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Write a short story about a teacher or mentor figure who recognizes hidden (or magical!) potential in someone and helps them cultivate it.

Posted in Narrative on May 12, 2023

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✍️ 46 stories

Making Music

Submitted to Contest #198

The lights dim in the auditorium and I wait as the next school’s Concert Band settles onstage and follows the First Chair’s directions. The young man calls upon each section to play, tuning them confidently, performing his duty as Concertmaster with precision and grace, before sitting back in his chair. This well-trained ensemble rises as the band’s director enters the stage and bows to the audience, receiving a polite round of applause.The ABODA Festival is the highlight of my year, a time when all the high school bands present th...

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Alchemy

Submitted to Contest #198

Tim slowed his walk down the sunset-drenched suburban alley when he noticed a black cat sitting on a tall green fence, watching him. He stopped altogether when the cat said, “Psst!”Tim startled, shook his head, and took another step.“Hey kid!” said the cat. “I said, ‘psst!’”Tim planted his hands on his hips and frowned up at the cat. He let out a long breath, as though he had just worked a double shift at Hotdog Cabana. “I heard you.” His last double shift, they had a birthday party of nearly thirty. The kicker was, the screaming kids were a...

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Urlwyn's Ward

Submitted to Contest #198

The Witch. Her Cottage. What Remained. Being Brave. Her name was Urlwyn Pitch, and when she died, her body was stuffed into a lidless casket propped upright against a hawthorn tree outside her home. A gruesome practice, the macabre display deterred sympathizers and served to caution the remaining members of her coven. Shortly after, the townfolk of Taemorden raized her humble cottage using mauls, sledgehammers, and mining picks, in a collective toil meant to expunge the witch from their memory. It was early morning, a day after Urlwyn’s demi...

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AN INCOMPARABLE MENTOR

Submitted to Contest #198

**small mention of physical abuse**So, here we are…a gaggle of gushing old geese fibbing to each other about how fabulous we all look, and how we haven’t changed in 50 years. As if! Okay. Maybe that’s a bit harsh, but I know what I see every morning when I look in the mirror: that reflection speaks a truth this reunion of excited, twittering ladies doesn’t. Oh, I know, I know! I need to be less critical of both them and myself. I’m such an old grouch these days it’s a wonder I get any compliments from anyone, anywhere, anytime. I need t...

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Corner Art

Submitted to Contest #198

For as long as she could remember, tendrils, peacocks, and rangolis ran amok in Suchi’s head. And leaped out at her notebooks. The public school she went to, close to her village, had half its teaching staff getting replaced every year. And given its proximity to the military cantonment, half its students got refreshed every year. Not that any of it mattered to Suchi. She had learned the art of becoming invisible by sandwiching herself between eager-beaver-answer-giver-oh-I’m-so-clever and I-care-two-hoots-for-your-chalk-and-talk-lady! briga...

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The Sunlight Made Rainbows in the Water

Submitted to Contest #198

   Everyone showed up for my funeral. Everyone wanted to see the Dead Kid.        Mom and Dad were there, although it seemed like they were ghosts of themselves, like they were the ones who drowned. They always looked that way.           Holly, Pat, and Christian were there, too—I didn’t expect to see them. They were swinging their feet in their plastic chairs and sipping from the black solo cups they had at the funeral home. I liked th...

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Spiderman Doesn't Wear Noise-canceling Headphones

Submitted to Contest #198

DEDICATED TO THE BEST MENTORS IN THE WHOLE WORLDDAY 1When I got lost, all I had to do was look for the men with banana horns attached to their hats. It's what our team was known for. When we were walking around the stadium or in the pits, we always got questions about where the 3D printed horns came from. It was a symbol of our team's identity. An integral part of our image. It represented who we were, our unity and community.And yet, I didn’t wear them.Instead, I had chunky black headphones perched on my ears as I sat and rocked back and fo...

