Instant Story

Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #03314-I026: Barge Versus Coracle

They were one of the worst Knomiras. Any time people said no to them, they immediately demanded to see the higher ups. No one was going to stop them from getting what THEY wanted! It was their way, or the highway! Then there was an accident, they demanded THEY be treated first! They shoved the person that they didn't even see, someone smaller than them out of the life pod and forced their way in. The person, a Havenworlder child, scrambled in, afterward, but badly hurt due to the shove. They looked into the eyes of this innocent, a child whose eyes asked 'why?' the entire trip to the emergency vessel. They held the child's hand, carefully, realizing what they did. They realize, they couldn't be acting like that anymore. -- Anon Guest

Knomira: (n) (1) A person who loudly, repeatedly, and vocally asserts their rights to the cost of everyone else around them. (2) An extremely selfish individual incapable of caring about anyone they don't know. (3) The gender-neutral alternative to "Karen". [Origin: onomatopoeia for their repeated catchcry of, "I know my rights!"] -- Dictionary of Confounding Human Words.

Launch plus three minutes. Tourist Will had barged into the lifepod, demanded the most comfortable seat inside, and they had just now finished drafting a scathing anti-review of the entire cruise company just because of the Vorax raid "they let happen".

A soft meeping, one that had been going since the launch, finally invaded Will's awareness. A small Havenworlder child was making an insistent noise whilst staring at them. "Someone shut that terrible creature up," Will snapped, not at all reading the room. Reading was for other people. "It's bad enough we have to endure this cut-price lifepod, but does there have to be whining?"

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Challenge #03313-I025: Cold Stone Inn

It's young Venin who points out the blunt obvious to these two adults, Kevin's got that bow that shoots those magic arrows, and the last time he experimented with it, he made the equivalent of a Hero's Feast. Did they forget as long as he's there with the bow, they'll never go hungry?

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03215-h306-why-didnt-you-say

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03185-h276-divine-intervention -- Anon Guest

The good berries were filling, for their tiny size. One argument resolved and bellies

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Challenge #03312-I024: Heart of Silicon

Humans study their past and how they viewed AI. How they had the fear of AI both being the ultimate slave where humans could live for the rest of eternity in leisure, and being the ultimate enemy, that would destroy all of human-kind brutally. And how the AI has shown to be neither, but instead, another kind of intelligent being that they needed to learn to understand. -- Anon Guest

Humans probably devote too much time to pondering how their own creations

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Challenge #03311-I023: Eggshell Crack'd

Why did this happen to Lillian? Why did she have to suffer? Why couldn't we tell her the TRUTH? These were things that went through the priest's and the acolyte's heads. But the Old One had told them. The girl had been half-god long before she "died", her mortal self burning away when the mana took over. The world was changing, they had to be able to move the spring to new safe places when the dark magi came. She was the

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Challenge #03310-I022: What Worries Most

Lilicoon talks to her therapist about the request for a date by someone she cares for quite a bit, and her fear and confusion because of it.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03194-h285-stumbling-blind -- Anon Guest

Lilicoon flexed her fingers in her current crochet piece. It was an instinctual comfort motion from the feline side of her genetics, and therefore unstoppable. Having something soft to flex her new hands in was a boon for her.

"I know that Human Jay is one

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Challenge #03309-I021: A Creeping Affection

She viewed him as a friend, though at first he was just an annoyance. She saw he had learned so much and was willing to open his mind, and not just act like all the other human men she'd known before the Wish sent her here. Maybe, one day, they could become best friends, for in her view he was starting to feel more like having a lunkhead, if but a very kind one, of a brother, little by little. Maybe, one

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Challenge #03308-I020: Repaid in Full

Though he never knew how many lived there, he'd saved well over 500 lives. Saving that small village by discovering a cure for a plague had become his deepest desire. He'd saved them not because Wraithvine had required him to save lives as penance for his crimes, but because looking into the eyes of the sick children, he swore to every god that would listen he'd rather die than see these people suffer, Wraithvine's requirement bedamned! Cold irony, the cure didn't work

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Challenge #03307-I019: The Sword Often Loses

The man was a reluctant killer. Forced by his lord to slay any his lord demanded lest his own family be slain. He was sent after an Elf that, once he heard the name, knew that meant he would never see his family again. Not in this world at least. But the Elf, the mage, was merciful. In swearing to save the man's family, the man swore to find the families of those he had slain, and make sure those families were

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Challenge #03306-I018: The Great Leveler

The Humans are dead. A futile effort to go against the almighty. Among the field of the fallen, one rose among the dead. Cloaked in black, it barely had any strength to stand. A barrage of concentrated plasma hit it dead on, as the dust settled, the only thing the barrage did was knock off its hood. It was no human, it lacked any flesh. It was just bones and in its desolate eyes was hazy blue flame. Its jaw opened, spilling

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Challenge #03305-I017: One Arrow, No Problems

They enter a village under siege. The village's heavy gates on their walls slammed shut not long after they'd arrived with a near army of zealots and slavers banging at the gates trying to force their way through. This "army" has already destroyed many villages, killed many innocents, and now they were trying to get this one. And worse, this village was backed into a box valley. It may now be up to young Kevin to help save them, along with help

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Challenge #03304-I016: Faces of Gratitude

They have rescued thousands of Dereggers over their lifetime. And they are at home with their family bragging. Puffing up their feathers, they are so proud of themselves. They do it, not for money, not for fame, not for recognition, but because they care for the people they've rescued. But that doesn't mean they can't have a proud moment knowing of all those people who now get a new chance at life. -- Anon Guest

Tia Rruku had a wall of portraits

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Challenge #03303-I015: The Terrors of Human Larvae

Q: How do you terrify a Vorax?

A: Stick them on a ship with a bunch of humans and tell them they're going to have to babysit the toddlers!

This exchange program is going to require the poor Vorax getting a large amount of therapy afterward. -- Anon Guest

[AN: Children should never be seen as punishment. No matter what the circumstances]

There was a nervous peace between the Humans and the Vorax. The Alliance was letting the Humans spread their pack-bonding

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Challenge #03302-I014: You Touch, You Die

There's one universal truth. Never get between a set of parents and their children. -- Anon Guest

The Universe has ways of answering the wrong questions. Those who know this never put voice to questions like, "How bad can it get?" or, "What could possibly go wrong?" It also responds to the terminally daft when they say, "It can't possibly get any worse," because the first law of the Universe is that it was NOT made to be kind.

Some Vorax, like

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Challenge #03301-I013: To Preserve Life

Despite the Alliance's best efforts, not all meteors are spotted in time. They were by a Pax Humanis sanctuary world when one is nearly to the point of striking. Not thinking of their lives, only of those on the planet, their ship plowed into the meteor, the resulting explosion knocking the meteor well off course and toward the solar system's primary while they, in their lifepod and very, very badly injured, plunge to the surface with the lifepod crashing into the heart

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Challenge #03300-I012: One Being's Torment...

On their world, theobromine is toxic. Extracted from plants that have it in its pods, as the prisoners are dipped into that vat of brown syrup, screams are elicited as the prisoner slowly poisoned to death in a vat of pain. The toxins creating agony before the being dies.

This prisoner, the human, was sentenced to be dropped in the vat. Why? To show all other humans that they were not going to be joking around when it came to the lengths

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