Writing prompt

Write with a strong image in mind.  Let it stay prominent so that it keeps reappearing in different forms, offering new meaning.  Use water or paper or a jumble of wires.

So for example, I’ll use sky.

She lay on her back counting stars as they appeared, searching out the steady light of planets, waiting for a new day that would need the night to mature.  The lights of her neighbor’s back porch forced her to shield one eye which cut off one side of the horizon, but it left her the inky blackness right up to the fence line, just one more limitation on her future.  Yet the stars still offered her clear skies with just a hint of confusion in a drift of Milky Way, so she imagined a boat load of friends could come by way of the Pleiades, and how could one argue with that.  She sighed and closed her eyes a moment to clear the jangle of thoughts that wanted to crowd out her contemplation of possibilities, and when she opened them, the neighbor’s porch light went out.  Before her a vastness spread, and the clean night presented stunning promise in abundance.

Write a mythology.  
Possible idea: Why do giraffes have long necks and no voice, and what are those funny horn bobs for?
Possible idea #2: Why do mother cats carry their young by the neck?
Possible idea #3:  Why do male sea horses carry the eggs to maturity and not the females?

There are scientific explanations for all of these.  Come up with a mythological reason for your choice of biological mystery.

In the past I have often given my students a famous quote to think about and then write using the idea they drew from the quote.  So here is one from Helen Keller:
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Give it some thought and see where it takes your muse.

In Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Mr. Lorry holds an imaginary conversation with Dr. Manette, who is newly released from prison. The imaginary conversation is tied around the question, “How long have you been buried?” It takes numerous twists and turns as Lorry considers all the variety of ways that Manette could reply, keeping in mind that the man may be suffering from madness after his long confinement and unable to maintain a coherent conversation.

exerpt:

The answers to this question were various and contradictory.  Sometimes the broken reply was, “Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon.” Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, “Take me to her.”  Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it was, “I don’t know her.  I don’t understand.”

So for this prompt, have one character ask a question that is open to metaphorical interpretation. The response to the question should be an imagined response, and like Lorry’s conversation in A Tale of Two Cities repeated with slight variations so that the conflict is slowly developed.