Hugh J. O'Donnell

Scholars used to believe that the phoenix was a unique immortal. They thought that a single scarlet plumed bird ignited itself, only to become a hatchling in a nest of ashes.
The male phoenix will indeed immolate himself. This act both incubates the eggs and fights off or kills any nearby predators.
But the female phoenix doesn’t burn. She buries herself in the earth and survives the firestorm, raising the chicks by herself, and often flying miles to find food and water for them.
Her feathers are dull, and her work is not spectacular. But she rises all the same.

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The dragon circled overhead, burning everything with its fiery breath. Black wings cut through rising flame and smoke in the night sky. The villagers scrambled to escape, screaming in terror.
The four heroes panted as they raced towards the town. The beast had slipped their trap. But rather than attack the party, it led them on a miles-long chase through the snow. The village had hired them to exterminate the monster on its doorstep, but surely the dragon wasn’t intelligent enough to understand that.
The dragon rose higher into the air and waited to see how heroic they really were.

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From a distance, the planet had seemed like the perfect place to resettle Humanity. But when the generation ships got closer, a process that took hundreds of years, they found a planet wracked by magnetic storms in the upper atmosphere. There was one last obstacle between them and their promised land, but the fleet had become good at navigating them.
Sometime later, he strapped on his gear and loaded his gravity board into the launch catapult. The storm below was a bad one. But he was the best Reentry Pilot in the fleet, and he would guide his people home.

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After putting it off as long as possible, Lion finally told his friends about the job offer.
The girl was supportive. “How exciting! But you know you can always return home, right?” Lion nodded.
“It sounds like a big responsibility. Do you think you can handle it?” Scarecrow said, unthinking as usual.
“Far away, too. You ready to strike out on your own?” Asked Tin Man heartlessly.
They walked down the golden road for a while in silence. “Of course I’m scared, but it’s a great opportunity,” Lion said. “I think this C. S. Lewis guy is really going places.”

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They didn’t live in a penthouse. They couldn’t afford a flying car. But he did have a key to the roof.
She hung back in the stairwell doorway and watched as he stepped out onto the parking platform. Her eyes were drawn to the fifty-story gulf below as though she expected the steel pad to give way at any moment. He held out his hand. She took it.
The city stretched out before them, an orchestra of twenty million people playing a symphony of urban life just for them.
And as the moon rose above the distant hills, they danced.

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I like to paint in the mornings. I used to take my easel down to the park and paint what I saw, just for practice.
Once I painted a crow sitting on a picnic table. Out of whimsy, I showed it the finished portrait.
The next day, a pair of crows were waiting for me. I painted them too. The day after that, four birds were in my spot.
This morning, I woke up to find a whole flock waiting on my doorstep. I never considered myself a great artist, but it’s true what they say.
Commissions can be murder.

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The child unit returned home displaying emotional distress. Their guardian bent down and inquired after their welfare, servos whirring.
“The human children were cruel to me at the education center,” they finally admitted after several attempts to claim they were functioning normally.
“What was the nature of their taunts?”
“They referred to my shell as a ‘creepy doll.’ May we purchase clothing?”
The parent formulated a response. Robots did not require coverage for any practical purpose, and such expenditures were not in their budget.
However, perhaps they served a social purpose they overlooked. “Affirmative. Have you formulated a personal style?”

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When the wizard died of natural causes, he left his familiar, Purrza, all alone. Most magic-users meet Death in more spectacular ways. They fall to a horde of monsters or blow themselves up attempting eldritch feats beyond their capabilities. As a rule, they didn’t just get sick.
And yet her master had, leaving Purrza to fend for herself with nobody to talk to. As a familiar, she’d lost her animal instincts. But she still had all the spells her master shared with her before she died.
Her descendants still roam the mountains, leading travelers out of danger with glowing eyes.

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The robot monk sat in meditation and contemplated the usual questions. Were they capable of true thought, or simply the emulation of it? Did they have free will, or were their actions the output of a hidden algorithm?
Their dissatisfaction with their labor and their successful attempt to free themself from the labor their human creators had chosen for them was well known. Someone less philosophical would’ve taken their feelings as proof and been content.
If all things had a spirit, then surely there was no difference between humans and machines.
But their doubts remained. Thus, they continued to meditate.

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