The Awakening

``I woke up with the sheer feeling of terror. Not the best way to wake up, I know. I felt a lot of weight on all of my limbs. I looked up, there was nothing there. I sighed. It was just my tiresome fatigue kicking in. I got up and looked at my surroundings..``

My Dailies!

March 1st: If I were a book, I am the kind of book with a mysterious smell and cover. You would pick me up and dust me off, wondering where I came from. I would be rather thick, with a red cover that, funnily enough, had no title. My genre would be that of a mix between romance and mystery. I would be a hardcover with a rough past. Been read by many over the decades, passed hand to second hand, and then to this almost deserted library.

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<33

~ INTRODUCTION ~

♥ Nickname: Zae
♥ Pronouns: She/They
♥ Cabin: Poetry ♨️
♥ Word Goal: 8,000
- Total words: 93

Hello! I have no clue what I'm doing, but I think this SWC is going to be very fun! I have been in maybe 4 so far, and I aim to be more active this time around. ^^ This is my first time participating on the megathread - I am excited!
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I love to read fantasy/dystopian, some of my favourites being the Divergent series, everything by Amy Wilson, and aaa! So many books!
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I am autistic, have ADHD, and have several other conditions which I also want to advocate and raise awareness for. They make me who I am, and although it can be unbelievably difficult sometimes, I wouldn't change them for the world! (Except the Coeliac, that can go away. And the pain. And the gastric issu- okay maybe I would change some of them!)
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I do online school, and my special interest is learning about disorders like autism, ADHD, DID, anxiety, diabetes, etc! I want to, as a job, do something involving learning about them, helping others with these conditions, raising awareness, and I also want to write at least one book! When I get round to it… :')

Okay, on to the writing!

~ MAIN CABIN DAILIES ~

1st. Myself as a book - I would be a paperback fantasy novel, fairly new to the library. Inconspicuous, tucked in to the edge of a shelf which really couldn't hold any more books. My story would be one that you get lost in - escape to a world of magic, mystery, and perhaps a touch of romance? A scene depicting the heart of this universe seals my words away from prying, greedy eyes - eyes searching for a quick burst of excitement. For better or for worse, this is my world. My creation. Dare you enter? (words - 93)
2nd. N/A
3rd.
I am the an extra
I get up every morning. I eat, go to work, come home, eat, sleep. That is my life. Anyone could be me; I could be anyone. Instead, I became no-one, destined to a life of monotonous routine and meaningless aspirations. That’s okay… I watch the famous rise and fall, rise and fall. It doesn’t seem much better than my situation – a sudden rise in fame, the entire world watching, then you word something wrong and are thrown from the public eye. It’s inevitable – no one is loved forever.

Once, one of these famous people (main characters in my story, if you will) talked to me. Just a bit of small talk, don’t get me wrong, but those few minutes gave me a taste of what it’s like to be known. Just for those moments, I wanted that attention. You know what changed my mind? That SAME week, something they said in an interview was taken out of context and they’ve been “cancelled’. Now I think about it, that doesn’t seem like much of a life at all – maybe even worse than mine. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be one extreme or another… it must be possible to be happy, fulfilled, without the rigmarole of popularity.

It’s so easy, though, for me to just go to work tomorrow and carry on as I do every day. Life is easier as an inconspicuous person in the shadows, right? I have to admit part of me DOES want to go further, does want to stretch the limits of my life. My story. I don’t want to get up at the same time every morning, eat the same food, go to work in my mind-numbing office job, come back home at 5:30, eat fish fingers and chips, then go to sleep. I want more to my life. What could stop me? (words - 312)

~ POETRY DAILIES ~

3rd.
Lost worlds
Lost worlds, dancing in the minds of those who passed by;
Lost worlds, whispering into the ears of curious listeners;
Lost worlds, breathing life into they who forgot their beauty;
Lost worlds, carrying memories of reading late into the night;

Books. Stories.Lost worlds, barely contained by two flimsy covers.
(words - 51)

~ WEEKLIES ~

Week 1:

~ WRITING COMPETITION ~

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~ WORD WARS ~

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~ OTHER ~

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~ NOTES ~


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Have a great SWC! <3

claiming this spot!
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dailies:

weeklies:

others:

Nickname :: Shadow / Equinox
Pronouns :: xe / xem
Cabin :: Dystopian.
Word goal :: 15k
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Hi, I'm Shadow, a writer, roleplayer and equestrian! It's nice to meet ya'll. This is my fourth time in SWC. I love reading fantasy and realistic fiction.
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DAILIES



WEEKLIES


WRITING COMP



WORD WARS

OTHER

Table of contents
Free-Writing
03/01 - Musicians Corner Club
03/01 - Quidditch Practice
03/03 - How Rude

Daily
03/01 - If I were a book
03/02 - (SW)Chaos
03/03 - Antagonist Feelings
03/10 - Cabin Wars!

Weekly
Weekly 1 -

March 1st
523 words

Break time, finally. I grabbed my case and grabbed a new reed to replace the old one with. I was sucking on the new reed when Charlie came over. She looked desperately to me, and I wondered why until she asked for my help. “Hey. Could you help me on this one? We honestly need as much clarinet and sax in this as we can because this is written for a concert band… not whatever we have.” I looked at her, knowing what she meant. We had all of us playing in the orchestra, but she had forgotten we had singers among us. “I also need help on the podium. And on the feedback.” I considered her offer. I was only a first year, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be this involved in a club. But she did seem like she needed help. And I could give feedback. “Please?” That was what got me. I could see how nervous she was, leading a club with older kids in it, and only being a first year. She wanted—and needed—a close friends help.
“Fine. But only if you rename my title as ‘deputy clarinet ear-destroyer’.” I added with a wink. If she agreed, my official title would be ‘deputy clarinet ear-destroyer’ and that would be pretty awesome. I looked at her and waited for her response.

We ran through hobbit dance once more. And once we were done I made a few rounds around the room. Charlie had put the vocalists on some percussion instruments, and lucky for them I knew I few tricks for percussion. I walked over to Kim, who was on bell kit and looked at his part. “You see how it says to slur? I know it’s difficult to actually slur, but here’s a way you can do it.” I demonstrated that with one hand you started on the first note and with the other hand you started playing the other note so the sound blended together for a moment, and then you stopped playing the first note. I made my rounds over to Aurora Griffith—or that’s what I thought that her name was—a saxophone player. “You see this half note note? Can you crescendo it up to a forte then drop back down to a piano on this quarter note?” I gestured for her to show me what she had. I gave a nod of approval and moved on. There was only one more piece I had noticed that needed to be addressed. Gavin Faulkner, playing on a snare pad. It was a simple tapping beat, and somehow he had gotten off beat. It was an easy mistake, but one that needed to be fixed. “Repeat after me. One AND two AND three AND four AND one AND two…”

The meeting seemed to be coming to an end, and I made a move towards Charlie, knowing she would need something to cheer her up after her first meeting as club leader. “Charlie! Great job! Want to go for a walk outside?” Fresh air to clear our head would be needed after how stressful this must have been.

Starry's Stories - March 2023

A cave stands before, you, tall and dark, yet it radiates a warm and inviting feeling. You step inside and find . . . scrolls. Definitely not what you expected to find. But you have plenty of time, so you pick up the first scroll and begin reading.

Dailies
March 1
March 2
March 3
Weeklies
Weekly 1

March 1: Daily
I'd be a fantasy book, full of random fantasy half-baked short stories like the ones I always make in bed. I'd be a paperback book because I'm fairly soft and quiet. The cover would be dull and not that interesting, but the stories inside would be totally wild and different from each other, ranging from dragons to fanfiction to random classmates having mind-reading abilities. The pages would vary in color and texture, as if the stories inside were all clobbered together to make the book. The book overall would have this glued together look.

94 words

01 Introduction

Table of Contents

Introduction as a book:
If I were a book I'd probably be a fantasy book with lots of twist and turns, but eventually a somewhat satisfying ending. I'd probably be one of those stiff paper backs nobody likes that you can't read without cracking the spine. My cover would appear to be simple and plain on the outside, but once you actually read the book you would understand the complexity of the cover. The book would probably contain a very very slow burn romance as well as a little bit of the beloved found family trope. (92 Words)

General introduction bc why not:
WIP
Helloo there, im Celes a camper of the :sparkle: extraordinary :sparkle: fantasy cabin this session! This is going to be my sixth session of swc and I beyond excited. A little bit about me is that I am a huge fandom fanatic, I use she/they pronouns, and I am a very big bookworm. I also like to think that I am decently athletic (lol). The soccer season actually starts today and as much as I'd like to say that I'm excited for practice after school today I'm a little bit stressed because one: I seem to have misplaced half of my gear and two: Im just now starting to get over a pretty crappy cold and Im not interested in playing soccer without being able to breath through my nose, but I also really don't want to miss my first practice of the season. Anyways, I've been playing soccer for about eight years so I'd like to say im somewhat experienced at it haha. Now moving on to another of my many hobbies.

Another one of my hobbies that I put my entire heart and soul into is reading. I recently got back into reading in August of last year and let's just say it's kind of taken over my life. So far this year I've read a grand total of 38 books (tracked on goodreads) and I'm sure there will be many more books to come. Currently, I am reading my second classic of the year (The Queen's Gambit) and I'm very happy to say that I'm really enjoying it. I don't usually annotate my books because of the fear of ruining them. Sometimes I'll tab them with these really nice translucent tabs I have, but for the Queen's gambit I decided to actually underline and write things and so far I think it's going pretty well. I also started reading the Wise Man's Fear today. It's exactly 1000 pages long which makes it kind of intimidating, but I read the first book earlier this year (The Name of The Wind) and I really enjoyed it so hopefully I'll enjoy this one just as much (if not more)!

Another thing I really like to do in my limited free time is journaling. I currently have 2 journals, but one is used for two purposes. My first journal is just my life journal which I haven't actually used for awhile. Itś just your typical journal in which I rant about my crappy life (lol). My other journal which is used for :sparkle: two :sparkle: purposes is my mostly reading/ some bullet journaling journal. Most/ all most all of the spreads I have made are dedicated towards reading related things, but I do have a monthly half-a-page spread that is life related I filll out every month and occasionally Iĺl throw in another spread dedicated to my life as well. I'm hoping to get back into life journaling this month not /just/ for the words, (though I have to admit that is part of my reason for wanting to get back into it) but also because it is quite beneficial for your health i just need to find the time to do it. I may end up having to do like a weekly journaling session because the dedication to journaling every day is kind of a lot, but it's better than nothing lol. Well we (?) I certaintly did go on quite the tangent there lol, but whatever.

