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Write about a character who was considered a prodigy when they were young.

Posted in Fiction on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 61 stories

Lara

Winner of Contest #26 🏆

I sit, frozen and rigid, on a cold bench as I stare at the stringed instrument that taunts me with its very existence.    So you are a prodigy, the voices whisper in my head. No, of course not, I tell them right back. I am not a prodigy. I am just Lara. The voices are relentless, whispering that dreaded word in my ear, mocking me with its weighty meaning. Fame and exploits, wealth and power: all of these things come with being a prodigy. Lara is not a prodigy. She is just a dabbler, a little girl playing pretend in a world fu...

94 likes 41 comments 41
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The Baron's Daughter

Submitted to Contest #26

They locked the cello in the cellar. Now, before we go any further, understand that this was not the sort of cellar in which we find homey cabinets of jams and pickled beets. Mrs. Maganis is more than fond of the story and, before the incident, acquired quite a knack for telling it.Her husband was the sort of man who takes great pride in the guests he brings to his table, and though he was not usually a proponent for letting the women "prattle on through gentlemen's business," as he put it, it was not long before she developed such a reputat...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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The Last Song

Submitted to Contest #26

I clenched my hands in and out, flexing the tiny joints and muscles that lay within. As I lowered my palms down onto the piano keys, I felt the familiar cold of the white ivory jolt through my fingertips. As my fingers took in the geometry of the intricate keys, I glanced down, mesmerized by the scars running across my hands. I warmed up, getting a feel for that gorgeous, rich sound; the tune of salvation, but also, my darkest demons. As my hands flew around the keys, faster, and more precise, the sensory overload overtook my brain. The smel...

16 likes 3 comments 3
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The Professional

Submitted to Contest #26

Lil Johnny Brown was never the first child to be picked for teams at school. He was not a very popular kisser. Heck, even the Mathletes were a little wary of the four-foot-two, chunky, pink child with a mosaic of acne you could read your horoscope in. But lil Johnny Brown had a secret.No, not really. It was too enormous to be a secret.He was the best sousaphone player in the world.Now, some of you might be wondering, how might I, too, play the sousaphone? Or where might one acquire such an instrument? Or oh, is that that thing that I thought...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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What You Have To Work For

Submitted to Contest #26

I stamped out my cigarette in a cheap, plastic golden trophy. Slim rays of sunlight glinted through the closed blinds. I ruffled one hand through my uncombed while the other searched for a new cigarette. One of the rays hit me in my left eye. I grimaced and ducked from the light.Reaching for a fallen cigarette on the ground, I hit my head on my unstable night stand. “Fuck!” I cursed under my breath.I laid down on my bed. Silk sheets pooled around me. I twirled the cigarette in my fingers. My brain buzzed for a hit but my eyes begged for a na...

13 likes 1 comment 1
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Fallen Prodigy

Submitted to Contest #26

She collapsed onto the bed, her body, almost instantly paralyzed by the feeling that began to spread through her body. The comforter hugged her body as she sank deeper. The warmth spread slowly all over her, taking over everything. It spread from her toes to her head causing a lazy smile to spread across her face. She felt like she was floating in the water, listening for the music that began to play with everything flowing and playing so slowly and gracefully.  As she sank deeper and deeper she began to not only hear the music but to f...

12 likes 9 comments 9
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Tendu, Tombé, et Brisé: Bina's New Dance

Submitted to Contest #26

“Plié, and straight. Make a window, and shut. Feet together, and straight” Bina looked down at the remnants of her term paper, marked profusely in red. Biology hadn’t been this hard in high school, had it? She only had two days to fix this, and she was supposed to have Mommy and Me time with her daughter after class tomorrow, so now really was the best time to do any of the edits. To make matters worse, she couldn’t get her old warmup out of her head and it flowed through her body and her toes itched to get up and dance again. She sighed in...

