Beautiful, had me teared up at the end. Lots of emotions, the selfless wish thing really stuck with me, and could be something that the continuation of the story revolves around, or if this was the ending.

I was reminded of this one https://redd.it/zgjfff but that's it

[Concrit Welcome]

If you wish upon a star, then a miracle is about to start.

Leo stood alone inside the circular dome-shaped room. It was a long day in the observatory, and he still needs to do routine recordings of the upcoming meteor shower. Forcing himself not to fall asleep on the desk, he approached the telescope at the center.

He had always believed there was something uniquely mesmerizing about the night sky, which was the reason he wanted to study astronomy. But these midnight observations that could’ve perfectly been automatically recorded were a real test on his nerves.

A faint flash in the night sky. The meteor shower had started.

More visible dots flickered from the lens on the telescope, and just as he had feared, the faint voices were back again.

There was another reason why Leo hated being alone in the observatory at night. Ever since he was a child, these whispers had accompanied him whenever there was a meteor shower. His therapist had called them harmless hallucinations, but it was nights like these that almost convinced Leo there was something deeper.

If he was more awake, he would pause everything and take his medication. But he was too tired, he wasn’t thinking. In between one breath and the next, the button to open the observatory roof was clicked.

The roof slowly bloomed open like moonflower petals, and a cold breeze trickled through the gaps. Perhaps it was his sleepiness, perhaps there was no reason, but the voices seemed clearer that night. Most were still nonsense noise, but he was able to make sense of a few of the loudest ones.

“I wish for the night to be not as dark.” A breathy voice said.

“I hope that one day the forest would be safer.” This one sounded like a young woman.

“I wish the village won’t starve just because of a bad harvest anymore.” An old man’s hoarse and deep voice echoed.

“I wish the neighboring kingdom wouldn’t attack us anymore.”

“I wish there are enough books for everyone.”

“I wish to no longer worry about floods or hurricanes.”

“I wish to understand the heavens.”

“I wish to be reunited with my loved ones.”

“I wish my voice to be heard.”

The meteors crashed down into the atmosphere one by one, etching faint white lines throughout the sky. Leo listened to every one of the wishes from long ago, that had come true in one way or another, long after the ones who made the wishes had passed.

He was in that dreamy state again, at that field trip in second grade, laying on the grass outside the tent. He muttered the same words he said back then in a shaky voice: “One day, I will touch the stars.”

In the not-so-far distant above, the international space station made another rotation around the earth.

"Greetings, Initiate. I trust the travel has been smooth," the Chapter Master said to the young man before him.

"I can't complain, my lord," the man replied respectfully. "I'm eager to prove myself, my lord. I've only heard... rumours about the nature of our work here, but I can assure you that I will do my utmost-"

"There'll be time for that, yes," the Chapter Master rushed to say. "Now - let's get the introductory tour going, shall we?"

The young man nodded enthusiastically and the two walked into the grand, ornate halls of the Imperium Anomaliae.

"Here in the Imperium Anomaliae," the Chapter Master started reciting effortlessly, having given the introductory speech, "you will work alongside others to protect the Imperium and the Galaxy from hostile forces that are of... alien nature."

"Xenos, my lord?" the man asked.

"No, Initiate," the Chapter Master laughed. "We're older than that. And no, not the forces of Chaos either. What we do is... more important than that. We are talking about things that break the rules of the universe itself; that even the Warp would fail to understand. We are all that's between the Galaxy and utter bedlam."

"I'm... not sure I follow, my lord."

"You must understand that our organization predates The Imperium itself. We've kept humanity safe throughout its ancient history, throughout the Dark Age of Technology, throughout the Horus Heresy, and we shall continue to do so before."

"But if this is older than The Imperium itself... what was this called before?"

The Chapter Master turned to him with a subtle smile on his face.

"The SCP Foundation," he said. "Now - let's meet your supervisor."

