Teeny Tiny Tales #15
"January is for dreamers… February is for doers.” - Marc Parent. 1.29.25 through 2.4.25
This is where I present my daily microfiction stories, mostly based on the past week’s prompts from The Fiction Dealer. By posting my humble tales - the good, bad, silly, and indifferent - I hope to inspire others to allow their creativity to come out and play.
Teeny Tiny Tales #1 - Teeny Tiny Tales #2 - Teeny Tiny Tales #3 - Teeny Tiny Tales #4 - Teeny Tiny Tales #5 -Teeny Tiny Tales #6 - Teeny Tiny Tales #7 - Teeny Tiny Tales #8 - Teeny Tiny Tales #9 - Teeny Tiny Tales #10 - Teeny Tiny Tales #11 - Teeny Tiny Tales #12 - Teeny Tiny Tales #13 - Teeny Tiny Tales #14
January 29, 2025
Microdosing - 60 mg of Boundaries
"I'll never speak to you again," I shouted. I was already sorry, but needed to stubbornly maintain the wall of silence.
The kitchen filled with gentle, busy clattering. Eventually, tantalizing aromas guided me downstairs. Mom smiled, handing me a thick slice of buttered, freshly baked bread. The boundaries finally broke. "I'm sorry, Mom."
She stroked my hair. "I know, hon."
January 30, 2025
Microdosing - 80 mg of a Morning
Father was dying, and we were all there, waiting for the end, supporting our parents as best we could. I found my sister sobbing in the darkened room. I held her and let her cry a bit, but then reminded her, "C'mon buck up, you don't want to upset Mom."
"But what if he dies tonight?"
"If he doesn't live to see the morning light, then will come the time for tears. There's no sense wasting them before they're needed."
January 31, 2025
Microdosing - 60 mg of a Moment
Featured in The Batch of Micro-Micro-Fiction #37! 🤗
"I don't have time to deal with you right now, I'm fucking busy!" So she quietly hung up the phone and acted in thoughtless desperation.
He tried to call later to apologize, but she couldn't answer, because he was too late.
No time to listen, no time to think, wasting too much time; taking time to mourn each lost moment
February 1, 2025
Microdosing - 100 mg of Creativity
Billy breathlessly recited his excuse: "My paper was all done when I saw lights outside and dinosaurs beside a spaceship, but they saw me and ran back in, except one didn't make it and got left behind and I felt sorry for him, so I snuck him indoors, and then he ate my homework." He looked up at his teacher expectedly.
"So a space dinosaur ate your homework?"
"Yes'm," Billy answered sincerely.
Mrs. Beecham grinned. "Fine. Go to your desk, write it all down, and I won't count it as late." After all, she reasoned, such creativity should be encouraged
February 2, 2025
Gibberish: Flash Fiction Friday
Assignment: A flash Fiction story about a character who doesn't feel safe, who is moving to a new place, including the phases “it stings sweetly” and “So you have made your choice.”
The Sweet Sting of Eternity
Highlighted on Flash Fiction Friday (2.7.25) 🤗
The crash was coming soon, my car rolling over and over, like an manic, escaped carnival ride. I was heading for a solid wall of granite at the edge of the highway, but I don't remember the impact, just a long, blank stretch of nothingness. And then I woke up to the sound of soft humming.
I awoke in a strange, new place, wrapped up into a soft bed smelling of honey and beeswax. Someone periodically fed me the strange, delicious royal jelly, that stung sweetly as it flowed down my throat and into my gullet. The air was filled with high pitched buzzing, a steady drone that filled my ears, gently lulling me back to sleep. I dreamed that Aris, my deceased husband, was here with me, quietly humming into my ear, telling me to wait until the time was ripe to travel.
I don't know how long I lay cuddled in my cell, feeding, sleeping, growing, but the day of my freedom finally arrived. A new discordant sound interrupted the comforting buzzing, a strident piping that drilled into my ears frantically, fearfully, and finally resolving into words: "Infant Queen, you must choose. Your sisters, the Warrior Queens, seek battle for supremacy. If we can, we will kill you, so the time has come to fight or flee."
I nibbled away the covering and I crawled forth and stretched out my new wings. Wings? I must have died in the car crash after all, for now I had become a bee, a Virgin Queen. I also realized that Aris truely was here, having reincarnated as a drone bee. He secretly visited me, to help me decide.
"My darling Melissa, you must soon move to a new place. I will begin the journey with you, but my time is short, so please listen carefully, so you can find the safe place on your own. If you do this, you will find me again.
"When I die, lead your Sister Helpers to the great, old oak at the edge of the meadow. There you will find a hollow in the old trunk, a perfect nest where you can rear our children. Go there and live, and someday I'll find you again," he promised.
So I made my choice. Rather than answer the challenging pipes of the young Warrior Queens, I crept to the lip at the hive's entrance, where Aris and many of my Sister Helpers awaited me. We flew off into the blue sky, our tiny bodies joining into a long, black cloud, as we swarmed off to our future.
Aris flew next to me, whispering and wooing. He clasped me with all six legs and we mated mid-flight, stinging sweetly. As his seed flowed into me, I heard a popping noise as his endophallus broke off within me, and, fatally wounded, he plummeted to the earth, already dead. But there was no time to mourn. To find him again, I must first find the sacred oak.
I led my Sister Helpers to the greatest oak in the meadow, and we moved into the great cavernous hollow, with room for the millions of future children now growing within my abdomen.
Two years passed. Eventially, my Sister Helpers all died of old age and many generations of my children lived and died, but thousands of us still lived within the great oak. My mind began to forget its former humanity. One day, a beekeeper came to the tree, carrying his young son. I sensed something familiar in the boy, and when he placed his finger into the hive, I realized that he was the new incarnation of my beloved Aris. I signaled to my children that he meant us no harm, so they would not sting him. I crept out of the hive and on to his hand and quietly rested in his loving presense.
The little boy laughed, "Look, Daddy, she likes me!"
His father smiled "She does indeed, Son. You must be a Master Beekeeper!"
And so it is. My children and I feed my beloved Aris with our honey and teach him our ways. Someday soon, I must leave this lifetime, and my soul will be reborn into another body. Then I will meet my Aris once again. Birth, life, death, and rebirth, forever and ever imbibing the sweetly stinging honey of eternity.
February 3, 2025
Microdosing - 100 mg of a Lullaby
The princess couldn't sleep. Her desperate father offered a great reward for her cure.
None succeeded, until a decrepit old woman offered her aid.
Raising her arms, she produced the sounds of gentle breezes and softly falling raindrops. She twirled, and a chorus of tree frogs and crickets joined in. When the king looked down at his daughter, she was fast asleep.
He cried, "Oh, sorceress, what boon can I offer you?"
She replied, "I've already taken it," and disappeared. The king rushed to the window and saw his city was gone, replaced by a primordial forest, singing nature's lullaby.
February 4, 2025
Microdosing - 70 mg of a Tornado
Dear lady, screaming at your child, I wish you understood what I know, for the storm brewing in your breast lives within my heart, too. If you fan the winds of abuse, your sweet girl's sorrow will grow into a tornado, destroying herself and all she loves, infecting your grandchildren and great grandchildren and on and on... You must quell the hateful wind or she'll grow up just like you.
Sweet Bee story.
Space dinosaur could be a children's book!
I love that you're doing these micro prompts.
I adore these!
The one about reincarnation was beautiful, and reminds me of a book I have called the 9 lives of Tyo, which is about a Paschat (extraterrestrial lion person from Sirius) who has 9 incarnations on this planet, and keeps meeting the same souls from his soul family. I completely believe in that sort of thing.
I love that dino picture too...