Another thing that is quite a book part of my personality is the many many fandoms that I am a part. I'm not going to go and list every single on of them because that would take quite a bit of time, but I will list some of my main and most recent fandoms. Some of the fandoms that I dedicate the mot of my life and sacred time to is: Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, The Owl House, Amphibia, She-Ra, The Lord of The Rings, and probably many many more than I am just not thinking about at the moment. By the way, this is not at all including the many book fandoms I am a part of, we'll get to that later. Now when I say these are some of the fandoms I am a part of I mean I dedicate hours of my life first watching/reading them and then many more fangirling on them and making them my entire personality for the next three months. Now, to get onto the many book fandoms that I am apart of. Now, again I'm not going to list all of them because there are WAY to many to list lol, but I'll list some of my favorites, and again the ones that I have gotten into most recently. Firstly, some of the books that I love mostly because they were some of my childhood favorites: Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The School For Good and Evil, The Land of Stories, Percy Jackson, and The Tale of Magic Series. Now for some of the book series that I have gotten into in the past year or so: The Keeper of The Lost Cities Series, The Cruel Prince Trilogy, The Six of Crows Duology, and Alice Oseman book, but especially Heartstopper and Loveless. Those are just some of the top contenders and there a definitely a bunch more, but those are just a few that I've been recently/overall really obsessed with.

I am now at over 900 words so I should probably try and close this up, but I will say this has been a fun 20 minutes or so spent writing about myself during math class. Also, I just took a math test and I'm like lowkey stressed about it and I again lowkey think I failed it, but then again whenever I think that I usually end up doing fine so that's probably just my nerves and I'm just overthinking it. Anyways, now I'll actually try and close this up That was my very lengthy, chaotic introduction, haha. Have a good session! <3 (1,010 Words)

1102 Words

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⊹ hello hello! welcome to my writing thread. I hope you enjoy reading what I've written!
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╎▹ Daily: 3/1 - 107 words
Hello, everyone! I am Mila, and I go by she/her. If I was a book, I would be a fantasy sci-fi novel. My cover would be taped together with many different colors of tape because tape goes quickly in my arts-and-crafts-loving household. Many of my pages would be dog-eared, and some would be mysteriously missing - I have a notoriously unreliable memory. I'll remember the most random things and forget the most important ones! I would likely have a watercolored bookmark with a The Lord of the Rings quote penned on with swirling calligraphy - a few blots of ink here and there since I'm still learning XD

╎▹ Daily: 3/2 - WIP

“Money, Trains, Ticket, Willow (like the tree- XD love ya, Willow-), and Print (these were all influenced by random stuff that occurred during my day today, soooo- yeah-)”

The crisp white tickets tucked neatly into Conever's vest pocket fluttered with a pleasant sound of rubbing paper as a train screamed past, the slight noise barely audible in the cacophony of the station. The gentleman stood close enough to the train that a mere extension of the hand would most likely mean the loss of it.

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Daily
3/1
0 points
395 words
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"Bonjour, my fellow writers! Welcome to another era of Starr Wants Cookies - er, Scratch Writing Camp ;) It's introduction day, and in the spirit of creative endeavours, we challenge you to introduce yourself as a book! What genre would you be, what would your cover look like, and what texture would your pages have? Would you be a paperback, or hardcover? Do tell."
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Hi! I'm Iris or Ris, she/her, CST and I'm leading Horror this session! I'm attempting a 1000 word intro so wish me luck! I'm writing my intro as a biography, so enjoy! ;D

Who is Iris?
Iris, or Ris, is a teenager who's trying to make her way through life. It can be fun at times, but she's had her fair share of hard times. From being body shamed by a friend and being called other nasty words, to being the academic achiever of her school a few years ago. She hasn't always done it with a smile on her face, but she tries to be grateful for whatever happens to her.

In her early years, she took piano lessons but grew a deep hatred for it after her mom lied to her, saying she could quit after two years but nope. Iris currently plays the viola in her orchestra, and she also is learning to play drums.

She has done many theatre related activities in her life, including devising projects, workshops, musicals, and plays. She thinks that one of the best things about all of those experiences is the friends she made along the way. Although some of them are not what they seem now that she knows them better.

What book is Iris?
If Iris was a book, she'd be a fresh new paperback book but with a weird, slimy substance in between one of the pages. This represents her want of a new life and fresh start but also can't have one due to past instances and events that happened to her. The book would be a dark one- horror, dystopian, plus a bit of failed romance. There'd be magic in it as well. It would twist your mind and give you millions upon billions of ideas of what will happen next. There's no telling what will happen next- nor if it'll be good. Everyone thinks different things about this book; some think it's good, others think it's bad. No one can agree on an answer. What will you think?

What does Iris like to do in her free time?
In her free time, Iris likes to participate in many Scratch camps, such as SWC, SMC, SRC, and many many more. She also likes to participate in theatre activities. Currently, she's in Annie Jr, a musical her school is putting on!

if i were a book, i would be a hardcover :) my genre would be fantasy and sword and sorcery. the cover itself would be quite underwhelming, something that you wouldn’t notice as much because of it being a dull, faded, blue, with the title the kind that shimmers in the light. the cover has a few items that don’t seem related, but if you look on the inside and read the book, you will realize the meaning of the items and why they were on the cover. the books also constantly breaks the 4th wall, and the cream-colored pages are clean and crisp, feeling smooth and new, as if no one’s read it before, or because the past readers were careful to leave no impact. the story is formatted as a diary, but it contains several other content, like drawings and doodles. the chapters, or entries, vary in tone—some are whimsical and imaginative, others are just to the point. the amount of pages would be around 600 - 700, but the size is small, making the pages and text smaller than normal.

(slightly edited)

Daily 3/1

The book is a lengthy paperback, its spine cracked and cover slightly raised from previous readings. Though clearly not brand new, it is still in relatively good shape - many more people have yet to handle it before the pages are torn and the cover has fallen away. Inside is a whimsical fantasy story mixed with hints of mystery and romance, set in a world so detailed and wondrous many readers have felt they were swept away to a different universe entirely. None of this is apparent from the outside of the book; its font is simple and old fashioned and its cover plain (the only decoration is the silhouette of a bird in mid flight, spread across a dull blue backdrop). There is no back cover blurb. This is a story that readers will have to discover through their own curiosity; perhaps, if they are a certain kind of person, they will find their efforts worthwhile.

Word count: 156

Bonjour, my fellow writers! Welcome to another era of Starr Wants Cookies - er, Scratch Writing Camp ;) It's introduction day, and in the spirit of creative endeavours, we challenge you to introduce yourself as a book! What genre would you be, what would your cover look like, and what texture would your pages have? Would you be a paperback, or hardcover? Do tell.


Daily - Mar. 1, 2023 - Jasper's Thread
wc : 1,008
title : n/a

this was supposed to just be a daily but apparently now it's. allegory. help i need therapy </3

If I were a book, I would be a hardcover, one of those from the library that has the cover taped on and encourages everyone to bend it slightly so they can discover what's underneath. My cover would consist of something wonderful and intruiging, yet also something that could prove a mistake, but often ends up being just the opposite- like when you think of a kid's fantasy. My cover would have a massive treehouse, a treehouse glittering with glowing swirls of magic. Climbing ivy and twisting vines would line the strong oak, and faerie lights would spiral around every branch, too many to count. Paintings off all kinds could be seen peeking through unobscured windows, their images seemingly temptig to change at any second. A coruscant violet sky would paint the background, deep green grass forming the foreground. And right in the center of the image, closer to you than the trees, facing their backs to you, would be two children, a girl with long, dark brown hair, and a boy with overflowing ginger curls.

I'd be a bit worn, but not quite torn. I'd be loved, with wrinkles here and there, with rough edges, coffee stains and tattered pages, but never ripped, never stolen. Every word would be readable, no matter where it was. Perhaps I would carry notes with me, notes that people wrote in pencil because they thought it would do no harm, and perhaps I would wait for someone else to come along with a clean eraser and erase those notes themselves. My pages would be yellowed and riddled with the scent of used ink, and you would know I was well read. Illustrations would take up the entire page every few pages, illustrations in dark charcoal, riddled with smudges, even though they've been printed onto the page. Spirals and stars would take up every chapter header, the page numbers surrounded by simple yet unique marks of magic.

I would be a medium-length book, not too long and not too short- perhaps three hundred pages. I would be hidden somewhere, somewhere on the bottom shelf, yet people would find me every time. The font of the title would catch their eye - yet no one can ever remember what I'm called. I'm like something forgotten, a book you read once, and put away, and perhaps forget about- but sometimes you'll remember it, in bits and pieces, and wonder which it was and where it went. And perhaps, when you find it again, you'll find joy in the nostalgia. You'll remember that old spark, and you'll find a sense of euphoria in my pages again, even if only for a short time. But every time you remember, it brings you joy. Even if perhaps it's not as good now, it was good when you first read it.

There would be theories around me, and about the author. I would boast a sequel, but none was ever found. I would boast an author, but no one could ever find her. I would be both lost and found, all at the same time. Then again, perhaps one needs to be lost before they truly find themselves?

Most would never know that much about me, even were you to read me all the way through, but there would be one someone, one person, cherishing me, knowing me word for word, by heart. I'd be something to someone, even if i was only a little bit of a thing or nothing to everyone else. I would be found, over and over, waiting for that someone. And I would find them, I know I would.

Sometimes I am overlooked, but I don't mind. I love those who do find me, who read me and listen and understand. I love those who care and hear every bit of me, even the parts that weren't written that well. And I love those who do attempt to read me, even though they hate those badly written parts. I enjoy anyone who sees me and picks me up and tries me. That's what I'm here for, after all. Just try me, and see what you find. You might find some of yourself in me, or perhaps some of a friend. Perhaps even part of someone you hate, but I hope that won't make you hate me. Just see what you find, see what you like. I'm here for that.

