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Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #02788-G231: A Pearl in the Mire

That moment where one goes to soothe a fussy baby and finds a surprise handful of bare bottom. -- Someone's Mum

[AN: Worse is a handful of messy bottom. Been there, done that, had to disinfect all on sundry for an entire hour]

Long before Wraithvine met Thief, later renamed as Chrysanthemum and Anthe for short, Wraithvine stole a baby. Technically. It's not theft if the article in question has already been thrown away.

The child in question was a paradox in evidence. New to the world, perhaps a handful of days old. Apparently originally wrapped in a quilt just big enough to hold an infant. Yet also lying on the town midden like refuse. They were pearl-white in skin, dark of hair, very upset, and quite clearly a Tiefling.

The tail's always a dead give-away. It lashed back and forth as the baby wailed and, since no-one else was coming to this particular town's midden, Wraithvine braved other people's mess to pick the child up.

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Challenge #02787-G230: A Necessary Education

All of the Top Schools, get 'problem students', some get rid of the fast. Our Lady of Purity embraced them. -- Anon Guest

[AN: Throwback to this thing in case you were wondering]

Somewhere in the known universe, there is a paradise. Nothing sharp exists there. The weather is always balmy and pleasant. The sands are soft on the beaches, and the shells are always pretty. Somewhere, sweet water flows and the air is full of birdsong. This is not that place.

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Challenge #02786-G229: Not That Hostile

What sort of culture might arise from an Eyeball Planet? From the ring of liquid water temperature sandwiched between way too hot and way too cold? -- Anon Guest

Life... finds a way. It can exist in sunless, crushing depths. It can survive under thousands of Sidu[1] of ice. It can thrive in the substrate of irradiated soil, between the burning sun above and the toxic liquid below. It can even evolve in the confounding physics of Hyperspace, where the Xyrak'l

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Challenge #02785-G228: Helper's Eye View

Created as helpers/aides. They are infertile, so how do they regard their charges? They are not slave or servant, even though they look after their charge. Remember Julie and Nanny, but how does the process work both from the Augment's view and the charges. -- Bonding

I am Borf. I am good dog. This is Len, they are my pup. My pup is bigger than me, and has been since I was a pup. That is the way of it. I

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Challenge #02784-G227: An Edge Case

A: hey man are you ok?

B: .... yeah sorry, feeling a little burned out

A: ah, I see. Hey do you want some coffee after this? -- Anon Guest

Humans are resilient. Humans are robust. Humans are strong. Humans are also living beings with limits. There is only so much stress, devastation, and chaos that even a Human can handle.

Learning this was something of a hurdle after Humanity was accepted into the Alliance.

Witness Human Doe, who has apparently reached a

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Challenge #02783-G226: Untranslatable

I wanted to sing, but it didn’t work translated to gal-simple. So I tried a mental translators, but then I learn that it most only scan the left side of the brain for the sentence structures. Singing comes from the right side. -- Anon Guest

[AN: There's growing evidence that the left-brain/right-brain stuff isn't as real as we once thought. However, there are other things that say it's real in very specific directions.]

Sometimes, you just got to sing. Sometimes,

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Challenge #02782-G225: Under Starry Skies

This is a prompt that's actually a mix of 3 stories, the one of the super-soldiers, the one of the dream berries, and the one of the seed collector. Here are the prompts for reference.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02677-g120-a-mind-of-their-own

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02509-f319-berry-small-problem

https://steemit.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02525-f335-useful-obsession

The person had collected more seeds than any human ever had before. It was their hobby, it was their obsession, and with it they had saved many lives from

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Challenge #02781-G224: Dear Employee...

If you really want to make a politician sweat write them a handwritten letter. I do this, (a) It's rare, and they are obliged to answer. But first of course they have to find someone who can read longhand, neat, correctly spelt, longhand. Which of course forces them to focus on the contents. -- Nonny the Mouse.

[AN: I'm sure I did something to this point somewhere before...]

People want to make politicians think. The problem with this is that the politicians

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Challenge #02780-G223: Redo From...

It started as a Company raid, aided by a hacker who crashed the system of a Rival company. It escalated, every computer system in the World crashed. Hospitals, Electricity, Money. All were lost and the only way to even get the beginning of a re-start needed electricity. -- Anon Guest

The moral, if there was one, was always add extra stop clauses in your trojan worms. Some would say it should have been, don't create trojan worms that will end the world

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Challenge #02779-G222: And There Was Only One Bed

Archivist finds a Treasure Trove in a Library's donation of 'source material, just old papers'. Stored in time seal conditions. Just one problem to the end of all their funding problems it was all hand written. -- Anon Guest

It was a sealed box in one of the Pre-Shattering Permaplastics. Someone had scrawled, "rando papers" in permanent marker across the lid. Scanners indicated that it was still hermetically sealed. This required care and attention to detail.

Good thing the Archivaas were an

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Challenge #02778-G221: To Walk Away

Call it what you will, the dollar shop, the thing store, they are inevitably tied to poky little book stores designed by Escher in that they contain far more than they should, and often never store the same thing twice. They are inevitably attractive to maker types as they have things you cannot find elsewhere, or ever again. They also have the phenomenon of wandering in "for a quick look-around," and emerging days later with a full shopping bag, an empty wallet,

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Challenge #02777-G220: Signal to Noise

Chuckled “I sense death behind us”

The moment the human said that some ordinance were detonated behind us, and a Vicious growl to our south -- Anon Guest

Human methods of memetic communication leave much to be desired. One has to know a certain volume of Terran art forms, especially popular Terran art forms, in order to understand what a memetic Human is attempting to communicate.

In this example, a stylised Human is sitting in a means of public transit and giggling

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Challenge #02776-G219: Peculiar Parenting Problems

There were things I expected to say to my children when I got into this whole parenthood thing. Things like "don't eat that" and "put your pants on" and "stop drawing on the walls" or "do your homework". Then, there were the things that took me by surprise. "Don't put that in your butt" was one, and "NO! DON'T PUSH YOUR BROTHER DOWN THE STAIRS!!" was another, but most recently, "If you make me faceplant into broken glass, you will be in

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Challenge #02775-G218: Waste Not

[Level 2 Deathworlder] I don't know how you can be so relaxed about this human. This is an unknown planet and, save for a few starvation rations and potable water, we've no supplies left. All of the prey is too fast to catch, and you are obviously starting to look worse. HOW can you be so calm when all you're doing is banging rocks together, scraping sticks, and weaving those disgusting plants skin together?

[Human] Yes so I've lost some kilos, but

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Challenge #02774-G217: Finding a Smile

"No, thank you."

...

"Get that out of my face."

...

"STOP" -- Anon Guest

They said, Give a sweet thing to a sour face. Which was the very essence of the Sunshine Festival. Enough smiles, and the sun would rise, bringing an end to the cold of winter. Which was why the marketplace was overloaded with cloth flowers that had been soaked in cloying perfume. Honey-cakes abounded. Beautiful music filled every corner and turned every road into a cacophony.

Compliments that usually didn't

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