Hola, Big Brother
by radarbrat

Comment:
And so she wept a little as she took her husbands arms, and looked at him with a smile, for they were both tears of joy and of sadness as she watched her little boy go off into the world on his own for the first time. The father stood proud, but he also was not immune to a welling in his eyes, that he quickly blinked away.

The little one turned back, briefly and gave them a smiling wave, and then with a final step he was gone.

When he returned from his first day of school later that day, they greeted him, and he filled their evening with the tales of First Grade.

Army Strong
by mirey41

Comment:
For the first few moments on this new world, he stumbled about, confused and disoriented, and weak. However, by some deep instinct within, he managed to find his way out of the dense junglescape he had found himself in, and discovered a wide open beach and stood staring at the sea. Not that he had names for these things, for he was a stranger here, and for the moment was merely trying to make sense of things, and survive.

He stumbled to the edge of the water, and suddenly noticed that he was getting stronger by the second. He could feel the heat flowing from the bright and powerful circle in the sky, which we call the sun. A heat that flooded into him, a heat that his body soaked up like a sponge. As it did, he stood up straighter. As it did he felt energy pulse within him. As he did he felt and saw his body changing, molding, building.

Not long after, he raised is arms to the sky, and flexed his arms and knew that he was no more powerful than he had ever dreamed he could become, and it was because of this strange new alien star. He shouted in triumph, and raced down the beach, towards a tale to be told another time.

Foggy IOP
by mgarsteck

Comment:
It was a cold and freezing day, and Bobby the World Explorer was teetering on the brink of disaster. If he could make it to the end of this outcropping that hung above the one bajillion infinity foot drop into the cracks of doom, he would be able to recover the Secret Golden Monkey Statue and save the arctic tundra natives from a fate worse than death!

Slowly, oh so slowly, he advanced, the wind howling, threatening to knock him from this precarious perch. Step by step, inch by inch he went, and the hiding place of the statue grew ever closer.

In the middle, he was almost lost. For as he tried to navigate a broken area, a gust of wind caught his loose and flapping hood, and he almost went over. Almost. But he grabbed in desperation and caught onto a bent and jutting spike just in time, and hung there for a moment, staring down into the darkness. He pulled himself back up, and rested, breathing hard. That was close. Too close.

He moved on, and without further incident he finally reached his goal, the end of the outcrop, and lifted the lid of the chest that lay there, and gasped at the brilliance of the object that lie within. He lifted it out, and held it high, and...

"Bobby! Dinner! Come off that old pier before you hurt yourself!" Bobby scowled as his mother brought him out of his imagination and play, and jumped down the two feet to the snow-covered ground below ( a far cry from a bajillion infinity drop!) and went in to eat. As he went, he smiled. Tomorrow, he would be the hero of the Arctic People. Tomorrow!

Just Coffee
by CEJ

Comment:
He plopped the spoon into his mug, and gave it a stir.

Another day, another coffee. Another day at work, but for how long? Another morning of the same old routine, but how many more would there be? He wasn't young anymore, and this job had been his rock for so many years. It had seen him through good times and bad. It had seen him through the raising of his children, through his marriage, through 4 houses and 5 dogs and one summer cottage and everything in between and now he was told that the company probably just couldn't afford to keep so many people anymore and although he'd put almost 20 years into the place and had an immaculate attendance record they said that they couldn't guarantee anyone would be spared and what was he going to do if they laid him off there was nowhere else to go and what was he going to tell his wife they couldn't do this to him could they it wasn't right why did this have to happen now what was wrong with this WORLD!?

He stirred his coffee again and sighed, and plunked the spoon down on the napkin by his side and pretended to read the paper.

Just another day.

Stairs
by hanserik

Comment:
He was late, that day, and was busy going over the excuses for why in his mind, when he came upon the stairway.

He had passed it, of course, a dozen times a day during his tenure there, and thought nothing of it every time. For whatever reason caused him to stop this time, when urgency and tardiness were screaming within him that he could not stop, he would never know.

Yet stop he did, and gazed upwards. Round and round it went, reaching to the very top of this rather unremarkable place, built like so many other buildings of the period. Yet something caught his attention and his mind, and he found himself unable to look away. He looked up there and wondered. Wondered what he would find, up there at the top. Wondered how fantastic it would be to go running up there, round and round, maybe getting a little dizzy, to then look down again and see what he could see.

A giddy sort of excitement grabbed him then, and all thoughts of being late were stripped from his mind. With a small shout of anticipation that startled some others walking past, he dropped his briefcase to the floor, and began to run up those winding stairs. Indeed, he went up them so quickly that on occasion, his momentum nearly sent him over the railing, a wild look in his eyes, nearly inhuman. He ran, faster and faster, his breath now coming in ragged bursts, his face red and inflamed, his eyes bulging. He ran, circling those wondrous steps, with complete abandon.

Then, reaching the stop, a scream of triumph ripped from his throat and echoed through the cavernous hall, and people below all stopped and stared upward and pointed, and began talking amongst themselves at such a strange and startling disturbance to their usual routine.

And as they gazed, suddenly they saw a body fling out from the top and come rocketing towards the ground, for when he got to the top, the man up there had lost his mind completely, and the triumph of the climb had quickly changed into a desperate urge to fly. To fly from this height and conquer the world.

For a long time afterward, whispered in the offices and the bathrooms and the halls, came the tale of the man that had jumped from the stairway, but in another land, beyond the doorways of ours, lived the spirit of the man that could fly.

A sweet winter daydreamer
by picturesbykim

Comment:
So she sat there in the quiet of the falling snow, having run out of the house in one of those childhood bursts of emotion that will occur from time to time, as the child struggles to learn and control those feelings that are so new and wondrous to them.