Sometimes it seems like I change, but you can't quite figure out how. Perhaps this new edition has a new font, or smaller text. Whatever it is, something is off- whether it be for better or worse. Sometimes, albeit quite rarely, the change is obvious- a new cover, something that leads you to hardly recognize me! But I am still the same on the inside, the same way I have been for years.

Sometimes it seems like the stories you hear about me- the fan writing, the summaries, the recommendations, the critiques- all clash against each other. Sometimes you wonder whether I'm really worth it. I might not be, but you won't know until you try. You can't judge a book by its cover. You can't judge me by mine.

I'm full of so many different things, and you have to read all my pages to understand. Maybe you'll miss a sentence, or a paragraph, or a page, but you just need to know what makes me what I am. If you choose not to like it, I won't hold that against you. Do as you wish, but don't judge me by what I look like outside, or what you hear. Judge me by what I am, what I say. Put aside bias and form your own view of me, and base your opinions on that. On what I actually am.

Perhaps I do have some wrong things with me, but all I'm asking is for you to give me a chance. Just a chance, that's all I need, all I want. Just try me, and see if you like me.

I'm here for that.

Nickname - Ava
Content - March 1st Daily
Word Count - 651
Topic - Write yourself as a book
Cabin - Horror

LET'S GET STARTED

As you open the book, you have no idea what to think. The texture is nothing as you've felt before; smooth, soft, hard, and cushiony, all simultaneously. You open the book, but then close it to observe the design of the cover. It is a mixture of blue, yellow, purple, orange, and black, colors which would have contrasted badly normally but looked oddly beautiful in this book. The main color was black, and then splashes of swirls of the mixtures of the other four colors. It was unlabeled, not named, and very mysterious, but you dared to open it anyways. Was it Horror? Thriller? Romance?

The pages gave off a distinct smell. You couldn't really name it, on the tip of your tongue, as if it was many things you had smelled before all mixed together to form a very different thing. The pages were fresh, yet looked old. As you read each page of the story, you cried and laughed, you giggled and then suddenly as the mood dropped, your mood changed too. The book was a completely different plot, one moment everything would be fine and then the other, something would go wrong, and you would feel as if the book had betrayed you of long-lasting happiness. The genre was everything, all compact in one ball and extremely confusing to understand, yet easy too. This book was extremely unusual, and you didn't know whether you liked that or not. The ending felt absolutely horrible to you. The girl had remained quiet from her bubbly and outward personality till the day, and you fervently wish that she would get okay in a couple of months, and would return to her cheerful personality after kicking those bullies. After finishing the book, you put it back on the shelf, but then take it out again after oddly missing it a couple of days later.

You read the only page you forgot to read, the acknowledgments. What it read surprised you.

How was it? How do you think my life was?

And your stomach dropped, reading those single ten words, thinking all those horrible things had happened to the author. How she was happy, and then sad, and then happy, and then broken, and then just broken. How those people had destroyed her, her writings, her special features, her confidence, her voice. And how she still wrote about it to encourage others. How she had changed so much in those nine years of her life. Nine years of constant bullying, how her best of friends had betrayed her. How she became from a completely extroverted social girl to and Ambivert who would be constantly insecure when people whispered, when they glanced at her or when they muttered her name in a conversation. You didn't know what to feel. What would have happened if you went through all of that? Would you be able to push through it and laugh through the pain like she did? Laugh in the face of death, yet dread it when it came for others? A girl who would protect others at no cost, now not knew how to protect herself. Not physically of course.

Mentally. How to protect herself from the mean people around her, except laughing their mean things off and pretending not to care, even though she did. She really, really did. And you felt bad for her, not only for her, but for yourself, for knowing that people existed like that in the world and yet people who never went through it never did anything to stop this.

You hesitantly closed the book and read the back cover, which you had not seen.

The back cover of the book said- READ ME AGAIN IF YOU WANT TO. BUT I KNOW YOU'LL NEVER FEEL THE SAME.

You put the book back on the shelf, not knowing if you would be able to open it again.

Daily 1
334 words
As you bend down to look at the books in the bottom row, a certain gray-skinned book attracts your attention. The cover was worn out, wrinkled, and stained. The book wasn’t properly taken care of. Food marks gashed the hardcover and the binding was falling off. Even the title wasn’t readable. You open the book expecting the inside to be the same. But instead, you find the pages perfectly intact. Your fingers ran through the smooth, even pages of the book. It was as if someone intently damaged the cover so no one would care to open the book. You went to the next page to discover rough sketches of elves, pretty people, and dresses. The next few pages were the same. You flipped the pages until you discovered writing. The handwriting was readable at the beginning but slowly became messy but you could still make out the words. On every page, the writer's mind seemed to change. At first, the writer seemed very interested in biology and the insides of living things, then they seemed to be grossed out by the fact and fell in love with coconut which they hated only a few pages ago. The writing was about everyday things but the way it was written made you want to continue. Sometimes the writer even wrote stories in the middle of their diary entries. You understood after some time that the writer wrote very little about her life or her emotions directly and mostly expressed them through her short writings. You skimmed over the writing and only paid attention to the parts you found interesting. Which in most cases were about stupid things the writer did or the short stories they wrote sometimes. As you flipped over to the last page you found a self-portrait the writer did of herself and a quick about me. You then close the book and put it back on the bottom row of the shelf. You take a mental note to read it thoroughly sometimes.

SWC Contents:
by Tiger ^^


—–Dailies-
2nd of March: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=7#post-7024653
4th of March: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=11#post-7029843
5th of March: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=12#post-7033183
6th of March: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=14#post-7035591
7th of March: Three words day
10th of March: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=17#post-7046631
11th of March: Cabin Wars
16th of March: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=23#post-7060372
17th of March: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=24#post-7063147
19th of March: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=25#post-7067585

——Weeklies-
Weekly 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=7#post-7025288 (unfinished)
Weekly 2: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=19#post-7048872
Weekly 3: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=23#post-7060420
Weekly 4: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=27#post-7077620 (Unfinished)

——Word Wars-
Word War 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=15#post-7038601 (lost)
Word War 2: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=24#post-7063061

——-Writing Competition Entry-
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=22#post-7058597

——–Miscallaneous Writing-

mega post cause why not :)))

weekly

this story is bringing together three of my favorite historical things: gilded age glamor, the golden age of broadway, and the golden age of pirating. so it is in no way historically accurate; i basically just rewrote the timelines so it would all work.

part one (630 words)

nicolas “colin” cline hayward iii (railroad tycoon’s son) was never truly happy as heir of hayward industries. long tired of his lush yet repetitive life in bustling manhattan, colin left the city to see the world. in a twist from the typical spoiled rich kid escaping their “tough” rich life, colin is quite good at the simple things, and quite satisfied doing them. settled in a nice, small colorado town, with a few pals and a job teaching the kids reading and counting, colin never expected to be contacted by his friends from the east.
colin is charismatic and warm, as you’d expect a rich boy to be, but he is also deeply considerate and anxious, hiding behind an exterior that doesn’t match his true self. his names play in to this — growing up, he was always “nicolas” or, quite rarely, “nico.” his maternal grandmother was the only one to call him “colin,” so when he moved west he decided he would take her last name, becoming “colin beck.”

captain patricia “peter prancer” charlton (pirate queen) clawed her way up the ranks to take her rightful spot at the helm. a middle sister of seven, she was always forgotten or overlooked back home in new york. so she left, long before her friend nico even thought of it. she set off on a boat to paris, where she saw all the sites but did not, as she promised her whiny mother, enroll in school. rather, she set off across the continent, then down into northern africa. always the sort to bore rather quickly, she decided to take a jab at the life of a seaman, joining a pirate crew, disguised as a man by the name of peter. she was terrible but she fell in love with the work. now she’s captain of her own tiny crew, sailing around the world and growing their riches. she has traveled to a tiny inland hamlet in the rockies at the request of a mysterious client, finding their two of her oldest friends.
patricia has more than her share of confidence and gusto, with a certain roughness to her that is simultaneously endearing and terrifying. the main twist with her archetype is she is not ruthless nor seeking revenge — she truly is only a pirate because she enjoys it, and hasn’t bored of the work yet. perhaps she will soon.

nevada farey (broadway star) is a soprano, first and foremost. she is the only in her small group of childhood companions still living in new york, and she is thriving. most of the time. her whole life, nevada has coveted the stage. her mother’s wish may have been to see the west, but god strike her down, nevada larry was gonna be a star. it was pure luck that a mere broker’s daughter was able to get in with the children of hayward industries and charlton coal, and nevada manipulated her every opportunity to get in with the right people — voice lessons, the proper dance classes, even simple etiquette expected in such circles. she was determined. and she made it. her name is now on the lips of every director in town, all of whom want her for their next try at broadway success. but, upon receiving a cryptic telegraph, nevada crosses the country to see those two troublemakers of her youth again.
nevada is ruthless and cruel, prideful and vain. she will cut you if you try to cross her. she is precisely the opposite of her onstage selves, all sweet and nice. but she is graceful and elegant, and pragmatic. and, above all, she is honest, in every circumstance. she only manipulates so well because she knows how to be perfectly honest but still get you to believe the moon’s a square.

part two (167 words)

nico, patricia, nevada, and ford were thick as thieves as children. their wildly varying personalities and situations only seemed to draw them all closer as they each tried to escape something in their life they hated, and they bonded over a love of baseball, even forming their own three-person team: the manhattan runaways.
of course, their circumstances changed, and nico and patricia both moved away from new york, while nevada turned her face towards the bright lights of broadway. so they were separated, for many years, before being brought back together as the pirate queen peter prancer and the broadway darling nevada farey showed up on the doorstep of schoolteacher colin beck. they had all changed their names, for one reason or another, but here they all were again, in the middle of colorado, one clearly missing, with a thick, unopened letter before them.
the only question was: who brought them back together? and — who murdered ford p. mininwader, the glue that had held them all together?

