Mikhail stood so still his muscles ached with the effort of breathing slowly and unnoticeably, nose to horn with a rhino.

“Just move already,” Liza said with dismissive boredom. “He won’t do anything. We’re kids.”

“Won’t I?” rumbled the rhinoceros. “This adolescent male challenged me. He deserves a lesson!”

“Percival,” interjected their guide. She used a wheedling tone that somehow fit perfectly with the enormous straw hat that covered a head of curly hair and no obvious face. “Mikhail is a very promising magical zoology student. Wouldn’t you rather want him to help you with that finding a mate problem?”

Percival snorted, his horn reddening. “Lucky I don’t charge him. Boot him right out of this apartment complex, I would.”

The blast of hot air hit Mikhail in the face, but at least the staring contest had broken. “I didn’t mean to be challenging, sir,” he tried, studying the rhino with peripheral vision. “I’ve never been to a—a place like this before.”

He’d nearly said the forbidden words and called the facility a magical zoo.

“Quite the place,” rumbled Percival.

“Obviously, Percival here isn’t your normal rhino,” Hat Lady — her real name subsumed by layers of woven straw and lost to memory — said. “He’s a wallywompus.”

“Ah,” Mikhail managed, swallowing with difficulty. No wonder Percival hadn’t liked a direct stare.

“Which you’d have known if you’d remembered to do the spell on the sign to reveal the real information on the creatures who have kindly , and then I’d not have to have rescued you.”

The tart words stung. “Yes, ma’am.”

Liza shrugged, the djinn’s ever-present floating fire extinguishers clanking with the movement. “I don’t see why you’re so upset.”

“I should have known,” Mikhail said with misery, and turned back to Percival. “Have you tried online dating apps? I assume you’re having trouble luring the female wallywompi out of the rainforest.”

“Worse,” Percival said sadly. “They don’t like condo living, most of them. That’s wild ‘wompi women for you. This is the greatest place ever! But maybe it makes me look old rather than stable. Retirement living, like that state that looks like —”

“Um, you mean Florida?” Mikhail interrupted quickly. He felt his face flushing and wondered if the heat was enough to trigger Liza’s fire magic.

A squeal behind him cut off the conversation. “I thought regular families weren’t allowed in today?”

She gave a crisp nod. “Magical families only. They’re good. You see her bear?”

The stuffed creature in question morphed from blue to purple, then flashed iridescent.

“Wouldn’t work for a normie.” She started to yawn, then froze with her mouth and eyes wide open.

“Cool.” Mikhail tried to pretend animals on the loose — in the walkways, out of their pens, condos, whatever pretense of a barrier gave the illusion of safety — at what the mundanes thought of as a zoo was perfectly normal and didn’t make his heart stutter.

The giraffe ambled over to the little girl and bowed. “Good morning, my dear,” he said.

***

This week’s giraffe prompt was inspired by Becky Jones, while mine went to nother Mike. Find more at MOTE!

Mikhail stared at the door, hanging loose on its hinges and splattered with streaks of neon orange and pink. “A funhouse?”

“Midterms,” Professor Bleekley bellowed cheerfully. “Makes it more interesting, doesn’t it?”

Behind him, Liza clamped her hands over her ears and shook her head. Lefty and George, the fire extinguishers that floated above the djinn’s shoulders slid from side to side in definite agreement.

“You’ll be working in teams,” Professor Akira said gently, her tail bobbing in what Mikhail had learned was a conciliatory manner. “And against another team. Practical applications make a more efficient metric for judging how much you’ve learned so far.”

“Improvements!” Professor Bleekley yelled with obvious glee, his slippers and astronomy robes swirling with the storms of Jupiter. “Continual improvements! It’s the Wizurg Magical Academy way!”

“My clan calls the concept kaizen,” Professor Akira said with a smile. “It lets us tailor next semester. Don’t worry—we keep a close eye on how you’re doing.”