He opened the door and the two saw a horrific sight - a tall, metal figure stood in the dark room, clutching a staff buried halfway into a human corpse. The figure turned to face them, the green light emanating from their face showing what resembled a blank expression. The Initiate immediately drew his weapon but the Chapter Master grabbed his hand with a vice-like grip, preventing him from taking aim.

"Chapter Master," the figure said in a cold, emotionless voice.

"Namaerekh," the Chapter Master responded politely. "This is the Initiate we have talked about."

"Ah. Very good," Namaerekh replied and turned back to the corpse, the green crystal atop his staff glowing lightly.

"My lord, this- this is a Necron!"

"Correct, Initiate," the Chapter Master replied, still holding his hand.

"The Xenos must be here to destr-"

"Initiate," the Chapter Master interrupted, "you must leave behind your old hate and prejudices. What we do here transcends these petty squabbles. We are here to protect life itself," he said and cast a quick look at the Necron Lord, "in all its forms."

Finally, the Initiate eased his grip on his bolter and slowly holstered it.

"Good," the Chapter Master commended. "You said you wished to prove yourself. A good way to start is not to fire at your superior. Lord Namaerekh is our chief Xenobiologist. You will answer directly to him."

The Necron pulled the staff out of the human body and turned to the two humans.

"Initiate Pelagius. I have seen your records. You have shown excellent aptitude and I trust you will perform your duties to the best of your ability."

Pelagius nervously looked at the Chapter Master who gave him a reassuring nod.

"Thank you... my... lord," Pelagius answered with audible uncertainty.

"News, Namaerekh?" the Chapter Master asked.

"As we feared. The body shows clear signs of Theta-Alpha-07 corruption. Another instance of it must've been created. It must be apprehended at once."

Pelagius, feeling a bit more in his element, spoke up.

"Just tell me the target and I will see it destroyed," he said.

"Destroyed? No, Initiate," the Necron explained. "We do not destroy things we do not understand; the repercussions of that could be a hundredfold worse than their existence."

"Then... what do we do?"

"We Secure. We Contain. And," the Necron said and looked at the Chapter Master, "we Protect."

Definitely getting some overlord vibes here

There was a man when the world was quite young. There was a woman. Sometimes it seems like all the stories start like this. Sometimes they do. But this time youth was no mere trick of light, sunrise filtering through the blinds just so to illuminate the room as she entered, because the world really was young once. I forget that. Do you? Before cities sprouted on the hills or smeared themselves across the riverbanks in a haze of steel and smoke.

Though there was smoke that night, whispering into the half-dark sky as night began to fall.

The man’s name has been forgotten. The woman’s. This is not to be considered. The world was young, and they lived in a succession of passing moments. Had not yet worried that such things as names might last.

The man builds up the campfire. Darkness gathers. There is no moon tonight, there are no stars. They’ve gone a distance away from the others, inadvisable on the savanna, but neither of them had to insist. One wandered off and then the other, and now their kinfolks’ singing is scattered across the near horizon, as the darkness presses down upon all things.

She speaks and he responds. He speaks and she smiles. Turns away as the full weight of night begins to settle. The fire leaps between them, casting shadows on her face and shoulders, the play of sinews in her thighs. We would say that she is sixteen, and he is nineteen, and there are circles torn beneath her eyes from waking late at night to the laughing sounds of the hyenas, a distant roar of lions, thunder, lightning, monsoons. Her black skin is calloused, laced by scars in intricate, intentional designs, and by an uncaring rake of claws received the year before from some predator or another, be it beast or bird or man. Her hair is no liquid tumble, no fast water at night. It does not spill across her shoulders. She’s hacked it short with a stone knife. Used the same knife just yesterday to skin his kill.

The man builds up the campfire. His axe and spear are close at hand. He has killed; mostly recently another man, when they passed a group of grizzled, half-mad wanderers on a hunt at the beginning of the season. Night brings those thoughts out in him, leaves him with a vague feeling of disquiet that often takes some hours to dispel. Not tonight. Tonight he is wasting wood to push back against the darkness for other reasons. He builds the fire up again, and she looks at him, at the night, with a curious expression, because she doesn’t understand what it is he sees.

