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The Talisman
The little white door blended in seamlessly with the wall around it, and Lucy probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if Connor didn’t point it out to her. It was small, the top of the door was level with the top of her head and it was maybe only a foot wide. In place of a doorknob, there were two latches – a tarnished old slide latch and a shiny and new-looking latch with a lock. Connor pulled a small key out of his pocket and started fumbling with the lock. Lucy looked at the door and wondered what could possibly be hiding behind it. It was much too small…
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Fairy Judgment
This post is a response to an assigned writing prompt for my local writing group. We had to respond to the question “In what way do you judge strangers before getting to know them?” through the eyes of characters in our writing. I answered this question using some of the characters from the novel that I have drafted and am currently working on editing. “Fairies are always so judgey,” the creature complained. “We are not ‘judgey’!” Maeve argued. “Judgey isn’t even a proper word. How would a groundling like you even know what fairies are really like? I can’t imagine that you have many fairies visiting you in this…place.” Maeve…
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The Patron
The tired, old bookseller heard the bell over the door ring and looked up from his coffee to see who had entered his shop. He studied the young woman and wondered whether she was just a casual tourist or one of the few who felt the pull from one of the Books hidden on the back shelf. The old man had grown tired of running the shop and now was only open a few hours a week, he often thought about closing it, but he felt a calling to keep it open for those special few who needed it. The woman did not seem to know what she was looking…
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The Bookseller
She walked down the narrow, cobblestone alley; she had never noticed the old bookstore there before. The sign outside said simply: “BOOKS Wednesdays 10-2”. She walked in to discover shelves and shelves of unfamiliar dust-covered books, not the walls of classics or contemporary books she expected to find in a bookstore. These were books about magic, fairies, spirits, and spells. The bookseller glared at her as she reached to dust off a book hidden in the corner. This was the book that would change everything. This was a six sentence story that had to include the prompt word CLASSICS. To see more six sentence stories responding to this prompt go…
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Halloween Housesitting
The job requirements were simple, she just had to spend the night in a vacant house to make sure that no Halloween pranksters messed with it – easy money. As she walked up to the door, the house was surrounded by a fog so thick she could barely see two feet in front of her. She pushed the old, creaky door open and stepped inside. She heard a door slam in a different part of the house as the lights flickered off and on. This house was supposed to be unoccupied so she shouted out to see who was there. Suddenly the lights went out and then the laughter started.…
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The Dragon Warrior
His heavy sword clashed against the dragon’s nearly impenetrable scales and the dragon snarled. He heard footsteps behind him and swung around just in time to block the Dark Knight’s attack. As he raised his sword toward the knight, he could feel the dragon’s fiery breath singe his back. This was the fiercest battle the mighty warrior had ever fought, but nothing would stop him from rescuing the King and retrieving the stolen jewels. He heard a woman shout from the far end of the field, so he laid down his sword and turned to run toward his mother. He would return to battle later, but now the little dragon warrior…
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The Magolith
The dark, claw-like rock was the last remaining connection between the Realm and the human world. For millenia, fairies and other mystical beings had used the magolith as a portal to travel freely between the worlds. Most fairies had stopped traveling to the Earthly world long ago, many had even forgotten how to find the magical stone. They were told that the humans had turned the world into a dark place full of hate, not a place for fairies and their light. Eighty years ago they stopped even sending scouts to keep an eye on the goings on of that world. Instead, one of the Keepers of Knowledge was charged…
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A Happy Place
Turning on the news lately makes me want to scream, but like a tragic roadside accident, I cannot look away. There is so much that I want to say, but I can’t. I am afraid that if I open the floodgates even a little, I will never be able to close them again. All of those words, memories and tears will just come falling out and I won’t be able to stop them. So instead, I focus on my happy place. For years, my happy place was not a real place at all. Instead it was a state of mind that I could take anywhere. I would put my headphones…
