"Petrichor's Embrace"
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Soft moss gave beneath her feet as Mara wandered beneath the dark boughs of the ancient wood. The forest was velvet and hush, laced with ferns and dappled in fading sunlight. She paused to listen to the drip of dew and the faint call of birds, breathing slow and steady.
A ripple ran through the undergrowth. Birds flurried into sudden silence.
Mara turned, curiosity alighting in her eyes. There, lumbering out of a stand of brambles, came a beast the likes of which dwelt only in whispered tales: the catoblepas. Its matted hide was streaked with mud; its head hung low as if too heavy for its own crooked neck, red-rimmed eyes shrouded by tangled hair.
For a heartbeat, Mara stood transfixed, her mind racing with the memory of old warnings.
The catoblepas exhaled with a wet, hollow sigh. From its nostrils spilled a wispy miasma, fetid and shimmering in the patchwork light. It drifted towards Mara, twisting in unseen currents. She opened her mouth—perhaps to scream, to plead, to pray—but the breath swirled around her, seeping into her lungs, her skin, her very marrow.
Slow horror dawned as Mara felt her limbs stiffen, harden, lock in place. Cool stone spread from her toes upward, freezing blood and thought alike. Her eyes caught the glimmer of dust, the green gold of moss—each color sharpened and then stilled, forever preserved.
The forest grew quiet, save for the silent, stone statue of a girl—her last moment wandering now etched in gray, and the echo of the catoblepas’s heavy breath fading into gloom.
This story was generated by user anonymus775 with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.
Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.
AI Prompts
Prompt: A girl wanders in the forest then suddenly a catobelpas crosses her path and uses it's petrifying breath to petrify her.
Response: Soft moss gave beneath her feet as Mara wandered beneath the dark boughs of the ancient wood. The forest was velvet and hush, laced with ferns and dappled in fading sunlight. She paused to listen to the drip of dew and the faint call of birds, breathing slow and steady. A ripple ran through the undergrowth. Birds flurried into sudden silence. Mara turned, curiosity alighting in her eyes. There, lumbering out of a stand of brambles, came a beast the likes of which dwelt only in whispered tales: the catoblepas. Its matted hide was streaked with mud; its head hung low as if too heavy for its own crooked neck, red-rimmed eyes shrouded by tangled hair. For a heartbeat, Mara stood transfixed, her mind racing with the memory of old warnings. The catoblepas exhaled with a wet, hollow sigh. From its nostrils spilled a wispy miasma, fetid and shimmering in the patchwork light. It drifted towards Mara, twisting in unseen currents. She opened her mouth—perhaps to scream, to plead, to pray—but the breath swirled around her, seeping into her lungs, her skin, her very marrow. Slow horror dawned as Mara felt her limbs stiffen, harden, lock in place. Cool stone spread from her toes upward, freezing blood and thought alike. Her eyes caught the glimmer of dust, the green gold of moss—each color sharpened and then stilled, forever preserved. The forest grew quiet, save for the silent, stone statue of a girl—her last moment wandering now etched in gray, and the echo of the catoblepas’s heavy breath fading into gloom.
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