An object lesson in point of view:
***First Try***
“Look, Voan! It’s a gap! I wonder where it goes.”
Iffith peered intently at a patch of air, but it looked just like any other to Voan.
“It’s not the season for gaps,” he said. “You’re imagining things.”
Iffith shot him a disbelieving glance before looking back at the same spot. “You can’t see this?” he asked.
Voan rolled his eyes. “No, and neither can you. Now come on, or we’ll be late for Ferr Nolan’s lesson.”
“Grandfather did say that some people couldn’t see them.” Iffith smirked. “Force-blind.”
Voan bristled at the insult, especially since Ferr Nolan had just confirmed the diagnosis two nights ago. Not that Iffith should know about that. “Fine,” he snapped. “If you’re so talented, then show me it’s there. Stick your hand through. Maybe something will do me a favor and bite it off.”
Iffith grinned. “I’ll do you one better. I’ll stick all of me through!” He reached out a hand and slid it down through the air as if parting a curtain. Then, eyes locked on Voan’s, he took a step and disappeared.
“Dung…” Voan winced at the thought of how insufferable Iffith was going to be from now on. He put on a bored look, so that Iffith at least wouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing him surprised or impressed once he came back.
A minute passed, and then another, and the careful look of boredom shifted into a more honest expression of annoyance.
“Hurry it up, Iffith!” He had no idea if one could hear voices across a gap, but they really were going to be late if he didn’t come back soon. “Iffith!”
He gulped, and took a few steps until he stood in the scuffmarks left by Iffith’s feet. Then he felt around in the air, trying to feel the edge of the gap, even if he couldn’t see it.
It was no use though. The gap, and Iffith, were gone.
.
***Alternate POV***
“Look, Voan! It’s a gap! I wonder where it goes.” Iffith peered intently at the strange twist of energy hanging in the air just off the path.
“It’s not the season for gaps,” Voan said, walking past. “You’re imagining things.”
Iffith shot him a disbelieving glance before looking back at the same spot. “You can’t see this?” he asked.
Voan stopped and rolled his eyes in that superior way Iffith hated. “No, and neither can you. Now come on, or we’ll be late for Ferr Nolan’s lesson.”
Iffith stared at him a moment, then realized what that had to mean. No more superior attitude for Voan. “Grandfather did say that some people couldn’t see them,” he said, smirking. “Force-blind.”
The other youngling bristled at the insult, and Iffith knew he had struck a nerve. “Fine,” Voan snapped. “If you’re so talented, then show me it’s there. Stick your hand through. Maybe something will do me a favor and bite it off.”
Iffith grinned. “I’ll do you one better. I’ll stick all of me through!” He reached out a hand and slid it down through the air as if parting a curtain. Then, eyes locked on Voan’s, he stepped sideways into another world.
.
Thoughts…
Depending on whose point of view I choose, and whose part of the story I follow, I can wind up with two very different stories!
Decisions, decisions. 
Scintilla – Midwinter
scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.
Madlin sat at the breakroom table, staring morosely into her coffee cup.
“What’s wrong?” Kurt asked, dropping his book on the table next to her while he retrieved his lunch from the fridge.
She sighed heavily. “It’s gone.”
“What is?” He struggled a moment before the box of his frozen meal gave way. After poking a few holes in the plastic and popping it in the microwave, he turned back and frowned at her. “Seriously, Madlin. What’s wrong?”
“I’ve lost my soul.”
Kurts eyebrows shot up, but he suppressed the laugh that lurked in the back of his throat. She was obviously taking this seriously. The least he could do was respect her feelings. “Ok,” he said after a moment. “Well, where did you see it last?”
She glared, and he winced. So much for respecting her feelings. Still, at least he had managed not to laugh. He turned to watch his meal turning in the microwave, keeping his mouth shut.
“I had it yesterday,” Madlin offered just before the microwave beeped. “But when I woke up this morning, it was gone.”
Kurt retrieved his meal – something with pasta and red sauce, though he couldn’t remember what the box had called it – and sat down next to her. “How can you tell?” he asked, taking a bite.
She glared at him again, but the glare faded when she saw he was being serious rather than sarcastic. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just feel so empty. Like I’m just a husk, you know?”
He really didn’t, but he nodded anyway. “You’re lucky,” he said, giving in to another joke. “I don’t think I ever had one to begin with. My parents weren’t very religious, you know.”
“This isn’t anything to do with religion,” she said, sighing deeply.
