Girl Superhero Project Prompt #1 -- Photosynthesis

 Hey, all!

My women writers group -- excuse me, that is my KICK ASS women writers group -- is doing a writing challenge. Thirty days, thirty prompts, to create new superheros. Female superheros, dammit! Ones that kick ASS! Or villains. Villains kick ass, too. 

Here's prompt No. 1. It's short, but that's how much time I had yesterday. 

Enjoy,

LLH

Girl Superhero Project Prompt #1
Superpower: Photosynthesis
Create a female super hero or super villain around idea of photosynthesis

The Leaf

By  L.L. Heberlein

Without realizing what she was doing, Melanie reached out and grabbed the sunlight. 

She’d never seen it done before. No one she’d ever known had grabbed a beam of light like this. But there she was, holding it in her hand, wrapping her fingers around the tiniest of particles—or were they waves—and bending the beam of light, not to shine out, but to flow into her. She wrapped all that light energy around herself and felt her body change. 

Her skin, always olive, turned shiny and iridescent before settling into a deeper, richer shade. 

Something a little greener. Then the blast hit her, like trying to drink from a fire hose of pure heat and light. She harnessed the light of the sun and transformed it into something she could use. She changed it into power. No. Super power. 

She drew the bright light into each tiny cell, raised her dark green arms above her head, and leaped into the sky. Like a leaf on the wind. Like a solar-powered superhero. 

She was twelve when she first learned what she could do. 

It scared her at first. Change is scary. But transforming light energy into a power she could control was second nature to her now. So was waiting. She sat in her windowless office, adjusting the little UV light on her desk to reflect off her face. It always helped to power up before answering a call. She had to be ready.

 And then she heard it. A cry for help resonated through the building, vibrating up from the floor under her feet. Using the light energy that she’d converted into chemical energy and stored in her cells, she became The Leaf. 

“The Earth needs me,” she whispered.