As the Quidditch team assembles for practice, to Katie's surprise, Oliver introduces a new player.

“Team, this is Harry Potter, our new Seeker.” Harry is small and thin, a mop of messy black hair falling over his face. He smiles nervously as Oliver continues, "McGonagall brought him in yesterday and he's the biggest find Gryffindor's had in [I[years. For once, we actually have a fighting chance at the cup.“ Oliver gives them all the same intense look he did at the team tryouts — which Harry somehow missed, but he's still managed to get on. ”Let's train our best…“

Katie tunes Oliver out (she's already heard his motivational speeches enough to know that they're skippable) and watches Harry as intensely as she can without one of the other girls starting to tease her about whether or not she has a crushhhh on him. She really doesn't have to want to deal with that, because she's not harbouring any kind feelings towards him. She's jealous.

How can he be so good that he gets on immediately, as a first-year? Even she, a second-year, is the youngest on the team — next to Angelina and Alicia, who are both third-years but joined this year as well.

Oliver finishes up and says, ”Right. Warm-up. Everyone on their brooms, ten laps of the pitch. Go."

Katie nearly trips over her own broom because she's too focused on observing Harry, but she steadies herself before anyone notices. The team rises into the air, coordinated, and then split up — Fred and George zooming round the pitch at break-neck speed, Oliver following, Angelina flying steadily behind them next to Alicia. Then Harry. Katie watches him and has to admit his flying is pretty good. Nothing out of the ordinary so far, but definitely better than your run-of-the-mill first year.

“Whatever you say, darling.” Aphrodite doesn't bother to keep the obvious boredom out of her tone. The man across the table is too busy staring at her, as entranced as mortals usually are. “Could you order another of the crêpes for me, please?”

The man — what was his name again? something long and pompous, no doubt — sits up, his gold watch glittering on his wrist as he gestures at the waiter and says brusquely, “Another crêpe for my date, thank you,” before turning back to her. His eyes soften again and his mouth drops slightly open.

Aphrodite sighs. Maybe she's turning up the charm a little bit high, but this man's way of talking over her annoys her. She wouldn't even be on this — what did he call it? a “date”? — with him if she wasn't interested in eating the crêpes at this lovely little café. She would have gone by herself if it weren't midnight.

Even though goddesses, unlike mortal women, can walk around in the dead of night without fear of harm, it doesn't mean that they won't have to deal with annoying would-be attackers. Aphrodite finds that punishing them gets boring. Also, Hades is annoyed about the number of men he keeps having to sort into Tartarus because she sent them there, and Aphrodite wants to be in his good books so that he'll give her more jewellery to show off in front of Hera.

So earlier this evening, she walked up to the prettiest car she could find. Green-painted, metallic, low-bodied… from Hermes' descriptions, she'd thought it was what they would call a sports car. She'd leant in the window and asked the man inside if he could take her to a café. His security guards didn't question it at all, too busy looking at her themselves.

Now, she's eating crêpes, basking in the attention of this man, his guards and the waiter, who is just rushing back with another one. She smiles slowly at him as he puts it on her plate, and he nearly drops his tray. How amusing mortals are.

PART ONE: Time Travel Mechanics (total 575 words)

EVENT, 34 words: Sparrow moves too close and the glass shatters loudly, its fragments exploding across the dark, dirty kitchen. One shard lands in the torchlight, reflecting a bright spot of concentrated light onto the wall opposite.

#1, 168 words: Everybody yells, flinching and jumping away from the sharp fragments flying through the kitchen. Jas falls against the sideboard, dislodging Orion. He stumbles into Stephen, who drops the torch. It thuds heavily on the ground, flickers, and then goes out. Darkness surrounds them as suddenly as if a huge blanket were thrown over a birdcage — and for a moment, everybody is as silent as said bird.

Then a clamour breaks out. Jas hisses and says she's hurt her hip, Sparrow yells an apology, Orion is swearing and asking where the torch got to, Stephen gropes for it but cuts his hand and joins in with the swearing. It only takes about ten seconds before Orion raises his voice over everyone and yells, “Quiet.”

Stephen and Jas listen. Sparrow lowers her voice to continue with her apology. “—really didn't mean to, I swear—”

“We know you didn't mean to,” Orion says wearily. “The problem is we're now stuck in a possibly haunted house without any legal light source whatsoever.”

#2, 245 words: Sparrow swears, gasping at the sudden rush of pain in her leg. “That really hurts. I'm such an idiot.” She can't think.

Stephen sees what the matter is and nearly drops the torch but Orion grabs it before it hits the ground. He points it back towards Sparrow. “What — oh.”

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Jas chants softly. She looks sick and Sparrow doesn't blame her. She feels sick herself. In the torchlight, a triangular, palm-sized shard of glass lodged in her calf is visible. Blood is already welling up around it, soaking down the denim of her jeans and dripping on the floor.

“That looks really…” Stephen trails off.

“Yeah,” Sparrow agrees, screwing her eyes up in order to keep the sob out of her voice. “Yeah.”

“What the hell do we do?” Stephen moves forward and squats down, presumably to look at it more closely. He twists his head up towards Orion. “You're the one with the healing experience, right?”

“I never—” Orion cuts himself off and moves over, replacing Stephen. “Yeah,” he says. "Just never done it in a haunted house in the middle of nowhere when there's the possibility of angry ghosts being attracted by the blood and the glass might have been laced with something, that's all."

Despite his words, he reaches out for Sparrow's leg. She can't stop the yelp when he touches the glass and Jas makes a low noise, her face screwed up in sympathy.

#3, 128 words: “Oops,” says Sparrow in the silence that follows immediately after the crash. “Sorry, guys.”

