It may be bad haiku, but it is my haiku.

春の風鳥や花見や緑の木
どこも音祭りが光る花火咲く
土湿る生命の鉢そして気も
変色落日落ち葉全て金
寒水と流動冬物静か

(Blech!)

[Read more on actual blog.]

The thing about being a telepath is that it gives you a sense of perspective.

Everyone worries about being big enough. Or too big. Or the wrong shape. Everybody. Everybody worries about not being pretty enough or strong enough or smart enough. The thing is, they're the only person that cares. Nobody else notices... Well, mostly. Some people really are ugly or stupid -- but they usually don't worry about it as much.

Everybody's a least a little neurotic. And everybody's a freak.

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[ Word (syzygy) suggested by Scott Zrubek. ]

Ubiquitous has been published on Escape Pod. (Listen here.)

I may or may not do any more writing exercises here (or rather, I probably will, but it's hard to say when) as I'm more or less planning to start working on a novel in the near future -- no doubt short snippets of it will appear here when I do, along with everyone's favorite useless statistic: running word totals.

Also, feel free to add comments with words to my previous post at any time if you haven't already and feel the urge; I can't guarantee I'll use them, of course, but I might.

I need more words.

I'm still probably going to use a few of the words that were suggested before, but probably only a few. So, I need more suggestions. It's a little different, this time, though -- obviously, now you know what they're for, but I also want people to just pick a single word. Again, foreign languages are okay, but if the word isn't English, please indicate what language it is in case I have to look it up.

Thanks!

Peter came home late as usual, got a beer and collapsed on his couch in front of the TV. But the painting on his living room wall called to him, and soon he shut off the TV, got out his painting supplies, and returned to the task.

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[ Word (orthogonal) suggested by amberdine. ]

The ship travelled along the tight magnetic field lines of the neutron star. It was stuck like an iron filing as it was dragged around the rapidly spinning body. That was what it was designed to be, at least until it turned off its own field, at which point it would be hurled away from the star.

Five souls were aboard, protected by layers and layers of advanced active and passive shielding. The life supports systems labored to keep them alive and comfortable, which they did with scant margin. But they worked as designed, and the mission continued smoothly.

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[ Word (snap) suggested by undeadprincess. ]

"Didja think it would be that easy?" said the dragon as it hovered overhead. "I'm five thousand years old, you know."

The terrified knight held his sword over his head and prepared to fend off the dragon's attack. Half-melted swords weren't the most fearsome of weapons, but you had to work with what you had.

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[ Word (Drachen) suggested by calicocat. ]

The electrical system was gone. Fried. Dead. No power, no life support. No power, no engine, no communications, nothing. The shuttle was no longer a spacecraft, it was a metal can stuck on a rocky, lifeless plain, soon to be lifeless itself.

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[ Word (仕様がない) suggested by lyte13. ]

[ 仕様がない (shou ga nai, usually written in kana as しょうがない) literally means "there's no way" in Japanese. Used in conversation, however, it means "it can't be helped" or "nothing can be done." It's not a word, technically, but a phrase, but since Japanese writing doesn't use spaces to seperate words, that distinction tends to be a bit on the fuzzy side, and even when writing in romaji (i.e., using the western or "roman" characters), native Japanese speakers tend to use spaces to divide words fairly randomly. ]

His father pulled him by the arm, away from the man. He didn't want to go, the man was nice. And the man wasn't a villager, he was from far away. He was different and new. The boy liked his stories. They were different and new.

"Come on, Jacob," his father said. "Haven't I told you not to talk to strangers?"

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[ Word (tramontane) suggested by amberdine. ]

[ This one is slightly over the 500-word limit I gave myself for these writing exercises, but oh, well. C'est la vie. ]

There was too much blood, more than usual. He hated the blood -- he hated it all, he hated the screams, he hated the pain when he tried to resist. But he knew that he couldn't ignore the commands when they came. He couldn't.

Getting the blood out of his clothes was going to be a bitch.

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[ Word (ubiquitous) suggested by sfeley. ]