"You have to slur your words more!" Grendel shouted at me. "Fhuuuud nowwwwwwww! Fhuuuuuuuuuuddd nnnnnnnnnnnoooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!"

I slumped. That was okay, not like in Wizard school, where you had to have "bearing". Ugh. Best decision I ever made leaving that place. Still, I wasn't sure about this place, either.

"Foooooooooooooooood nnnnoowww!!" I screamed. "Hhunnnnnggrraaaaaayyyyyyy!"

"Better," he commented. I couldn't tell if he was pleased. Grendel was so close to graduating, he rarely smiled except when he was supposed to. I was still getting the rules straight in my head. Only smile at violence, oh, and really bad puns.

"Cat got tongue bath?" I said, smiling. Was that too clever? Grendel smiled, so I guess I got it about right.

John Quig was the only inhabitant of Planet 65798. Well, the only inhabitant of his kind. Planet 65798 had been discovered several hundred years before by the first space telescope. A tiny wobble had been detected in a distant star, indicating an orbiting planet. And Planet 65798 was the first of several hundred subsequent planets that had been discovered beyond the solar system way back before the wars. Back then the scientific community had hoped one day to travel to Planet 65798, which looked like the one most able to support life.

John Quig was an astroexplorer. He’d trained on space ships large and small. He had been the first to walk on a planet other than the one he had been born on. But unlike Planet 65798, that was a planet in his own solar system. Nevertheless, he had gotten the parades, the acclaim, and the book deals when he returned home the hero he truly was. He’d made history and would never be forgotten – or so he thought.

The young prince examined the old map like a bloodhound on the trail of a fox, his nose sniffed the surface, his eyes examined every blemish, his mind focused upon all of the available information. Metchlock grinned at the boy's intensity.

"And what," Metchlock asked, approaching his student's desk, "does my Lord find so
fascinating?"

Prince Leartes frowned as he put the map down. "It's lack of details," he grumbled.

"Excuse me?"

Leartes tapped the map. "It shows the lands to our West, South, and East, but has nothing of the seas to our North. Look, except for some faint words scratched into the paper, it's blank. Can you read that?" He held the map up for Metchlock to see.

Metchlock smiled. "No need. It's a standard warning placed upon unexplored regions:
Here, There Be Dragons."

For September thru October 2009 is back to school time.

Our new contest is a story about a school. Something that happens at a school, during school or around a school in a science fiction, fantasy or horror kind of way.

Some kind of school has to be involved, what kind of school is up to you! Wizards school, rocket science school, everyday school.

As always, have fun!

1000 words of less.
Contest ends on October 15th 2009

This contest has closed - a new contest will start November 1 2009.