aug 23, 2020 18:41
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Crit for Uranium Phoenix who used my prompt I really liked it, you took it in a direction I did not expect but perhaps should have. The location of the dust bowl also being the destination of the trail of tears, combined with the native american roots of the rain dance, I should have seen it coming but I did not when I was writing the prompt, I was just making poo poo up. But it was a really good direction to take it in. I appreciated the examination of the main character and his mother being people of native american heritage who has lost their roots, or rather had them erased out of them by a cruel white society. The flashbacks to mother, the way he almost mocked her attachment to that heritage that she had never really known, until he discovered it himself upon her death, the spirit of his grandmother coming, the literal tears ruining the land that is bathed in the guilt of the trail of tears, and that broken identity coming to the fore at the end of the story as well. I think that theme is the strongest feature of the story, perhaps a weird thing to say because it is the story, maybe what I really mean is the way it was presented was really good. The reference to the wounded knee massacre was an interesting addition, but the fact that Henry's mother had some connection to someone there seemed a little shoehorned in perhaps. I dunno, I get wanting to mention wounded knee. I get that it would feel a little out of nowhere to just be like "they read in the news about wounded knee, wow how hosed up is that!" and a personal connection is a bit more meaningful. But it kinda comes in suddenly and leaves just as suddenly. I know you're space constrained but perhaps it would be better to not do it at all without more space to devote to that connection. I also found the description of the mother's history / adopted-ness a little confusing, like I was slightly confused about the basic facts at first - she was adopted? he was adopted? - but I got it eventually so maybe that's just me being dense. That's the only constructive criticism I can think about from this story, which I overall really liked, beyond what I expected from my prompt. Sorry I'm new here idk how to write a good criticism.
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Aug 25, 2020 17:14
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