Orion frowns at her, face annoyed. “Be careful, okay? I was under the impression that we were trying not to attract undue attention.”

“So was I. Unfortunately, my arm didn't seem to get the memo.” Sparrow rubs the part of her forearm which hit the glass. “It hurts.”

“Yeah, that tends to happen when you whack it into something solid.” Orion's tone is snarkier than it needs to be, in Sparrow's opinion. She can tell Stephen agrees by his raised eyebrows and opens her mouth to make a retort, but Jas — surprisingly — interrupts.

“Guys. Look.” She's pointing at where a fragment is reflecting a bright spot on the wall from the torchlight, revealing… writing?

PART TWO: Plotting Timelines (total 587)

1: the end of term dance is announced despite concerns it might not happen
2: Lily needs to find someone to go with
3: she gets upset about the fact that she can't go with her ex
4: she decides to go with her friends
5: the dance

1. 126 words: The first idea that Lily had that the end-of-term dance would still be going on was when Ingrid dragged her to the notice board to book an available practice room and they found it surrounded by a crowd, staring at the flashing letters at the top:

END OF TERM DANCE — 20TH JULY.

“What?” She turned to Ingrid, her own incredulous expression mirrored back at her (but blonder).

“I know! I thought it'd definitely be off this year.” Ingrid pulled up the shoulder of her sweater, turning back towards the board. “Do they want a repeat of what happened at the last one?”

“Maybe they won't serve alcohol this time or something.” Lily shrugged. “It'll be more boring but at least nobody will dance on the table.”

2. 121 words. It was all that Lily thought about for the rest of the day. She knew what she'd wear already — you could never go wrong with a little black dress, in her opinion — but shoes and accessories were still a difficulty. High heels would look great, but she still had trouble wearing them for longer than about ten minutes. And what jewellery? She didn't want to lose any of her nice pieces, but neither did she want to turn up looking tacky.

If she was honest, she wasn't really all that worried about her outfit. She was just thinking about it to keep her mind off her ex. Unfortunately, once she got back home, that proved to be too difficult a task.

3. 116 words: Alex would have been the perfect date for this. Unlike the majority of teenage boys Lily knew, he could actually dance — his parents had arranged a course of ballroom dancing classes for him over one summer holiday, and ever since he'd been much sought after by his female acquaintances whenever music started playing.

Unfortunately, she and Alex were no longer on speaking terms after they had split up at the beginning of this term, and so that was quite out of the question.

Lily couldn't help but miss him, still. Sure, he'd cheated on her… but up till then he'd been great. Maybe it was just the gap of having someone to cuddle with, but yeah.

4. 106 words: She'd been floundering about in misery, thinking about how good the dance could've been with Alex but how he'd had to ruin it and how there was no one else she could go with as a replacement, all the evening until Ingrid texted.

what about we go with Sophie and Niamh?
they'd be up for it
and we could all go and get pizza before as a group

Lily sat up, eyes widening. Of course! Sophie, Niamh, and Ingrid would make the evening about three hundred times better. Probably better than Alex would've.

that's a really good idea! let's make it a plan xx

5. 118 words: “I don't get why you always want a margherita,” Niamh mock-groaned at Sophie as they all went out. “Not even pepperoni, honestly…”

“The toppings just spoil the pure, gorgeous pizza flavour,” Sophie said in an excellent imitation of one of the two uni boys who'd been talking very loudly at the table next to them. They all giggled, clambering into Ingrid's car.

Warm and full of pizza, Lily felt far better than she'd anticipated she would ever manage, attending the dance without Alex. She barely even had time to glance around for him when they arrived, as Niamh and Sophie were too busy dragging their quieter friends out onto the dancefloor. She'd forgotten how healing friends could be.

PART THREE: Outlining a Non-Linear Storyline Draft (total 311 words)

Summary (56 words)
At the ancient Brass Jail, two time travellers are breaking in to rescue their former ally — an international thief sentenced to death for stealing from royalty. They enter at the same time, Marisa distracting the guards while Sam unchains Zeb, the thief in question. In the end they get him out, but not without great difficulty.

Outline (255 words)
• Final scene — all three are getting away. Zeb is nearly collapsing from injuries incurred during his imprisonment, but they meet up with Leo who is waiting with a getaway portal.
• Marisa is the first to start their plan, distracting the guards at the entrance so that Sam can sneak past.
• Once inside, Sam turns back time an hour ago and attempts to locate Zeb’s cell without getting caught. She ends up getting yelled at by a prisoner “You again! You said you were going to get me out!” and has to turn back time again in order to escape the guards. She discovers that this time, the prisoner is placated and persuaded not to yell by the promise that she’ll get him out.
• Meanwhile, Marisa is trying to continue distracting the guards enough so that Sam can sneak back out. She sees her appear five minutes after she went in, half-carrying a limp and bloodied Zeb. She is terrified that the guards will notice.
• Sam, inside the prison, finds Zeb and with great difficulty, over a couple of hours, unchains him and frees him. She discovers that he has been tortured and is very worried for him, but they start to sneak back out again. They very nearly get run down by the guards coming running to the prisoner (who Zeb informs her is a dangerous, psychotic killer), but Sam manages to turn forward time just before they get seen.
• First scene chronologically — royalty toasting to Zeb’s death in the surety that he cannot escape.

PART FOUR: Final Story (1,605 words)

“Come on, just keep going. Just a few more steps. Just a few more.” Sam bites her lip, pulling Zeb along. He moans in pain, his long frame flopping brokenly onto her shoulder.