“Yo.” Vick waved absently at them as he made a beeline from the door to the fridge.
Kurt patted Madlin’s hand and picked up his book. They’d have to wait til later to talk more, now that the rest of the team were trickling in.
She sighed, and went back to staring at her coffee.
Scintilla – Hunted
Anneka woke with a start from dreams of blood and terror to lie panting in the darkness, listening to the gentle sound of a child snoring.
She tried to take comfort in the closeness of other living people, but the anxiety from her dream grew instead of fading. Suddenly the makeshift shelter seemed too small, the air she shared with a dozen other sleepers too sparse. She took a deep breath and held it while she struggled to get outside without waking any of the others.
Outside, she sat gasping at the cool night air and trying not to let herself hyperventilate or cry out. Eyes wide to catch the faint moonlight, she wished for morning, or a flashlight, or even the double-edged sword of firelight.
“What’s up?”
The soft voice made her jump, but also told her where to look to catch the glint of moonlight off the sentry’s night vision goggles.
“N-n-n-nightmare,” she managed, hugging herself tight.
He grunted acknowledgement. They all had reason enough for nightmares. “Just make sure you keep it quiet,” he said. “We don’t…”
He let out a sudden, startled groan, and then his body flew apart in front of her, and the high, ululating screech of the invaders echoed through the night.
Scintilla – Lost
Happy Thanksgiving!
scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.
The kitchens of the Diamont Building were a frustrating maze of automated food-preppers, serving counters, and narrow, staff-clogged pathways in between. Vervain had finally given up on finding her way out, and was now simply looking for an empty enough serving counter that jumping it and departing into the dining areas wouldn’t attract too much notice.
“I know you have DEF.”
The voice of her enemy made her spin to face him, even as his strange words short-circuited her normal panic reaction. “You think I’m deaf?” she repeated, confused.
Dammon Diamont looked heavenward as if for patience, while the people around them swiftly left the area, giving their boss’s boss’s boss privacy.
“Diamont Echo Field,” he explained, clearly impatient. “A child of five could navigate from the highest observation room to the lowest dungeon without a wrong turn. I know you have it. I made sure you knew you had it at your fraudulent entry this morning.”
“That wasn’t fraudulent! You brought me here!”
He ignored her protest. “So why are you wandering around my kitchens instead of sneaking back to my office while I was distracted and stealing back your sword?”
Vervain winced. “I’m kind of bad with directions,” she started to explain, weakly, when her brain caught up with her ears. “Wait… you wanted me to steal the sword back?”
The counter separating them from the dining area retracted, leaving her gaping at how easily she could have left if only she’d known the trick of it. Dammon grabbed her arm just above the elbow and pulled her out across the dining area, towards the wide windows.
“I wanted you to be caught stealing my property and shot dead by the police, leaving me the blameless victim until I can put my plan into motion. Now, though, I’m going to have to settle for a dramatic fight to your death on the promenade.”
He thrust her out a door onto a broad walkway that seemed vanishingly narrow without the usual safety rail at its edge. The wind whipped her hair across her face, carrying with it the faint wail of a siren from far below.
“You won’t get away with this,” Dammon shouted as he followed her, swinging a roundhouse punch at her head.
She ducked easily and retreated. “Why are you doing this?” she shouted over the wind.
He dodged, flattening himself against the wall instead of responding.
Confused, she did the same just in time for a laser blast to rip through the space she had been standing a moment before.
“You’re insane,” she said, though she didn’t bother shouting this time. Instead, she pushed off from the wall behind her into a short dash and then dove off the edge, closing her eyes and hoping that her grandmother’s stories had been right.
Worldbuilding – The Mistlands, part 2
scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.
(Continued from here.)
The native organisms, the few that had survived the cometary bombardment, were reforming their world into a new configuration. Only extremophiles could have survived the terraforming, but with all of their natural competition wiped away, they had as good a chance at filling all the new ecological niches as the terrestrial microorganisms that the humans introduced.
Of course, the human-introduced life-forms had the advantage of being specifically selected for their purposes, based on both Earth’s history and previous experience terraforming barren planets. At first, they proliferated so well that no one realized any of the native microbes had survived. It was assumed that if any had, they would be out-competed by the introduced biome.
Instead, they adapted.
The mists are the metabolic byproduct of a composite organism. Much like terrestrial lichen, which is the result of a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae, the mistmounds are made up of terrestrial fungi and a variety of different native microbes.
