#microprompt

"She fucking killed me!"

She was back on the operations deck, plugged into the interface. Of course there was nothing on the other end of the connection as the drone had more or less been slagged.

"She?" her tech asked.

She makes a face. A whole lot of emotions playing out at once.

"It’s... complicated," she said finally.

The tech rolled their eyes. Of course it was complicated. This little development was barely a drop in the whole bucket of complicated that was this situation.

"You need to send me back out!"

🗣️ Pronunciation:

a-ban-don /əˈbandən/ \uh-ban-don\

💭Feeling Family:

♻️Threshold emotion

📖Definitions:

noun

Merriam-Webster’s: a thorough yielding to natural impulses

Oxford English Dictionary: complete freedom from constraint or convention; surrender or abandonment to natural impulses; lack of inhibition or restraint

Oxford Languages: complete lack of inhibition or restraint

Cambridge: in a completely uncontrolled way

⬜Experience

We typically think of abandon as a verb, and when we do use it as a noun, it’s usually attached with a modifier to make it a state of being (‘wild abandon’). However, it is through the liberating abandonment of all else that we allow ourselves to become fully immersed in the moment, inspiring us to embrace life with open hearts. It can be raw despair—the sense of being discarded and forgotten, a hollow ache of isolation. It can be a liberated release—letting go of inhibition and dancing alone in the rain. And, sometimes, it’s both—a deep yearning to be seen but relief when disappearing. As a wound and as liberation, it is both the collapse of the walls of safety; one brings fear and shame, while the other is embracing the moment with an open heart rather than guardedness.

While ‘abandon’ may not be viewed as an independent emotion, it is a state of being that I felt was worth including. It’s a popular word in literature, but how do we truly define it? The best summary I’ve come across for this experience is: to feel abandoned is to feel fully present.

🫀Biofeedback:

Negative:

Chest tightness

Cold extremities

Lethargy and weariness

Tight throat

Positive:

Goosebumps 

Elevated heartbeat

Relaxed muscles

Tingling 

🛠️Facta Non Verba

⛔Negative

Body Language:

Gestures: fidgeting or even sitting entirely still

Posture: slumped, hanging head

Expression:

Eyes: Averted, unfocused, dull

Mouth: lip biting

Dialogue Tags:

Whisper - evokes a sense of fragility

Murmur - conveys hesitation

Plead - carries raw desperation

Sob - painful overwhelm

Choke - desperate restraint

Confess - shameful admission

Lament - completely mournful

Quaver - trembling with trepidation

Blurt - a sudden discharge

Moan - vulnerable ache

✅Positive

Body Language:

Gestures: loose, expansive, emotive

Posture: straight, leaning forward slightly when engaged with others

Expression:

Eyes: open, bright, focused

Many lists of descriptors or body language notes I’ve come across note that eye contact is consistent and intense. However, this should be considered from a sociological perspective. In some cultures where eye contact is considered confrontational, a marked awareness of the surroundings may be more appropriate.

Mouth: genuine smile (crinkled eyes)

Dialogue Tags:

Exclaim - exuberant communication

Shout - loud and untamed

Cry out - spontaneous defiance

Declare - unapologetic statement

Gasp - out of breath

Sang - euphoric singing

Whoop - loud celebratory cries

Bellow - crude release

Rave - fiery intensity

Spill - speaking rapidly with no filter

📃Microprompts

These prompts are to help get the juices flowing, now that you are armed with a definition, experience, biofeedback, and nonverbal cues. You are free and welcome to share them with us—but there is never any pressure to do so.

✒️Writer: Write a scene where a character is speaking in bursts because silence feels like erasure. Let their voice be the map, without using any feeling words.

🎨Artist:

Sketch a figure mid-collapse or mid-flight.

📓Journaling

When have you felt the most present?

TTPD microprompt: summer romance

Ship: wolfstar (Sirius x Remus)

He was too old for this, surely.

The melodramatic residence he’d taken up at the window; the longing glances through the glass as if he was a war widow waiting for a sweetheart that would never come home.

Twenty-nine was at least nine rotations around the sun too many, and yet, spring succumbed to summer as it did every year and Sirius’s focus once more surrendered along with it.

Time punished him, promising a fix that it couldn’t deliver. He dissociated from real life, going through the motions so convincingly no one noticed his annual soul-death; that, or no one cared enough to pay attention.

He was immune to the infectious conversation that trickled across the pub, about the newest bingeable television show everyone was watching or that viral meme forcing its way into every group text chain. He seemed to be the only one who found his coworker’s objectively hilarious retellings about the disastrous meeting of his parents and in-laws tiredly predictable, and even routine, polite small talk with the postman drained him of energy.