She herself is aching, her hands bloodied, but she is in nowhere near as bad a condition as he is. What they’ve done to him… It’s shocking just to look at him. When Marisa first saw him, just after she’d got way from the guards, Sam had thought Marisa might be sick. She feels the same way herself, although it’s dulled after two hours or however long since she first glimpsed Zeb in his cell.

She looks up the curve of the road. Marisa ran ahead a while ago, so surely Leo must be here soon. Collapsible portals are notoriously dangerous and have to be transported slowly, but she doesn’t know how much further Zeb can make it.

“Sam!” Marisa’s voice is louder than feels safe as she appears, jogging towards them both. “Quickly! Leo says that his bird reported that they’ve discovered Zeb is gone and they’re starting out after us.”

Sam doesn’t usually trust wizards, but she has to admit Leo has been a godsend throughout all this. They’d never have had a chance of getting away without his portal, or of figuring out what days would be lower on guards without his raven familiar spying for them.

“Help me with Zeb, then.”

Marisa, half a head shorter than Sam, dwarfed by Zeb, is not much help. But somehow, painfully, jolting step by step, they make it to the portal.

It’s fizzing blue, a spitting, hissing whirl of flame. A tear in the fabric of the universe. Sam remembers her reservations against wizards as Leo chants at it, the light flickering unnaturally against his face. But she steels herself as he nods at her. “Go through.”

Safety at last. They’ve done it.

Marisa knows how to distract people. It's always been one of her skills, ever since she was a child. Acting is another. So pretending to be a distraught would-be “visitor”, sobbing to the guards about her poor, falsely accused brother, is fairly easy. They both turn to stare at her as she cries and begs them to let her in to see him, turning away from the entrance. And Sam sneaks past.

I'm in. Sam can hardly believe it as she disappears inside the dark, bronze-riddled walls of the Brass Jail and taps her watch, spinning it back an hour.

Of course, it'd been built to keep people in, not out. But still. A miniature victory. First step of the plan enabled.

Zeb will be kept somewhere to the western side of this huge building, she knows. He's on the execution list, and those prisoners are kept separate to the others. However, the monarchy has a lot of public enemies who they want dead, and although Zeb may be high-profile, he's only one among many.

Most prisoners are well behind the high walls, unable to see in or out. However, there's a gap in the cell wall ahead… and someone is staring out. A man with long blond greasy hair and bright, mad eyes.

“Have you come back for me?” he rasps.

Sam freezes for a second. Carry on walking, she thinks to herself. He'll probably just think you're a dream or a delusion of some sort.

“You said you were going to get me out!”

She continues moving past him.

"Guards! She's escaping! There's an escaped prisoner!“ The shock of the sudden shout makes her stumble. It rings in the corridor, echoes, then multiplies… oh no. Footsteps coming towards her.

She dives for cover, then realises there is none. Oh great, oh great, oh great. Frantically, she spins the hands on her watch again. They settle just as the edges of the guards' shadows appear around the corridor… and then vanish.

She's back in time another hour.

She starts to move on, then freezes. The man who was watching through the wall before is stirring as if he was asleep. He opens his eyes and looks at her.

”Ssh,“ she says before he can say anything. ”I'll come back and get you out." She puts a finger to her lips.

The man says nothing, just watches her until she's past his cell.

It's only been five minutes before Marisa sees Sam again, standing in the shadows of the archway. This time, however, there's another familiar figure standing with her.

Zeb.

Marisa bites her tongue and continues with her act, practically dissolving into hysterics. She subtly edges round until she's in between the prison and the guards, and Sam and Zeb are free to dash for the shelter of the trees. By this point, the guards are moving forwards, as if to poke her away with their weapons.

“You'd better get going, girl,” one says. “We've tolerated enough of this.”

"But my brother,“ she howls, and that pushes him over the edge.

”Your brother will be fine when he gets out in a few months! He's only a petty thief. But if you stand here screeching at me any longer, I'll make it my business to find out who he is and punish him for his stupid sister's interference!“

Marisa gives a gasp and stumbles backwards, then turns for the road, still ”weeping" hysterically.

Finding Zeb didn't prove half as difficult as freeing him from the chains they've bound him up in. Sam can't help but be slightly impressed by the number of different restraints, magical and non-magical, that they've caught him in. All the same, when she finally unravels him, it seems like overkill.

He's bloodied, bruised, covered in dirt. His wrists flop limply — have they been broken? — and he barely even looks up, instead rasping, “Back for more?”

She's shocked by how defeated he sounds. Zeb, always bright and full of life, like this? “It's me. Sam.”

He looks up. Their eyes meet, and his cut-covered face changes. But the fear still remains. “How… what…?”

“I've come to get you out of here. Me and Marisa both.”

“It's no use. The roads are watched and the guards will get us before we can get off the island. Especially with me…” He holds up his arm as if to demonstrate, not meeting her eyes. “You should get out before they get you too.”

“We've also got Leo. With a portal.”

She watches the hope spark in his eyes and determines that they will get out, no matter how difficult it is.

They've been limping through the prison, Zeb having to stop and rest often, leaning on her all the way. Even so, they've nearly made it all the way. Then they hear a voice from around the corridor.

“Have you come back for me?”

Zeb looks at her, alarm sparking in his face. She realises what is happening a second later — they've got back to the time with the prisoner who was trying to talk to her — and pulls him back before they can go round the corner and see past-her.

“You said you were going to get me out!”

How long do they have before the guards come running? And will they check past this corner? Probably. There's no way they can get away…

Oh. Wait.

She pulls her watch off, then holds out her wrist and gestures for him to put his next to hers. He winces in pain as she clumsily loops the band around both of them with her only free hand, but she ignores it along with the shouting from the prisoner and the steps from the guards as she spins the dials and…

Done. They're an hour ahead again, back near the time when she first entered the prison, before her original time set-back. As they walk past the man's cell, she sees it's empty. She shudders.