Here is what he sees across the dancing flames:

Beauty, softened by the play of shadows, a blackness that breathes another meaning into night. Whimsy, ease, daring. She didn’t have to come with him. She did. They are too far from the others, these things are not safe. This was a time before we courted danger, before risks became exciting, and yet that thought stirs within him the most curious feeling. Building up the fire, the man sees the impulse that will, one day, lead to sprawling cities, hilltop fortresses, temples, tombs, and poetry. He does not yet have these. Is a part of their beginning, nothing more.

What he does have, staring at her, wishing that this moment could last, that dawn would hold off just this one night with its hunts and raids and headlong flights—

Is the stars.

He glances up, just a glance, he cannot bring himself to look away from her. He does not speak or gesture. Could not yet put this thought into words. He simply wishes in this moment when everything is youth and fire, that the two of them could be preserved. Or her. He’d settle for just her. His knees have begun hurting lately, and in the rainy season the old wounds along his hip and back ache. He’s turned half to dust already, but her.

He smiles, thinking that. She notices. Asks him what’s so funny.

“Nothing at all,” says the man, who goes back to tinkering with the fire, playing tender shadows across her bruised, calloused, scarred—supple—skin, before a passing breath across the world fades them into hazy memory.

There was a man when the world was quite young. There was woman. Sometimes it seems like all the stories start like this. Many have, and will, and do.

Lay back tonight. Find a patch of grass if you are able, away from all the lights. Listen to the gentling pulse of your heartbeat as the sun falls and darkness gathers. Watch, in astonished silence, as an infinity of campfires spreads across the sky. If you are very quick, or very daring, or very much at ease, perhaps you’ll see it—theirs, the first—before you blink the night away, and call them simply stars.

Lay back tonight, as they did.

There was a man. There was a woman.

Stories start like this.

r/TurningtoWords

Lol that this prompt was reported as a repost when, as near as I can tell, it's one of the few truly unique prompts posted on this sub since I've been a mod here.

what a beautiful story! loved the selfless wish and how it comforted the kid

[removed]

Will do! (I think this is a compliment? But if not I'll still take it.)

I sat outside with my son. Everyone sat outside that night, it seemed, or leaned out their windows and over their balconies. You’d think we were all trying to escape from something sinister indoors, and maybe we were. Maybe that’s what we’ve been trying to do for millennia.

We’d dragged out two slatted chairs from the kitchen so we could lounge and stare up at the sky. Andrew wore his WWE cap and a shirt that was too baggy on him but that didn’t used to be. It wasn’t the way a twelve-year-old should be growing — he shouldn’t be deflating.

”It’s amazing,” Andrew said, and I said I agreed, although I was maybe the only person that night not looking up. I hadn’t seen him smile much recently. Not the genuine type — just the brave plastic type he wore because he didn’t like to see me sad. So I didn’t look up.

“What do you think their wish was, exactly?” he said. “Because, like, they didn’t have pollution back then, right?”

”Not really,” I said. “Maybe whisks of smoke curled up from their fires. I doubt there was much more than that.”

”So, what do you think it was? The exact words?’

I thought a while. Wondered, if I saw a sky like this, what I’d wish for. “Maybe this person had this very same view, thousands and thousands of years ago. And it blew their mind so much that they wished to share it with everyone. That we could all see the heavens as clearly as them.”

”That’s cool.”

”It’s selfless,” I said. “I think if it had been me, I’d have wished for only me to have seen the sky like this every night. I just wouldn’t have thought beyond that. But whoever that was, they wanted us all to share in the beauty.”

This was the second night we’d been able to see the night sky so clearly — even in a city as bright as this. The sky had cleared up yesterday evening, as if god’s hand had swept over the dirt and cleansed the air itself. Not even light could pollute it now.

”Remember,” Andrew said, “how you used to tell me dad was a star and watching down on us?”

I felt a sudden, guilty nausea. Andrew had been young and I’d mostly said it to soothe him. Maybe to soothe me, too. He hadn’t mentioned it in a couple of years. “You remember that, huh?”