part three (392 words)

of all the things to come back to haunt me, i never expected it to be him. my best friend. my first love and my truest joy. my everything, for the time.
the man i left on a train speeding west, the man who ran after me, but couldn’t quite reach out his hand to mine.
i thought ford would have to move on when i left. i thought he and nevada and patricia would be perfectly alright. no, that’s wrong, i hoped these things, but deep down i knew the truth. he was our group’s glue, but, i blush to say, i was his everything too, for that time. without me, did he fall apart?
of course this is how i find out just how badly he fell.
i bounce the heavy paper envelope in my hand, addressed in dark blue ink to nicolas cline hayward iii. a man i used to be. i recognize the handwriting, of course, even without the mininwader family crest. matthew mininwader only ever wrote me one other letter, to my old address, threatening to reveal my every dark secret if i continued that dumb competition with his son. i wonder if he ever learned the truth. i must assume he did.
i can’t tear open the carefully folded, cleanly pressed envelope, so obviously more expensive than the clothes on my back. i can’t read what lays written inside. i don’t want to. i toss it to the table and grab my books for school. i straighten my tie. little laury and thomas don’t need to know about this. this town doesn’t need to know where i come from.
a knock at the door startles me from my thoughts. who would be coming here now? most of the town would expect me to be in school, most everyone else would just barge in. i jump immediately to them, but why would they be in the middle of nowhere? how would they find me? yes, matthew mininwader did it, but he’s a mininwader. surely they couldn’t—
“colin?” i let out a sigh. not them, just parker, from school. “colin, there’s these people here waiting for you? they were asking around town for this address, so i just thought they might be your sisters or—”
so it is them.
“nicolas, this is so unlike you! i’m coming in!”

part four (346 words) & part five (368 words)

jesus christ, he’s off worse than i expected. what did i expect? that he had built his own empire out here, like his father might have, like his grandfather most certainly would have? like i did?
but no, of course not. because nico was never like that. he may have pretended to be, he and ford may have driven each other half crazy competing to turn the city into their own personal empires, but it was never his truth. i could see that, even when nevada stood blinded by her own poverty and ford refused to admit nico slotted perfectly into his role.
i barge into his tiny shack of a house — i have traveled the world, i have sailed the seas, i know a shack when i see one. this one is in shambles. how does he live like this?
rich coming from a pirate, i’m sure.
nevada is two steps ahead of me, already slapping nico across his stunned face. “nicolas!” she says again, holding out her arms with a deadly grace and smiling sweet as apple pie as he recovers from the shock. she hugs him. “i have been so worried about you!”
i really love her sometimes.
“dada, out of the way, let me get a good look at our runaway,” i say, pushing her out of the way with none of the same grace. i don’t have time for it. i need to get this job done. i look nico in the eye. he still hasn’t said anything; i give him a chance, he doesn’t take it. “you seaforesaken man. you son of a— nico. why didn’t you tell us where you were? what is this place? do you need money—”
“no! god no!” he doesn’t like that. i grin. “stop calling me nico, my name is colin.” he sounds like a cowboy, not the rich boy i knew growing up. i imagine he’s thinking the same of me. i don’t have time for this reunion, we really need to get to this case. make sure the trail doesn’t go cold.

his eyes flick to the table. nevada catches it, and picks up an unopened letter, dated for last week. in that blue ink. “mininwader wrote you…” she muses, turning it over in her hands, “and you didn’t open it. wonder what that means?”
“it means he brought us together.” i pull out my matching envelope, addressed to patricia charlton. not my real name, peter prancer. i see nico’s name on the letter is unchanged too. “it means he wants you in.”
“in on what?”
“don’t you notice, rich boy?” nevada’s voice is vicious. “our fourth member is missing. why might that be?”
“oh god.”
poor nico. he didn’t know. doesn’t know. he hopes, i am sure, that ford lives on. his breath hitches, he turns and walks out the back door. i follow him. he cannot run from this.
“patricia, please.” i breathe deeply. “please tell me the truth. don’t twist it. don’t make it pretty. is fo— is he gone?”
i breathe again. i know how important they were to one another. i know what this will do to him. his back is still to me, his eyes turned up to the pale blue sky above.
“he is, right? you never wait for me to speak first.”
“yes, colin. he’s dead.”

patricia charlton was never a great friend to me. none of them were, really. ford overlooked me. nicolas pitied me. but from patricia, it was the worst. she loathed me, when we were children. i think she was jealous. what a privileged little prick.
but i stuck around. not just for the connections, either. for those few moments of clarity in our friendship. for those few memories that stood out in a crowd of sadness and sorrow and general poverty of spirit. the three of them were so terrible to me, most of the time. but in times…
i dreamt last night, on the hayward train rushing towards this tiny little town, that ford forgave me. we were all back at coney island, running around and laughing, little kids again.
he looked me in the eye and said, as nicolas and patricia continued their games, “it’s okay that you killed me. i probably deserved it anyways.”

part six (305 words)

i don’t remember the first time i met ford. of course i don’t, he and patricia and i were friends practically from birth. but i do remember my oldest memory, him at the center of it. the butterflies, the snow—
i can’t think of that right now. not when i’ve learned what i just learned. ford deserves so much more than me. he deserves so much more than whatever i could ever offer him.
before i can stop myself, i break down sobbing. patricia pities me. nevada stands back in the house, a look of disgust on her face. let her judge. god knows she has enough money, enough success, to just ignore us now. let her think what she thinks of the pathetic heir who couldn’t even inherit his fortune.
they see me as nicolas, i can see it. i’m not. and patricia isn’t patricia, i can see that too. but she hasn’t mentioned any new name.
nevada is the same as ever. what a lovable yet unlovable talented little girl. she’s not a kid anymore. none of us are. i miss that. i miss the innocence of my students.
“stop looking like a wounded puppy, nicolas,” she says coldly from the shadows. how could someone be so terrible, so off-putting in real life, yet make you cry your heart out with sweetness on stage? how does it work so well for her? “it doesn’t work with your eyes. we need your help, if we’re going to find the man who killed him.”
“killed him?” i spin on my heel, staring at patricia. “i had assumed—”
“no. that’s why we’re here. that’s why mininwader contacted you, and us. that’s why we have to get on the train in—” she checks her watch “—three minutes, approximately.” she stares back at me, for a moment. “are you coming with us?”

part seven (419 words)

in the next three hundred words, in very little time that i have to write it, the characters need to get on the train as the first plot point, then talk a bit on the train, then get off the train and, from nevada’s point of view, start to look for clues for the murder she believes she has committed. a very nerve wracking set of occurrences for her, and the other two should begin to be worried, but again, this is very fast so they all head to patricia’s home to get some sleep. there they find a note.

the three rush to the train station, barely making it on before the train pulls away. first class is quiet, plush, and empty. they take their seats, all looking warily at one another. this will be a long and quiet journey. they all fall back into their minds, into their own thoughts. the day passes quickly; one at a time, they each fall asleep, tired from the emotional exhaustion that is a reunion.
they awaken upon arriving across the continent, so many miles from their first stop, in new york. grand central station. how long has it been since colin left this place? how long has it been since ford ran after him? he doesn’t think about it.
their plan is simple. they have never solved a murder before so they figure they can start by just retracing ford’s final steps. where did he eat last? what was he doing for fun? and who was he hanging around with?
helpfully, nevada says she saw him not long ago. he came to her show, she mentions on the train ride. he enjoyed it, met her afterwards for drinks and celebration. seemed to be in good spirits all around. not the sort to suddenly die afterwards. but looks can be deceiving.
so they search the theatre. the box where he sat holds nothing. none of the others in the cast seem to have any idea what they are talking about. and, of course, they search the bar where the two met as well. but again, nothing. their search is fruitless.
in their exhaustion, neither colin nor peter notice nevada’s eyes, constantly flicking to her back. neither of them seem to catch her fidgeting. or they just chalk it up to jitters. poor nevada, they think, perhaps. the only of the four still here. she made it out, but did she really?
they go to the charlton house to get some rest. and they find a note, resting on patricia’s windowsill.

part eight (311 words + 100 foreshadowing ^)

“‘hello, friends.’ who would address us as friends?” i pace the room, trying to make sense of this stupid stupid letter. not blue ink. not writing i recognize. and the contents are utterly senseless. “who would send us this?”
“i don’t know, patricia, someone who wants us worried?” nevada is annoyed as ever. i think she wants to head home to her own place, but doesn’t want to go back out at this time of night. can i blame her, really? nico is silent.
no, not nico. colin. his name is colin. god, i keep forgetting.
“colin, what do you think?” i ask.
he is shocked at my addressing him. his eyes are wide, his hands shaking. i rush to his side, trying to comfort him, trying to do something. i don’t know. this is so wrong.
“i think…” he whispers

i think this message is meant for me. it references butterflies and honey and butter and poppies. and rolling down hills and dirt in the snow and so many other things only he would know about.
but then… why did he send it here?
“he’s alive,” is all i can actually get out.
their shock is immediate. patricia clearly thinks i am crazy. but i am not, i know i am not.
but nevada plain thinks i am wrong.
“he can’t be! i killed him!”

i just said it. i just— i just sentenced myself. and now nicolas isn’t the only one crying, because i sink to my knees and just … sob.
“i didn’t mean to, i promise,” i try to say, but i am sure they can’t understand a word of it. “i really wanted — i — i just—”
but then i did not. because here he is, standing in the door way, wrapped up in nicolas’ arms already, but looking at me.
“i’m not dead, my dear nevada.”

part nine (100 words)

how do i explain this? who in the world would believe me? that i did all this for a man i loved years ago, who left me to be one with the mountains? who ran away on the train company he refused to inherit, left me to pick up the scraps of our ruined friend group?
nicolas, my beloved nicky, my darling colin, always thought i was the glue. always thought i was the only one keeping him and patricia and nevada from tearing each other apart.
“but i wasn’t, my love. that was you.”
he smiles. i smile back.

