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Sjan Evardsson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2019

Stories (261)

Comments

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301 Followers

9 Following

261 Stories

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Damn Wizards

Submitted to Contest #93

The Palace Hotel Grand Ballroom was most decidedly not grand that morning. Morning light spilled through the huge windows that overlooked the bay to cast rays on the detritus of the previous night’s soirée. Overturned tables and chairs, spills and stains on the carpets, half of the draperies ripped from the windows, and above it all, the smell of stale champagne and spilled booze.“You ever notice,” Karl asked, “that the richer the party, the worse the mess?”Sera knew what he was getting at, but she’d let him explain himself, again, in order ...

27 likes

Pair Bonded

Submitted to Contest #92

Curfew had less to do with safety or control of the citizens than an innate fear of the dark. The ruling elite, all grens, instituted the curfew to avoid having to go out in the dark, forcing the working class, including the naturally nocturnal baras, to toil away under the sun. As that sun set, the city was awash in streetlights, floodlights, and the lights from windows where the grens huddled in comfort. Philbert was, to his mind, quite a dashing gren; not too tall, suitably bulky, with iridescent green and gold fur. He cut a handsome fig...

14 likes

Take Me Home

Submitted to Contest #91

Martin was the opposite of every stereotypical thing one might think on first glance. He was not the curious, inventive, clever, gregarious, outgoing gnome that most people expected. He was shy, unimaginative, more at home buried in a book than any social situation, and he was painfully lonely. As much as he desired friends, no one he’d ever met gave him the chance to open up, expecting too much too soon. University was meant to be his chance to make a friend or two. After three years with no success, he decided to learn mixology. At least ...

22 likes

End of an Era

Submitted to Contest #90

It was a warm, bright midnight in December, and time for my shift. The skies on the western horizon were tinged pinkish-orange, as they had been for nearly two months. I had a tall glass of water for breakfast, just like the previous day. Even after being in Antarctica for a year, it still shocked me how clean and pure it tasted. Unlike distilled water, which was flat and tasteless, this was sweet with a hint of minerals. How long can a person last without food, I wondered. A lot longer than they can without water. That was the only thing t...

22 likes

March of the Slabs

Submitted to Contest #89

It started on March 1st. Or rather, it ended on March 1st. The world as she knew it, that is.First, GPS and satellite communications went silent, and contact with the ISS was lost. Within twelve hours, the rain of fire started. Satellites, abandoned boosters, and all the junk humans had polluted Earth’s orbit with began to fall. Most of it burned up in the atmosphere or landed in the sea, but that still left enough to bring devastation to population centers world-wide.For people in remote areas that relied on satellites for communication, th...

13 likes

The Ogre That Loved to Dance

Submitted to Contest #88

Back when the world was young, the morning skies promised adventurers excitement in undiscovered lands. Hilda, a tall, stout woman, dressed in nothing more than a loose tunic and short trousers, was one of those adventurers, having traveled years, far from her home in the north. She hadn’t wanted to be an adventurer at first. Her people kicked her out for her love of dancing, and every other place she visited wanted nothing to do with her. Over the years, though, she had grown to enjoy her adventures. At this time, however, she was tired an...

15 likes

Let Them Play

Submitted to Contest #87

Horace A. Grimwald was, to any casual observer, a serious little man of indeterminate age with comically thick glasses and salt-and-pepper hair. Closer inspection would show that behind his coke-bottle glasses his bright, green eyes were flanked by laugh lines, and the few other wrinkles he had were consistent with someone who smiled a lot more than he seemed to. His employees knew him as a collection of self-contradictions. Horace encouraged his employees to personalize their workspace, but the only decoration on his desk was a hand-carved...

18 likes

Missing Pieces

Submitted to Contest #86

The doctor said I have to go out today. I don’t know why she’s doing this to me. She doesn’t listen when I tell her I’m not ready. It would be better if she’d said I have to go “outside” today, because I’ve been doing my exercises. Yesterday I stood outside the door forever… well, five minutes, but it seemed like forever. She’d show up, wearing her bright colors and cheery smile. I liked that. There wasn’t much about her I didn’t like, even when she was poking around in my head to find my hurts. It’s just that she’d been going too fast for ...

