The machine wasn’t stopping. It kept popping out xylophone after xylophone, each one perfectly identical to each other, down to the little scratch on the left that Princess Xanthia had made when she was six. The princess wasn’t sure if she should cry or laugh.
~
The xerox machine was a large silver box. Princess Xanthia knew that in the non-magical world she’d taken the thing from, all the machine did was create a flat image of whatever you put face down on its shiny glass on a piece of paper. That was all she wanted! To make an image of her old xylophone to give to the toy-maker. Not a gazillion copies of her xylophone!
She’d expected that bringing the machine back home might change it in some way or other, but she hadn’t expected this. Though, now… she didn’t actually need the toy-maker to create a replica of her xylophone anymore… because she had more than enough.
Oh, it was all so very confusing.
She sat down, buried her face in her hands and groaned. Around her, xylophones multiplied like bunnies.
~
He’d said it would be simple. Put it face down on the glass, close the lid. Press start. She’d seen him do it. And it had been simple. He pressed the button and after a short mechanical whine, a paper came out with a picture on it. ONE sheet of paper. So… what had happened?
She’d put the xylophone face down on the glass. She hadn’t been able to fully close the lid, because the xylophone was bulky, and the lid could only cover flat items. She did everything he said! Why was it doing this? She looked at the screen which had strange numbers and words on them, and the xylophones that were still spewing from the machine, and then she gave up.
With a blast of magic, she destroyed the machine, incinerating half the xylophones along with it. Well, at least she had her replica. Quite a few of them.
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Head over to Yuin-Y's for today's illustration.
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(Sorry, X is a difficult alphabet)
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