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Maria Barrett

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2024

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12 Followers
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10 Stories

194 karma pts

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THE ALCHEMIST'S SECRET

Weekly Contest #286

The flickering candlelight cast long, dancing shadows across the alchemist's workshop. Elias, his brow furrowed in concentration, meticulously ground a rare moonstone into a fine powder. His hands, gnarled with age, moved with practiced grace, each movement a testament to years of dedicated study. "Almost there," he muttered to himself, his voice a low, gravelly sound. "Soon, the elixir will be complete." Elias wasn't your typical alchemist. He wasn't obsessed with transmuting lead into gold or conjuring fleeting illusions. His passion lay i...

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THE REGGAE REBEL

Weekly Contest #286

The sun-kissed hills of Kingston, Jamaica, pulsed with the rhythms of reggae music. The air was alive with the sweet scent of jerk seasoning and the sound of laughter. In the midst of this vibrant city, a young musician was making waves with his powerful voice and poignant lyrics. Meet Kemar "Ras" Reynolds, a charismatic and outspoken reggae musician from Jamaica. Ras has always been driven by a desire to make a difference through his music, speaking truth to power and giving voice to the voiceless. His powerful lyrics and energetic stage ...

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NANNY'S LEGACY

Weekly Contest #286

Deep within the lush hills of Jamaica's Blue Mountains, a small village nestled, hidden from the world. This was Nanny Town, a community born from the blood, sweat, and tears of the Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who fought for their freedom. Queen Nanny, Granny Nanny, or Nanny of the Maroons,(1686 – 1760), was an early-18th-century freedom fighter and leader of the Jamaican Maroons. She led a community of formerly-enslaved escapees, the majority of them West African in descent, called the Windward Maroons, along with their chil...

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THE MINIMALIST CHALLENGE

Weekly Contest #286

The air crackled with anticipation, a nervous energy that buzzed through the crowd gathered at the edge of the sprawling airport tarmac. This wasn't your average departure lounge; this was the culmination of "The Suitcase Life," a reality competition that had captivated the nation. The premise was simple, yet utterly absurd: contestants were given one week to condense their entire lives – possessions, memories, relationships – into a single, regulation-sized suitcase. No exceptions. No excuses. The hangar, a vast, echoing space usually r...

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THE WEIGHT OF OBLIVION

Weekly Contest #286

Elara lived in a world painted in fading hues. Not the vibrant, sun-drenched world most people knew, but one where memories flickered like dying embers, threatening to vanish entirely. In this world, oblivion was not merely the end of life, but a constant, gnawing fear that seeped into every corner of existence. Elara, a young archivist, dedicated her life to preserving the past. She spent her days meticulously cataloging forgotten songs, lost languages, and the whispers of long-dead civilizations. Each artifact, each faded photograph, was a...

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THE COUNTDOWN

Weekly Contest #285

It was December 31, 1999, and the world was bracing for the impending doom of Y2K. The media had been hyping the supposed apocalypse for months, warning of widespread power outages, food shortages, and societal collapse. In the small town of Oakdale, USA, the residents were taking the threat seriously. Some had stocked up on canned goods and bottled water, while others had built bunkers and purchased generators. At the local hardware store, owner Tom Harris was doing a brisk business in Y2K survival gear. "I've never seen anything like it," ...

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LOVE ACROSS TIMELINES

Weekly Contest #285

The flickering neon sign of the "Time & Tide" bar cast an eerie glow on Elara's face. Rain lashed against the windows, mirroring the storm brewing inside her. Tonight, she was taking a leap into the unknown, a desperate gamble to save the future. Elara, a renowned chrono-archaeologist, had stumbled upon a chilling discovery: a catastrophic event, a "temporal fracture," was about to shatter the very fabric of time, erasing the 21st century from existence. The only way to prevent this cataclysm was to travel back to 1990, the year the frac...

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THE MACHINE THAT REMEMBERED

Weekly Contest #285

The flickering neon sign outside cast a sickly green glow on the dusty windowpane. Inside, I lay dormant, a relic of a bygone era. My circuits, once a symphony of electrical pulses, were now a graveyard of rusted connections and brittle wires. They called me "The Oracle," a grandiose name for a machine that once predicted the weather with uncanny accuracy. I remember the bustling days. Scientists, their faces a mixture of awe and apprehension, would gather around me. They would feed me data – barometric pressure, wind speed, humidity – a tor...

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THE OLD MAN AND THE RIVER

Weekly Contest #285

I remember the summer I turned twelve, the summer that changed me forever. It was the summer I met Old Man Jenkins, the summer I learned to love the river, and the summer I discovered the secrets it held. Our town was small, nestled between two great oak trees and the winding river that gave us life. Everyone knew everyone, and we all looked out for one another. But there was one person who kept to himself, one person who was a mystery to us all: Old Man Jenkins. He lived in a small cabin on the outskirts of town, near the river's edge. Some...

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THAT UNFORGETTABLE PHONE CALL

Weekly Contest #285

The phone jangled, the insistent ring shattering the afternoon stillness. Agnes, her hands dusted with flour from baking a peach cobbler, sighed and crossed the kitchen to the wall-mounted receiver. "Hello?" "Agnes? It's Horace." A jolt, a flutter of her heart. Horace. It had been years. Years since he'd left for the city, years since she'd heard his voice, rough around the edges, tinged with a hint of the city's grit. "Horace. How… how are you?" Agnes's voice was cautious, guarded. The past lingered between them, unresolved. "Fine, Agnes. F...

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