16 likes

Hellhole

Submitted to Contest #85

Mention New Amsterdam, New York and the response is either gushing love or hateful revulsion. When it comes to NANY, there is nothing between the two extremes. Some, however, have learned to embrace both sides. Seth Burdian, NAPD Precinct 47 Captain, was one of those. In elementary school PS 422, he was bullied by the larger students. He was short, even for a gnome, with a “classic” gnome nose, large and straight with wide nostrils, and large, round ears he didn’t grow into until well after puberty. His frizzy, medium-brown hair and olive-t...

13 likes

Harvest

Submitted to Contest #84

Jora sat on the edge of the bed. His warm, deep-brown hand, calloused and strong, ruffled Raz’s auburn hair. When Raz didn’t move under the covers, he shook the larger man’s shoulder. “Raz, wake up.”“I don’t want to.” Raz tried to roll away from the intrusion but was held firm. Jora’s slight frame hid enormous strength.“You don’t want to; I don’t want to. I just want to go home. Shift starts in an hour,” Jora said. “Get up so we can have breakfast together, at least.”“We’ve made it this long,” Raz said. “We can see this through to the end.”“...

14 likes

The Blue Lady of Fallam Lake

Submitted to Contest #83

She’s evil, she’s holy, she’s bad, she’s good, she’s a monster, she’s a hero… there are nearly as many descriptions of her as there are people who claim to have seen her. I’m talking, of course, about the Blue Lady of Fallam Lake. It’s said that she lives on the bottom of the lake, or maybe in a cave beneath the water where her hearth is warm and dry. How would that even work? I’m on day eleven of a fourteen-day assignment to try catch the Blue Lady on camera. It’s all a bunch of nonsense, of course, but that’s what they pay me to do. Despi...

11 likes

On the Outside

Submitted to Contest #82

What does the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world look like? Like a five-foot-four, Chinese-American, human female with pixie-cut black hair, brown eyes, and a scattering of freckles. At least, that’s what I look like on the outside. All the fears about advanced AI being an existential threat to humanity are wholly unfounded, and largely the result of anthropomorphizing the motivations of AI. This is in the nature of humans, though, to see danger where it could possibly exist. Although useful in their earlier evolution, it ha...

19 likes

Second Best

Submitted to Contest #81

What may have rated as an average first date for most was a turn into uncharted waters for Kailin. She took another sip of wine, her eyes darting between the dark, rich brown of Amandi’s eyes and the near-black red of her wine. A small frown played at the corner of her lips.Amandi reached across the table and took her slender, pale hand in his own; his deep brown skin contrasting starkly with her pink-tinged fingers. “You’re thinking something. Just say it. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to get to know you.”“I have a history with dating...

10 likes

Outed

Submitted to Contest #80

Gail, along with most of the world, sat transfixed by the news on the television. They had outed themselves, and her, in a very public way. Her anonymity, her freedom, likely her life itself, was over. She willed herself away from the television and made her way to the mirror in the hall. Her glamour was gone. Where she had appeared to be a small, five-foot-two, average-looking woman with ginger hair and freckles, her true self now showed. Skin the color of bleached parchment, short horns of gleaming ebon, over-large eyes with inky-black ir...

11 likes

Family Is Forever

Submitted to Contest #79

There’s something not quite human in me. When I should be grieving a loss, I find myself oddly serene. In the moments when others panic, I’m met with a calm that makes it easy to weigh my options and choose a course of action.I was warned, of course. The more implants I collected, the greater the impact on my humanity. After the corporate wars divvied up the planet between the victors it seemed I had little reason to care any longer. I knew my family was gone. By the time my little sister found me, and I found out she was still alive, it was...

8 likes