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Challenge #03418-I130: Look After Yourself

Ma scolds Wraithvine for making a very rare, for them, dangerous mistake. Fatigue can get to anyone. -- Lessons

It had been a long, long day of chaotic encounters in a Wild Magic Zone. Wraithvine, suitably frazzled and tired, had 'only' wanted to light hir pipe and smoke a little dandelion to calm hir nerves. Of such little things, big mistakes are made.

When ze came out of being an iron statue for a quarter of an hour, ze was face to furious face with Ma. "Have you learned a lesson or do I have to teach it to ye?"

Every single muscle in hir body was stiff. Hardly a surprise, all things considered. "I forgot," ze sighed. "Anybody could make that mistake."

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Challenge #03415-I127: Convergent Evolution

The humans call us "foxes", close enough for them, since they have trouble pronouncing our proper name at the moment. We met these small, squishy, beings when we answered a distress call. Given our thick fur, our planet's pretty cold, and the pictures they showed us of their earth creature called the grey fox, we suppose, in their eyes, we do somewhat look like that. Still, at least these strangers are friendly. -- Anon Guest

Humans are great at misnomers. Just look

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Challenge #03417-I129: Making it Look Easy

I love my job, I mean I REALLY love my job! I get up every day excited to go to work! What do I do? I run a multi-species salon and spa aboard a space station. Did I mention I really, REALLY, love my job? -- A New Guy

Livesuits don't tell the entire story, did you know that? Most species evolve in single gravity[1] environments and that means a mostly anthropoid body form. Some of them turn up in rented

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Challenge #03416-I128: Walking Carpets

A human who hires out as a protector has two large, beautiful, Newfoundland dogs. They gets some very interesting looks both on ships and on stations. -- Fighting Fit

The Human entered the ship with two bears. Not teddy bears, actual ursine life forms. The fact that they were padding amenably at Human Hip's heels did nothing to reassure the crew of the Indigo Shamrock. Companion Ty almost scurried onto a high shelf from the terror.

"How is having Ursid pet?" she

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Challenge #03414-I126: The Escape Clause

An old spirit, hearing the two conversing, steps forward to give a hint of the bell. What was the hint? "They who become too tied to their power, become tied by the power. They who learn to work with hands, not magic, soon learn they hear no bells."

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03352-i064-just-in-their-nature -- Anon Guest

"Have we met?" said Wraithvine. "Normally the spirits who seem to lend instructions are trying to redeem themselves for something they did. Usually to me.

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Challenge #03413-I125: A Pinion'd Minion

Ma captures a merc who'd caught her to try to trap her son and the rest of the party. The leader of the flock of raven-folk, imagine the looks on Wraithvine's and the rest of their faces when she shows up with her new feathered friends.

((See comments for more details!))

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03351-i063-the-nature-of-mothers#@internutter/re-bkf-r88htb -- DaniAndShali

The Raven-folk were said to be cursed by the gods. They had the power of creation taken away from them. Less

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Challenge #03412-I124: A Horse of a Different Choler

A ship is headed to a colonial planet and they have several full-sized clydesdales in deep sleep, the animals often otherwise having trouble with such confinement. Some of the other passengers, being dropped off in other places on the way to the planet, get to see the sleeping animals up close before leaving. -- Anon Guest

Tucked up in sleep pods made for Gaux[1], the frosted windows display an enormous land mammal. Those who peer closely at the animals realise their

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Challenge #03411-I123: Guards of Honour

The Honorable Guard invites Wraithvine to meet others within the Order and invites them to their headquarters so they can see for hirself who they are.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03347-i059-we-know-this-looks-bad -- Anon Guest

The Honourable Guard did as was expected. They offered the hand of mercy wherever they went. They took in the lost, the abandoned, and the forsaken. They took oaths of justice, and more alarming, kept them.

It should be no surprise that there were a lot of

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Challenge #03410-I122: From the Mouths of Babes

The sun is shining, the snow is melting, and the air is much warmer now. So... WHY does our village run the ice festival NOW instead of in the coldest part of winter where everything would've remained more solid? -- Anon Guest

"But this is the middle of winter," insisted the grownup. "It says so on the calendar."

"We're tobogganing down mud," insisted Galiena. "The crocuses are out. Birds are returning from the south. It's not winter."

The officious officer Thoralf Rutsk

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Challenge #03409-I121: Curse-grown Blessings

I curse you with ten thousand years of life! Sounds like a blessing doesn't it? But I'm not done yet. You are now incapable of doing any harm to ANYONE ever again except under two conditions. You are actively defending your OWN life, you are actively defending an innocent's life. Good luck. -- Anon Guest

Year One:

Sword and dagger alike failed to hit. Fists stopped short of their intended victims. Arrows missed their target. Even words meant to injure pride failed

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Challenge #03408-I120: Solid, Scientific, Documented Evidence

They say that whenever people have to choose between doing what's right, and doing what's easy, they choose what's easy. But what of those times where doing what's right is easy, and doing what's wrong is more difficult? Why is it so many choose what's wrong anyhow? Especially those who struggle to continue to deny basic scientific fact, and deny what's, quite literally, staring them in the face? -- Lessons

Humans are, as a species, considered insane. They do many, many things

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Challenge #03407-I119: Strained Benefit

A level two Deathworlder barrels toward Mr. Sunshine at full bore and slams into him, knocking him to the ground and landing on top of Sunshine, just as a large part of a scaffold falls. The Deathworlder is harmed though not fatally, but is glad they saved the Human from serious harm. -- Anon Guest

Humans are bizarre creatures to begin with. Members of Pax Humanis are what Humans consider abnormal psychology. In this case, it meant dismissing quite a lot of

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Challenge #03406-I118: Cracks Before a Breakthrough

The man who once "owned" his wife with an iron fist now finds himself in jail for violating no-contact. He HAD been warned, and now, much to the frustration of the therapists trying to work with him, is resisting the idea of change.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03342-i054-she-said-no-pickles#@internutter/re-bkf-r7txz0 -- DaniAndShali

"It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair!" Maazdon Brandon was throwing his umpteenth tantrum of the day. It was nothing new. He'd been doing the same thing

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Challenge #03405-I117: With Two Kind Hands

"You are rubber, they are glue...." Normally it was the other way around, but not for THIS spell. The wizard, in secret back alley-ways and run-down shacks found the downtrodden, child Tieflings, child Kobolds, and other such children, and did a spell that ensured, if anyone should physically try to harm them and be cruel, it rebounded upon their abusers. But there's a catch, if THEY were to act in a cruel manner, they were the ones struck instead -- Fighting Fit

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Challenge #03404-I116: A Palpable Hit

The very motley crew, with a woman who seemed to want to take everyone under her wing with a kind heart beneath that gruff exterior begins to enter the realm of danger. The "Old Fool" rather glad for the help with clothing gets helplessly damaged, and the ones that were once lonely, bereft of friends or family, find the warmth, even in facing a deadly foe, that comes with being loved.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03336-i048-youve-been-mothered -- Anon Guest

[AN: Also

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