“We’d be able to see him now.” Andrew peered up at the stars, eyes slowly roving, seemingly taking each one in and assessing the possibility. Except there were millions. “Maybe, you know, after… Maybe I’ll be up there sitting next to him.”

I told him not to say such things and turned away as I wiped my eyes. Told him he was going to be fine — that he was strong and going to make it. But the shirt was so big on him, and nothing yet had worked, and I’d kept none of my promises so far, so I think he knew better than to trust to my new ones.

After a while he said, ”Do you really think it was someone’s wish?”

”What else could it be?“ I replied. “No one can explain it.”

“I hope it was.”

Before we went indoors, I finally looked up at the sky. I knew a wish would take thousands of years to reach the wishing star — if it even existed — and I knew that it might never come true. It wasn’t a wish for me, or even for Andrew. We were on our own now. And I knew I wouldn’t be around to see a wish I made take shape. But one day I hoped that no other parent or child had to go through this, so I closed my eyes and wished.

nooo. taylor swift is for anyone despite of how old they are ♥️

Infortunately shooting stars are not actually stars and itd be practically instant unless the speed of wish is abysmal

cool one! bringing out a wish from the chacters youth?

keep writing ♥️

it was the final moment of my life and there i was, lying down on the hospital bed, bed-stricken and exhausted from a long painful illness.

a shining twinkling light shone from the window, opening my eyes and on the window, a screen began to appeared and showed me a taylor swift's live performance.

i havent heard that song in a while since the illness took over my body and thats when it hits.

my heart was giving up on itself, slowly, and the screen vanished from the window as the star was no longer there because the moon was shining this time and as I drifted off to nowhere and into the dark, I heard the door swung opened and a familiar voice said,

"Hey, its taylor."

Amazing!!

I have a pet jaguar now.

I named her Jabari, meaning brave one, because I always come home to find her crouched at the door, waiting to pounce on my boots. Other than her unconquerable instinct to hunt humans, she is by far the easiest cat I've ever owned. She has no claws, no fangs, and only stands as tall as a squirrel.

Admittedly, adopting a jaguar is a tacky trend at this point. I'm catching the wave at the tail end, when it's as easy as rescuing a stray from the shelters. When the rapid evolution had just occurred, and all jaguars on the planet found themselves on the prey-end of the wildlife spectrum, owning one of these little devils had been a high luxury. But it took less than ten years before nearly every street in the country had a proud-posturing mini-big cat being walked on a leash.

We've seen now that this was likely the first of the ancient wishes to come true. As far as I can tell, it's the only one that has had a clearly positive benefit.

Following closely behind the rapid evolution of all jaguars came many sudden and unexplainable events like the torrential rainfall along the Tigris-Euphrates river system in the Middle-East, the appearance of an enormous fish in the Huang He, or 'Yellow River', of China, and the eruption of a previously dormant volcano along the east coast of Kenya.

Taken on their own, each seemed like an individual freak occurrence of nature. It wasn't until the resurrection of Sadiki, the ancient Egyptian, that we all pieced together what must be happening.

Sadiki's body coalesced from a scattering of dust outside of Cairo. The skeleton had formed first, discovered one morning just lying out in the open under the hot sun, and scientists gathered from across the globe to watch as the streams of dust carrying Sadiki's soft tissue slowly trickled in from the farthest reaches of the desert. Even the white linen outfit from Sadiki's burial had reformed, and until then, scientists were too cautious to get close enough to discover that this was not a modern human skeleton.

Sadiki, through the help of some very excited historical linguists, described a long and arduous battle for their health, and many prayers from friends and family for their full recovery. Their mother, in a slightly blasphemous taboo, even wished on a wandering star.

At last, all the individual anomalies could be collected into one theory. And this theory seemed to hold for many freak occurrences to come, like the sudden appearance of a land bridge across the Red Sea, trapping many cargo ships in the newly formed Great Red Lake.

