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Sjan Evardsson

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2019

Stories (282)

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307 Followers

9 Following

282 Stories

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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...

3 likes

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...

4 likes

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...

2 likes

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...

2 likes

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 ...

1 like

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 ...

3 likes

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. ...

2 likes

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 ...

1 like

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...

2 likes

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 ...

2 likes

Gossip Guru

Guola, your Gossip Guru here with the latest. Has the frost melted for the ‘Ice Queen?’ Rumors of Sol III stadium shows for her next tour, fresh romance, and sparks in front of the holodrones hold the answer. Things are heating up in more ways than one for the anikuran super-star singer, and now actress from Tavril IV, the ‘Ice Queen of Trance,’ Siala. Her affinity for all things human has worked well for her so far, with sixteen of her twenty-one hits being reworked human songs from antiquity, the latest being Never Gonna Give You Up. The b...

2 likes

A Shower Would Be Nice

Chris wanted a shower. She wanted to go home, get clean, and get out the crusty clothes she was wearing. There was no clock on the wall, but the passing of time that could never be recovered still weighed heavy on her. She had to admit to herself that where she sat, at the small table, was exactly what she expected from an interrogation room. Her arm throbbed under the bandage. She avoided rubbing it, since that would just make it worse. Her patience was approaching its limit when the door opened. A man and a woman in cheap suits walked in. ...

2 likes

A Proper Meeting

The sun had set, and the planet dominated the sky, the swirls of color it was painted with brightly illuminated. The shadow of the moon would transit the planet’s face in a while. The telescope and camera were set up to capture it when it showed.There wasn’t much else for a Royal Expeditionary Frontier Police officer like T-937/K, “Tik” to his peers, to do this far into the neutral zone. He knew what he wanted to do, but the chance of doing it here was as close to nil as to make no difference.He checked the time on his eye implant, setting i...

3 likes

The Keeper, the Seeker, and the Avatar

After nearly thirty years of research, field work, digging, and sometimes living off the land, Ana had finally found what her family had sought since her great-grandfather. The door was so well hidden that she hadn’t realized it was there until she attempted to break a bit of the surface rock off with her geologist’s hammer. The hollow behind the door resonated with the sound of the hammer on stone. She tapped along the door to find the edges. With the chisel end of her hammer, she chipped away the encrustations that had built up along the e...

2 likes

A Nefarious Plot

I had just come into a large inheritance, and despite only Pete, my supervisor, knowing about it, everyone at work started treating me differently. People I’d thought of as not just colleagues, but friends had started to plot something. It was as though the entire office was in on it. It sounds insane, and a bit paranoid, but conversations would suddenly stop when I entered the break room. When I returned from a break, a conversation between three or four people huddled around a desk would either stop dead or take a clumsy turn into some cus...

2 likes