At first glance, they look like simple dirt or rocks, and a neophyte colony may be as small as a grain of sand. Some types spread out in a thin layer over any surface they can get a foothold on, while others pile up on themselves in complex structures resembling coral reefs.
The chemicals they exude are barely noticeable at small concentrations, but as a population grows, its exudates reach a threshold where they combine with atmospheric water to form vast banks of corrosive mist.
A thick mist can burn through unprotected human skin in less than an hour, and it takes only seconds for it to do permanent damage to unprotected eyes and mucous membranes.
A human, or indeed any complex Earth organism, who is caught out in such a thick mist without breathing apparatus will die, in agony, within minutes, drowning in their own blood as the fine structures of their lungs dissolve.
Fortunately, heavy mists are rare, and require both an impossible-to-miss population of mistmounds and the right atmospheric conditions. Light mists, while painful, are survivable, especially if one can get into shelter or protective gear quickly.
Worldbuilding – The Mistlands
scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.
Other worlds have just as much environmental variation as Earth, with their own flora, fauna, and everything in between. Some environments are amenable to terraforming, where targeted bombardment with comets and asteroids brings water and amino acids to the surface of an otherwise barren world. In those cases, humans can then bring in their own micro-organisms to tailor the atmosphere, and their own plants and animals to support the human population.
Other worlds, though, already have their own eco-systems in place. In those cases, humanity has learned through painful experience that it is best to try to work within the pre-existing ecology to carve out a niche for terrestrial life. Terraforming attempts on planets that already support life never wipe the slate clean. They only make the end result highly unpredictable, and dangerous.
The Mistlands are the result of one of those early, ill-fated attempts at terraforming a world that already knew life. At first, all seemed well, and the colonists moved in. Then, the mists came, and all the organisms the humans had released into the wild either died, or changed.
Scintilla – Subspace
scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.
Worldbuilding notes:
Travel by subspace is both incredibly safe and incredibly dangerous at the same time.
Incredibly safe because the bubble generator creates a bubble of realspace around each transport before it dives, and no known weapon or tool or even signal can penetrate that bubble. More importantly, every system involved is designed with times-ten redundancy, and transports automatically transfer back into realspace at the first sign of trouble.
No one is foolish enough to bypass the safety systems and continue travel on their backups. Stopping to fix even the most minor problem is standard, and all it takes to silence objections is the images of what happens to the human body when a bubble fails in subspace.
Subspace travel is so fast because you’re popping out of our universe into another one, one where Alpha Centauri is a five-minute jaunt from Earth. One with different physical constants and laws.
It’s that last bit that’s the problem. Not even the hardiest microorganism can survive the transition to a world where the forces that hold their very atoms together are different. Just imagine what it does to a delicately balanced system like the human body.
Even the slightest flicker in the bubble field, and everyone on board dies horribly.
No one knows what happens to their souls. No one wants to know.
Scintilla – Eyes
scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.
They were always watching her. She didn’t know who “they” were, since they borrowed other creatures’ eyes with impunity. If she spoke to someone staring at her, asked what they were looking at, either politely or with the real hostility that she felt, they acted like she was crazy.
Like she was the frightening one.
No one ever knew that their eyes had been borrowed.
Scintilla – Eyepatch
scintilla [sin-til-uh] (noun) 1. A spark; a flash; a trace amount. 2. A small piece of writing intended to inspire wonder, curiosity, or amusement.
***
The sky was green and the city was gray, and the people walking around her looked like normal people, except for the fact that none of them looked at her. She knew that if she stayed in one place long enough, some of them would even walk through her, completely unaware of her existence.
Maigred closed her eyes and shifted her eyepatch, then opened them again, looking out on the world with her left eye instead of her right.
Blue sky, gray city, normal people walking around her, some of them giving her irritated looks for standing stock still in the middle of a busy sidewalk.
Weekly test over, she continued on her way to work.
Silliness
Dickery, dickery dock, the mouse ran up the clock…
Then the clock struck twelve, the stars aligned, and the Great Old One shed its mouse-like form to ascend into the aether to do battle with its brethren.
***
Alas, this is all the writing I’ve done this morning, since I slept too late to get in my normal hour. I felt so much better the second time I got up that it was worth it, though!
And hopefully I’ll get in some writing time tonight. 
Happy Friday, everyone!
© 2010 Catherine Wechsler, used with permission.
