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M Nieto

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Aug, 2020

Stories (10)

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7 Followers

2 Following

10 Stories

194 karma pts

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The (Not Always Good) Foods I Loved in 2020

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #74

It’s been a hell of a year, hasn’t it? Plagues and politics, a landscape so barren that we believed the dolphins had come back to Italy. 2020. A decade from now we’ll look back and think, how did I survive that? Or maybe we’ll be even worse off. I try not to think about it. I’m young. I’m healthy. I follow the mandates, wash my hands, I’ve learned how to cook and bake better than I ever have before, and you know what? I get the hype. There’s something immensely refreshing about making your own food with whatever ingredients you find ...

5 likes

Where the Fire Dies

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #70

When he looked his wife in the face, James wanted nothing more than to settle into her warmth. Her name was Lucille, a name she told him she had adopted shortly before they met. She was dark-haired, brown-skinned, and she had the most beautiful eyes James had ever seen. They were the shade of rain-kissed hickory, so nearly black that he swore the moon reflected off of them, the stars and the planets, too. She was of the Abenaki, she told him, and James told her that he had been born in Ireland, that he had technically been Northern Irish f...

5 likes

A Bite Long Scarred

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #67

There was not one man on his ship that cared for him beyond the heft of his name, the souls of those that had long fled to whatever world waited beyond. The men aboard Honor’s Marrow wore unscarred faces, fat unweathered cheeks and hands that had only just lost their softness. They knew him as Captain Kemp Bonefire, the Owl-Boar, half myth and half bloodlust; he had turned the tides of battle with his torn visage alone, frightening guardsmen so thoroughly that they surrendered their towns for the remaining attachment of their heads. Captai...

9 likes

Mismatched

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #65

He leaned against a crooked, knobby tree, skin so pale that it evoked a modeled sheet. His hair fell over his forehead in dark waves, and from the fork of a particularly stubborn lock peered light brown eyes, veined with black like the rings of an ancient tree.His name was Beckett, and he was twenty-two years old.Her name was Regan Marie, and she had known him since they were five.“Eight years and you’re still late,” Beckett said, lips twisted into a wicked little smirk. “Every Halloween we’re here, every Halloween you show up in a less than...

7 likes

The Thief's Pyre

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #64

When he looked his father in the face, Darragh wanted to disappear. Odhran Lynch was six-foot-two, dark-haired and hazel-eyed, with the broad, muscled frame of a farmer, and though he bore a name that was not Trase, he blended remarkably well. Still, he was not. And still, he pretended. At least his mother dressed it up some, wore the charming determination that came with her name. Aoife Trase - she had not taken her husband’s name - rested a strong hand on her son’s shoulder and shook him once, gently. At only 14, Darragh Trase stood thre...

5 likes

Watchdog of the Orchard

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #63

“How many of these are good?” Rosie asked, standing on her tiptoes to read the topmost row of apple… flavors? Breeds? “Uh,” Max said, bending down to scan the list. There were about twenty different apples, all with their own seasons and “Sweet-Tang Rating,” marked by little pictures and graphs so small that it did not seem possible that the bulk of apple-pickers could read them with any amount of ease. In all, Max knew about five of them. “Honeycrisp is good,” he said, pointing. Rosie’s dark eyes followed his fingertip to the appl...

8 likes

Soleil

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #61

BREAKING: DEPOSED DUFRESNE HEIR SPOTTED IN THE WAKE OF MURDER SCENE. He pinned the newspaper to the concrete ledge with a finely padded knee, a humid summer wind tugging at the headline with a fevered panic Alec Dufresne had not possessed in months. An eight-month-old picture grinned up at him, his clean-shaven face and golden curls greyed by the paper’s composition, bright blue eyes white on the page. His brother stood behind him in a matching suit, beaming like he’d won the lottery. Their faces were so alike that it was a wonder this p...

8 likes

Asylum, the Bloodless City

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #60

A scarf of thick, marble-colored fur tickled the soft part of his neck, where his stubble had not yet grown coarse enough to ward off the biting cold that encased Asylum like a shell. The heat of Naoki’s drink sank through the fur-lined skin of his clawed glove and went down like liquid fire. He knew better than to complain in this place. It was not Oasis with its unending heat wave, nor Harbor with its onslaught of storms; Asylum had its own charm. When snowflakes weren’t raking flesh from raw pink cheeks - and one wore their snow goggles...

11 likes

A Fox in the House of Badgers

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #59

Richard claimed that the guardians of the Trase manor were wolves, sharp-muzzled with cold blank eyes and teeth like whetted blades, they stood ten feet up on two pillars that framed the gate. Rust ate at the metal, but the thickets of iron gorse remained, swiss-holed but sturdy.Alicia did not want to touch it. Those wolves towered over her like massive birds, and where the rain wore their faces scared her the most. She could not place why.“You’ve been here once, aye?” Richard asked. Two massive hands curled around a bar on either gate door ...

11 likes

The False Face of God

M Nieto

Submitted to Contest #58

They were the first to arrive on Sunday morning, the shadows they cast darkening the temple doors as Gus opened them. He blinked, surprised, and the taller of the two men waved as if he and Gus had met. He stared and could not determine who they were. This must have been a friendliness directed toward his profession, not his face. Sunlight bleached the even square of his clerical collar bone-white. The taller man pointed at it. “You’re the priest around here, then?” He asked in a faintly southern accent. Gus nodded. “I am. Are you se...

6 likes