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Jethro Pili

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2021

Stories (178)

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30 Followers

41 Following

178 Stories

305 karma pts

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The Longest Watch

Jethro Pili

The clock on the wall read 11:42 p.m.Most people Noah Klein knew were either asleep or winding down with a book or Netflix. His apartment lights blazed like a ship lit for battle.On the kitchen table:A sprawling hex-map of the world’s oceans in 1799, printed in high-res and laminated like a museum artifact.Laptops open to spreadsheets with labels like Quarterly Trade Revenues – East Indies.Graph paper crammed with doodles of cannons, flags, and figureheads.Dice—lots of dice—ranging from tiny four-siders to golf-ball-sized twenty-siders.And a...

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O Canada

Jethro Pili

1 — The FallDr. Emily Hayes had been in the cardiac wing for nearly twelve hours when it happened.A code blue on a patient she knew by name, by history, by every lab result for the past six months. She was at his bedside in seconds, barking orders, running compressions, calling for epi. She thought she’d brought him back—until the monitors told her otherwise.The autopsy called it a pulmonary embolism. The family called it negligence. The hospital called it a “failure of protocol.” The press dubbed it The Hayes Disaster and ran her photo—hair...

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Sun & Moon

Jethro Pili

It had been a thousand years since they’d spoken.Not since Delphi had fallen into ruin. Not since temples had become tourist traps and worshippers became scholars. Not since the twilight years of gods who no longer walked on marble but cement, whose names were now brand labels, tattoos, or hashtags.And not since Orion died.Artemis watched her twin through the scope of a high-powered telescope stationed on the edge of a Vermont forest. She didn’t need it. Her divine eyes could pick him out even in the shimmering crowd of Tokyo, if she wished....

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It Was The Hottest Day of the Year

Jethro Pili

It was the hottest day of the year...A day so hot that everyone wanted to be inside—inside a freezer, ideally. The kind of heat that made air conditioners groan like wounded beasts and dogs stretch themselves flat on cool tiles, tongues lolling. The kind of day when your sweat evaporated before it could finish falling off your body, like the sun was too impatient to wait for gravity to do its thing.It was so hot that you could cook breakfast on the hood of your car and make lunch on the sidewalk. Eggs, bacon, maybe some blistered tomatoes. T...

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Horacescopes: The Sniff of Destiny

Jethro Pili

Let me tell you something about dogs. People think we’re all tennis balls and tail wags, but there’s more. Some of us are watchers. Some are guardians. And me? I’m a reader. A seer. A sniffer of secrets.Name’s Horace. I’m a Husky. Yes, I’m blind. No, it’s not sad. It’s liberating. You try living without distractions like squirrels or whatever passes by the window. I see in scents, emotions, memories baked into the cracks of the sidewalk. I know when rain is coming by the way the wind tastes. And I know when something bigger is shifting in th...

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Summer Stars Over Donegal

Jethro Pili

The scent of turf smoke clung to the air like a lullaby, drifting in through the half-open window of the small room in Nana Sorcha’s house. The countryside outside was draped in a thick, pearly fog, the kind that seemed to hum with ancient lullabies, but inside the cramped bedroom, three boys shared a room far too small for so many limbs, dreams, and late-night whispers.One of them, the youngest by a few months, tossed and turned in his cot, the sheets twisted at his ankles.“I can’t sleep,” Sam Ihle muttered into the darkness.A soft grunt ca...

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Hot Off The Press

Jethro Pili

It was the kind of heat that melted time.Not the romantic kind of summer warmth that encouraged rooftop sunsets and lemon sorbet, but a suffocating, unforgiving blaze that turned Seabrook’s pavement into stovetops and crosswalks into griddles. The Viking News office—an aging three-story building that hadn’t seen a proper HVAC update since Clinton was president—felt like the inside of a dying toaster.At 9:04 AM, the staff of the Viking News was already sweating. Even the walls looked tired.The air vents groaned, coughed like a dying smoker, a...