“All you have to do is get through the maze,” Bleekley shouted. “That’s all, boyo, get on with it now, there’s a good lad.”

Liza bounced, her fire extinguishers mimicking the movement. “Let’s go! This is the last exam.”

Mikhail’s movements were positively sluggish as he followed Liza through the brightly colored door. A blinding light stunned his vision, and he was alone after blinking spots away.

Alone, that was, as long as he didn’t count the endless reflections of funhouse mirrors. He tried to avoid meeting his twins’ eyes, digging instead into his bag.

“A maze,” he muttered, and pulled his notebook from his ever-present satchel. He’d sacrifice a page away from magical zoology if it meant finding a clear path out of this carnival of nightmares.

He tried to ignore the flashing of silver in the mirror as he was suddenly surrounded by stainless steel pens. If he looked up, he’d have to admit there was no way out of this room of glass and mirrors.

One of the pens caught his eye, and he made the mistake of looking directly into the face of a twisted version of himself.

His reflection tapped the tip of his pen on his nose and winked, then faded from view.

***

A snippet of something I’m working on, inspired by this week’s prompt of stainless steel pens from Cedar Sanderson.

Want more Mikhail and Liza? Check out Fantastic Middle Schools and Fantastic School Hols!

Want more prompts, to see what Leigh Kimmel did with my suggestion, or to play along? Check out more at MOTE!

“Nope,” June said, and inched backward until she ran into Peter’s shoes. “I’m out.”

“Let me take a gander?” He nested his chin over her shoulder and peered down into the circle of gaping darkness. “Ah, well. I can’t imagine why you’d want a hole that leads into the dark abyss hidden in your office, but now you know why they went to so much effort to conceal it behind a secret door.”

“Inside a locked cupboard.”

“And under magic seal,” he finished, and she could hear the grin in his voice.

“Maybe we should have left well enough alone,” she muttered, and leaned down to tug at the heavy wheel, the painted steel still looking almost new. Her efforts were futile, only making her wobble with fatigue as she straightened.

“Maybe if they hadn’t made such a bags of it,” he mused with an absentminded steadying hand. “Though if you didn’t want the answer…”

She blew out a breath, strands of hair tickling her face as they moved. “I know, I know. Don’t ask the question. I’d rather know there’s a gaping, malevolent portal to hell in my office before a demon pops out.”

“Malevolent. Hmm.” He tugged her gently backward with a hand on one hip.

She didn’t need the encouragement. “I was joking.”

“Were you?” He leaned down to close the hatch and spin the mundane wheel shut.

June didn’t answer, just wrapped her arms around her middle with a shiver. “I’m not up for resealing that properly. Too tired and too hungry to concentrate. It’s making me shaky.”

She glanced longingly at the empty coffee cup precariously balanced on the overstuffed bookshelf that concealed the passage to her real office, closet that it was. “And too uncaffeinated.”

“The metal blocks it for now,” Peter said, his Irish lilt soft. “You can feel the difference, can’t you? Whatever’s down there is more at a distance now.”

Her shiver turned into a full-body shudder of dread. “An eternal darkness of roiling anger.” She backed away again, making a gesture of aversion. “Righteous rage. I’ve never felt the like.”

“Worse,” he said slowly. “I suspect…I think it’s lonely.”

***

Find more at MOTE!

“Can’t deny it any longer,” June told Peter without looking up from the paper she was grading. “The evidence is undeniable. Three students have been bitten so far.”

“But -” Peter looked down the hallway behind him and inched into her tiny office. He lowered his voice. “But the threat on this campus has always been magical. Not physical.”

She quirked an eyebrow, the product of her eleven-year-old summer. “Magic brings physical danger. And magical creatures.”

“An unusual amount of critters,” he allowed, and tapped a hand on the doorway in frustration. “Something on campus is attracting the paranormal.”

