Instant Story

Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #03050-H127: Fate, Destiny... a Basket...

They had been born, and abandoned. This small child, a babe in the woods, taken in by others who found their odd appearance undaunting. Who did not care about appearance, all they cared is that they were a child and needed someone to love them. They looked like a tiefling, but had the white, soft, wings of an angelic. One eye a beautiful sky blue, the other flaming red. They projected strength, and kindness at the same time. They had horns, and yet, at the same time, a golden halo, a ring of magic, drifted between the two horns upon the child's head. -- Teachers

There are those who hold that the product of a Tiefling and an Aasimar should be merely Human. Most of the time, they are correct in that assumption. Once... they were wrong. Well. They could have been wrong. Nobody knew whose hands put the babe in the basket, nor the basket in the river, but it and its passenger wound up in Merrivale, where Dellaise Baumkyn scooped them up and became a mother.

Halflings are renowned for their hospitality, and any otherwise unwelcome soul finds themselves a warm welcome in their lands. So it was that the infant with both horns and downy wings had a new home and a new family. Dellaise named him Amatu, and loved him as thoroughly as any of her more natural children. She taught him well, fed him well, cared for him and worried as any mother would... and it was not very long at all before the child realised how different they were.

Being the tallest in the house at age eight will do that to a person. So when Amatu asked, Dellaise told the story of the luckiest day of both their lives. How two lives were made better with a simple discovery.

There was no note, and his infant self had escaped his swaddling, which was so generic and impersonal that Dellaise sometimes had dark thoughts about the person who had initially set him adrift. There may have been no choice. It may have been an act of desperation. There was no way to tell, and it didn't truly matter, as the important part was the love and family he had found.

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Challenge #03049-H126: To Find a Good Teacher

They worked hard to find out who this person was. The one who could not be harmed, the one who never needed a weapon, they WERE a weapon. And once the person was found, the seeker, and their siblings, went to them and said, politely. "Please, teach us, we wish to be your students."

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02669-g112-the-immortal-master -- Fighting Fit

Fel was a long time in finding hir. The Immortal Master didn't advertise and, in fact, preferred to stay

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Challenge #03048-H125: They Don't Need Weapons

Anything can be a weapon if you’re reckless enough -- Anon Guest

[AN: For the unlimited version of this, check the collected works of Jackie Chan]

Humans. The aggressive warrior race who will go to any extreme to protect and enrich their pack. Any single one of them is capable of creating a phenomenal amount of destructive chaos on their enemy. When no weapons are available, they will create their own. Often in an instant. A fact not lost on anyone

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Challenge #03047-H124: Free Time

"Human, you don't need to sleep every night outside of my door. This station is quite safe."

The human, looking upon the galactic while they sat upright in a chair, their lifesuit programmed to hold them in that position even if they fell fast asleep. "Two weeks ago my mother and I were dying dereggers. You saved us, I will protect you." -- Anon Guest

Humans, among many other qualities, are illogical. Those rescued from Deregger space have the worst logic. It's

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Challenge #03046-H123: To Win at a Loss

They are a good lucker, but a scoundrel. True they could be quite kind, benevolent even, but they loved breaking the rules and getting into mischief. They'd been kicked out of more casinos than they cared to count, and had been escorted from stations more than a few times for bilking people for their time via gambling. After all, it's hard to catch a lucker at such antics if you don't know they're a lucker!

Then they met a bad lucker whose

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Challenge #03045-H122: Medicinal Purposes Only

Stranded Human: Does this look infected to you?

Stranded Alien: It looks...abnormal?

Stranded Human: Yeah...I don't think treating this can wait for rescue...

Stranded Alien: (starting to panic a little) How do we treat it????

Stranded Human: We start by collecting some of those plants that were too toxic for me to eat.... -- Anon Guest

"The ones we have to handle with gloves, or the ones that we need a livesuit to go near?"

"The ones we have to

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Challenge #03044-H121: Unclean! Unclean!

