Grandma's Poppy Seed Cookie Recipe

Look for slip of paper to try and remember exact amounts. Fail to do so. Eyeball roughly what you remember your grandmother using.

Preheat oven to 180C, since that bit she always said out loud.

Cream butter until soft, add sugar, beat until light and/or fluffy.

Sift in flour, add poppy seeds, bring mixture into a dough. Ignore that it doesn't look like hers.

Make balls of walnut size, flatten slightly. Put on oven tray, bake until it goes past golden brown since you were distracted downing a bottle of wine.

Cry.

Transfer to wire rack.

Eat them all.

The Correct Way To Channel Magic

The wizards in their ivory towers, or ebony towers if they prefer, they channel magic via their spells and their staffs. That's correct.

The witches in their covens, they brew potions and poultices to channel magic. That's also correct.

The artificers who channel magic into their devices and machines, correct. The psychics who channel the magic straight into and through their mind, also correct. The bards on every street corner turning tricks, yet again, this magic channeling is correct.

Whatever your method, there isn't a wrong way to channel magic, with one exception.

If you let the magic channel you...

Never Stop Running

"Never stop running."

Her mother's dying words were always the first thing on her mind when she woke, the last thing she thought about before falling asleep.

What she was running from had changed over the years. At first it was the pain of the loss, then the fear of joining her in death.

But there was no shortage of things to run away from, no end to the amount of people wanting to dig their claws into her.

At least, that's what she had to tell herself. Otherwise she might have to look back. And that she couldn't do.

The Marker Diamond

It was a flawless diamond, about the size of a tennis ball when it was cut and polished. Its worth was not incalculable, but was very much far beyond any one person to buy.

So it became a symbol almost, one that businesses would buy off each other once they became the biggest and most profitable on Earth. A bank, then an internet provider, then a country, and so on.

A nice way to keep score, but a somewhat wasteful one.

But then the scientific company used it in a giant laser cutting array, which felt very much like cheating.

Caught Red Handed

I couldn't see the Officer's eyes behind the reflective sunglasses, which I presumed was the point. Instead I saw my own face reflected where his eyes were.

But I tried to focus and plead my case. Tried to explain why I was speeding, swore to him that my wife was ill. However the cop must have been looking around the car, as he suddenly pulled out his baton and pointed at the bag of weed poking out of my jacket on the back seat. He wrote a ticket for speeding and for possession, and thus didn't check the trunk, thankfully.

Flight MQ647

The plane was in the air for two hours before the trouble started.

The pilots radioed in that one of the engines was a little sluggish, but they were confident they'd be fine.

A few moments later, they reported that it had died, but they felt they would be fine.

Then there was radio silence for several hours, long past the point they should have checked in.

The final message came just as the controllers were starting to activate the various first responses to missing planes.

Oddly enough, anyone who listens to the message feels we shouldn't look for it.

Druid Sparce Legend Space

He adjusted the stone wheel one more notch, took hold of the rope hanging from the hole in the roof with one hand, then pulled the lever with his other hand. With a grinding noise, the floor slid into the wall, revealing rusted spikes below. After a moment, the floor slid back, and he let go of the rope.

Sure, he was one of the few people left on the planet who could read Ancient Sudial, but no one knew how it was pronounced. Which made it difficult to unlock a trap based on a pun.

But brute force worked.