I'm back with another collage in the Let's Make A Collage Community. The LMAC Community offers an opportunity for members to create and post "freestyle" collage themes. In the freestyle option, more freedom is allowed to design your creations without having to incorporate the weekly contest photo. However, contest rules still apply.

This is a Curated Collection of posts for stories created in the Freewriters Community during the period January 1st through March 31st, 2025. The stories consist of flash fiction entries in the ZAPFICMonday and ZAPFIC50 Monday challenges by the community leader, Felt.Buzz. Challenges are in the form of word or phrase prompts. As stated in the name, the challenges begin on Mondays and run through Thursdays. Winners and runners-ups are announced the following Monday, together with a new prompt challenge.

Source...Part 7The air in Nathan's living room was thick with distrust as he shot a quick glance toward Ophelia before cautiously inching closer to Herman, all the while eying the sackcloth. Nathan noticed Herman's gaze and quickly jerked his hand behind his back."How did you know?" Nathan queried, his voice shaky."That you were hiding the female?" Herman replied quickly and assuredly, then paused as if deciding whether to divulge all. Moments later, he continued. "The sickly-sweet odor leading to your farm. Then, the faint glow from your window. Same as the one I got, but the species resembles a male. It may sound inhumane, but she's got to go to the cellar or risk discovery until we can figure out the meaning of all this."Without another word, Herman brought his hand around and moved in closer, almost touching Nathan's chest. "Here, take this sack. She'll need its contents," he uttered in a matter-of-fact tone. He spied Ophelia, a sneer at the corner of his lip.He was about to continue when Nathan broke in, "How long have you had yours?" A worried frown spread over his forehead. And how did you know what to feed it?"Herman hesitated, then thought it best to divulge all he knew."Seven months. Discovered him digging up soil on my property. Covered in dirt as if he'd been underground. On closer inspection, this bag of gems was buried under a clump of rocks nearby. Digging away like a madman with those deformed hands. The instant I gave him the gem, he swallowed it, then glowed like a lit up Christmas tree."Ophelia cleared her throat. Both men turned to find a scowl on her face. "I wouldn't say they're deformed. Perhaps to us," she trailed off.*A long second elapsed while all three stared at each other, now fully understanding that both the children were not of their country, nor any other on the planet.

NFTShowroom partnered with @alienarthive for a new monthly challenge. For May, the CHALLENGE theme is "MAGIC". Participating is easy, just:make art incorporating magicmake art incorporating magicmint it on ---> make a blog post about it in Alien Art Hivemake a blog post about it in Alien Art Hiveuse 'nftshowroom' in your tagsuse 'nftshowroom' in your tags

This is a Curated Collection of posts that evidences my participation in the NFT Showroom and Alien Art Hive collaboration in March, 2025. Although busy with writing projects, the challenge was a fun exercise. When viewing the Community's participation, I could see that the challenge produced numerous projects from Alien Art Hive members in which they overwhelmingly minted their Skull creations on NFT Showroom in support of the initiative.

The evening sun witnessed two shadowy figures, adorned in outfits not suitable for the outlines of female frames, hurried past the diner's front window, glancing across the street to avoid the curious stares of patrons inside. They cursed, moving swiftly to the corner of the lone business, then ducked behind the building. Not five seconds later, headlights from a shiny, silver vintage vehicle sped by. Guessing that the person of interest they sought behind the wheel would slow down at the approaching intersection, they waited for the driver to place the car in reverse and parallel park.