Zeb twists round as well. “Sven's been executed?”

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“Definitely not.” Zeb pauses, leaning agains the wall. “I need a rest.” He closes his eyes, breathing shallowly, and murmurs, “Back before my first escape attempt, when I was still allowed out for meals with the other prisoners, he wasn't. Just sat there and cackled weird stuff at us when we were marched past. They told me he was a psychotic murderer. Guess he finally did something to one of the guards and they hurried up his execution date.”

Sam feels her eyes widen. Good thing he's gone now, then.

She waits for Zeb to signal it's okay to move on, then they hobble on until they can hear Marisa's raised voice outside. Zeb smiles slightly at it (wincing from the pain).

They're nearly out.

The banquet is in full force. King Leopold is making a toast, his wife Marguerite smiling sharply beside him. “To my wife, to the safety of our jewels, and to the death of the thief Zeb who dared to steal them!”

Cheers roar through the dazzling crowd. Glasses of wine are lifted high, song breaks out, rich fabric whirls around as its owners waltz.

The banquet is in full force. King Leopold is making a toast, his wife Marguerite smiling sharply beside him. “To my wife, to the safety of our jewels, and to the death of the thief Zeb who dared to steal them!”

Cheers roar through the dazzling crowd. Glasses of wine are lifted high, song breaks out, rich fabric whirls around as its owners waltz.

Only one court wizard doesn't cheer. Leo turns away slightly as the party goes on, thinking about his plans for smuggling a portal.

“The only apology I accept is cash.”

“Is that really the best you can come up with?”

Sal raises an eyebrow. “Tell me you could come up with something better.”

“Fair,” I acknowledge. I pause before saying, “Are you really still mad at me?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “I mean…”

“You can say yes.”

“All I’m saying is that the last of the chocolate spread is a serious matter. Even more so when it’s raining and I don’t want to go to the shops to buy more.”

“Waterproofs exist.”

Sal scowls. “They’re not great.”

“So take an umbrella.”

“And have to do that stupid thing where you shake it in the shop? No way.”

I sigh. “It’s not like anyone else will be there to see you on a day like this.”

“Yeah, because they’re not raving lunatics. And anyway, it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Well, if you’re not going to do anything about it, stop sulking and get over it.” This is perhaps slightly harsh.

“Sulk? I’m sulking now? I didn’t even say anything about it to you.”

“You look so gloomy sitting in that armchair that it feels like it’s raining inside as well.”

“If it bothers you, you probably shouldn’t have eaten all the chocolate spread.” He gives me a smug look.

I chuck a cushion at him. “No, you should work on overcoming your dangerous chocolate spread addiction. It’s clearly affecting you emotionally, clouding rational thought, ruining your day-“

He grabs the cushion and hurls it back. “Take that.”

“Seriously, though. If something’s ruining your day, you should do your best to fix it.”

“Wow, someone’s been watching too many of those self-help videos.”

I roll my eyes, which goads him into adding, “You definitely need them.”

“All I can say is that I’m not the one in need of support because I can’t have chocolate spread.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll go and get more if you just shut up about it. Please.” He stands up and walks out.

I grin. Little does he know, my cunning plan for more chocolate spread has worked.

Sparrow has always had an unmistakable talent for potions. When it lands her a place at an elite First World school, she's ecstatic, as are her family, who see it as part of their ticket out of exile. However, not everything is as it seems: it turns out that her “scholarship” is more of a guard job, the frighteningly clever teachers could be hiding a killer in their midst, and the girl she has to protect could be hiding a long-lost magical talent that governments would kill for. Can Sparrow balance redeeming her family's name, proving her talent, and saving her charge from a fate potentially worth from death?

PART ONE: Do a Relaxing Activity (100 words)

I practiced the hymns I have to play this Sunday for church. I always really enjoy the rich chords and progressions that occur in 18th-19th century hymns (to be honest, I find them much more enjoyable than a lot of modern worship music — both from a musical perspective and because of their relative easiness to sing), and I had three of those. I also enjoy the physical feeling of playing the piano. It's satisfying. Sitting in the dining room where the piano is, with the door shut and just the music with me, is relaxing and helps me unwind too.

PART TWO: Consume Media (109 words)

The opening bars of music of the song “Mariners Apartment Complex” start with piano creating the main tune and other instruments weaving around it, shortly followed by the lines “You took my sadness out of context / at the Mariners Apartment Complex”. This sounds like the beginning of a story and sets the mood for the song. The singer starts by singing softly about a complicated relationship. The backing music and her voice get stronger at the lines “You lose your way, just take my hand”, which symbolises her support for the other person in her relationship, despite any difficulties they might be facing. The overall impression, however, is sad.

PART THREE: Story (954 words)

The cracked blue-paint door of the Mariners' Apartment Complex is shut, but Sparrow can still hear music floating out from an upstairs window above. Someone is playing the piano; a sad, fast melody, like it's from a song. She thinks she knows it, but she's not sure whether or not it's a First World song. It doesn't remind her of home the way some Second World songs do, anyway.

She sits down on the step. Some sort of shining stone, slate maybe. It's been warmed by the sun, as has the door, which she leans back against despite the flaking paint, screwing her eyes up.

Knocking feels too hard to do. Even though she knows she'll inevitably have to at some point, she can't bring herself to interrupt Orion's piano playing. So she just sits there on the step, pretending she's any ordinary inhabitant of this seaside town. No, she couldn't pass for one; her clothes are all wrong. Shoes too cheap, shirt too cheap, still in her school sweater. Some new money second-home owner, then, just arrived down from the portal for a week or a month, watching the blue sea sparkle in the mouth of the harbour across the street, saying to themselves how good it is to be back again.