Militant vegans, for years after she managed to escape their world, attempt to kidnap Harro, and later their children, and their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to "pay for crimes against their world". Each time they try, they're stopped rather firmly and placed into prison. Good thing Harro, and their family, are quite fierce about self-defense and have a lot of defenders. The militant vegans, within their cells, and the ones from their homeworlds, both refuse to accept their "heros" have committed crimes and

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Challenge #03043-H120: It's Pronounced Ee-Mew

A tour group of several havenworlders, other galactics, and a few deathworlders were visiting an Emu farm and getting to pet the birds which were quite happily pecking pellets from open hands, visiting the young chicks, and seeing the hatchery. Then the humans grin, as a galactic mentions how gentle these birds are, and the humans tell of the Emu War, where these birds actually defeated the humans who want to war with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War --

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Challenge #03042-H119: Galactics Bearing Gifts

To make it easier for dereggers to escape oppression, several galactic traders begin to offer to build trading ports on deregger places that "will guarantee a great profit for the leadership" because the leaders won't have to pay for building the facility, and part of the fees the trading groups agree to pay for maintaining the places as well. Odd, though, the "security", while seeming to do their job, sure love to slack off! -- Lessons

The CRC had a loophole that

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Challenge #03041-H118: Tactile Therapy

The ship's human is a former deregger still recovering from the horrors they endured. They often awakened in the middle of the night shaking and afraid. The companion liaison decided to do something about it and got the human a gift. A weighted blanket, and a soft, cuddly, comfort item that they, even though they were an adult, could cling to when they started to get lost in their own head. This fierce protector that helped the ship, and was an incredibly

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Challenge #03040-H117: Accepted Market Price

If you can't blow them away with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit. -- Anon Guest

"Two thousand gold per square quarter-inch of ear... five hundred per digit of phalanges... three hundred for the tarsals and metatarsals..." The person running the tally was not a necromancer. They were not a crime lord. They were an "acquisitions agent" for the Dark Market. Not the Black Market, the Dark Market. It's much, much worse.

"Oh don't worry about me," Wraithvine muttered to hirself,

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Challenge #03039-H116: There's Some in Every Trip

A group of former Degreggers, with their galactic friends, compiling their resources, purchased a trading ship, and outfitted the two largest holds with large, comfortable, reclining seats, blankets, and other creature comforts, each one being able to hold at least a hundred people, and the third largest hold with tons of nutrient packs that would last for long periods of time. The other holds aboard the ship were used for normal storage with many types of trade goods, the three turned into

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Challenge #03038-H115: We're Going to Need a Bigger Nametag

A: You know Jugemu I don't actually know your full name; what is it?

J: You sure? it's really long.

A: hit me

J: Jugemu Jugemu Go-Kō-no-Surikire Kaijari-suigyo no Suigyō-matsu Unrai-matsu Fūrai-matsu Kū-Neru Tokoro ni Sumu Tokoro Yaburakōji no Burakōji Paipo Paipo Paipo no Shūringan Shūringan no Gūrindai Gūrindai no Ponpokopii no Ponpokonaa no Chōkyūmei no Chōsuke -- Anon Guest

[AN: That's a meme I've managed to avoid for literal years. I knew it existed, but I've never seen it. Also some

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Challenge #03037-H114: The Learning Process

Ad astra per aspera -- Anon Guest

[AN: My old primary school motto was Per Ardua Ad Astra - by effort to the stars. If I read this correctly, this means "To the stars by breath" ::googles:: Almost. "Through the rough" not "by breath". Was I close?]

Groundbreaking travel, as the name suggests, is fraught with unforeseen perils. The first person to hang onto the back of a horse or an ox had no idea what they were in for. The first

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Challenge #03036-H113: Where and How to Cut

In a quiet meeting room several met. Each one of them carrying a blade. Each blade were of various conditions of care, or lack thereof. As had became tradition, these blades were exchanged amongst each other, no blood upon them, and then thrust into a soft wooden half-sphere that lay upon the table showing each hand was empty. They discussed why they came to the palace, why they had once wanted to kill the king. What they had learned from the King

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