Challenge #02584-G027: At the Turning
I wanted to get into the fun with the odd litch who worked to punish the wicked and help the people in need. He should be rewarded. I would put the link to the posting my prompt is talking about, but for some reason, it’s giving me the error that the link is spam. I don’t know why. But it is the posting called “Who Waits Forever Anyway?”
They looked down upon the realms of man. Boredom was always something a god fought as millenia went by, things tended to repeat themselves. But there was one being they’d heard of more than once. A being that time seemed to pass by. A being that was interesting. Koschei the Undying. They had heard that name before from spirits who had left the living world. Some in anger, some with warmth. Some with fear, and one…. with love. Love? This single female spirit had drifted into the world of the dead peacefully. The look on her face, one of happiness. Yet they had seen where she had passed. They had seen what had been at her side at the moment of her passing. She had loved….. that? Well then! Surely for him to have earned an innocent’s love, and he had sent so many wicked to their fates, he deserved a reward. She believed her soul would be reborn, she had a desire to see him once more. So how about both wishes be granted, and the friends may talk once more? – Anon Guest
[AN: This prompt harkens back to this thing thanks and blessings once more to DaniAndShali for providing the helpful linkage. May your friends’ pets always greet you warmly.]
Who could possibly stand in the way when the Goddess of Light and Love is on the case? Certainly not an undead thing more memory than man. In a remote village near a spa that caters to the very sick or the very rich or both… a child is born with an old soul. Call her… Melody. She is graced by the Goddess. Born on a festival day in the middle of the temple, she has gifts. You could even call them Gifts.
She can sing health into anything that sickens. Some whisper that she could sing life into the dead. That was the promise that they came for. It was not entirely the truth. She could sing life into good things. She could sing health into the sick and deserving. She could sing prosperity for the poor… What she could not do was give to the greedy, the grasping, and the ungrateful.
Melody met Koschei when she was fifteen, and remembered him instantly. Such was the blessing of the Goddess. As soon as she shook his hand, he remembered her. “A new body,” he said, “already? It’s only been a hundred years.” Of course, to one who has existed for thousands, a hundred years is a blink.
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Challenge #02583-G026: Ma Yub
There are two kinds of parents. There’s the kind that thinks their children should have the experiences that they had when they were a child, and there’s the kind that thinks their children should have something better than that.
The problem with being that second kind, I’ve found, is that it’s hard to give your children something better when you don’t really know what that looks like. – Anon Guest
Bringing up the next generation of cogniscent life is never easy. Certainly, the basic caretaking falls into a pattern. Clean, dress, feed, and hold. Communication in all its forms tends to take place anyway. It’s after the child surpasses the basic needs that the trouble begins, because education will occur whether the parent thinks they’re doing it or not.
The two primary patterns of parenting are Sharing, and Expansion. Sharing includes all the good experiences of the parental childhood into the experiences of the child. Expansion improves on the past of the parent, so that the child has a better life. Easy for some.
Dan knew that he couldn’t Share. Not his childhood, with the terrible neglect and the yelling and the harsh blows for the least infraction. The shouted, “Did that teach you? Did that teach you?” with his parents looming over him. It taught him, all right. It taught him things that it took years of therapy to get over. It taught him what not to do with an iron rod and the threat of hellfire. He was, he hoped and prayed, the very last of the Abused Generation, doing his utmost to see that his children could not ever suffer. So far, so good. It was the next step that had him baffled.
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Challenge #02582-G025: History is a Pane
I see the words tossed around here and there but I I don’t fully understand the impact of the “shattering” does fragment of humanity wander space, or something comical like everything went ape sh*t the moment humans enter the galactic alliance? – Anon Guest
Many don’t understand what the Shattering is, how long it took, and what it did to Human history. For a start, it’s named as if it’s one event, but it’s actually an era in Terran history. When the abundance of ‘deep time’ one-way wormholes in the Sol system were discovered, there followed an era of rapid-fire colonisation. In order to go deep, the colonists had to gather and take with them a certain amount of mass.
