We were told that molten lead burned through Uncle Sam's skin. Daddy said, "Each time he plundered and destroyed, speaking cruel, heartless words, the metal would seep in and stain him." But I looked closer and studied Uncle Sam. There was also silver and gold. I asked him about it. He said, "Oh, my little bunny," speaking with his Irish lilt, "That's when I was kind, when I gave more of myself than I took. We are never just one story."

@cattailnu
Captain Merry Horgan was in his cabin. He was silent. The battle was terrible but we were still afloat. You could see his scars. In time they would heal. But his eyes told us the truth. He was dying. We were dying. Without him we would never return home. His soul was attached to his ship, and without him, the Storm Of The Sea would go to the bottom of the ocean. And us with him. We were so far from the main routes that no one would save us. But we won the battle…

#writingprompt

@cattailnu This one seems easiest out of all the prompts you've posted.

@cattailnu The "Black Blood" had spread, incurable & deadly, he had but a few hours before it entered his brain & his descent into madness began

He was still the captain & he was damned if he would die an ignoble death

Dressed in his finest, with meticulously trimmed beard, he set the controls for the sun & cancelled all command codes, locking himself out of the computer

No one would catch this foulness from him

"WAIT" said a voice in his head, "We mean you no harm, we are in your blood"

@cattailnu
What had once begun as a religious quest to find the Holy Grail for his king and country swiftly morphed into something darker - something evil. It ate at his soul, causing his desire for the relic to skew his vision, turning his into an obsession that eventually stole his very identity, leaving nothing but a monster in its wake.

@cattailnu It was just before dawn that I went into the old, ruined hall. For so long I had moved from doorway to doorway, or from car park to ruin, in search of some place to sleep. I had been lucky to find this old, derelict house. Or so I thought.

I just could not sleep that night. The building seemed to be moving in the throws of some agonising death. Then a noise, from that hall. I expected to find some other squatter, looking for a roof.

In the darkness, I could make out nothing. The sound seemed strangely fragile. "Who's there?" I called.

Then the sunrise, illuminating a window I had not seen before. A curious, stained glass window, in a wall I could have sworn was solid. And, as the light grew stronger, the man outlined in the glass seemed to become almost three dimensional. "That's quite a work of art," I whispered.

"Yes, I am," the cold, brittle voice answered, as the head moved and gazed at me with those clear, glassy eyes.

@cattailnu The painting of Capsicum Dirigible had hung on the wall of her father’s mansion for as long as she could remember. As a child, she’d been attracted by the colours. As a teen, by his chiselled jaw and cool blue eyes. Now, as an adult, it was the story of the Last Great Buccaneer that captured her attention.

Her research had revealed that most of the myth surrounding her great uncle wasn’t true. But at its heart, where the stories became less legendary and more mundane, there sat a kernel of truth about a man named Garth and his ship, the Febrile Dance. A ship that had sailed the solar winds to Arethon and returned with a secret; a darkness buried deep in fantastical stories of black holes and aliens.

Today, as she stared at the painting one last time, she finally understood why great uncle Garth had cultivated the myth. The alternative - the truth - would break the world.