When I'm out on my late walks with Jabari, I watch the first stars appear in the sky and wonder what the earth will look like when all the past millenniums' worth of wishes come true. I'd really like to see this planet after all the little changes catch up, see how society carries on with what will probably be a daily reshuffling of the laws of physics.

So tonight, I wish to come back like Sadiki, at least for a short while, in however far a future that may be. I'll try to remember tomorrow to wish for Jabari's safe return as well, as long as some other misguided wish from the ancient past doesn't wipe us out before then.

__________________

I'm on day 30 of a streak.

If you liked this story, the other 29 days are collected at r/FarFetchedFiction.

Thanks.

We're achieving nerd levels that shouldn't be possible

• The protagonist has been personally given a Super Important Mission™ by a god(dess)
• The protagonist is a complete sociopath, but the narrator and characters don't seem to notice
• The protagonist keeps growing more and more ridiculously overpowered, with no end in sight

Haha, caveman wishes are coming true in modernity, eh?

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Thanks so much for such a thoughtful response, Korra! I love how you focus on ways to make it work—some great advice there. And as you say, sadly it happens IRL quite a bit

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

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Part 2

I’m in shock, not surprised just shocked. After all I’ve been alive longer than most nations, I’ve seen horrific things; done a vast amount of vile things myself. But I do in fact have morals, extremely twisted morals but I do have them. And if there is one thing I can’t stand it’s abusive parents.

I feel my free hands clenching into a fist as Faeblade continues to explain what happened.

“My father, he heard my wails and just walked to the doorway and saw me cradling my best friend’s corpse. And he.. he told me that boys who don’t do chores get punished. Then he grabbed a bag and threw it at me, and told me to get out. I asked why and he said he had checked my computer search history, and read my diaries. He knew I was gay, and told me if I was not out of the house in two hours he would shoot me like he had my dog. My father then said a ton of things I can’t repeat. I just remember packing my things and then wandering. I asked around and Ripline, you know the villain who sometimes teams up with you? He gave me your number. I did not call right away because well, you’re a supervillain.” Faeblade voice trails off.

“And you’re a superhero.” I know what the kid is expecting, he thinks I’m going to say no. However as I said I’ve seen this before, and though I am a supervillain I’m not s monster.

“But based on what you have told me I can guess what you want to ask. I have a guesthouse out back. It’s usually reserved for when other villains visit. The bed is always made, food is in the fridge. You remember my mountain lair? If you can get here I’ll open the door for you and give you the guesthouse key. No smashing through walls though alright? I just got them repaired.” I am sure the young hero is in shock.

A few minutes of stunned silence ensues before Faeblade responds, “You will really let me stay with you? But why?”

I sigh, “Because I know what other options you may resort to. Remember kid I’m centuries old, you think you are the first heroic foe I’ve helped like this? I may be a immortal ageless supervillain but I’m not a complete monster. Your father on the other hand, he is a complete unforgivable monster.”

“He is.. you are right my father is a monster. I’ll be over in a hour, and Eternas.. thank you.” I hear the click as Faeblade hangs up the phone. Meanwhile I’m already making plans to deal with their father and potentially revive Lucky the FaeHound.

As I said I’ve seen this kind of situation before, and as far as I’m concerned beings like Faeblade’s father are not people; but brutal rabid beasts to be put down. And after the young hero is settled in the guest house I intend to deal with their father.

But before that happens thoughI dial a number I haven’t used in a long time, “Hey Goldenboy, you know the Fae kid? Yeah their dad killed their superdog and kicked them out. Yes they are staying with me, yeah same place you did all those years ago. Why am I calling the illustrious SolarStriker? Oh I just wanted to see if you could use your position as leader of the heroes association to overlook a certain incident that will happen today. Yeah exactly like what I did when you showed up on my doorstep. You can? Thanks Goldenboy, yes I’ll make sure the kid is safe. Yeah he probably needs a short leave from hero duties to process things. Alright yeah I know, thanks again and bye Goldenboy.”

I hang up the phone satisfied that once Faeblade is safely in the guest house I can go and deal with that monstrous father without repercussions. Just as I’ve done many times before.