She wraps her arms around her knees, feeling suddenly tired. She aches internally.

How does she explain to Orion what happened? Maybe he'll have heard somehow already. Perhaps her sister will have sent him a message; but no. The one time Orion came to visit her in her own house (she cringes internally at the memory) they didn't get on, although the discord was less painfully obvious than with certain other members of her family.

He probably knows more about the relationship she has with her family than any of her other friends do. He probably understands it more. She's seen enough of his interactions with his mother to realise that they have more similarities in their family dynamics than either of them really want.

But all the same, she still internally cringes at the thought of knocking on the door. Waiting for him to come down the stairs. Watching as his face changes at the sight of her, then stumbling over her words — “Yeah, I sort of… got kicked out. It's not that serious, they'll probably be over it in a few days or weeks or by the time we're back at school. But all the same. I was wondering if I could stay here with you?”

He'd say yes, of course. But what else could he say to that?

She hates the thought that she's going to be imposing on him, ruining his perfect seaside solitude. Even just sitting here on the doorstep, she can see the appeal of this quiet summer life: the sun on the cobblestoned streets through the town, walking to the local bakery to get bread and a coffee for breakfast, perhaps going out in a little boat with a white sail. Silence in the coolspelled rooms upstairs in the hottest part of the day, while reading or lying on clean linen sheets or staring out at the seagulls flocking over the harbour. No wonder he chooses to spend his time here.

She almost doesn't register the piano stopping until she hears hasty footsteps coming down the stairs inside. She recognises them as his — he always rushes everywhere, up and down the stairs as fast as if someone is chasing him, even on the most boring errands ever — and starts up, twisting round just as he opens the door and nearly trips over her.

"Oh, I'm so sorry — Sparrow?"

His expression is nearly exactly as she imagined it. I missed him, she realises in a rush, and pulling herself to her feet, impulsively hugs him despite the fact that she's been travelling in the same clothes for a day whereas his look clean and fresh and he smells good, some sort of cologne mixed with a slightly soapy scent, and his shirt feels like it's been washed recently.

“Hey,” he says, and hugs her back. They stay like that for ten seconds, until Sparrow realises she should probably explain and pulls back.

“I'm sorry,” she says. She tries to explain, wants to watch his face but can't. Please let him understand, she thinks desperately, like a prayer.

“They…” He shakes his head. His hair is longer and it moves as he does so. She finds her eyes following it and pulls them away before he can notice. “Of course. Come in.”

She follows him in, into a small pretty kitchen. It's abruptly cooler — both an effect of the stone and the plants outside the window, as well as the cooling charms, which are good, no weird frosting or condensation effects. He gestures for her to sit on one of the light wooden chairs, next to the table. The legs squeak on the stone-tiled floor slightly as she pulls it back and he winces. “I keep meaning to fix that, sorry.”

“Don't worry.” Sparrow doesn't know what else to say. They're both looking at each other. She feels strange; a combination of the travelling, not having been able to eat or drink properly during it, and the shock of the coolness after the warm sun, she thinks. Her eyes feel heavy.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and she can't tell what he's asking exactly. About what happened? Physically? Both? Perhaps he doesn't know himself.

“I don't know,” she says in response. “I don't…” Her words trail off, and she keeps looking at him, sitting there in his kitchen, finally safe, and she feels a sudden rush of emotion that she can't really identify.

“Yeah, I'm sure it's going to be amazing. Nothing ever goes wrong when Sparrow and I have to work together.”

“Shut it,” is Sparrow's only response. Her intent expression doesn't change as she pores over her book, but her cheeks are turning slightly pink all the same. Jas can tell that Orion's words are getting to her. “Look, I'm sure it'll be fine. It's just a presentation—”

“The easiest one ever. Not like it's on a potion with highly corrosive ingredients, very precise timing, and we have to brew it in front of everyone.”

“Look, as long as I'm there, everything will be fine.” Sparrow sounds confident, despite everything. “Potions are my thing. It's not like I'm going to be abducted in the night or something.”

***

The potion exploded two minutes ago because Orion was waiting for Sparrow and she didn't turn up. Professor Abbott vanishes it.

“Where the actual—”

Jas nudges him, pointing to the teacher. Professor Abbott is a known stickler for swearing.

Orion sighs. "Okay. Where is she?“

”I don't know.“ Jas is beginning to feel a prickle of worry herself; it's unheard-of for Sparrow to miss a class despite her frequent jokes about doing so. ”I didn't see her this morning but I assumed she was studying in the library—“

”I was there this morning but she wasn't. Didn't she have a lie-in?“

”Well, I got up at six and her bed was empty.“ Jas is trying to remember if there was a sign of what Sparrow might have been doing. She tells herself that panicking is a stupid reaction. People don't turn up all the time. ”Look, there's Stephen. He'll have seen her in firecasting.“

”Wait, what?“ Stephen has caught the last of this and is hurrying over. ”I didn't, actually. I thought she was ill or skipping it or something. The professor didn't know where she was either.“

Orion looks at him and then says, ”This is probably going to make us all look like idiots, but we could ask for the CCTV to be checked."

Fifteen minutes later, the news is spreading through the school: Jas Evergreen's friend Sparrow has been kidnapped.

Once upon a time, a family of bears lived in the forest. They enchanted their cottage with their magic in order to lure and entrap intruders.

The first bear was called Papa and he was gifted with the sort of magic that hurts people through being overwhelming.