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The Feather & the Heart

Jethro Pili

Hour 12: The Final Day BeginsThe room smelled faintly of lavender and old books. Outside, the sun crept across the windowsill of the hospice, illuminating the faint motes of dust like drifting stars. Marwa Abbas Sinclair, eighty years old to the day, lay curled like a comma beneath a crocheted quilt. She’d always hated that quilt—it was itchy and mismatched—but now it was the last gift her granddaughter had made her, so she bore it.The nurse had told her gently the night before: “A few more hours, Miss Marwa. The body's slowing down. If ther...

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The Uber Driver

Jethro Pili

The old man sat alone on the green slatted bench just outside Roosevelt Park, the rustle of summer leaves whispering overhead like the last murmurs of forgotten conversations. A pigeon eyed him curiously from a trash bin while a toddler shrieked gleefully in the distance, chasing bubbles blown by a weary mother with earbuds in.He checked his phone again. 6:42 PM. The app said the driver’s name was “Heron.” Five stars. A silver Toyota Camry. He looked up as a breeze teased the hem of his cardigan, the one Margaret had bought him for Christmas...

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The Long Way Down

Jethro Pili

It was nearly closing time at the airport. The terminals buzzed with the dull hum of fluorescent lights, the occasional rolling suitcase, and the gentle snore of a weary traveler curled across vinyl seats. At Gate 13B, the Cinnabon stand was still open, miraculously, and a man in a slate-gray hoodie leaned casually against the counter, his golden sunglasses pushed up onto his head like a halo made of Ray-Bans.“Extra frosting,” he said, flashing the cashier a grin. “My companion takes his pastries very seriously.”The cashier blinked at the ma...

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Seeds And Sunbeams

Jethro Pili

The brass bell over the door tinkled softly as Eli turned the sign to Closed. It had been a slow Thursday at Petals on the Wind, but that was fine with him—he preferred quiet nights. He locked the door, flipped off the display lights, and inhaled the sweet, damp smell of soil, blossoms, and seed packets.Even though his dad owned the shop, Eli always felt it was partly his. He’d grown up here among the bags of compost, hyacinth bulbs, and terra cotta pots, memorizing the Latin names of flowers before he could spell his own.Diospyros lotus, he...

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Talos 5000

Jethro Pili

The workshop smelled of ozone and oil. Sparks leapt like tiny meteors from the welders, and soft, deliberate whirs filled the air, punctuated by hammer strikes as technicians adjusted limbs and plates.At the center of it all stood Talos 5000.He — if “he” could be used — was the latest model out of HephaestusTech’s Olympian Line. Taller than a man, forged of burnished bronze alloy with inlaid circuits that glowed faintly under the surface, Talos 5000 was an artificial sentinel designed for security, rescue, construction, and (if the brochure ...

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The Lamb’s Lost Angel

Jethro Pili

I. The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly Reilly Chong was the kind of boy whose teachers used words like tenderhearted and gentle soul. His mother would catch him setting out little bowls of sugar water for bees on the back porch, or scooping worms off hot sidewalks after a rainstorm. At fifteen, his biggest concerns were passing algebra and saving up for a secondhand guitar.Then the Lambs of Jesus came to town.They called themselves a ministry. They wore white robes with a lamb stitched over the heart and wandered through neighborhoods handing...

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Step Nine: The Bridge

Jethro Pili

Brandon Cole stared at the name on the folded piece of paper in his hand as though it might catch fire if he opened it again.Dad.Two weeks ago his sponsor, Jorge, had said: “You’re ready. You’ve done the writing, you’ve done the praying. Now go make it right. Not perfect. Not pretty. Just right.”Brandon didn’t feel ready. His palms still sweat through his sleeves at meetings. He still dreamed about bourbon at least twice a week, sometimes waking with the taste of it in his throat like a ghost. But he was on Step Nine now, and if he kept putt...

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I Regret…

Jethro Pili

The café smelled like roasted almonds and honey, and the late afternoon sun cut through its broad windows like a golden blade. In the back corner, away from mortal ears and eyes, sat two women who didn’t quite belong in any age but had learned to wear whatever century they walked through like a silk scarf.Aphrodite stirred her cappuccino with a lazy finger, watching the foam swirl, her long lashes lowered. Across from her, Athena sat upright, all crisp lines and calm precision, wearing a dove-grey pantsuit, a small notebook resting beside he...

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