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Tempest Phoenix Smith

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jun, 2023

Stories (55)

Comments

Library

18 Followers

8 Following

55 Stories

1025 karma pts

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Tiger Lily

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #262

Candis was the last of the gathered poets to stash her notebook and assorted pens in her capacious bag after everyone else dispersed. The highlight of her week always ended too soon.She abandoned the picnic bench outside Scripps Cottage to head back to the main campus of San Diego State University. Glancing down, she paused to adjust her bag so the mermaid portrait trimmed with sequins would be displayed to any passerby. The opposite side only showed a curling wave, frilled with a filigree of foam, not half as interesting.She glanced at the ...

3 likes

Wise Old Owl

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #261

Arthur Tomlinson dragged himself home from the bus stop after an unproductive visit to the doctor.He wanted to get back to his bungalow, slam the door on the world and lose himself in his latest library book. Not plunge into a bottle of his favourite tipple, not any more, but a good novel did the trick as long as it had plenty of action, suspense, and unexpected twists along the way.You could drown in fiction easily enough, forget your current circumstances, ignore the gloomy news which never seemed to get any better and, best of all, not pu...

6 likes

Being Polite

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #261

Thank you, Vicky, for sending me the woven mats Grandmother Victoria made. You won’t remember her, of course, but she was the sweetest person you could hope to know. I’ve never understood why your mother named you after her because she died before you were born.It means a lot to be able to display the weaving when we entertain family. Nobody realised that your mother took them away with her to California. We thought they had been lost in all the upheaval after grandfather died with the house having to be sold and Aunt Bogna moving into a muc...

1 like

I Blame the Squirrel

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #261

Before mobile phones or computers, back in the Twentieth Century which some people can still remember, a young woman boarded with her half-sister’s family.She paid a pittance to sleep in a postage stamp of a room high up in the attic of the big house but that was okay as she owned few possessions and was unlikely to gather more because she was saving up to own a house herself, though this would take many years if she remained single.The cheapness of the accommodation was not simply due to being a blood relation, but because she frequently he...

4 likes

Marsh Walker

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #260

I had timed it right. As the twilight began to soften the sky after the sun vanished over the edge of the marsh, I finally walked on firm footing and could see my way clear through what I felt sure were the last patches of boggy ground.Of course, I still tested with my staff. Excessive confidence was a danger since the marsh had tricksy ways. I heard enough about that as a child to always heed my mother’s warnings, especially as since then I dragged more than a few people out of the quavering fen, though one of them I had been tempted to lea...

4 likes

Refuge

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #259

The gray and white seagull ignored the buffeting rain and how much every muscle ached from the long flight. The storm wind under his wings was carrying him in the right direction at last. And, as twilight descended, he could see what looked like from this distance a straight white branch sticking up from the ocean.Light emanated from the vertical pole, ceased, then shone again.Although thunder cracked and lightning flickered between clouds and ocean, he felt his heart ease. Where there was light, there must be a keeper. In these changing tim...

4 likes

Frame of Mind

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #258

It was the calico cat that started it all on a Saturday morning.Not even his cat, though he had let her inside a few times since moving to Old Town.Ambrose had stripped the king-sized bed first thing, taken everything to the laundry room, then brought fresh lavender-colored sheets and pillowcases. He had stretched the last corner of the fitted bottom sheet over the mattress corner when he noticed the calico cat staring in through the bedroom window.Taking the cat to be scanned for a micro-chip was on his to-do list as none of the neighbours ...

5 likes

The Tempest

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #257

Luckily, she was good at focusing. In the bustle and noise of costume shop where the sun never shone in the basement of the Dramatic Arts building at San Diego State University, she threaded several needles with midnight blue thread and stabbed each of them into the enormous peach-coloured pin cushion which bristled like a porcupine with pins and needles. She appreciated her preparation, then liberated a needle and began to hem.The trouser press hissed. Costumers discussed last night’s incident when the shoulder of the leading...

8 likes

The 497th Santa

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #256

Mabel patted her hair, fingered underneath the back, then switched the hairdryer off and set it down on the dresser. Silence rushed in. She put one hand on the wall to steady herself and bent over to turn off the mains before unplugging the gadget. She would let it cool down before putting it back in the drawer later today.When she stood up, she was eye level with one of the teddies perched on the long shelf above her daughter’s bed. She tried to read some message in those glass amber eyes, felt she might get some insight, maybe one word to ...

7 likes

Sandcastle in the Storm

Tempest Phoenix Smith

Submitted to Contest #255

I remember standing on the pale sands in warm sunlight watching the boy who kneels near his sister. He is using the top of a red plastic shovel to shape each turret on the sandcastle towers with deep concentration. She is looking down at him and smiling. He is her best ever birthday gift as he was born on her birthday. Who needs a doll when you have a real baby to cuddle? Only, I don’t remember this at all. I never had children. I wanted them desperately, but never had even one. I didn’t even get so far as a miscarriage. Why does this scene...

6 likes