Is that her bike?

In one sentence is the spark of a story. Ignite. 

The heading is the one sentence prompt that caught my eye.

Writeworld is a tumblr site that gives both visual and word prompts and I do love prompts. This one made me think of the following, with zero idea of where it goes from here. Lol

*****

 “Is that her bike?” the tall, dark haired boy asked.

“Yeah? Why?” the shorter guy answered.

“Is it meant to have steam coming out of it?”

The shorter guy rolled his eyes. “Her father is a nutcase; he made it.”

“Yeah… but… steam?” He looked concerned for her. “What if she burnt herself?”

His friend frowned at him. “Why do you care?”

“Ah,” he blustered, “It looks dangerous… that’s all…”

“Uh, huh.” The shorter boy studied his friend. His eyes narrowed and he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe that his friend was even looking at that girl. “Nutcases,” he repeated. “He blew up the back shed last month. You didn’t hear that enormous explosion?”

“Was that what that was?”

“Yep. Very lucky that no one was hurt or-”

“It was a controlled explosion,” the girl interrupted.

“Yeah, right,” the doubter sneered.

“And I do burn myself occasionally, but not so much lately,” the girl said. She held her hand out to the tall boy to shake.

He took it, but looked confused that she had done something so distinctly masculine.

“Eugenia Weathercroft,” she said as if it ought to mean something to him.

“Hello,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow.

He seemed to have forgotten his own name. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Daniel.”

They were still holding hands. She shook his firmly and then let go. She ignored the other male.

She put on a leather skull cap over her unfashionably short hair and started to tie the strap under her chin. The steam powered bicycle puffed away quietly. She winked at him before she lowered large, glass goggles over her eyes, clambered onto the seat, put her feet on the pedals, and released a gear and the bike moved away with a lot of steam emissions and hissing noises.

She waved, once it had got going properly.

He stood there and watched her go. “What an extraordinary girl,” he commented.

~~~~

© AM Gray 2013