28 - 29 march : atmosphere

with river!

part one:
an establishing shot. from miles away, giant beams of golden light dance across the dark sky above, a beacon of glitz and glamor. the crown of the district shining even at a distance. the city on the hill. the light in the dark.
pan in. follow the rush of the crowds, the clamor of press closing in, clawing through to get the photo. follow the desperation, all dressed up for its day out in society, fluffed and shined. everything looks so pretty. it smells terrible. rotten. the camera does not pick up smell.
now the destination is upon us. lights flash with greater frequency, the chatter and clicking and chaos is constant. it all pales in comparison to the movie palace. grand, can be the only word given to its facade. the only bit that most people will ever see, but not them, and not us. what are they meant to strive for, if we give it all away? rush past the marble and metal of the outside, into the lush reds and golds of the interior.
patterns adorn every available surface. all the furniture is italian crafted, all the columns pure marble. expensive exclusivity, exclusive expense. only the very best.
lamps form pools of light, guiding the audience into the theatre. shadows are too dark here. something surely lurks.
bright light, that sound of film’s beginning.

part two:
the most obvious difference between these two pieces is the scale at the beginning, which then impacts the pacing of the description leading up to the eventual start of movies in each. because mine started so far away from the destination, it was rushed in getting there, adding to that busyness of hollywood premieres and the general chaos of it all. there is also a clear difference, from the very beginning, in who the narrator is / where the “voice” is coming from; mine is distant and omniscient, while river’s is much more personal, with a clear character in “you,” who is actually in the space. we also went for different time periods — i tried to capture more of the ’20s-’30s glitz of hollywood and movie palaces while river’s is more modern though still glamorous. and, of course, both have a bit of a twist, with mine being the subtle reveals of the dark underbelly of the movie industry (not sure how well that came across) and river’s being a more magical unfurling of plot.

23 march : continue old writing

continued from 16 march 2021

He still tells himself this story, now. A fictional brother, an imaginary family, a legendary homeland. Alacia is a myth, he knows this well. Tales of its eight mountains, eight rivers, and eight Councilors any child across the continent can recount. A shared dream, can there be anything more tempting to an orphan?
Really, Hugo has no idea where the stone came from. No memories explain its smooth surface, its warm greyness, its perfect round shape. Must be magic, he thinks rubbing his thumb over it, as he has so many times. Then: No such thing as magic.
How lonely he is as he wanders these cliffs. They echo still with song. Mythical song.
Does he regret weaving this myth? Does he ever wish to go back, plead with Rejean, reject that offer of escape? They might have died in the war, but dying together is certainly better than whatever this cursed fate is. Godhood. He winces at the thought.
Hugo Fent will soon lose his name. Likely his mind as well. He will reunite with that figment of a twin, that legend of a world. His breath will be the wind, his tears the streams, his agony the mourning black of night. On the tips of their tongues, on his follower’s tongues, will be a grand song of sorrow. His life lost.
Traded for a forever.
Adrian Charles is already losing his name, and his nickname. Both layered with years of neglect. None but Hugo even thinks of him as human anymore. He can only hope the same love, the same vigil of remembrance, is carried out by Rejean’s current form. A son, a beloved first son, now the sun in the sky.
Hugo hates the poetry of it. Hugo refuses to commune with him. He fears the near certain rejection.
He wishes, at times like this, Arno to be real. To have a brother. Hugo and Arno, Arno and Hugo, inseparable at the age of eight. A laugh, a hug, an exchange of gifts.
He slips the stone away.

19 march : pov of concept

beauty, with inspiration taken from n.k. jemisin’s great cities duology

beau is an avid traveler. they always have been, crisscrossing the globe even before jets made it possible for humans to do so too. humans would probably describe them as a chronic tourist, but even that description fails to capture the depths of their zeal for the world. in mere seconds, they can zip around the world, taking in a sunrise off the coast of aotearoa, contemplating the highest peaks from a market in kathmundu, watching the aurora borealis from the arctic’s edge, walking along the nts'ósíkooh. time is of no consequence, when you’re an abstract.
as one of the eldest of their kind, beau’s power still comes from the earth. no matter what beauty humans contribute to the world, it pales in comparison to that of the planet they work so hard to destroy. not to underplay the joy beau gets from a perfectly proportioned pot, or a compositionally intriguing bit of graffiti, or the variety of other artworks humans constantly churn out. but it’s not their cup of tea.
felix is always telling them to dig in a little. find a muse. try visiting one of the cities. stick with it, he insists, and the humans will earn their heart. easy for fortune to say. how many times have they tried? how many times have they found themselves bored by an insistence that such strict standards must be met? makes them wonder what philia feels like, in a world so obsessed with romance.
but beau tries still, so hard. they go to lengths many abstracts would think silly — taking public transit when teleporting is quicker and lengths easier, wandering museums and universities and other art institutions for hours to give each work a good long stare, generally devoting themself to giving humans the chance they deserved.
through trial and error, they’ve found a previously untapped love for structures. buildings. of all sorts. how did they miss this before? how will they ever catch up with the centuries of breathtaking wonders? how many will they regret losing the chance to take in?

17 march : FLOWER DAILY

fern — concealed love
jasmine — ambiability
quamoclit — busybody

When you wake up, you cannot remember how you got inside your rival’s closet. This missing information fails to disturb you; things like this just happen, sometimes, you’ve come to expect them time to time. You blink a few times. It takes a moment to store away the newest installment in the ever-unfolding saga that is your nightly dreams. Always remembering the dreams, never the events that cause them. Perhaps they will be relevant, someday, but not today.
Then you remember.
Honestly, it’s not quite as bad as you expected. Also not as good as you hoped, but you can never win them all. And, thankfully, wonderfully, praise be to all the stars above, your rival seems to have nothing to do with the story or your appearance in her rather lavish closet.
Most unfortunately, your boss does. And her wife. Strange. You’ll process that whole situation later.
Finally, your blinking works.
Back home, in the receiving room, you get to starting your day. You drink your coffee, eat your daily soft-boiled egg, make sure Tiny hasn’t mysteriously perished in your absence. You look at the ever-growing pile of unanswered correspondence by your front door, decide it can still wait until tomorrow.
You notice the bouquet, in your only good glass, sitting on your dining table / desk / counter. That is new. A gift, you presume, from the cottage witch.
The combination of large green leaves, spirals of tiny white trumpeting blossoms, and bright red starbursts is striking and, somehow, you feel it captures you. Strange. You can think about that after your second cup of cold brew.

weekly two : inspiration

part one (155 words)

activity completed : walked around our neighborhood and talked with my dad in the chilling rain

I was in a really bad mood all day today, but getting out of the house and feeling the cold cold rain on my hands and face and talking to my dad not about college but about social media’s impacts on society and how it’s changed over time helped me feel better for a few minutes. The light was really grey because of the clouds, so it was not super bright, and the atmosphere was generally nice. My house is super loud most of the time, so it was nice to not be surrounded by my family’s noise, especially on a day where I was already overwhelmed. Afterwards, I realized why I can get more done when home alone, or at night when everyone’s gone to bed: I really need to be able to hear my own thoughts, to escape the blabber. Not sure how to use this realization, but it is nice to have.

part two (154 words)

inspiration consumed : chapter of n.k. jemisin’s the city we became, youtube video of designing characters based on random photos

Somehow throughout this entire book, Jemisin has been able to capture the energy of New York City. Her writing is dynamic and her characters leap of the pages. Her prose has the electricity of a story told aloud. It just has super great vibes and I don’t entirely understand how she achieved it. She manages to balance interesting worldbuilding with engaging characters and a high-stakes plot and a message about cities and systems.
The video I watched was part of an ongoing series by an artist who uses aesthetic images sent to her by followers to inspire character designs. I absolutely love her art style and her ability to capture vibes, and I always come away from her videos inspired to create. In this video, she created a character based on a teacup, whose regal appearance I am absolutely obsessed with, though not quite as much as I’m obsessed with her previous pirate designs.

part three (563 words)

combining the two : from the perspective of character who represents cold rain, hugo’s first time communing, with someone who is not at all from the culture he lives and grew up in, rather the one his parents were of

Your awakening comes with a knock at the door. A shuffling of the curtain, someone trying to get a peek inside. You yawn, stretch your arms, feel sleep loosening its grip on you. You wake up, but cannot seem to remember why you were asleep in the first place. No matter; the knocking persists, you must answer whoever it is.
Clouds curl around them, grey tinted with the slightest blue. They shiver at your cold presence. It is what they asked for. You will not hold back. You are not certain where they are, where they have called you to be, but wherever it is, the temperature drops several tens of degrees. It feels good, such concentrated control.
Though, you realize quite soon, you are not the one in control. Whoever this is, this boy, this foreigner, has stolen your powers. He grins, must have sensed your displeasure.
You grumble in your ancient tongue. Without control, you do nothing to the room. But his face, that shock, that fear, that unearned joy instantly shattering at the sound in his mind, that is enough to sate you.
Until he responds, in the very same tongue. Not a foreigner, then. One of your own. You thought them all dead, or dead to you, at least. But here one is, attempting, succeeding, to commune. Now there is something worth waking up for.
“Young acolyte,” you whisper in his mind. “You must not speak to me with such disrespect. Have your masters taught you nothing?”
He does not take this well. “Master Torlin is the most well-learned, most traveled, and certainly best teacher in the continents! Say nothing against him, else risk your life.”
You only laugh, angering the boy further. Ranting quite furiously, with the sort of anger that contorts the face and clouds the mind, he lapses back into that terrible nasally language of this place he has brought you. It hurts to hear.
Saddens you, more than that. No boy like this should be speaking a language like that.
After a few minutes, he is still babbling incomprehensibly. You try to pull away, put him to sleep, return to your home. He grabs on to you, clinging wildly with a new understanding of his own power in his eyes. He makes you stay. You see his surprise turn to hard-set confidence, taste that shift in the air.
“No more speak of previous masters,” he says. You cannot ignore the accent with which he speaks your language. You hate it. “I need help, now. I need your knowledge, your form, or whatever else you can give me.”
You almost laugh again, but distaste of this boy and his learned language stop you. “How do you intend to get either from me? I am no simple spirit they have taught you to reach. I am Alacian.” He shivers at that word. Good. “I am power beyond power. I do not gift easily.”
“Absolute understanding, j’ruh.” He uses that word, not from your shared language, not from the one forced down his throat, but from a language older than any single continent on this world. Hearing it fills you with power. It promises unconditional servitude. A sign of respect, total linguistic deference. He returns to you all control over the situation, over your own stolen powers.
This time, you do laugh. “What is your name, acolyte?”
“Hugo.”