“A common sort of magic,” Mama always sniffed, and although she was being pretentious, she wasn't wrong. Many humans, although not magical whatsoever, use the process of overwhelming to win against others. Poison overwhelms cells, bit by bit, until they can't cope with it any more. Shouting overwhelms people until they give in. Talking at someone, again and again, overwhelms them until they give in under the sheer weight of your words.

Anyway, Papa's magic made his food too hot and his chair too hard and his bed too big, and it was quite easy for an intruder to avoid. The prospect of pain was far too obvious.

Mama, the next bear, had a much more soft and subtle magic. She wound people round to agreeing with her by simply being not enough. Although Papa grumbled about her magic being slow, it was truly extraordinary.

Mama had mastered the art of being silent to an extent that no human ever could. People found themselves talking too much to fill in the silence, and suddenly they would talk themselves into her point of view, into her place. Mama always got what she wanted, no matter what, and the secret lay in being so underwhelming and so boring that people would do anything to get out of that lack of sensation.

Her magic made her food too cold and her chair too soft and her bed too small. If she had been there, the intruder would have found themselves agreeing to anything, just to get away from the sense of dissatisfaction. However, without her, there wasn't anything to keep them there, and so intruders weren't usually trapped by her magic.

Baby Bear possibly wouldn't have been much without Mama and Papa, but with the combination of their magic, he was the one who lured the people in and trapped them there.

Baby Bear had the sort of magic that means everything feels perfect: the cottage felt safe to break into, his food was perfect to eat, his chair was perfect to sit in — and last but not least, his bed was perfect to fall asleep in.

His magic never did any harm. It just shielded the intruders from awakening to the dangers of the other magics… at least, until the bears came home.

Mangoes fall from the sky, faster and faster and faster. There are huge clusters of mango clouds, made up of tiny yellow and orange blobs, looking like they belong in a 2-D game.

“The Mango Floods have begun,” says one camper ominously, stepping though the main cabin. Mangoes are bouncing off the walls, squelching against the signposts for the daily and the weekly, and cluttering up word wars. Everything is yellow and smells of mangoes.

The separate cabins aren't faring better. Dystopian's campers are complaining that mangoes are far too bright for their dark and gloomy Six of Crows aesthetic. “They just don't fit in. Can't you throw, I don't know, jewellery or treasure or something instead?”

“Mangoes are the fruit of SWC, though. They represent us,” says another camper, tilting their head up to the sky to stare up at the mango clouds. They have to dodge hastily as a mango nearly hits them, which rather spoils the effect.

The other Dystopian campers, however, decide to make the best of it. Along with the other campers, they're soon stretching out their hands for a mango falling out of the sky. Soon, everybody is enjoying themselves.

“I wonder when it will stop,” says the camper who complained.

“Probably when everyone's had one. That's the great thing about SWC — no one gets left out.”

the sadness of pandas

a purer black and white than the photos you find
those are really mostly different sorts of grey.
the way that they move slowly makes them look kind —
although that's probably a stupid thing to say.
the pandas themselves wouldn't mind, true
they're not really intelligent themselves, which is sad.
they only eat low-in-nutrient bamboo
even if there are other things to be had.
without humans they would probably have died out long ago.
would the world be worth living in without pandas in it?
the truth is I don't know
but I still don't really want to try it

Humans think about love all the time. It's their driving force to live, a lot of the time, and when they don't get enough, they stop wanting to exist.

Despite their collective longing for it, the vast majority of them don't understand it. Sometimes, they deny their own need for it. They say that they “don't really believe in love” when they can't find a romantic partner, not realising that romantic love is only one shade of a vast and incomprehensible spectrum.

Love exists everywhere. Love covers the surface of the moon, over which billions of eyes have traced from earth below. Love is the ripples of water and light caused by someone running their hand through the shining waters of a stream to enjoy its coolness. Love exists in the cracks of every wall which someone's elbow has bumped into as they hug their friend. Love is in the mundane and the everyday as often as or more than in the splendid and beautiful. Love is in handmade sweaters made for a granddaughter, as well as in the joke t-shirt bought for a friend or the new gloves gifted by someone who noticed their coworkers' hands looked cold. When someone eats their favourite food or dances to music or smiles at their own imagination, love is there.

I am everywhere. As dramatic and quick-fading as lightning, as quiet as a thread of wind pushing gentle at the grass, as ancient as the broken stone on the hillside, as new as a wobbling-legged calf, as beautiful as stars on a clear night from the middle of nowhere, as painful as touching lava. I fade away like the sunset and come back again like the first evening star. I am as inescapable as time. It is impossible to live without love.

PART ONE: Brainstorming Emotions 307 words

In real life, emotion can be expressed various different ways: body language, tone of voice, facial expressions. Who they look at and how, the emphasis they put on different words, whether their smile is forced or genuine. Certain phrases or words can also betray someone's feelings, such as swearing or leaving it out when they usually do (although this is not applicable to writing shared on Scratch, of course).

In writing, emotions are often described using adjectives; that made her angry, he felt sad, she felt a strong sense of loathing towards them. However, too much of this can make your writing feel blank and stiff, so intersperse it with:

• Body language: The risk when describing body language is that it will come across as awkward. To avoid this, don't do it every sentence a character speaks. Don't overdo it when you do describe it. It can quickly come across as too much. Instead, a simple, she glanced over at him quickly or his fists clenched slightly can do very well. This could be followed by a line of dialogue which also showcases their feelings.

• Tone of voice: Using words like “softly” or “harshly” or “firmly” can show a character's specific emotion very clearly. Another useful tool is italicising a word they put emphasis on. Adding exclamation marks or ellipses can also help, but as with the rest of the tips in this section, they need to be used sparsely or it comes across as too much.

