#PhantasticsPrompts 2025.24.03.: What kind of fantasy creatures do you particularly like and why?

Um, dragons? Cut my teeth on Dragon Riders of Pern (not Tolkien, never Tolkien). But, right, cliché, a trope. So. I write this fantasy story and a secondary character is? You guessed it, a dragon. Hackneyed? Well, when the Red Dragon is shows up it has the flu. A fever means it's warm blooded. It walks on rear legs and wings, so a wyvern? It breathes fire so when it sneezes that's a problem. It's furry, pretty ugly, too. Well, maybe a giant bat? People don't know the difference; still a dragon. But it eats an orchard when hungry, so… a fruit bat?

I have a bit of fun with this.

They show up in an SF story, but that's a different prompt.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 966 — SC POV: When was the last time you got lost?

Most of my characters, who aren't antagonists, I would ask this to have wings. Kind of hard for a day angel or a night angel to get lost when they can easily get a bird's eye view. So, I'll ask Shugh, short for Steamed Milk and Sugar. He's a real saint. (I won't explain the pun; you'd have to read the story.)

[Shugh:] As a college trained journalist, I moved to Home City to find work at one of the newspapers or magazines published there—but I was a man trying to become a reporter in a field dominated by women. I performed plenty of menial labor for years, but kept showing up in newsrooms willing to take even a janitorial position.

One day, a night angel in the elevator mistook me for a gofer. She handed me coin and sent me to fetch her ramen and tea at a place she'd heard was amazing. Of course, that meant finding the right building with a day angel food court on the roof. She'd given me directions and a restaurant name, but apparently I hadn't gotten the directions right. Since I don't have wings (I'm neither a day nor a night angel), that meant climbing dozens of flights of stairs in a dozen old buildings lacking elevators until I found it. Two hours later.

Well, it did smell amazing. Spicy. Lots of garlic.

When I returned looking beyond wilted, only to have my empty stomach growl loudly, the dark woman with velvety black wings took pity on me. She never admitted it, but I think she'd hazed the new man in the office, not realizing I wasn't even hired. She did listen to my sad story, and shared the ramen in their lunch room with curious women coworkers sometime walking by to ogle me. I'm not very masculine and intentionally a little plump, always dressing as genderless as I could to blend amongst the other women, never looking competitive or that I might go aggro. I could do this! I'd always felt more at home amongst the women in school than with other guys, and had learned well how to be accepted.

Turned out she was the layout editor at Around the City. She couldn't hire me, but she knew the woman in charge of photography at the newspaper two floors above in the same building.

Long story short, I now share an apartment with Night On Fire, and her bed—well, she insisted—and I now also work at that newspaper two floors above as a (too junior to get an assignment so he's a gofer and in the typing pool) reporter. Despite being male, I've gotten my foot in the door. I took the name Steamed Milk and Sugar in further effort to fit in, biding my time to jump on a story that will prove my worth despite my gender.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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