She shrugged, still typing, and finished her last comment. June shut the laptop lid with a thump. “And something on campus is hungry.”

He winced, though it could have been at her aggressive treatment of technology rather than her words.

“Dr. Porter?” The voice wafted into her office along with the overwhelming scent of plumeria. “I had a question about the paper due next week.”

June’s stomach flipped over as every magical alarm in her office started blaring.

***

This week’s prompt was a trade with Becky Jones. She proposed: The scent of plumerias floated in the air. In return, I challenged her with: “Ah, yes, the awkward silence best found in a large group of technology experts put in uncomfortable positions.”

Check out more over at More Odds Than Ends!

And if you see anything off with the site, please let me know. There’ll likely be some changes and bug fixes coming soon.

Allergy season

The hiccups were more annoying but

Sneezes wouldn’t end

***

An extremely brief experiment tonight, so here’s a bonus raccoon. Midjourney thinks that’s a juice box, by the way. He might have also stolen someone’s wallet and a pack of cigarettes by the look of it, but who could blame that adorable face?

More, over at MOTE!

“Gloves,” Halima said without looking up.

“Talk to me like I’ve never been around manuscripts before,” June replied lightly, pulling on her own pair. “What’s the museum want?”

“Help figuring out what they have, mostly.” Halima pushed back a long curtain of dark hair, revealing eyes red from dust. “How did someone just ‘happen’ to find 15th century documents in their attics?”

“And palimpsests,” June added, studying the traces of writing underneath the inked lines. “Even older. I love those cat drawings the monks did.”

“Better,” Halima announced smugly. “Take a look at this one. Some sort of legal agreement, a land sale.”

“Whaddaya know…”

“Yep. Guess this monk had opinions on the landowner.”

The women stared at the early medieval drawing.

“Yep,” June said, and hovered her finger just above a red and black horned finger. “The devil really is in the details.”

***

More at MOTE!

June’s fingers clenched on the stairwell windowsill in utter disbelief. It took her mouth working three times to cooperate with her throat, and another few seconds for her lungs to remember to suck in oxygen.

Her voice still came out a wheeze. “Whaaaaa?”

The petite woman she shared an office hallway with stopped half a flight below. Dr. Christa Pham gazed upward in bewilderment. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Wha?” June tried again, and cleared her throat. She pointed over her shoulder, although it felt like a wild flail. By the look on her colleague’s face, it was. “Who thought it was a good idea to set up another festival in the courtyard?”

Christa tapped a sensible flat with impatience and headed for the next landing. “What on earth are you talking about?”

June felt the blood drain from her face. “I can’t go through that again just yet,” she mumbled. “It’s too soon since that blasted Renaissance Faire popped up.”

The folklore professor studied the view out the window. “Ah, lovely, they roofed it over this year.”

“You knew?” June felt her throat start to close again and tried to massage her neck with oddly frozen fingers. “What is it this time? The campus chili cookoff?”

“Interdepartmental trick-or-treating,” the other woman said brightly.

June sat down heavily on the cold tile stairwell. Oxford flats headed her way, and it was all she could do to focus on the shining leather.

“Relax,” Christa said dryly. “It’s a career fair. Happens every year. Didn’t you see the email?”

June grasped the railing and her colleague’s extended hand in another, hauling herself to her feet while wanting to collapse limply with relief. “As long as I don’t have to suddenly run the whole thing, we’re good.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

She kept a grip on the handrail until they reached the bottom of the stairwell, releasing it with reluctance.

Christa paused before opening the door to the chill New Hampshire autumn air. “Do try not to swordfight anyone this month, June.”

***

This week’s prompt came from Leigh Kimmel. Who thought it was a good idea to roof over the courtyard and turn it into another exhibit hall?

Mine went to nother Mike, who also fixed the randomizer (thanks, nother Mike!): “For the last time, it’s not funny to mix up the water caltrops and the baby bats!”

Check it out—and play along!—over at MOTE!