• Facial expressions: While this technically falls under body language, most people find writing about and summarising the meaning of facial expressions easier. She grimaced, he rolled his eyes, they laughed. They're a great way of establishing your character's mood, but don't do it too much or else it feels like the characters are having a face-pulling competition.

PART TWO: Emotions in Character 696 words

“… I don’t know what I would have done without you, you know? I haven’t had the chance to thank you yet.”

She's kneeling quiet on the bed, folding her clothes away into the suitcase. The sun is peering through the window, touching the edges of her hair gently but she doesn't seem to notice. Watching her feels like I'm looking at a painting of someone from a long time ago; disconnected, far away, but if I make myself think about it, technically the feelings are there.

Like the painting, she remains silent. I would've thought she didn't hear but her shoulders tensed, tattle-tale tell, just after I stopped speaking. A minute passes, the only sounds the clock on the wall ticking it away and underneath the barely discernible thump of the clothes into the suitcase. Then she says, “You don't have to thank me, you know.”

“You probably saved my life back there,” I say. “I feel grateful to you about it.” The words are clunky.

“Grateful. Right.” Her back's still turned to me.

“I do,” I say. It's what I ought to be feeling, right? I'm not dead, I'm still here, I'm still alive. I should be grateful.

“Really.”

“Yeah. I'm grateful. Thankful. Indebted to you.” I try to make it sound funny.

But she turns round and looks at me — looks me in the eye, the first time since last night — and says, “In debt sounds more like you.”

“I've never had money issues. Mommy issues, though…” I say, and get the satisfaction of seeing her roll her eyes.

“Stop being stupid. What I meant was that you obviously don't care whether or not you're still alive. You just feel like you're being a bother to someone and you should at least try to say something vaguely nice in order to appease them about it.”

I shrug. “Yeah, well. I am, aren't I?”

“Yeah.” She turns back to folding her stuff. “Even more than usual.”

I don't know what to say to that, so I keep sitting there awkwardly. Another minute passes, then she breaks out.

"You know, I thought that at least you'd stop yourself from trying to jump a cliff on holiday. Like. Everyone's having a nice time. Why would you even do that? If you're going to you know.“ She can't say it, just throws another piece of clothing into her suitcase. ”You could at least do it without ruining everyone's memories of this summer.“

”Look, I'm sorry.“ Despite myself, I feel ashamed. She has a point, slightly. ”I was drunk.“

”That's your excuse for everything nowadays.“

”It works well.“

She turns on me again, angry. ”Stop trying to throw yourself away! You have quite a lot of potential, you know.“

She doesn't get it and she never will, but I can't hold it against her, somehow. ”Right.“

”Right.“ She imitates my voice back at me. It keeps getting higher and more upset. ”Right. Right. Right.“

”Shut up,“ I say. It seems the thing to say — to try to bring her back to normality — and I think it works. She grabs her suitcase and zips it shut, then moves over to mine.

”You going to try to sort this out at all or what?“

I can't be bothered, to be honest. ”Wasn't planning on having to sort it out at all.“

It's the wrong moment for that joke. She turns round and looks at me. ”You—“

”Getting on well with packing, are we?“ Matt opens the door, grins in affably at both of us. His smile fades slightly at the look on Lucie's face. ”Maybe try doing it yourself?“ he says appeasingly to me, before hastily shutting the door.

”You know, his idea's not bad,“ she says, straightening up, glaring at me. ”And that goes for everything. Last night and last week and this whole thing where I'm meant to help sort through your emotions but you refuse to be serious and you won't do anything to help yourself and all you do is upset me." With that, she stalks out and I'm left by myself, staring at my crumpled clothes spilling out of my suitcase.

PART 3: Emotions in Prose 953 words

I got nostalgia, which means a sentimental longing / wistful affection for something in the past. In specific, I think this nostalgic feeling will be directed at childhood friends. What could it be caused by? Seeing some of them who are still on close enough terms to hang out, but you drifted away instead? 53 words

900 words Scrolling through a social media app shouldn't be like this. I should be immune to it, by now. But lying on my bed in the dark, cheek squashed against the flannel pyjamas I couldn't be bothered to change into, I feel like I'm about to cry.

Both of them are in the same photo. They're not standing together, though, which would've been impossible in the old days. Isla has her arm around a girl I don't know, but who I guess is one of her flatmates. Beatrice (can I think of her as Bea, still, when none of her new friends seem to call her that?) is near them, but she looks more interested in holding her drink. Slightly nervous, even. I can't imagine Bea — daughter of gods, effortlessly beautiful, always had a word for everyone — being awkward, but that's what's going on.

Five years ago, I'd have known why. Even if I didn't make it to the invite list, Bea would've called me up and told me all about it. Maybe it was the guy behind her being a creep or something. I can almost hear her voice over the phone, now: "Gosh, yeah, it was ghastly. I hinted at him, like, five times or something. And then I had to actually tell him, ‘I’m really not interested'. Darlinggg.“ There'd be an aggravated sigh here. ”It was utterly terrible."

If Isla had heard that, she'd have teased the stuffing out of Bea. Posh girl, she'd always say. I sort of agreed with her — the way Bea spoke sounded far too pretentious to be tolerated sometimes — but although Bea always laughed off Isla's comments, I could tell they upset her slightly.

Maybe Isla being insensitive was part of the reason our trio didn't last. Maybe the fact that it was a trio didn't help at all.

I joined it, back when I joined their sixth form. I think they'd had another friend before — Esther, maybe? — who'd moved overseas, and I was apparently similar enough to be the logical replacement. They both agreed on it immediately, and they were lovely to me. Invites to their houses, parties, sleepovers. Everything.

We got close pretty soon. Told each other secrets, took stupid photos of each other, went on bike rides and picnics and camping trips and shopping and made so many memories. It was one of the happiest times in my life.

