Jumping back into #flashfictionmagic!

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Lila settled down on the dock, legs dangling over the edge, she wrapped one hand around the nearest post and leaned way out over the edge to peer into the water.

“What are you looking for?” James asked, sitting down beside her.

“You never know what lives down there.”

“Lila, we’ve been coming to this lake for years. We know it’s just a bunch of fish.”

“It could be different fish this time. Or…or…maybe a vat of oil got dumped on them and they’re magical fish now.”

As long as he’d known Lila, she’d seen the possibility of Others, of Something Else, everywhere. And he had always chalked it up to her love for fantasy stories.

“The news would be all over a vat of oil being dumped here.”

Plonk.

Lila watched her second stone sink. If she stared at the lake long enough, she could see movement just below the surface. That didn’t look like fish scales.

“Flat stones,” he teased.

James had spent their childhood teaching Lila how to skip stones—and all these years later, she only got it like once every bazillion times.

Why couldn’t it be something other than just fish?” Lila asked, taking a handful of cheese-flavored crackers from the box, watching him skip a rock perfectly across the surface.

She picked up another stone—

Thud.

A stone landed on the dock between them.

Lila met James’s gaze, eyes wide. She leaned way over the edge of the dock.

James reached for her arm. “What are you doing?”

“Someone threw a rock back at us!” she exclaimed. her words sped up with excitement: “Magic fish! What if there’s a whole world under there we don’t even know about?”

“I mean, a rock has never come back to us before.”

Lila tossed the rock in her hand. “Let’s see if it happens again.”

10 seconds…20 seconds…30…45…60…90…

Thud.

Another rock landed between them.

Lila’s eyes were wide and the grin on her face—

“Oh boy,” James started.

“Oil vat!” Leah jumped to her feet and tugged James to his. “Let’s go see if we can meet our new friend!”

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This story was written as part of the #flashfictionmagic story community on Instagram instigated by author Emily Barnett. You can follow the hashtag here for more stories.

You can find more flash fiction that I’ve written over here in the Story Corner 🙂

Happy reading!