11 likes 0 comments 0
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The Farm Wizard

Submitted to Contest #26

The last of the winter snow had finally melted. For most, that was a good thing. It meant an end to the cold days. No more children trapped inside the house to drive their parents crazy. No more worrying about a small chill causing a terrible illness, or the deeply rooted fear that the food might run out before spring. The end of winter was a joyous time for everyone.Everyone but me. Tessa frowned as she sipped her tea and stared out at the sunrise. She hated spring. Winter was good to her. It meant she could show off her skills by keeping t...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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Little Mozart

Submitted to Contest #26

Mozart was buried in an unmarked grave. No pomp nor circumstance. The greatest musical mind thrown into a dirt hole. Jody thought about this as he sat in the windowless waiting room on the fourth floor of a government building. The hum of electricity was a B flat. The sharpness of the plain rooms details were perfectly lit in the dim light of fluorescent bulbs. He was there to apply for government housing. A fittingly low point in the life of someone who had once appeared on the cover of several nationwide publications under the title of “th...

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Anomaly

Submitted to Contest #26

Song, and the joy of song, composed most of Camran's first memory. The full, silver moon hung low in a sky speckled with stars, and the light reflected off the black, brown, gray, and white throats of his pack. Normally human but now in the forms of half-breed wolves, the BehnKailev Clan howled their monthly Gathering's harmonized chorus toward Heaven. From high, piping wails to bone-deep moans and every sound in-between, not a single note rang sour as the guardians of the montane Rebirth Forest wove a song of thanks, promise, and supplicati...

9 likes 1 comment 1
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The Discovery of Music

Submitted to Contest #26

There once was a time when mankind didn’t know music. The only sounds men and women produced were noise and voice. People talked to each other abundantly, but there was no rhythm in their words, no melody in their sentences.The word “lyrics” couldn’t be found in any dictionary, simply because it didn’t exist yet. As for music, there was the knock-knock of the carpenter hammering nails into wood, the kling-kling of the blacksmith forging metal on his anvil, the klang-klang of the trolley driver warning people to get out of the way, the ting-t...

9 likes 2 comments 2
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The Last Gift

Submitted to Contest #26

It had been when I was young that everyone told me that I would grow up to be a doctor—that, in language that five-year-old me could understand, I would fix people and make them better. Pretty much change the world, they had made it seem. It didn’t seem much too difficult of a job, from the way Grandfather worded his experiences in medical life. All you were required to do was to come in after the nurse had seen the patient and taken vital signs down, discuss what it was exactly that the patient was suffering, and then prescribe whatever med...

8 likes 1 comment 1
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Holding

Shortlisted for Contest #26 ⭐️

He wakes up in an empty bed. A pang of hollowness stabs him. It will take a long time before he’s used to this, the raw ache of missing. It’s a familiar feeling. It feels like losing a limb. For a minute he lies there, crushed by the weight of a thousand empty mornings stretching out before him. He doesn’t want to get out of bed, to face the loneliness of the future that yawns like a gaping mouth. How can he bring himself to move forward into a world without her? He will not think of the future. Not yet. Today is for remembering. He forces h...

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All That Glitters Is Not Gold

Submitted to Contest #26

        It had been one of those glittering evenings. It was a party, a concert for one of my distant relatives. Private concerts were all the rage, and we Hapsburgs knew how to make an evening. Mama had told me that Wolfgang Gottlieb was to play. You, reader, know him by his other name, Mozart. He was a child, like me.  A prodigy. The son of Leopold Mozart. Like me, fortune had already kissed him on the forehead. Austria knew both of our identities. So...

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The twisted music boy.

Submitted to Contest #26

  The monstrosity that was the fetus, was finally ‘torn,’ via the surgeon’s knife from the mother’s belly, more than 2 weeks after its ‘scheduled’ appearance upon our stage. Its grotesqueness brought horrified gasps from all those attending the delivery.The misshapen head, humped back and deformed lower limbs elicited thoughts that he would do the decent thing and expire before his very young mother emerged from the anesthetic. No such fortune awaited this unprepared woman. Apparently, though, his lungs had not suffered the same fa...

7 likes 2 comments 2
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