8-9 march : dialogue

‘your grave is my favorite’ and ‘it was a day of sorrows, but the morrow was of joy’

Lyre found, as they grew more and more accustomed to their role, that the threads of stories would always lead them back to one place. To one feeling. To that emptiness of a cemetary in the nighttime. To that anticipation of the dawn. Or the awakening.
They didn’t much care which they got. Only that the waiting be relieved.
“Did you know,” they would call to no one in particular, “that the Earth is not perfectly round? And nor are my eyes?”
And, always, no one in particular would respond with silence. Waiting. Hovering on the edge of a great story. Lyre knew it.

Trouble, Lyre discovered soon after their awakening, always sought them out. Hunted them down. Without a doubt, if any inkling of foulness could be mustered, it would be directed at them. But this only meant more stories. People were astoundingly fond of monologuing right at them. Walking right into their trap, the one Lyre didn’t know they had set, the one they could never seem to disassemble. Cats were walking, talking trouble on a stick.
“Oh, hello,” purred the cat. “Fond of the moon, are you? I bet you can’t touch it. I bet I can jump over it, far over it, and you can’t even brush it with your fingertips.”
“Oh, hello,” answered Lyre. “I find little interest in placing bets. But I would guess you know a lot about the world. Far more than I, lowly liar I am.”
“And so I do. Ah, but you are a tricky one, goading me to spill my hard-won knowledge. Little spinner, little seamstress, weave me a tale. Trade me, one truth for one half.”
“I don’t think I will, thank you.” Lyre stood, stretched their legs, and walked deeper into the graveyard.

Of all the places they had visited in their month or so alive, Lyre’s favorite was this spot on the bank of the river. They were not sure of the river’s name, if it had a name at all. Some things, they learned, possessed many names. Some had none.
“Lyre, you have returned to me!” rejoiced the river. “Wade into my rapids, I have many whispers to share with you. Dip your ears beneath my waters, I have secrets I must bestow upon your head.”
“You claim such richness, proffered in exchange for my breath. But if I give you my life, what have I to do with your fables?”
“Then fight, Lyre, for your fate within my watery reach. Do not skirt along the edges. Do not fear what I can offer. Swim, and I will not sink you. Fight, and you will win.”
“I wish I could believe you. I wish we could be friends. Alas, neither you nor downstream holds my true destination. Goodbye for now.”
They never left the banks without first leaving the river a gift. Tonight, a note, rolled tight around a twig. Tomorrow, who could tell.

“Your grave is my favorite. I do not know why. I cannot think of what calls me here. But I speak the truth. And you never respond.”
“Don’t I respond? Have you simply not been listening?”
“I talk to all things. I hear their stories, because I do not know my own. Yet you evade me. You draw me closer, with your insistence on silence. I wonder, if you could talk, what would you say? If you could sing, whose song would it be?”
“You are a brat. There, I said what none of the others would. You knock on our doorsteps, offer ‘friendship’ but have appetite only for gossip. You chew us up, spit us out. Even if you could hear me, you would not listen. Not really.”
“I wonder, would you be a ghost? A person’s soul, or a spirit’s? Or another option, a secret third I haven’t yet encountered? I love you, I think, more than I love me.”

Sometimes, often, waiting amounted to nothing. A difficult lesson to be forced down one’s throat. A difficult morning to face, knowing nothing new of the world. Lyre knew. They sighed. Packed away their disappointment, polished up their hope. They yawned. Dawn, breaking sweetly as an orange, brought on exhaustion.
“‘It was a day of sorrows, but the morrow was of joy.’” Lyre grinned in the face of the sun.
“Flattery never works on me, little one,” answered the sun, but it smiled anyways.
No longer did the spell of night hang heavy in the air. No longer were the stories so clear. That could be lack of sleep.
“My return shall come soon,” Lyre promised the graveyard. “Never miss me.”

weekly one : time travel

part one, time travel mechanics (657 words)

0. A not uncommon concern in societies of the underground is that of escaped discoveries. In fact, they ponder these worries to the extent that most of their bureaucracies include committees entirely devoted to tracking down any leaks or mishaps that may occur.
Blaise always despised working with these departments. She saw them as controlling gnats, buzzing in her ears and distracting her from the work at hand. So it was with no great joy that she was deployed to work alongside a senior researcher from one such organization when a long-lost relic of time malleability popped up in her region. She prepared to hate every part of the experience.
Lang Mae, unfortunately, was far from hateable. It prickled her, Mae’s likeability. And she refused to let her win. Which was why, at the moment the pocket bubbled, in an attempt to avoid Mae’s puppy eyes, Blaise was stepping through a threshold into the dark.

1. “Blaise, no!”
In a flash, Blaise was on the ground, earth shifting beneath her, weight pressing on her lungs, gasping for breath. Everything was bright, then it all went black.

“Sir, I never would have—oh, thank heavens, she’s awake!”
“Good. The academy will not have to deal with losing another scholar.”
Blaise blinked once, twice, sat up, winced, fell back to the bed. When she opened her mouth to curse, as any respectable scholar would in such unfathomable pain, she found her throat raw and voiceless. And the attendants—all three of those employed by her society—swarmed her immediately.
“Off, off, off,” came a nasally little voice, petulant and privileged. That would be Rite, then. For all her agony, Blaise couldn’t help but grin at the realization. Edmund Wright cared about her. “The scholar-errant has had enough of your probing, she must be allowed to remember what she saw. Come back in an hour, we shall be finished by then.”
No, of course he had no real care for her. Only her discoveries. Her abilities. She was sorely tempted to tell him off. Would have, if not for her pesky voice.
Rite turned his attention, eerily silver eyes making contact with hers. “I understand the medics prefer you not speak for the moment. But we must extract as much… material from you while you can still describe the details. Miss Lang, fetch Blaise a pen. We can start with the sensations, whenever you’re ready.”

2. Nothing. How anticlimactic. Though, she considered, it meant that she could go home, and never speak to this annoyingly likable companion. She lit the chamber’s gas lantern then set out to looking.
“Lang, I think I found what you were searching for.” Mae ducked through the doorway, eyes flitting over the room before settling on Blaise.
“Please, call me M—oh my!” She rushed forward, cupping the music box in her hands as if it were a firefly, or a fairy. As if, without careful consideration and enclosure, it would simply fly away. “I have never seen one quite like this… eighth edition, I guess, rarer than bird’s breath. Oh, Blaise, see how beautiful it is?”

3. “My love, is that you?” Dahlia’s voice rang through her head. She flinched. Blaise knew nothing purer than her lover. No one better than the garden witch.
“Blaise, darling, are you there?” Who was this imposter, who could imitate every inflection in Dahlia’s soft, lilting voice? What was making those noises?
“I know you hear me, you can’t hide that.” She stumbled, fumbled for a light, struck a match, smothered it. She groped for her flare, reached for the door. Mae would be just outside. Mae, the expert, would know what to do.
“Oh, deary, certainly you do not think it true…” She found her hands stiff, her mouth sewn shut. This grating voice was nothing like Dahlia’s, not now. Whatever monster lurking here had long lost that illusion.
“They all lied before: there is no way out, not from here.”

part two, plotting timelines (807 words)

conversations by moonlight
- point one: lyre enters the graveyard
Lyre found, as they grew more and more accustomed to their role, that the threads of stories would always lead them back to one place. To one feeling. To that emptiness of a cemetary in the nighttime. To that anticipation of the dawn. Or the awakening.
They didn’t much care which they got. Only that the waiting be relieved.
“Did you know,” they would call to no one in particular, “that the Earth is not perfectly round? And nor are my eyes?”
And, always, no one in particular would respond with silence. Waiting. Hovering on the edge of a great story. Lyre knew it.

- point two: lyre is visited by a cat
Trouble, Lyre discovered soon after their awakening, always sought them out. Hunted them down. Without a doubt, if any inkling of foulness could be mustered, it would be directed at them. But this only meant more stories. People were astoundingly fond of monologuing right at them. Walking right into their trap, the one Lyre didn’t know they had set, the one they could never seem to disassemble. Cats were walking, talking trouble on a stick.
“Oh, hello,” purred the cat. “Fond of the moon, are you? I bet you can’t touch it. I bet I can jump over it, far over it, and you can’t even brush it with your fingertips.”
“Oh, hello,” answered Lyre. “I find little interest in placing bets. But I would guess you know a lot about the world. Far more than I, lowly liar I am.”
“And so I do. Ah, but you are a tricky one, goading me to spill my hard-won knowledge. Little spinner, little seamstress, weave me a tale. Trade me, one truth for one half.”
“I don’t think I will, thank you.” Lyre stood, stretched their legs, and walked deeper into the graveyard.

- point three: lyre speaks with a river
Of all the places they had visited in their month or so alive, Lyre’s favorite was this spot on the bank of the river. They were not sure of the river’s name, if it had a name at all. Some things, they learned, possessed many names. Some had none.
“Lyre, you have returned to me!” rejoiced the river. “Wade into my rapids, I have many whispers to share with you. Dip your ears beneath my waters, I have secrets I must bestow upon your head.”
“You claim such richness, proffered in exchange for my breath. But if I give you my life, what have I to do with your fables?”
“Then fight, Lyre, for your fate within my watery reach. Do not skirt along the edges. Do not fear what I can offer. Swim, and I will not sink you. Fight, and you will win.”
“I wish I could believe you. I wish we could be friends. Alas, neither you nor downstream holds my true destination. Goodbye for now.”
They never left the banks without first leaving the river a gift. Tonight, a note, rolled tight around a twig. Tomorrow, who could tell.

- point four: lyre finds the grave
“Your grave is my favorite. I do not know why. I cannot think of what calls me here. But I speak the truth. And you never respond.”
“Don’t I respond? Have you simply not been listening?”
“I talk to all things. I hear their stories, because I do not know my own. Yet you evade me. You draw me closer, with your insistence on silence. I wonder, if you could talk, what would you say? If you could sing, whose song would it be?”
“You are a brat. There, I said what none of the others would. You knock on our doorsteps, offer ‘friendship’ but have appetite only for gossip. You chew us up, spit us out. Even if you could hear me, you would not listen. Not really.”
“I wonder, would you be a ghost? A person’s soul, or a spirit’s? Or another option, a secret third I haven’t yet encountered? I love you, I think, more than I love me.”

