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LeeAnn Hively

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Mar, 2024

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59 Followers
25 Following

14 Stories

551 karma pts

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Three Red Seals

Weekly Contest #364

The flour was the only thing in the kitchen that did not lie.Coarse stuff, ground from winter wheat left too long in the damp granaries by the river, so that even dry it carried a memory of silt underneath. When I drove my knuckles into the center of the trough, dust rose in a pale breath and settled along my forearms, into the weave of my apron.Beyond the shuttered window, the sky over the lower town sat the color of wet slate. It had been threatening rain for three days and had not yet had the decency to fall.“You are working the dough too...

6 likes 7 comments 7
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Sixty-Thousand Years of Solitude

Weekly Contest #317

The canyon had devoured the trail completely.Bobbie Jean’s fingers scraped against bare sandstone where the metal markers should have been bolted. Gone. Not just the markers—even the drill holes in the sandstone were smooth, as if no hand of iron had ever touched it.Her chest constricted. Not from the altitude, but from something colder creeping up her spine.This was impossible. She’d hiked this loop a dozen times since the divorce. She knew every switchback, every cairn. Trails didn’t just disappear.At fifty-two, her body was already stagin...

11 likes 12 comments 12
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Paper Portals

Weekly Contest #316

My life had become paper. Not just metaphorically, but with actual thinness that touched everything. Two-dimensional. The screen-glow of spreadsheets cast shadows across my face, the air conditioner droned its only song, and identical microwaved dinners marked time’s passage.My apartment held the scent of stale coffee and quiet resignation. I moved through each day with careful precision, never deviating, never risking. Reality unfolded with the neat predictability of a receipt. Only within books did I find texture, the saturated colors abse...

20 likes 17 comments 17
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A Thousand Mortal Coils

The autumn wind carried the scent of chrysanthemums and grief across the cemetery lawn. Lilith stood at the back of the mourning party, her dark hair swept elegantly beneath a wide-brimmed hat, watching her own funeral through amber-tinted sunglasses. The irony of mourning herself yet again, maybe for the 600th time, hadn’t lost its edge, even after six thousand years.“A brilliant scholar,” she heard someone murmur. “Such a tragic loss.”Sarah Thorne—the identity she’d worn for the past twenty-three years—had vanished in a hiking accident thr...

6 likes 9 comments 9
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The Art of Unmasking

Weekly Contest #294

They recoiled from her like she carried a plague, these townsfolk with their secrets festering beneath pressed smiles and starched collars.Elizabeth watched them scatter when she appeared, conversations crumbling to ash, laughter strangling in throats. Their eyes sliced sideways, lips curling with barely concealed revulsion as they sought refuge from her penetrating gaze. She’d spent years trying to earn their acceptance, volunteering at church functions, helping with town festivals, offering shy smiles that were met with turned backs.The cu...

22 likes 19 comments 19
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Megan Said

Weekly Contest #249

Molly had become someone boring; she’d wrapped herself in a cocoon of solitary shadows, separate from the world even when they moved in tandem. It happened in increments. One day she was in the middle of it–it being anything new and exciting. The next, premature departures became her signature move. She cited a sudden headache or an impending workday as her escape route.Soon enough, the tedium of social niceties weighed down on her. That’s when she started stepping out for fresh air and just not going back inside. The phone buzzed with conce...

26 likes 16 comments 16
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A Lion's Tale

Weekly Contest #249

“I was a perfectly well-behaved child.” It always made me laugh when Ruslan would say such a thing sincerely and with a straight face, as if he believed the words that flowed from his mouth. While staring at nothing at all, he would scrunch up his eyes a bit, as if maybe looking hard enough would allow him to see more details. Then he’d recount another story, a narrative of a childhood claimed to be filled with innocence and commendable virtue.It was especially hot that summer, a year that leapt directly from winter into summer and skipped s...

19 likes 7 comments 7
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Desperate Remedies

Weekly Contest #248

The Golden God was beginning the languid descent towards his home beyond the horizon, casting a brilliant tinge across the embankment sheltering the trees. The river, a smooth glass of serpentine fluidity, reflected the blazing orb as it neared the jagged peaks that devoured it every night. On the shore, a man as stout and squat as the rocky escarpments surrounding the valley advanced with unwavering resolve, his broad brow furrowed with worry as he pushed onward into the formidable landscape.In the dimming radiance of a setting sun, Druk, w...

28 likes 16 comments 16
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Pomposity

Weekly Contest #247

I used to be held in high regard by humans in the past. They possessed the knowledge to stay away from fairy circles and clearly understood that mysterious entities dwelled in the shadows. Their transformation into these ignorant brutes, who live without dread of the supernatural and with contentment for existence, is beyond my understanding. They are much sturdier now and don’t fall over dead from a simple cold; they have vast amounts of entertainment, and they eat every single day. People made things even more dreadful with their inte...

21 likes 12 comments 12
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The Hexenmeister

Weekly Contest #246

They were settling in front of the fire, Mama in her rocking chair, Johannes with his wooden horses, and Inga singing to her doll, when thunderous voices suddenly heralded the bludgeoning of the door. The eldest twin, Johannes, sprung to his feet and instinctively sidled in front of Inga. Mama, dropping the darning into the ancient woven basket near her rocker, walked towards the latched entrance.With every fist lash, the hammering intensified, and the voices became audible. “Ebba! Ebba, let us in!” The cumbrous oaken door gave one last shud...

19 likes 23 comments 23
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Purpose

Weekly Contest #243

   I am life, and I am death. I am the personification of everything in between. Unseen, I am the epitome of all that we are, you and I. By your side, I steadfastly remain, from your first breath to your last. We share this world and the world to come. While I see every minuscule moment of your physical duration, you are incapable of seeing the love I have for you, from one soul to another, the heartbeat of existence thrumming rhythmically within us both. This is how it should be. You, one soul, tethered to the physical world,...

28 likes 15 comments 15
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Metamorphosis Reimagined

Weekly Contest #242

     She was my muse, first coming to me in a feverish dream when the heat pressed down on my body, and the ocean failed to send a breeze across the whole of Cyprus. She teased me coquettishly; shooting looks from beneath lashes so dark they could have been crafted from the night sky, her eyes the net with which the stars became ensnared. Selene doused this impish nymph in her light, and I watched her dance. For the whole evening, I sat in the shadows of my subconscious, hypnotized by the sway in her hips. &nbsp...

27 likes 28 comments 28
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Home

Weekly Contest #241

     Six years, five months, seventeen days, nine hours, and twenty minutes since the Trippers, as they called themselves, came through the portals. They claimed to be from another universe nestled in between ours and one more that was pretty much just like the cosmic wonderland we called home, and theirs was experiencing a year we wouldn’t see here for another millennia.      Their scientists had long since discovered time travel was perfectly possible…with one specific hitch. It turns ...

18 likes 7 comments 7
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Two Moons

Shortlisted for Contest #240 ⭐️

      He occasionally envisioned that life in dreams, where two moons hung in the sky, one closer, vibrantly pink and purple, the other, a shimmering white, the opaque pearl magic unto itself. He saw them disappear from view as the ancient cave walls enveloped him in their darkness, his small feet padding along the rock of the stone floor worn smooth over centuries of use. The further he crept, the more exposed he felt, and shadows gathered around him. His bones began to quake deep into the pitch with the final ...

29 likes 26 comments 26
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