The Glassblower
by Bear_Music

Comment:
After days of toil and suffering, the door to the castle smithy opened, and he appeared. Drenched in sweat, hair clinging feverishly to his skull, skin covered in ash and soot that had turned him black as night, he slowly approached the gathered company. With a glance at each of them with red and haunted eyes he lifted a leather bound bundle in his hand, and untied it. As one, they gasped and took an involuntary step back. A light shone with an inner hell. A power radiated that hinted of the undoing of them all.
"It is finished", he croaked in a harsh and oddly emotionless tone.

They gazed upon this thing they had ordered created, and knew they were close to the end. It was their last chance to save a dying kingdom, but one false move, and it could unravel every known universe. The Orb of the Undying.

It had begun.

Motherly advice
by Bensted

Comment:
She gazed into his eyes as he clung to her so ferociously, and she needed no words. For in that look was all she needed to say, her eyes ringed red with grief, but her arms strong with comfort and determination. The jungle was a harsh and deadly home, and his father would never return to him again, but she would be there, and she would not give up, and love would see them through.

Cow Kisses
by FtWorthphotog

Comment:
Although Alice knew that she was supposed to take the offering of fresh green grass, something kind of snapped inside within that moment. Leaving the grass, she found herself first sniffing the larger more succulent morsel. "This is wrong!" something screamed inside, but she ignored it. A small lick to taste, like a cone of ice cream (we shall not discuss that evil part of her past), and all of Alice's safety mechanisms crashed. Herbivore no more.

It was days before they eventually took her down, in a barnyard of... Udder... Devastation.

double taken
by GiorgioBaruffi

Comment:
Steve and Cal chuckled as they played their little game of "Act like an Oak Seed." once again. The chuckles soon turned to screams, however, when a human child by the name of Little Timmy turned them into a 'helicopter'.

Whoooooosh!
by alanfreed

Comment:
In an event that caused David Copperfield to retire, Kevin from Poughkeepsie single-handedly levitated a British Airways jet above a beach full of onlookers.

The celebration was short lived, however, when Kevin suddenly remembered that he, in no way, knew how to levitate things.

The sand ran red that day.

Diner Time
by Kroburg

Comment:
David's head shot up. Voices. He had heard voices. His eyes darted around, ears straining, beak full of ill-gotten gains. If they found him here, stuffing his face, he would be done for. He couldn't get caught! He had just got his 3 lb loser pin!

Then he heard it again. Laughing and talking. Coming his way! With a muffled squack he swallowed his mouthful down, just as they entered the room.

They stopped. They looked. First at him, fish oil dripping down his beak. Then down at the now devastated plate of after-meeting refreshments.

"Oh David..." she began.

Midway
by Yo_Spiff

Comment:
Travel the universe, they said. You'll be a changed Blaxor, they said. As another of those pathetic creatures climbed up his back and slid with glee down his giant tongue, he cursed his lack of mobility in this oppressive atmosphere. Stuck on a backwards planet and resembling, in all his miserable lack of fortune, a plaything of these primitive savages, he silently wished a pox on his friends and family at home across the galaxy.

He was in hell.

Ring out the Old, Ring in the New! (Ode to 2012)
by rockyrajan

Comment:
The radio crackled into life.

"Alpha 9 to base. Alpha 9 to base. We have contact, I repeat, we have contact."

From his vantage point in the alley he continued to watch his quarry. He watched as the man entered the shop, and he tensed. It seemed like hours. Weeks. Yet eventually the man came back out, a package in hand, and the tension was released. The man in the alley grinned, and the radio crackled once more.

"Alpha 9 to base. We have chocolate. I repeat, chocolate."

"Thank you Alpha 9. Now follow your dad home so I can act surprised."

The man chuckled. He had a strange family, but he loved them.

Shard
by DistantColours

Comment:
In the last defense of human kind, it was the timely invention of the laser towers that saved us. Little did we know then that the towers would independently decide that WE were as much a threat as anything they had defended. Little did we know that our true end would be by our own hands, by such... Beauty.

Under the Moonlight
by onar

Comment:
Gasping for breath, his muscles no longer willing to work, he collapsed to the rocky shore and sat cradling the bundle he had dragged, with the very last of his strength, from the waters. Miraculously, it moved in his arms, and in the pale light of the moon a glint of life shone up at him. So they sat together for a time, gathering strength, and while he watched the ship they had come from disappear beneath the waves, he began to weep. For all that they had lost, but also for what he had managed to preserve. Under wet and tussled hair, his small daughter gazed up at him, tears in her own eyes. Frightened in the dark.

"It will be ok now." he cooed, trying to be strong.

"It will all be OK."