Coupla notes:
1) I set up the challenge, I wrote this text, hence this text is excluded from competing in the challenge. It’s included here to help kickstart the event.
2) Oman is an absolute monarchy near the United Arab Emirates with a really interesting history, king and an unusually ‘western’ political and educational system for the region – with universal sufferage. 20% of all meteorite finds come from Oman (hint hint).
3) Floasa is fictitious, but Stroma is a real island in the Pentland Firth, the cause of many a shipwreck (thus bread and butter for many wreckers, hint) and now home to an automated lighthouse. Read Stroma for Floasa but with four inhabitants. Again, wiki it. If you like, drop Floasa entirely and just set the story on Stroma. I would, in retrospect.
4) Broke my ‘implied, not overt’ rule on the end paragraph, but it could just be a rust/fungus buildup with straw or a mysterious string.
Sequel, prequel, reference or ignore. Good luck Ficlys! Ficklers. Fickers? …writers!

Bizarre but brimming with detail and possibility. Makes me think of an X-files or Twilight Zone episode…yeah definitely a black and white Twilight Zone episode. Will have to ruminate on this one.

THX summed it up – this piece is FULL of possibilities… A lovely build up, full of little clues and details that may or may not make up the story that will inevitably grow from this fic :) Well done!

On a minor note in reply to your comment…i like to say ficleteers!

Anyway…a brilliant work and brimming with wonderful potential. My word I sound like a property advertiser. Can’t praise this one enough. =D

That’s very kind of you, folks. Curious to see where other people might take this… so I’m heading to THX 0477’s sequel now…! =)