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Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2022
Submitted to Contest #300
The sky was gray and overcast. The ground below was also gray. Little dust clouds puffed up when people stepped down. Many people in town wore masks or goggles while outside to prevent too much from getting in their face. Today, little gray flakes were also drifting down.Some people said the flakes were ash, but Tama wasn’t sure of that. What could possibly be burning so much that ash came down from the sky? Multiple times?People said the reason the land was so barren was because of the Omens of Strive, demons come to the mortal realm to mak...
Submitted to Contest #290
Hettie walked through a field of short grass. Enough trees were around that the sun was just warm, not uncomfortable beating heat. She could hear a river at the bottom of the hill. Her dress blew in the wind, but her leggings and boots kept thorny plants and bugs away.In one hand was a small basket of seeds. A random mix of mostly wild flowers, if the leader of this volunteer group was right. Some of them would be considered weeds to most people. She’d reach in with her other hand sometimes, and sprinkle seeds across the hill.She knew this w...
Submitted to Contest #287
Decay let Secca prepare the tea. He put some dried leaves, and a few flower petals, into a strainer. He put the strainer into their teapot, which already had hot water, and let it steep.It wasn’t like Decay literally couldn’t prepare tea. He was sitting at his desk, and neither the desk nor chair were rotting. Nor was the floor, which was good, seeing as they were on the second floor of the building. If he touched the tea leaves, they wouldn’t literally crumble into dust. He had better control than that. But cooking, preparing food or drink,...
Submitted to Contest #281
Decay stood at the front of an empty classroom, staring at the empty desks, and the door that stood just ajar. It was too dark in the hallway beyond to see out there.He was allowed to decorate the classroom as he wanted, and he had a feeling he'd do that eventually. This skeleton of a room wasn't interesting. But he hadn't yet. Didn't know what he'd want.It didn't stay empty for long. Two students filed in, one looking at him with skepticism, the other looking at her shoes and fumbling with her books.Secca? Any advice? Decay asked, internall...
Submitted to Contest #275
The first thing Ray was aware of was darkness. That might not sound like much, but he hadn't been aware of anything a moment ago. So it was certainly a change. The next thing he was aware of was that he was lying on stone, with stone walls on either side of him. He'd bump into them if he tried to move even a little. And there was a stone wall above him.That explained the darkness, but he wasn't thinking hard about that right now. He wasn't thinking about much of anything, except that he was trapped in a tiny dark space, and he needed to get ...
Submitted to Contest #272
Corry put on a bed sheet. It fell through him to a crumpled heap on the floor the first time or two. He concentrated, and got it to stay though. He dropped lower, feet on the ground, so the sheet was on the floor. No floating here. Then he stepped outside.It was Halloween. The sun was setting. Pumpkins and porch lights were lit. Children ran around in costumes, sometimes with parents, sometimes in groups. They went from house to house, knocking and asking for candy.Some of the houses were lackluster. They gave candy if someone knocked, but o...
Submitted to Contest #264
Bethel sat, hands clasped on their round dinning table. A cooling cup of coffee sat beside her. She'd taken maybe one sip.Her oldest child, Vaa, sat asleep in a chair beside her. Not that oldest was saying much. She was three.Outside, her husband Nev was marching their younger child around the garden, trying to calm him down. He would normally be working by now, but he'd understandably been given the day off. If it was a normal day, Bethel would also have taken both kids to the nearby park. There was an area for very young children like her ...
Submitted to Contest #258
"I wish you would leave me alone!"The shadow demon grinned at him, from where it took vague shape in the street curb's shadow.Gray sat in the stairwell of an apartment building he didn't live in. There were large windows in the stairwell, and he could take pictures of the hummingbirds outside at the feeder from there.A rare one came by, and Gray put the camera out the window to get a good picture.Gray's eyes widened, his vision going dark around the edge, only focused on the shadow demon in front of him."Is that so?" the shadow demon chuckle...
Submitted to Contest #257
"The name I have here is Aris.""That clearly says Avic, you hear? Av-ik.""You could be lying about that.""And so could she."Like the rest of the small crowd, Mercia was drawn to the front steps of the mage school because she heard a commotion. Those were the first words she'd actually managed to make out, between the headmaster and a boy, about her age. Another professor was holding his elbow, but he pulled away with the slightest tug, and straightened his shirt."Did you look into your students at all before letting them into a dorm? Or did ...
Submitted to Contest #253
Mortals called me Sands of Time. A few called me Tick-Tock. For the best, really. I wasn't a mortal being. I didn't have a mortal name. Best to stick with the monikers.I didn't give mortals much thought. People had compared a deity's relation to mortals with a mortal's relation to ants. Mortals liked to counter that if ants could talk, of course they'd pay more attention to them. But I didn't think they'd thought that all the way through.Ants lived, what? Two years? Three?That meant, to oversimplify, every two or three years there was a tota...
Submitted to Contest #252
Someone was following them. May hadn't noticed. But she was eight. And while their parents had never been specific, they made sure Paul knew her mind didn't work the same way as theirs. She was "special." Not that he noticed often. That was just how eight year olds were, yeah?The point was, May didn't pick up on it. Paul had.At first, he hadn't. The city, Aquarin, was apparently the capital of this world. There were a lot of people, and it wouldn't be weird if someone was on the same street, or even took the same turn.But Paul didn't have an...
Submitted to Contest #251
I loved to read. Still do, I suppose. Far more than I did growing up. Maybe it’s because I’m sick now, my body failing me in a way it didn’t when I was a child. I’m often tired. It can feel like I’m in pain half the day.Of course, I still do things. Like is short enough without taking out a large chunk for pain, and I think I’m the type to go a little crazy if I’m in the same room all the time. I don’t envy the people who genuinely have no choice.I’m an Investigator. At the time, I was helping a farmer find out what happened to his sheep.But...
Submitted to Contest #246
Pryce put his hands on his hips. "You want me to what?""I think I was pretty clear.""Do you know who I am?""Of course I do. That's why you can swing with me."Presumably she meant she was safe, that she wouldn't make assumptions.When he didn't respond, she sighed. He couldn't read her expression for more. She had an invisible face. And invisible everything else. He could only look at her clothes to see her.Right now, he saw the heels of her shoes dig into the ground, bringing her swing to a halt. In fairness, she hadn't been swinging very har...
Submitted to Contest #242
It was a cloudy, gray day out. Not even a rainy one, which Pryce would’ve preferred. It was just gloom.But it did let him move around during the day without an umbrella. And the art museum was free for twelve and under. He wasn’t going to lower himself to acting, but he could put on some sunglasses, to hide his red eyes, and see where that took him.It worked.Pryce got his free admission, and went to the area for optical illusions. There were things like pictures that could be cups or faces, and the image of squares that supposedly had multip...
Submitted to Contest #234
Misco grimaced. He could hear music from the other corner of the tavern, the musician strumming away on some kind of string instrument. And that was impressive, because the voices between his spot and the corner should’ve muffled that. The musician seemed to be using some kind of magic to make sure the music could be heard from everywhere. Unfortunately, he’d been very sloppy, and created a feedback loop. The music was loud, so people talked louder to hear each other, and the music ramped up further. And . . . it shouldn’t have been that bad...
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