She sat there and brooded for a time, and wondered why life was so unfair, and parents so lacking in understanding, and siblings so cruel. She sat there and began to wander in her mind, to tell herself tales and stories in an attempt at self-distraction. She dreamed of more pleasant lands and places, places where parents existed not, and little brothers were chained and forced to say only nicer things to their older, and better, sisters.

And as she sat there and dreamed, and plotted, and a hint of smile passed her lips, she heard a soft snapping of branch in the trees behind her. Her head whipped around and she looked back into the dense bracken. A slight gasp came from her then, for in the shadows there she thought she caught a glimpse of something. Something squat and round, but it was gone so fast. She blinked a couple of times, thinking that perhaps it was her imagination. Had just been a branch falling from a tree, was all.

Just as she shrugged a shoulder and began to look away, there it was again. A flash of something moving, going deeper into the trees. She gave a shout, her curiosity and wonder masking any fear or caution she may have had, and she jumped up from the log that was her seat and ran off, now certain that she had spied some kind of shy little faery creature. Her mother had told her tales of such things, and who was she to misbelieve them?

So she ran off, chasing what she did not know, and her wonder and belief, this time, did not betray her, for what she found in the deeps of those woods on that day shocked and amazed her. A kingdom of wonder and imagination untold.

Through her childhood years, she returned there many a time, but those adventures, I'm afraid, are tales for another day.

The Demon of Ghost Lake
by skewsme

Comment:
... and from out of the very ground before them it rose, seeming to be of the very soil and earth they walked upon, and the forest itself contorted and twisted around it to become a part of its being. Its body spouting fire and flame which burst about it, yet gave off no heat that they could feel. Indeed, quite the opposite, as the air around them seemed to grow chill and clammy, and their every breath was like drawing in crystals of ice to their lungs.

They stood in shock and stared at this being that formed, eyes large and empty, with a beak like to some monster out of fairy tales, its multiple arms of the trunks of trees, yet lithe and limber, swaying this way and that, and upon its shoulders, in pointed hat, a faery rider that glared at them without feeling.

The monster stood, or perhaps floated, they could not tell. Its very countenance shifting, blurring. It seemed not solid, yet far too solid, and its voice was like a thousand screeching banshees in the night.

What it was they could not say, nor had the breath to say it if they could, but they knew that they had disturbed something ancient here. Something of the earth and trees, some horror untold. They also knew, in some deep part of their minds, that were it not being controlled by its faery rider, they would have already been consumed by it, for it gazed upon them hungrily, and seemed only barely held back. Yet they were rooted there, held by the sight of it, by its gaze, and by the pull of a will from the creature upon it, and that creature leaned over, and spoke to them, not with voice but with power of mind, and it told them to follow.

So follow they did, though they wished not to, and the creature lumbered deeper into the forest, and the trees and bush parted for it as it went, and they follwed.

What became of them, no tale tells, for they were never seen again on this side of the veil.

View from the Bridge of Sighs, Venice
by jgoings

Comment:
It was a phenomenon like no other, and the people of the world reacted to it in an unusual manner. For when the color began to seep from their world, and it became as grey scaled as the photographs from a bygone era had pretended the world had been, it had caused a bit of a panic. Yet there remained in the world one thing that would not turn grey or black or white. Around the world, one thing remained full of color and reminded us of what the world had once been filled with.

Around the world, once this knowledge was made clear, the people gathered with these items, the umbrella, the bumbershoot, the Brolly, the Parasol. They gathered and brought them together, in groups and crowds. On bridges, in parks, on building tops, in squares, the world over. They brought them together and packed them in, attempting in some strange superstitious manner, to bring color back into the world through sheer force of will.

Yet in the end, all they were left with were these things, and the small amount of color that they brought, and no amount of desire would expand the color from them to the world again.

So it was, and so it remained, and the umbrella grew to a status of reverence and memory and was ever worshiped.

Hidden Feelings
by pete0121

Comment:
She covered her face, the tears threatening a little, and once more she wondered if this was the right thing to do. It had happened so fast, for both of them, and now she was caught in this wonderful, frightening, chaotic thing. This day that was meant for joy and happiness but was also undercut with fear and uncertainty.

She gazed to the floor, and struggled with her anxieties and her fears. What if it was a mistake? What if it all turned out to be for naught? What if...

... and then she glanced up, and caught a glimpse of him, though she was not supposed to, and she saw the smile on his face and the happiness in his eyes, and it was all forgotten. In just that brief moment she saw there the surety that she sought, and she held her head up high, and let them lead her to that place where her future would be set, and she was glad.

Vancouver Island Sunset
by tooter

Comment:
As he sat there, silhouetted against the falling sun, he found himself dreaming of a world more filled with wonders than the one in which he found himself. Didn't the outcropping he found himself on resemble the face of a great ape, proudly wearing a hat in the shape of a tree? A majestic ape, with a silly side, proudly holding its head up high, enjoying the end of this day.

And didn't the rock opposite it resemble a more alien creature, mouth open and lined with teeth, calling out to the sunset, perhaps at the beginning of a nocturnal hunt, to prowl the lands for food, bringing danger to all that existed there?

And didn't the very rock before him resemble the face of some sad and reflecting creature, with elongated head, and glowing eye. Perhaps it wished for his companionship, someone to converse with and discover the secrets of the universe together, stuck there in that spot for what might seem an eternity.

Such things and more, he could see, and he smiled and the sun collapsed below the horizon, and night slowly fell, and he began to wonder homeward, and the world returned to a more mundane existence.

Yet there was always tomorrow, and there was always more to believe.