Got to put that foundation down first.

Here you go!

You’re welcome

Ha! That was so funny! Very good, indeed!

Dammit! You made me snort coffee out my nose, you magnificent bastard.

"What do you mean I'm not ready to open!" She shouted at the robotic being before her, holding a small cardboard box in its hands. It gave a shrug and turned its body away from the scientist, who quickly attempted to maneuver around the being and get closer to the box. In response, it held it above its head.

"You're not ready to open it! It would make things too easy for you!"

"That's absolutely ridiculous, give me the box!"

"No!" The being shouted back, keeping the box away from the scientist. "You have spent your entire life pursuing this question, have you not? Do you want me to undermine your entire career by just giving you the answers you've sought for - this whole time sitting in this cardboard box!"

"Give me the box!" She shouted, almost like a child throwing a tantrum. The being sighed and said calmly, "You are so close." She paused.

"What?"

"You are so close. These answers will come to you in time, and you won't need the cardboard box. I've seen your work. Keep pushing. You're so close. Would you rather have the satisfaction of finding the answer yourself, or claim to have discovered the truth all the while knowing that you weren't the one who discovered it? Perhaps I am making sense, perhaps not. But giving you the answer would do more harm than good."

She paused.

"You know, you're right. But you're a ******* jerk for showing me the box in the first place!"

The being crushed the cardboard box.

"There was nothing in the cardboard box - why would the secrets of humanity be in a cardboard box! It was a test! Humans are so complicated..."

They sat in a brief moment of silence before she laughed.

"Sorry, you're right. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to need your help on the next experiment."

Your alien is adorable. This is kind of how I tend to imagine aliens as they get to know us. Everything makes sense until something suddenly doesn't and they get all discombobulated. This story could go places, it really could.

That could be a great premise for a rouge like dungeon crawler xD

I need more of this story

There comes a day when Sildorn and Lareis don't return from a hunting trip, so the former adventurers all don their armor again and go looking for their adopted elven parents.

This is so terrific

I now have a vision of a "daycare". Filled with all kinds of brave warriors, heroes and rogues, who really enjoy and embrace their new lives. Even though they will happily punch anybody in the face, that dares making fun of their outfits.

Oh yes please write more! Even if its not in WP, i think the concept and everything deserves more. Even if its a bit steamy in here

"Oh look, Sildorn! There, in the street!"

At Lareis's cry, Sildorn glanced up. There, standing amidst the debris and bodies, was a human. Sildorn always had trouble with identifying humans by their appearance, they didn't have any of the scales, antlers, fur, or fins that helped mark the individual elven tribes. This human was wearing crude-looking plates of metal with straps holding them in place, and was holding an equally-unconventional chunk of iron in one of its hands.

Lareis was already approaching the bedraggled human, who took a step back as if to flee. It said something Sildorn didn't understand in the simple language they spoke, which didn't discourage Lareis.

He picked his way past the bodies of the orcs that had ransacked the human town. As he got closer, he could see the human was coated in dark blood.

"Oh, the poor sweet thing," Lareis said. "Look at it! It's practically a babe."

Sildorn frowned. "How can you be sure? It looks like it can walk fine to me." He'd heard about human children, how they struggled to stay upright on their strangely-fragile legs.

"I read about it in one of the tomes we borrowed from Ysale. It's hard to believe, but did you know they let their children go into battle as young as fifty years old? How barbaric!"

Lareis bent down to make eye contact with the human, and smiled sweetly. The human now looked considerably less skittish, and made another series of harsh sounds, to which Lareis responded by softly cooing. Sildorn didn't need to see his soulmate's eyes to know what she was thinking.

"No."

"No what?"

"No, we can't keep it," Sildorn folded his arms and gave the human a stern look. "It's a child, who knows if it's even been house trained yet?"

"Oh, but we can't just leave it here!" Lareis turned to him, and he grimaced as she reached down to pat the human on the head. The human took another step away, but Lareis didn't seem to notice.