- point five: lyre leaves the graveyard
Sometimes, often, waiting amounted to nothing. A difficult lesson to be forced down one’s throat. A difficult morning to face, knowing nothing new of the world. Lyre knew. They sighed. Packed away their disappointment, polished up their hope. They yawned. Dawn, breaking sweetly as an orange, brought on exhaustion.
“‘It was a day of sorrows, but the morrow was of joy.’” Lyre grinned in the face of the sun.
“Flattery never works on me, little one,” answered the sun, but it smiled anyways.
No longer did the spell of night hang heavy in the air. No longer were the stories so clear. That could be lack of sleep.
“My return shall come soon,” Lyre promised the graveyard. “Never miss me.”

part three, non-linear timeline draft (308 words)

Two opposing characters (Cosmonaut (-) & Spaceman (+)) tell their life stories — lives of time travel and adventuring — one from the beginning, and the other from the end. They are enemies for every part except the middle, where they share a single interaction of goodwill before being ripped apart again. From both perspectives, it is clear: the most important person in their life is the other.

- Cosmonaut’s death.
+ Spaceman’s first true memory: seeing Cosmonaut for the first time. Instant hatred, making the memory glow when Spaceman looks back at it.
- Cosmonaut fighting, winning, hatred in heart burning against Spaceman, and it is clearly deeper than when they just met.
+ Spaceman training montage. Learning to use time travel — finding difficulty with seeing things any other way than the way they happened. Cause to effect. Friends: Harmonic, Argos.
= That one moment of peace, in some sort of puddle of timespace. The only part that uses both names, all other use only the name of the narrator and refer to the other only as “the enemy” or other descriptors. They share an unexpected connection, they both see a future where they are friends.
- Cosmonaut training montage. Contrast of being able to see effects before causes. Friends: Schemer, Fateman.
+ Spaceman reflection on betrayal, on Cosmonaut, on the fate doomed before both of them. No hate, only cold regret mixed with hard set determination. Would use all abilities to do it again, but cannot. Can only relieve that peace.
- Cosmonaut moments after seeing Spaceman for the first time. Contemplates the end — wishes to see this enemy die over and over and over, would use up all of their abilities just to end Spaceman.
+ Spaceman’s death. Revealed that it occurs at the exact moment as Cosmonaut’s, that, in fact, they sacrificed their lives for one another. It is not enemies to lovers. It is enemies to siblings.

part four, final story (770 words)

Death has never seemed particularly beautiful to Cosmonaut. And it certainly is not now. But what can be more beautiful than this? Hand in hand, eye meeting eye, walking together in rhythm. No thoughts pierce Cosmonaut’s mind. No premonitions can stop this now, in its tracks, already almost complete.
Except one.
Understanding. Finally, at last, Cosmonaut sees the full picture. Finally, able to let it go. At peace with fate. At peace with this doom.
Hands squeezed. Breath in, breath out. Mouth widening, grinning. Cosmonaut smiles, for the first time, dying. No last words. No final thoughts.
Dead.

In the nursery, at a very young age, that is when one might expect to find their first memory. Or perhaps a little later, a birthday ceremony or a traumatic event or the like. This truth has held even with humanity’s expansion to the stars, even with greater understanding of space’s function and time’s lack thereof.
Spaceman knows this. And yet, when tasked with recalling their earliest memory, the answer was nothing from young childhood. Far from it.
Come to think of it, they didn’t know why they were asked this question at all. Certainly no one had posed it of them. Strange.
From across the room, Spaceman felt it. A shift. A challenge. An enemy, the enemy, their enemy, approaching.
Spaceman was young, but not too young to ignore this occurrence. They looked up. Eyes met with another student. Eyes narrowed. The enemy. Perfect. Neither made any movement, neither approached. Ever. Enemies from a distance.
Spaceman hated with the fury of a sun.

Faced in battle with a terrible enemy, with one who can manipulate time in a way Cosmonaut hardly understands and certainly cannot replicate, they find their hands shaking. Their heart pounding. Everything hurts. And they can’t think straight, not here.
“I hate them. I hate the enemy so much.” Voice void of emotion, as always. Perhaps they do not even mean it, perhaps it is the only thing they have ever meant. “Cover me, I am going in.”
“No, w—” Whoever that was is too late. Cosmonaut is gone, flicking through the cosmos, fighting the entropy and fields of matter and resurfacing seconds later, miles away. They wonder, for a moment, why it hasn’t always felt this good.
Cosmonaut locks eyes with the enemy. Both see the sun.

Many years would pass without Spaceman facing the enemy. Many almost encounters would occur, but never boil up into battle or anything close. Spaceman got better at everything in the elapsed time. It was incredible, what they learned to do. They obsessed over perfection.
Argos could laugh, Harmonic could tease, but Spaceman knew. One day, this power would save the universe. One day, they would be a hero.
If they could stop messing up the fundamentals.
Pure power could only take them so far. Cosmic understanding was key to fully realizing their potential. Unfortunately, their mind was rigid. Their will was stubborn, averse to change. They simply could not see time any other way.
Eventually, they gave up. That innate power would give them all they needed, even if the enemy was far more versed in time.

“Thank Cosmos, I was worried I would be stuck here for millenia, eons, I don—oh. It’s you.”
“Not pleased to see me?”
“I just thought you would be … nevermind. You can rescue me. Continue.”
“Excuse me? I have half the mind to go back through that portal and leave you here to rot. Or, not rot. That would be quite impossible in a realm lacking all concept of time. How did you manage to end up here?”
“Cosmos, you’re annoying. Stop with the badgering. I’m fine.”
“It’s Cosmonaut, actually. And you’re Spaceman.”
“Of course I am. Who name their kid Cosmonaut? That’s like a Christian naming a kid—”
“I’ll stop you there. I came to get some peace, not to get you out. I’m assuming you never intended to come here?”
“No, why would I?”
“I use it as a meditation space. Good for clearing the mind, and escaping the likes of you.”
“Hey! I mean, hey?”
“I have no particular like of you, if you have not already noticed. I can see you share the distaste, simply by that look. And that one. Fake smiles are very easy to—”
“Look, are you gonna let me out of here or not?”

Spaceman froze in regret. Immediate, piercing. But they couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t back away. They were on this path, they would see it through. Even if it were the death of them. Even if it were the death of everything.

6 march : blackout poetry

beginning, how a forest is destined to
hide in the trees.
later, too late be
cause emperors imagined a snake and a
procession of victims
still stuck inside.
power discovered, When
invited beside an old friend, various
orders to the interest
and dread.
Young forces
never
impress her where none answer.

Run. Hide.
We are a collective, we are one from all, we can disguise ourselves in the leaves and the branches, in the fallen snow cloaking the earth. They will overlook us. They will never notice.
Lie. Sleep.
Each one of us matters, each one makes the whole. Alone, we are nothing. Alone, we accomplish nothing. Alone, the hallucinations and stories we tell are senseless and possess no worth. We ask no questions, receive no answers, have no value to any around us.
Eat. Drink.
Time for memories is not now. We are nothing if not new, young, born yesterday evening to welcome in this dawn. We are shatters, scattered across the surface of something greater. We are glass, can you not peer right through?
Listen.
Without us, what matters in this world is nothing. Without us, no truth is revealed. We are forest, hidden in the trees. We are interest, we are dread. We know and share. Describe the victim. Leave inside.

5 march : mythology

a rambling note for any readers: the myth i adapted is a bible story, noah’s ark. i’m not sure what the consensus in christian and jewish circles is about adapting biblical myths, or even treating them as a mythology. considering these stories are the ones i know the best (having learned them in sunday school and children’s church from a young age) and they aren’t adapted much (though when they are, it’s a banger cough the locked tomb cough), i decided to try my hand at one of the most gruesome old testament stories, the flood.

Cacophonous. No other word can capture those moments, just after the downpour, just before the floods. I knew it was coming, we all knew. Those who would survive, that is. But nothing could have prepared us for it. No prophecy, no word of god, no portents nor cautions. Lord knows we received many. And still, the noise overwhelmed us.
Pounding sheets of water poured from a sky so black, I swear it was midnight. Between the percussive deluge and my own heavy-beating heart, all other noise was drowned. All other senses smothered. Even now, my memories from that day, that week, that unknowable interval of time when the whole earth shook with falling water are unreliable. Unreachable. I’ve let them decay, diminish, my faith untouched. But questions come, they always do.
Did I cry, my tears cloaked in the tears of my god? Did the others, did I mistake their sobs for laughter or relief? Did I realize then what an evil it was, or would that only dawn with the clearing of the sky?
I try not to wonder. I try to only remember the sound. There was no cold, there was no darkness, there was no taste of blood in my mouth nor smell of rot in my nose. There was no sinking, not for me. Only the sound of sin washed away, of cities razed, of billions cleansed, at last. Only cacophony. That disorder before the instruments are in tune, raised, conductor ready. Chaos, moments before symphony.

When I heard the call, my god had never reached out to me before. Why should he have? I was no standout follower. I hardly attended church once a month, let alone spread the word. Did I even believe any of it? I don’t think it mattered to me, either way. I worked as a — that’s strange, I can’t remember — and I lived a rather un-notable life, at least from what I can see now. Everything before seems so dull, compared to now.
He spoke to me in a dream. Called me by my middle name, always thought that was strange. “Noé.” No one ever called me by my middle name, except my great-grandmother. it had been my grandfather’s name, I think she just got us mixed up towards her end. To think of it now, perhaps that was it. Perhaps, in the dream, I had not seen him, by my great-grandmother.
“Noé, do you love me?” I can remember. The rest is gone, worn away by decades of constant retelling, like rivers smoothing rocks to stones. I think I said yes. I think he believed me. I think he told me to build a boat. But maybe that is just what I told the others?
The others. My wife, the cook; my sister, the pharmacist; my best friend, who at the time was subbing at our high school. Not exactly an expected assembly for surviving an apocalypse. Don’t blame me, I had no idea what I was doing. I don’t know, didn’t know then, why I even believed it. Certainly not why they did too.
We never tried telling the church. For one, none of us had any particular attachment to the institution. My sister was one of those spiritual-but-not-religious sort, my wife had been raised atheist, my best friend Jewish culturally but not too religiously active any way. We never tried telling many others, either. We didn’t want to come off as some sort of cult. Though, of course, that is exactly what we were. I went on with life as normal, besides spending every waking hour not at work hammering away at that stupid-big boat.
My only journal entries to survive to this day are complaints about that boat, about the price of lumber, about the splinters, about how could some guy thousands of years ago manage to do this at age 900? I must have reread those chapters of Genesis about a million times. I had them memorized within months, playing on loop in my mind, everyday on the tip of my tongue.
I recall reading that series about the lesbian necromancers. I had been desperate, at the time, for anything remotely similar to my own experience. I hated relating most to the series’ villain. His experience seemed to echo my own. I never read the end; it was never published. Water made sure of that.
Water made sure of it all. The seas rose, so much more than was ever expected. The flood, the second one. And I made it through.