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Dark Lash

M B

Submitted to Contest #198

“I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do,” Principle Rania declared serenely.The elf woman gazed at Yvette from behind her desk. Like most elves she hardly looked her age, with long, dark, pinned-back hair and luscious pale skin. ...Not bad for someone over six hundred.Yvette looked crestfallen. “But Ms. Rania, I never meant to displace the school champion! I don’t even want to be the magic champion.”Rania sighed. “It’s far too late for that now Yvette. You fought him and defeated him, thus he was shown to be unworthy. Whether you want it or not...

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The Drum Poem

Submitted to Contest #198

“He has the fever; by sundown, he will be dead.” Romiissi watched her donkey, close to death. Drum in hand. This misfortune threatened to undo months of careful planning. The creature that had served her and her brother Serimga well for four months on the pilgrimage way lay on the floor, head down, eyes wide of exhaustion.  Romiisii paced up and down around it in panic. Where is he? She thought. Her brother Serimga had yet to return. He had gone into the town, the town the caravan stopped for the day, to restock...

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Non Compos Mentor: Tinkering Part 4

Submitted to Contest #198

"What is the fundamental difference between the natural and the supernatural? What is the essential characteristic of magic?" George R. Price "Science and the Supernatural," Science, August 26, 1955 2014 “Feel better?” Reynolds growled lazily, sipping noisily at his Viente Americano. Danzer considered, settling in with his Grande Kona as he glanced absently at the cadaverous panhandler at the nearby junction of Baseline and Val Vista, where Mesa met Gilbert in a torrent of mid-morning traffic. Reynolds had suppressed a smirk as Danzer ...

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How To Execute A Jellyfish

Submitted to Contest #198

Dan sparked the fat Zippo with a soot-blackened thumb and touched the flame to the wick. The torch lit instantly; yellow flame grew from low blue roots in the smooth vapour cloud that wrapped it. He pocketed the lighter, raised the torch in a salute, paused, twirled the torch once like a majorette, threw his head back and plunged the flame into his mouth. A short, controlled breath sent the fire racing into the dark air of the nightclub and it was gone. He showed us the extinguished torch and smiled. “That’s all you have to do,” he said to...

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Each a Fruitful Bough

Submitted to Contest #198

2:55. Jo clicked her mechanical pencil, then jabbed it against her desk, the graphite disappearing. She repeated. Once. Twice. More times than she could count. 2:55. Still. How is that even possible? Now Jo traced the rings of the lifeless wood, flattened into elongated patterns. She imagined the rings speaking to her, as though her pencil were a stylus revealing a story older than the building she sat in. She drew a dark spot in the middle, the gray spirals becoming the revolving rings of a distant, undiscovered planet. The stillnes...

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The Spartan Gym

Submitted to Contest #198

Luke’s pulse throbbed through his entire body. He could even hear it in his ears as he faced the battered green, double door. He had begged his parents for weeks and they finally relented. They were banking on this being a phase, a passing fancy. No way Luke thought.  Ever since the Saturday that his Dad let him stay up to watch the fight, he was hooked. The next day he had gone to the library and checked out as many books as they would let him take, but the grainy black and white pictures weren’t enough. They were like drops of rain t...

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Teacher Vision

Submitted to Contest #198

Mrs. Emily Lennon was the first one to name it. I didn’t even know I could do it. It was the nineties and I was in fourth grade. “Look at it with your eyes out of focus. You can cross your eyes and then bring them uncrossed slowly. Or you can try to look past the poster. A new image should appear. Be patient and keep trying.” We were starting a unit about space. Mrs. Lennon hung a Magic Eye poster on the classroom door. The obvious, surface image was a cosmic swirl of stars over the partial horizon of a blue planet. As a class, we ...

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Everly

Submitted to Contest #198

Everly thought no one was watching when she woke the mouse. It was during first recess and all the other kindergarteners were busy climbing on the play structure or happily kicking a ball around.  Everly had walked away from the playground area and was sitting in the slightly overgrown grass that was still wet with morning dew.  She had positioned herself right next to the fence that separated the school yard from the woods and was listening to see if she would hear the voices again.  She had first heard the voices a...

10 likes 2 comments 2
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