"It's not just one human. I've read some of Ysale's books too. Humans don't create vessels for children, they just..." Sildorn trailed off. "Well, I'm not entirely sure I understood the diagram correctly. But if you take two humans in, within a few centuries you'll have a hundred."

"Please, Sildorn? At least let us take it back for tonight and give it some food, then we can let it go in the morning. Besides, you just said it takes two humans to make new ones, right?"

The elven man hesitated, and glanced at the human again. It did look rather pitiful, with its filthy rags and vacant expression. He sighed, lifting his face to the sky in a silent prayer for patience.

"Fine. But it's just for tonight. It's gone in the morning."

---

Sir Braxford wasn't entirely sure what the two elves were saying. He cursed himself for not paying enough attention during his language studies, but at least they weren't hostile. Lifting his sword, he drew a cleaning cloth from his belt and wiped some of the orcish blood off the blade, before sheathing it. The elves seemed to have come to an agreement of some kind, and began to gesture childishly in his direction. The errant knight sighed, and began to follow the duo, rolling his eyes at the idiotic noises the taller, scaled elf was making.

Please don't make it too off feeling

well done slow burn even though it's just in a short story

kinda agree, the slow burn was well done

"Dear Jeffery!

It is with utmost pleasure that we invite you to participate in our prestigious program for the folklore creatures!

We identified great potential in you, and would like you to come study at our institute. We offer a high variety of post-graduation jobs. You will have a chance to work with the best in their fields, and gain an experience like no other!"

​

At first when Jeffery got the letter, he thought it was a prank. As a joke, He sent his application. And then a week later, as he opened the door to get the day's mail, a Leprechaun stood outside. Iv'e never seen anything like that except for in movies.

"Jeffery, right? You signed up to Folkland Academy? I'm here to take you."

"You... um... wait, this is real? Am I dreaming?"

"New students are always so tiring. Yes, the tooth fairy is real. Baba yaga? Greatly misunderstood. Santa Claus? Never met him, but who knows. You can call me Dave. Now, if you will sign this form so we could get this over with,", the Leprechaun said with a sigh. He was not happy to be on recruitment duty.

"Uhhh... sure..", Jeffery said in an unsure voice. He signed the document without reading it, just to go along with the prank, but then suddenly the everything started to shake. Lights flickered in his eyes and he became dizzy, until suddenly he was stood in front of a large castle in the middle of a forest.

​

"Welcome to the Academy, Jeffery! ", said a large bunny, wearing a top hat and a monocle.

Two years have passed since that day. Jeffery always liked reminiscing about how at first, he thought he was hallucinating, but as he got to meet with the other students, and see new recruits arriving with the same reaction as his, he realised this was legit. The semester started with an introduction of the staff: Dave the Leprechaun, whom he already met. Easter Bunny, the headmaster. Dracula the Vampire, Stan the Grim Reaper, Particia the Tooth Fairy, and Sonya the Mermaid.

​

They were taught courses in magic, potion brewing and history. They met with other mystical creatures, and experienced working with them in their daily lives. After two years, the base program ended and they had to choose a specific route. Would they become a Tooth Fairy, collecting teeth from children, or a Grim Reaper, collecting souls for the afterlife? Jeffery himself decided to become a Leprechaun, much to Dave's delight. As his graduation task, he was given an empty pot and was told to fill it with gold he collected while travelling. He travelled for months, meeting with humans and mystical creatures alike. When he finished filling it with gold, a rainbow appeared before him, leading him to the next chapter of his life.

I don't know, you tell me

that's too dirty for me tbh I enjoy light romance

That's great. Just imagine: I wish I were rich. You get the key to a sewer entrance. You walk around in the sewer and notice a glimmer of light coming from cracks in old brickwork. You glimpse through the cracks and you see piles of gold and platinum coins. You get a pickaxe and punch a hole through the brickwork, you fill your bag and you vanish into the night.

The next morning you hear that someone robbed the bank.

"How did you do that?"

Jason turned back to his lunch mate and stabbed another forkful of salad into his mouth.