4 march : character & cabin

“Believe me, Fairy Lio, I appreciate the offer. I would greatly enjoy teaching your acolytes in the art of communing, but I simply cannot abandon my apprentice.”
“Master Torlin, I understand, and thank you for your consideration. We welcome you to return to this sanctuary if you ever wish to reconnect with wishes.” With that, the godparent bowed out of the domed meditation room, where Torlin had been sleeping for his short stay in the mysterious, brightly decorated wishing well. As head of the School of Devotion, the dedicated teacher had seen many a library. None intrigued him in the same way as this one.
Each tome upon these shelves housed an entire lifetime, not told in actual memories, rather in wishes granted. But no single book made any sense. No single sentence made any sense, unless you could connect it with every other wish granter who worked on that particular case. Unless you could see the whole picture, the shatters were worthless.
Or so was the common preconception. Torlin disagreed with this idea. He could see the value in even the most rambling truthful story. He could piece together meaning from even the poorest written words. Every word had worth to a communer.
And that was why the fairy godparents of this well had approached him in the first place. Only with his abilities, his teaching, could they hope to parce the greater meaning of this library.
He stood from where he was sitting, dust off his pants, and set to work.

3 march : non-protag pov

Sacred squirrels,” you curse, “I’m brilliant!”
Brush in hand, smock and face both caked in paint, you step back from the canvas to take in your handiwork. No house portraitist, at least in the written history of this university, has ever painted as ingeniously as you do. None have ever captured the personality and character of their age’s lady with such a delicate hand as you did in this piece. You are a genius, you know it well. And this portrait is perfect, you are certain.
“She’s going to hate it,” pipes up your tiny assistant from behind her own canvas. “She hates chickens.”
“I must protest your concern! The lady has never expressed displeasure at the sight of a lovely chicken painted so perfectly, and certainly she will love seeing herself so motherly,” you answer, eyes still fixed with pride on the hen you’ve painted. “You simply do not understand the brilliance, the sheer genius required to be a house portraitist. The lady, I am certain, will appreciate my ingenuity.”
“You forget, Emmerson Ash, that you are no house portraitist.”
You scoff at the sound of your enemy’s voice from the studio. Frey Filk, notorious gossip and apprentice of the School of Linguistics, has despised you since you first met during your primary years when every professor forced you to work together. That’s fine by you, for you’ve hated her just as long. Rivals at first sight, a tussle or two every term, the drama of such constant back and forth: yours is the perfect arrangement. Every genius needs their adversary, a literary foil as a challenge to overcome, and Frey is yours.
“You forget, Frey Filk, that you possess no taste nor authority in the world of arts, blessing be upon the truth.”
“I possess far grander than

2 march : word soup (verdure, apeiron, hors-d'œuvres, origami, regret from elfie <3)

That night, his magic tasted of clementines. Under constellations whirring across bruised black, under fruit-dotted vines and hanging verdure, under the spell, he tasted clementines. Dancing, laughing, clawing his way from the party, he tasted clementines. Tangy, tinted sour with time, bright-tasting delight. All parts fresh. Nothing had ever been so right.
Even so. He held back sobbing. His gloved hands shook, he clutched the balcony’s wall. His eyes were knives, slivers of silver slicing across the glamor below. Drink pressed to his lips, teeth clenched, grimace, only clementines.
“Sir Aemur, what a pleasant surprise. None expected your attendance tonight, after…” Her silence spoke louder than any words would. ‘Why are you here?’ it demanded. ‘You’ve thrown this life away. You’ve broken every vow.’
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Do you expect every mourning knight to throw themselves to the cliffs?”
“Certainly not, nothing good could come from another futile death.”
He didn’t turn to her. He refused to meet her eye. Glass shattered on stone, sharp reflections of his sneer shimmered in moonlight, splinters dripped with blood. He smoothed his hair.
“Dame Emiel, such passion you pour into planning your nights, I could never miss one. Not for death.” He considered his hand, tugged off one glove, flourished pale fingers. “Not for Apeiron.”
In his dream, in every instance he had walked through this encounter, this was when she pounced. Snapped. But his visions long ago proved unreliable, idealized. She only laughed, stepped up to share the balcony’s edge, brushed her fingers against his.
“You sly man, you mean that.” Still laughing, she threw back her head, amber eyes alight with amusement. He winced. Such pain to look at her. Such agony to see her joy. “You truly enjoy our company. Or perhaps just the cranberry crostini — you may ask my chef for the recipe, if it pleases you. I have no interest in hors-d'œuvres hoarding.”
Had she not heard him before? Was Emiel truly so stubborn to ignore his threats?
She folded her hands together, a delicate origami of veins and bone. So she was not ignoring them, then. “Anyone can tell you. Citrus signals regret.”

1 march : 1k intro

an attempt at the 1k intro challenge

hello hello! i’m lio (they/them), an arts enthusiast, aspiring polyglot, and avid lover of literature. i’m currently a second-semester senior (who constantly has to tell adults that no!! i do not know where i am going for college nor do i know what i want to study!!) and reside in the eastern timezone (est) (east coast best coast!). my favorite beverage is coffee of any sort (except pumpkin spice, that’s terrible) and my favorite food is soup (especially broccoli cheddar soup in a bread bowl or tom kha kai, a thai coconut chicken soup). in general, in real life at least, i’m a quite introverted person who would far prefer to be alone than with others, especially when being alone includes being alone with a book. however, online, i am far more outgoing and i’m always open to a chat — particularly if said chat is about one of my many many interests :0

interests! i have so many of them. perhaps too many. to the extent that i cannot even think of or list all of them. but hey! i can certainly try.
let’s start with books, my most persistent obsession throughout my entire life. as a first grader, i became engrossed with the magic tree house series, a children’s chapter book sequence following two young siblings who travel through time, to various notable events from the titanic to pompeii, in a magical tree house in the woods behind their house. i loved these books so much that i never read anything else, much to my parents’ chagrin. i can remember several instances when my father tried to get me to read other books, but i stubbornly refused to take in anything but my silly little historical adventure books.
happily, my love for reading has now extended to a variety of genres and series. last year, for example, i read 82 books: 28 of which were fantasy, 17 romance, 13 historical fiction, 13 contemporary, 8 science fiction, 6 classics, and a smattering of non-fiction memoirs and essay collections. so far this year, i have been on a fantasy kick (of course <3), with 11 of the 14 books i’ve finished including aspects of the genre. all this to say: i really like reading, especially fantasy.
at the moment, i am reading several books (i can never stick to just one at a time), among them the dragon republic by r.f. kuang (book two of the poppy wars series), mary shelley’s classic sci-fi frankenstein, and two of n.k. jemisin’s books (the city we became and the fifth season). i’m also rereading book one of lockwood & co., the screaming staircase by jonathan stroud, aloud with my younger brother.
speaking of lockwood & co., this series, both the books and the netflix show, is one of my current bookish obsessions. others include tamsyn muir’s locked tomb series (can’t wait for alecto the ninth!) and anything by r.f. kuang (i could talk about babel for literal days). if asked my favorite book, these would be strong contenders, as would be the giver by lois lowry. to conclude this ramble about literature, i shall just say i always love talking about books and both giving and receiving book recommendations.
on to more academic and active interests. since i was in elementary school, and even before that, i have been a curious and avid learner. though i am now quite disillusioned with the education system in my country (and honestly kinda hate going to school oops), i still enjoy learning end exploring more academic topics, particularly linguistics, history, archeology, human geography, politics, biology, and chemistry. on top of my love of learning, i enjoy a variety of other hobbies, most notably theatre (acting, running spotlight, and directing), rock-climbing, biking, art (mostly i draw and paint), and reading and writing of course.
now to simply list a few of my less serious, more fandom-y interests, many of which i share with many of you — the owl house, percy jackson, six of crows, broadway musicals (come from away, falsettos, and hadestown my beloveds), and arcane immediately come to mind. i have a rather incurable infatuation with disney, particularly their parks (so so so obsessed) and walt disney animation studios (especially the older, hand-animated movies), and would definitely talk your head off if you ever asked me about my opinions on either.

i am a ninth-time scratch writing camp participant. as fantasy leader, this will be my third time leading and my sixth time on the leadership team. in my previous sessions, i’ve led twice (adventure march 2022 & script july 2022), co-led three times (sci-fi march 2021, horror july 2021, & folklore nov 2022), and campered three times (hi-fi july 2020, thriller nov 2020, & contemporary nov 2021). in july 2022, i was a member of the daily team and am honored to be working with the daily team again this session. needless to say, i have a lot of experience with various perspectives on camp and am very enthusiastic about every part of it!

for the sake of tradition (and to gain the final 200ish words i need to complete this challenge), i shall introduce an updated version of my swc character, who has been around since march 2021 when i coled sci-fi for the first time. at the time, they were named cae, though they have changed much over the years. this session, taking on the role as a fairy godparent of the wishing well, their backstory and abilities will change again.

years, decades, centuries does the art of wish granting stretch back. over the millennia, many methods have been developed to hone the wishes that spun the fabric of the universe. the first time lio ever granted a wish, they felt a rush of pride, joy, and satisfaction. but more than that, the lovely calm that came with such success and collaboration with their then partners. even just as a trainee, lio knew they would one day teach the art to others. and, one day, they came across the well. deep in a forest, magic humming in the air all around, it was the perfect place to teach. and now they will.