This included many surviving historical artefacts, landmarks, and so forth. That is, when the colonisers didn’t use other forms of mass to form the critical closure of the wormhole gateway. Most of which was obtained from the asteroid and kuiper belts. After all, the last thing a group of like-minded people needed when busy making a world in their own image was serial kibbitzing from the very world they just escaped.
The delayed result was chaos. History as Terra knew it… shattered. It was a slow dissolution, working over cycles during the centuries following the discovery of one-way wormholes. The assorted lunatic fringes, weirdoes, and cultural pockets decided that life would be so much better if they built a world of their own, or the controlling mainstream concluded that life would be so much easier if they didn’t have to deal with the aforementioned fringe. Either way, parts of civilisation as it was known went down through time and space to sink or swim on a world of their own making. The relevant parts of history went with them, thus making it easier for the remaining fragments to pretend that the fringe never existed in the first place. In this, it is certainly true that those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
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Challenge #02581-G024: Forgotten Good
A pervert once told me that pride was like a knife, with it you can cut down your enemies, and your allies. There are time when you do not throw it away but leave it on the ground right beside you so you can pick it up once again. – Anon Guest
Pride is a knife, the teacher said. Use it to cut others and it will cut you. It shines, it gleams, it hurts, and it makes it all the easier to hurt yourself. Pride is a gleaming prize that can be reached for, but never achieved. No matter what, pride will turn on you and cut you down. Pride can be a tool. Pride can be earned. Pride can be a poison.
It’s a complicated thing to have. Harder than diamond, stronger than stone, ephemeral as mist… all of them at once. Rarest of all prizes for the downtrodden and unworthy like Pia. The Mistress called her ugly at every turn, even her own parents didn’t want her and nobody else had until the Mistress had chosen her for training. Then… another found her and trained her for other things.
That was the teacher, and they took Pia away from the Mistress at any time they liked to bring her… here… and teach her things. Pia wasn’t certain how it worked, the teacher kept things foggy, but it never seemed far and it never seemed to take very long, despite the fact that Pia was always working at it for hours. This lesson on Pride had taken but a minute, yet the arguing of it took far, far longer. “Y'ain’t gonna make me poison the Mistress, is you? I ain’t gonna poison th’ Mistress.”
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Challenge #02580-G023: Just One
Human Bear was sitting on the ramp of his Bodge Job repairing a few new holes on one of the arms of his Live Suit courtesy of a particularly aggressive Predator on the planet they just left. When one of the Crew the creature thought looked like a tasty meal walked into the hanger to express this thanks, Stopped in his tracks at a human not sealed in his Protective Suit. He also noticed a very large very ugly looking scar that covered most of his upper Back.
Excitedly the Afro'ad asked about the Scar thinking he would get to hear another one of Human Bear’s Big Adventures. To his surprise the signature smile disappeared and a face the little creature had never seen before took its place.
“Some of my Stories don’t have Happy Endings, Little-one.” He said “You sure you want to hear it?” – Anon Guest
[AN: Harkens back to this thing ]
It’s not always the Deathworlders you gotta keep an eye on, Bear began, meditatively twiddling with his patched and repaired livesuit. Hell, even the frailest Havenworlders can pack the right kind'a punch if they have strategy. Not every planet has compatible enzymes and all. People like me? We go around thinking we’re indestructible.
No, it wasn’t Havenworlders like you. These were just… regular-ass citizens. Like anyone else in the Alliance. It was a disaster. Not a war. It was… it was an accident. Bear closed his eyes, as if fortifying himself against the muggers waiting in Memory Lane. Caught everyone by surprise. It was supposed to be a holiday.
I don’t think anyone knew the place was tectonically active. One of those little fly-by-night construction places. Instant resort, just add visitors, you know? Looks pretty, everything’s… well… functional. If nothing bad happens, nothing worse happens. They’re more all over the place than you might think. Ten minute scan versus in-depth analysis, you know? It’s legal, still, but it’s getting less legal, thank the Powers.
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