"Dew vhut?", he asked around the crunching mass as he tried to resist the urge to turn back around and see what the man seated a few tables behind them was doing.

His lunch mate gestured (well ... gesticulated) behind Jason in the direction of the man with barely contained exasperation. "You just talked to him!

"No I didn't, I was talking to you - and stop pointing! Jesus Tez'uk, it's been 15 years since you guys discovered us and y'all still suck at remembering that pointing is rude.", Jason griped as he lightly smacked the aliens tentacle down.

The alien mass of undulating waves of cilia on a round egg-like surface broken up by four tentacles spaced seemingly at random somehow conveyed bashful embarrassment as it drew back its smacked tentacle.

"Sorry. I just don't know how you do it. I've studied your language, culture, and social norms for over a decade - and yet somehow you and a few humans like you seem to communicate without any speech or antecedent correspondence."

"Oooo, antecedent! That's a good one!", Jason praised while trying to catch the waiters eye for a refill on his diet coke.

"Thank you. It was in this mornings crossword.", Tez'uk tersely replied before barrelling on - "I don't understand it! We can't seem to find a rhyme or reason to it. There's just something some of you do with each other where yo- YOU DID IT AGAIN! THERE!"

Te'zuk knocked their own drink over as their tentacles writhed in either excitement or anger. Jason honestly had a hard time reading tentacle or cilia expressions. He sheepishly recalled his many failed duolingo attempts to improve and mentally promised he'd open the app later tonight.

Jason tried to ignore the now plentiful eyes staring at them after Tez'uk's outburst. Glancing back to the waiter whose eye he'd caught he indicated they'd need napkins.

"AGAIN! YOU DID IT AGAIN! JUST NOW!"

At this Jason paused.

"Wait...do you mean what I did with the waiter just now?"

"YES!", Tez'uk practically shouted - their sea of cilia now joining in with their tentacles in displaying waves of heightened agitation. "You did it just now with the waiter! Just like you did with the man behind you!"

Jason blinked slowly at his alien friend. Sometimes he forgot that even though these alien creatures had assimilated so well into human life, they had blind spots. Their obsession with all things language and communication had made exchanging information as easy as breathing, but some things did not translate.

"Tez - they're gay."

The waves of cilia increased their frenetic writhing as Tez'uk processed that information. After a moments pause they responded with a slowness they'd observed in humans talking to a mentally slow creature such as a human baby.

Or a chihuahua.

"Thaaatttt issssss goooooddddd. Doessss notttttt explainnnnnn."

Jason rolled his eyes and looked to make sure the waiter was on his way.

"I can't explain it. It's just a thing we do. I guess I thought you knew. The look I told the waiter earlier was that I needed a refill."

The cilia and tentacles slowed to a standstill. Jason was bemused as he watched the errant twitch of one or two cilia as his friend processed this new information.

"...and the man behind you?"

"Oh! That? He just told me he's in med school, single, and he'd be happy to get drinks with me on Saturday."

The cilia gently waived in a crosshatch pattern that Jason thought he remembered was an expression of puzzlement.

"You...you said all that? With that one look?"

Jason chuckled softly as he let his friend grapple with his newfound knowledge for a moment before he gave an affirmative grunt around his next mouthful of salad.

With a sharp swallow and a sheepish shrug he gestured around at the full dining area. "We've all been doing it. Jerry over there invited me to his kickball tournament. Hector just got engaged but he confessed he's not sure if it's going to work out. Daniel says the straight busboy has cocaine and will give you a bump if you compliment his arms."

Jason put his fork down and dabbed at his mouth.

"We all do it. All the time. It's just a gay thing. Kinda like brunch."

Tez'uk's cilia became a complex roiling sea of mixed messages that Jason doubted he'd find anywhere in tonight's duolingo lesson.

"Wait...brunch is a gay thing??"

So the key opens a door but you still have to walk through it.

They are going to be laying bricks atop one another to build a house.

r/DirtyWritingPrompts is that way.