Sirius regularly found himself nodding along and smiling small and making his excuses to leave before his preoccupation was exposed, which inevitably left him entirely too alone too often.

It meant he was a prisoner in his own mind, forced to watch the warmest days of the year pass by from behind bars; forced to compare them to the tangible memories that kept him from escaping his hold whenever an opportunity presented itself; forced to straighten the curl of his lips when a faint voice no one else could hear called to him, his truest company.

Every sunrise lacked that particular burning glow that crept over his skin on those legendary nights, the ones that stole his breath and left grains of sand in his hair as dusk gave way to dawn.

The air was too polluted or clear or floral wherever he was, lacking the brine and salt that would cling to his fingers and tongue, that expanded his lungs and made him sleep-soft even when he’d never felt more awake; when he’d never felt more alive.

Boats were event locations and possessions to be toured, paraded, and sold. They were polished and staffed, the cost of purchase and maintenance always supplied in the first breath of arrogance. They were never sailed for the feel of flying; they were never touched reverently, or gazed at with pride, or repaired with painstaking care, the kind that only came from blood and sweat and the last dollar in your pocket that could’ve gone towards food but was allocated for a bottle of Collonite instead.

Thunderstorms were mild and subdued, uninterested in his little circle of existence, unimpressed with the landscape it had to work with. Where were the waves, it asked, the ones that reached for the skies and tumbled down in a huff; where were the gusts of wind that clamoured for my attention and the miles of open water that mirrored my reflection and the frantic red flags waving on the shore and the lighthouses fighting against me and you, where are you, why are you here?

He wondered the same. He always did, this time of year.

Microprompt 15: “Trembling Hands”

Pairing: Sharky Boshaw/Ramona Belmont

Word Count: 800

Warnings: Cursing, implied smut

A/N: I’m counting this as Day 9 of Ramona’s Birthday event.

All that came out from Ramona was a shallow gasp as she brought back into the waking world in a cold sweat. As she gathered her senses, Ramona found that it was night and she was in a bed tucked under a snoring Sharky's arm. The bed of course belonged to an unknown owner of an abandoned house Sharky had suggested they crash in for the night. They were currently in the Whitetail Mountains.

As Ramona sat up, while not disturbing Sharky, she tried to recall her nightmare. She remembered running, jaws snapping, fog, blood, and being alone. That was all she could make sense of.

microprompt 5: hide

words: 489 (I swear that I’m actually trying to do the 3-10 sentence quota. I just don’t know when to shut up.)

requested by: @archetypesinthefog

This is inspired by Charlie’s original ending of actually coming to her senses/not going off the deep end. Also, gave a little sneak peek at another one of my chosen ocs here.

From: Reylomicrofic Hub (@reylomicrofics)

---

Maybe she'd thought that since he’d lived most of his life in space, he’d flounder here among the trees and the damp and the wilderness. Clearly, she hadn’t given Hux enough credit.

 Looking around the little cabin, with its stone hearth and kettle perched above it on a little hook, the fur skins hanging along the far wall, to the little bed made up with its neat, military corners-- exile hadn’t broken Hux. No, he was thriving. 

A low, rough voice gruffed behind her, “Are you just going to stand there gawking, or are you going to go inside?” 

Rose gave a start, taking a step over the threshold, the scent of cedar and dried herbs filling her nose.

“Tea?” Hux said, dropping the basket of vegetables onto the small table. 

“Oh, yes please,” Rose breathed, turning around in a slow circle to take in every little bit of the homely space. H

ux fiddled with the kettle as she walked over to the makeshift bedside table- an upturned crate he must have received during a supply drop- and the leather-bound journal on top. It had been so long since she’d seen real flimsy...

She wondered what secrets it held. 

Her hand jerked back at Hux’s voice. “If you’re going to snoop, perhaps you should wait until I’m gone."

“Sorry,” she said quickly, clasping her hands behind her back. “It’s beautiful here. You’ve done really well." 

“The wonders  one can accomplish by oneself,” he muttered, perhaps a bit bitterly “when one finally has time.” 

And he would have time, Rose knew. Years of it. Decades, probably. 

 Until the New Alliance either expunged his punishment or forgot about him entirely. 

At this point, he thinks he could walk through Yongen blindfolded. Fifty paces from the cafe door to the alleyway shortcut to Shibuya Station, thirty-five and change to round the corner and end up on Sojiro’s doorstep. Fifteen to the bathhouse, twelve to the laundromat. Three inside the laundromat, slow paces like a caged animal while his clothing bakes down.

The streets don’t change with the seasons. Everything else besides the buildings shifts, born anew, people coming and going, stock switching out, flowers blooming and fading as the days and nights pass. It’s a welcome piece of stability, when he steps off the subway so tired he can barely keep his eyes open.