Oh, now this was a very interesting one to write. You see, I’ve received this writing prompt before - its actually one of the ones I’ve submitted for publication. So the challenge here was to use the same prompt to craft a totally different story. Let’s see how I did...
The planet was lost. It had been lost for as long as it had been, floating through the vastness impregnability of space. It hurtled along it’s intended trajectory and was totally, utterly lost. It had never seen another planet through its long existence, and although all around and about it were stars, they were many millions of lightyears away and may as well have been pinpricks in a black curtain for the good they did.
It was not a big planet, a paltry few million miles in circumference. If one were to take a spacecraft in close to its surface, one would fly over vast forests, undulating landscape covered in green trees, occasional peaks rising from the sea of foliage like the fins of hungry sharks swaggering through the ocean. Snow tipped these mountains, icing on a mound of stone confectionary, and although the spaceship would have to fly much lower to be able to see, rare and heavy-furred animals clambered from rock to rock, sure-footed and stable in their lofty home. In the forest below, sleeker and faster animals hunted through the undergrowth, chasing down their quarry with grunts and cries. Zooming away from this macro and heading further south, one would see a climate change, as forest gives way to verdant grasslands, acre upon acre of waving tall grass coating the ground like fur on the mountain animals, giving way with the breeze. The unrelenting movement of the vast ocean of plants is not an easy sight, and the only relenting from the monotony are the huge trees that rise, here and there, from the carpet of green. Bulbous trees, with trunks like balloons blown up too many times and branches like the seeking legs of a spider, coated in spine-like leaves. Each tree rises a good 50 metres in the air, the tallest reaching twice that height, and although these monoliths of the plains seemingly dwarf any other object nearby, they are not exempt from the wind’s incessancy. The leaves, razor-sharp and spiked, quiver and purr like the hairs on the back of the neck, and the spider-leg branches make intricate patterns as they bend and wave in the wind’s caress.
Moving further south still, the grass dies down and shows the hard ground underneath – ground that gets harder and rockier, more mountainous and treacherous as the equator is neared. For hundreds of miles surrounding the invisible meridian, a world of snow envelopes the terrain. Vast deserts of white greet the eye, the biting chill pulling and twisting the cold, laden air into shapes strange and misleading. To land here would mean death in hours, let alone days, as the soft deep snow hungrily devours all it can eat. No creature lives here, not even the hardiest of beasts could survive in this stretch of climate which wraps its way all around the centre of the planet like a girdle of winter. Before long, the terrain becomes monotonous and monochrome, and it is only when we finally head back the equator and into the southern hemisphere that it begins once more to change.
Here, one finds the vast ocean of the planet. Most of the lower hemisphere is covered in water, a deep blue ocean filled with fantastic creatures large and small. The steady blue horizon is dotted with the occasional island, rising from the sea like shells stuck to the back of the ocean’s largest denizens, huge barbelled-headed mammals with outstretched fins running up and down the length of their pendulous bodies. These behemoths crest the waves every hundred metres or so, oscillating in and out of the water gently and smoothly, accompanied all around by smaller sea creatures; some with huge sail-like fins, others with countless legs and huge protruding jaws, yet more clinging to the back of the behemoths with hooked claws, riding like surfers on their backs. One might follow the procession along for many, many miles, diverting not an inch to the left or right unless an island reared its head, and then diving in a great group, down and out of sight, until they surface again on the other side of the island, still going straight, never of course. These floating islands seem to be utterly untethered to the sea bed – if indeed there was one – and floated as free as the creatures in the giant blue ocean. As one travels, in aerial cavalcade with the migrating denizens of the sea, the unwavering dark indigo of the ocean gradually softens into a lighter, more friendly looking blue. The air warms, as does the wind. The floating islands start to appear more frequently, but not the hard white rock outcrops of the northern sea. These new islands are sand, and spots of forest, and long flat stone. This ocean seems kinder than its neighbour, and it would come to no surprise to one to see more sea creatures here as well. No huge mammals - although the aquatic caravan is still making its steady way south – these new creatures are small, and almost infinite in their shoals. Too small to make out individual details, the group nonetheless dwarfs the largest of the behemoths and indeed at one point swims around the gentle giant, hiding its form in a whirlwind of flashing silver and erratic movement. Eventually the vast school moves away, leaving the larger creature to carry on its sedate journey southwards.
Another 100 miles and one might witness another change in the ocean’s colour and climate. The water is now a brilliant azure blue, and it is shallow - shallow enough that the giant animals, still pointing directly south, are no longer weaving up and down out of the water but now constantly have their tops peeking from the waves. Here, finally, they stop, and start to swim about in a complex, extraordinary mating pattern. If one stayed, one might witness the larger of the behemoths carefully picking from the other animals, and eventually mating before beginning their arduous due-north journey to their deep dark holes in the equator ocean. However, if one continues to the very far south, one will find land again.
This is a place of sand, of desert and death. A stark opposite to the biting, below-zero winds of the equator, this pole climate is dry and arid, huge dunes rising like mountains from the sandy floor. Great scars of dried-up river criss-cross the land like a whipped soldier’s back, and the brief and infrequent spots of vegetation seem more to highlight the inhospitality of the place rather than provide respite from it. This great dry circle, clinging to the bottom of the lost planet, is maybe thousands of miles across, and landing here is death just as sure as landing at the equator is. If one were to fly across the vastness of yellow sand and reach the other side, one would start to trek back north and re-discover the sights they have just seen.
The planet flies on, following a path it doesn’t know that it’s taking, part of a vast planetary system orbiting around not one, but two circling suns. The planet knows nothing of this. It knows nothing of trajectory, or orbits. The planet is merely lost in space. Home to millions of creatures, strange and wonderful climates, and lost in space.
