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Sjan Evardsson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2019

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314 Followers

9 Following

150 Stories

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The Helping Hand

Weekly Contest #269

1984: Gwen lay on the grass in the circle of mushrooms, drawing Fae-touched Fran, her comic heroine. Like her, Fran was a recent high-school grad, just a hair over five feet tall, with strawberry blonde hair, one green and one brown eye, and a spattering of freckles across her pale face. Unlike her, Fran had been given a gift by the fae, The Helping Hand, a pendant that allowed her to teleport anywhere she desired, that just as often took her instead to where she was needed. Fran had no other superpowers, instead relying on her knowledge and...

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No Glory

Glory, honor, the chance to prove himself. For any warrior, this would be the chance of a lifetime. For Kendrick, however, prophesied to perform the greatest feat a person could, this was everything. The enemy was encroaching on his clan’s sacred lands. Not other clans, not even people, no. People knew well enough to leave sacred spaces unsullied.No, these were abominations that shouldn’t exist. They had no connection to the land, no history in this place beyond the last few moons. In those few moons, though, they built their monstrous edifi...

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Final Appeal

There is little in life more disappointing than having the target of your desire snatched from your grasp at the last moment. Alex knew that feeling all too well. The third time was not the charm, as the saying would have one believe; neither were the fourth, fifth or sixth. Alex smoothed her jumpsuit. It was a copy of the ones worn by everyone else around her, made smaller and shaped to fit her. The cool grey of the jumpsuit clashed with her warm, golden-brown skin, reddish brown hair, and bright brown eyes, but she’d gotten used to it. “Ar...

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I Want to Be Here for You

Kiera was tired of waiting for inspiration to strike, she decided to force the issue. She’d recently gone off on a study binge and devoured the contents of dusty old tomes of summoning. Everything she found on calling forth entities from other realms was jumbled together in her head, and she was going to put it to use. She set up a chair and desk in the center of her attic. Her laptop sat on the desk, next to a water bottle and a packet of pretzels. Around the entire setup she drew a circle in chalk. Kiera placed a candle at each of the card...

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One Small Change

Dr. A was probably the most famous anonymous person in the world. There are plenty of published scientists who are little-known and content to be private, and then there’s Dr. A. The Nobel committee spent over a year before they found someone who was in contact with the brilliant polymath. All their searching was met with an immediate refusal. Dr. A was not going to be seen in public, nor did they want the committee’s attention. Despite this, the anonymous doctor had authored and published no fewer than seventy-four peer-reviewed papers in t...

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Knowing You're Safe

The Bihrelli sidled close to me. They were an average sort of Bihrelli; hermaphroditic, bipedal, two-armed creatures just under one and a half meters in height, with huge, black eyes that made them cute. This one’s skin was a pale blue, with uneven pale brown spots. Their tail twitched in the way that showed nerves or fear. There was nothing unusual about that, at least for this one. “Hi, Jordi.” I’d long ago given up trying to pronounce their name and used a close equivalent. They’d done the same with me, even though they were always so ten...

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The Rise of the Specter

From the outside, my childhood was normal. Of course, “normal” changes over time. The sounds of a paddle or belt coupled with the wails of a child was just “normal,” then. What should have garnered attention was the frequency and severity of my corporal punishment. The sense of the time was, though, that what happens in a neighbor’s house was not one’s business. That is not to say I blame my parents for who I turned out to be. Just to say that I learned a lot about hiding in my early childhood. With a hot-heated father that looked for any re...

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XEF

The scant wisps of high cloud offered no hope for relief from the rising sun. The dark red soil had barely finished radiating the heat it had collected the previous day when the first rays of the sun lit the sky. “Listen up, the word of the day is hydrate.” Captain Inez Isobel filled her canteen from the creek, pushed the button on the side, and waited for the red light on the button to turn green. When it had, she took a swig of the tepid water. “Tastes like shit, but it’s better than dying out here. Speaking of dying out here, every hour w...

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Nondescript

Elijah was the sort of person that could disappear in a “crowd” of three. There was nothing about his looks that stood out. Medium height, build, hair color, skin tone, and immediate impression. He was both an “everyman” and no-one in particular. That suited him just fine, though. He checked the balance of his savings account, what was left over from his mother’s life insurance after paying her debts. He stepped out of the shotgun shack he’d inherited from his grandparents by way of his mother. A quick scan of the small, gravel plot showed h...

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Campaign

“That smug bastard’s done it again.” Penelope made a fist and the small gem in the wall went dark, taking the wall-sized image of the dwarf’s press conference coverage with it. She banged her warm brown fist on the table, her blonde-tipped, brown hair falling in waves around her face as she dropped her forehead to fist, hiding her hazel eyes. “He just laid out the entire transportation plan we just finalized last night.” “We can fix this.” The elf with charcoal-grey skin, bright violet eyes, and long, straight, snow-white hair pulled into a ...

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One Way

The mood in the room had been smothered to the point that if were to drop any lower, it would wrap around into manic chaos. Thirty-one red markers on the holographic display blinked and drew attention to themselves as they orbited the gas giant in the system. “If they complete the gate, the frontier worlds are lost. They have to be stopped, now but … the nearest carrier strike group is the twelfth, and they won’t get here in time.” He looked at his reflection in the darkened screen of his terminal. Where he’d been a young captain only a few ...

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Spritely

When she saw the glow of fire, Scarlett stopped, called 9-1-1, and pulled out her camera. The corner of the warehouse was wrapped in flames, not yet huge, perhaps caught early enough to save most of it. Given the rash of arson in the industrial district, Scarlett set about capturing as much of the fire as she could. The news vans would be trailing the fire trucks. If there was a chance for an exclusive, now was it. She put on her telephoto lens and began scanning the edges of the flames, snapping as she went. Something caught her attention. ...

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Accidental General

Desperate people do desperate things. Jen convinced herself that what she was doing was desperate rather than insane. If anyone had the cure for her mother, it would have to be the aliens. They’d arrived on Earth a few years ago, spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with human governments, greed, and tribalism. In the end, they were given places where their trade vessels could land, sell goods, and buy from the local populace in dozens of countries. One of those alien port markets happened to be just a hundred kilometers or so from ...

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A Private Meeting

“Really? Of all places, this is where you choose to meet?” “Damn! Can you believe these seats? I can’t see what’s happening,” the small woman complained. She leaned left and right in an attempt to see around the crowd of large men in the next row. Her pink-tipped blonde hair fell across her pale beige face and green eyes as she did, and she ignored it. “It’s a game of sportsball or something. Some kind of sports are happening. That’s not why we’re here.” The woman next to her wore large sunglasses that hid her eyes, a wide-brimmed hat with h...

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The First Stage

Fenrik’s world had turned upside down in a heartbeat; his hand had been forced. With devastated armies, his generals began to field adolescent children and any elderly person that could hold a rifle. Had he not signed the terms of surrender, his people would continue to be slaughtered. They had let him keep his title, at least in name. What true king answers to a higher authority, and what true elf answers to the authority of barbarous humans? The humans had taken away all his generals that led the troops of children to stand trial for “war ...

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