The planet was lost. It had been lost for as long as it had been, floating through the vastness impregnability of space. It hurtled along it’s intended trajectory and was totally, utterly lost. It had never seen another planet through its long existence, and although all around and about it were stars, they were many millions of lightyears away and may as well have been pinpricks in a black curtain for the good they did.
It was not a big planet, a paltry few million miles in circumference. If one were to take a spacecraft in close to its surface, one would fly over vast forests, undulating landscape covered in green trees, occasional peaks rising from the sea of foliage like the fins of hungry sharks swaggering through the ocean. Snow tipped these mountains, icing on a mound of stone confectionary, and although the spaceship would have to fly much lower to be able to see, rare and heavy-furred animals clambered from rock to rock, sure-footed and stable in their lofty home. In the forest below, sleeker and faster animals hunted through the undergrowth, chasing down their quarry with grunts and cries. Zooming away from this macro and heading further south, one would see a climate change, as forest gives way to verdant grasslands, acre upon acre of waving tall grass coating the ground like fur on the mountain animals, giving way with the breeze. The unrelenting movement of the vast ocean of plants is not an easy sight, and the only relenting from the monotony are the huge trees that rise, here and there, from the carpet of green. Bulbous trees, with trunks like balloons blown up too many times and branches like the seeking legs of a spider, coated in spine-like leaves. Each tree rises a good 50 metres in the air, the tallest reaching twice that height, and although these monoliths of the plains seemingly dwarf any other object nearby, they are not exempt from the wind’s incessancy. The leaves, razor-sharp and spiked, quiver and purr like the hairs on the back of the neck, and the spider-leg branches make intricate patterns as they bend and wave in the wind’s caress.
Moving further south still, the grass dies down and shows the hard ground underneath – ground that gets harder and rockier, more mountainous and treacherous as the equator is neared. For hundreds of miles surrounding the invisible meridian, a world of snow envelopes the terrain. Vast deserts of white greet the eye, the biting chill pulling and twisting the cold, laden air into shapes strange and misleading. To land here would mean death in hours, let alone days, as the soft deep snow hungrily devours all it can eat. No creature lives here, not even the hardiest of beasts could survive in this stretch of climate which wraps its way all around the centre of the planet like a girdle of winter. Before long, the terrain becomes monotonous and monochrome, and it is only when we finally head back the equator and into the southern hemisphere that it begins once more to change.
Here, one finds the vast ocean of the planet. Most of the lower hemisphere is covered in water, a deep blue ocean filled with fantastic creatures large and small. The steady blue horizon is dotted with the occasional island, rising from the sea like shells stuck to the back of the ocean’s largest denizens, huge barbelled-headed mammals with outstretched fins running up and down the length of their pendulous bodies. These behemoths crest the waves every hundred metres or so, oscillating in and out of the water gently and smoothly, accompanied all around by smaller sea creatures; some with huge sail-like fins, others with countless legs and huge protruding jaws, yet more clinging to the back of the behemoths with hooked claws, riding like surfers on their backs. One might follow the procession along for many, many miles, diverting not an inch to the left or right unless an island reared its head, and then diving in a great group, down and out of sight, until they surface again on the other side of the island, still going straight, never of course. These floating islands seem to be utterly untethered to the sea bed – if indeed there was one – and floated as free as the creatures in the giant blue ocean. As one travels, in aerial cavalcade with the migrating denizens of the sea, the unwavering dark indigo of the ocean gradually softens into a lighter, more friendly looking blue. The air warms, as does the wind. The floating islands start to appear more frequently, but not the hard white rock outcrops of the northern sea. These new islands are sand, and spots of forest, and long flat stone. This ocean seems kinder than its neighbour, and it would come to no surprise to one to see more sea creatures here as well. No huge mammals - although the aquatic caravan is still making its steady way south – these new creatures are small, and almost infinite in their shoals. Too small to make out individual details, the group nonetheless dwarfs the largest of the behemoths and indeed at one point swims around the gentle giant, hiding its form in a whirlwind of flashing silver and erratic movement. Eventually the vast school moves away, leaving the larger creature to carry on its sedate journey southwards.
Another 100 miles and one might witness another change in the ocean’s colour and climate. The water is now a brilliant azure blue, and it is shallow - shallow enough that the giant animals, still pointing directly south, are no longer weaving up and down out of the water but now constantly have their tops peeking from the waves. Here, finally, they stop, and start to swim about in a complex, extraordinary mating pattern. If one stayed, one might witness the larger of the behemoths carefully picking from the other animals, and eventually mating before beginning their arduous due-north journey to their deep dark holes in the equator ocean. However, if one continues to the very far south, one will find land again.
This is a place of sand, of desert and death. A stark opposite to the biting, below-zero winds of the equator, this pole climate is dry and arid, huge dunes rising like mountains from the sandy floor. Great scars of dried-up river criss-cross the land like a whipped soldier’s back, and the brief and infrequent spots of vegetation seem more to highlight the inhospitality of the place rather than provide respite from it. This great dry circle, clinging to the bottom of the lost planet, is maybe thousands of miles across, and landing here is death just as sure as landing at the equator is. If one were to fly across the vastness of yellow sand and reach the other side, one would start to trek back north and re-discover the sights they have just seen.
The planet flies on, following a path it doesn’t know that it’s taking, part of a vast planetary system orbiting around not one, but two circling suns. The planet knows nothing of this. It knows nothing of trajectory, or orbits. The planet is merely lost in space. Home to millions of creatures, strange and wonderful climates, and lost in space.