In spite of that, I felt like I spent the whole first year playing catch-up on their dynamic and by the point I'd figured things out, it was too late to try to fix any of the problems.

Bea could be really touchy sometimes. She was always falling out with people over stupid little things; in the first few weeks I knew her, she had an argument with a boy in our English class over the interpretation of one line from a book she didn't care about and then didn't speak to him until half-term. Isla was the only person she tolerated even a bit. (I might have counted after a while, but I never said anything remotely controversial then.)

Isla, however, abused this freedom of speech as relentlessly as she could. She didn't even seem to notice that she was upsetting Bea; didn't observe her jaw tightening, her eye flick, her knuckles tightening briefly as she dug her fingernails into her palm and out again. Isla was a wave that crashed against a building, again and again and again, and didn't realise that its foundations were soaked and crumbling.

It came to a head just after we'd finished our exams. Bea's ex-boyfriend (one of many) had cheated on her. For once, she'd been really cut up about it, going all pale and sad and not bothering to dress up at all. Basketball shorts and one of his tops that she'd described as “utterly horrible” when they'd been together.

Isla had decided that taking a “get yourself together” approach was the thing to do. It backfired. Tremendously. Bea ended up screaming at her about a subject we never brought up — “You cheated on your own boyfriend, shut up!” — then rounding on me. “You never do anything! Anything at all. She's always horrible to me and you see it but you never intervene.”

Isla, pink with anger already, was incandescent with rage at this. Her stutter started playing up, as it always did when she was upset, but she managed to force out: “She — she always takes your side, though! I can see it. She tries to be, be all nice and sweet about it but she always supports you instead of me.”

“She never says anything.” Bea hissed, and then snapped at us. “I'm sick of both of you. Get out.”

We drove back, but after that, we never made up. I was too scared to do anything — I really regret that — and I can only assume that both of them thought that they were irrevocably right. School was over for good so we didn't have an opportunity to see each other again — both Bea and Isla spent the whole summer elsewhere, leaving me wandering mournful round our drizzling town. Loneliness pervaded me, and a burning sense of resentment: I couldn't believe that the whole thing came crashing down like that. Did we really care about each other so little we could let each other go over a fight?

PART 4: Bringing It All Together 779 words

I don't know what to say to her.

That's nothing new, but this is. She doesn't cry, ever. But now tears are streaming down her face, visible in the dim yellow glow of the streetlight we're both standing under, and I don't know what to do.

“I just hate him! I hate him so much. I hate boys.” She chokes, her nose running, and I offer her a tissue. She grabs it and uses it then stuffs it in the pocket of her precious leather jacket without a second thought. “He's so callous, you know…”

She's looking at me like she expects me to do something, and I can't tell what. But I reach out and wrap my arms around her — tentatively, we don't usually hug much nowadays — and she collapses against me, her tears soaking into the collar of my work shirt. I forget she's shorter than me, usually, but now I'm hit with the sudden remembrance.

Weirdly enough, this feels sort of right.

I brush the thought away, because nothing about Lily being upset is right. She deserves to be happy. She lives up to her flower namesake, beautiful, her swinging hair the same colour as its reddish-brown stamens as she spins and twirls.

Right now, there aren't any spins and twirls forthcoming.

“So what did he do?” I've got her inside the shop, now. I'm the only one left there now — I'm meant to be closing it down — and I've rolled down the shutters. The faint buzz of the fluorescent lighting overhead irritates me slightly. I hope it's not making Lily feel worse.

“He kissed someone else at the club. In front of me.” She scrubs at her eyes with another tissue, tears soaking her eyelashes together. “If I'd known he wanted to break up, I would've let him! He didn't have to be so cruel.”

“That's horrible,” I say, because it is. But honestly, I can't be surprised. Whenever Lily chooses to date someone, she picks the absolute worst guy possible. There was David, who condescended to anyone he met (including her). She dumped him after he mocked her in class (the fifth time). There was Liam, who only cared about appearances, and broke up with her after she was ill and her face looked puffy (seriously). And now there's George, who has never stayed with one girl for longer than about two months, as I can make it.

“I didn't think he was like that!” she says, and her face screws up. “He said he really liked me…”

“He's not worth it, honestly,” I say, and put an arm around her.

She leans her head on my shoulder, putting her other arm around me. “Yeah, but I thought we could be a thing!”

“You kept on looking for potential in him,” I say. “But honestly, he has as much potential as a rotten potato. You're well rid of him.”

Lily snorts, slightly. “He is a potato.”

I laugh. It's not really all that funny but I think Lily needs something to laugh at. As usual, she finds my laugh infectious and joins in.

I think I should be feeling bad for feeling relieved. I feel guilty about it. But my main feeling at them breaking up is relief.

“I swear I'm never going to abandon you again for a boy,” Lily says, sitting up straight again.

That's a bit close to home. I think it shows slightly on my face, because hers falls slightly.

“Oh. I did it again, didn't I?”

“I don't blame you. George needed a full set of eyes on him at all times,” I say, but honestly. I don't know.

We're meant to be best friends, and in between boys, Lily's a great friend. We text all the time and talk and hang out and hug and it feels like it's meant to be. Like we're soulmates or something.

But as soon as she gets a boyfriend, all that disappears. Suddenly, she's too busy to text me back quickly. Hangouts get cancelled because he suddenly came round, or she doesn't have time because they were out last night and she really needs to catch up on her schoolwork, and we drift apart and suddenly we end up only seeing each other at school and she has no idea what's going on in my life and I only know what's going on with her latest boy drama.

Lily laughs, but as she turns to leave, she hesitates slightly. “You're better than any of my boyfriends, you know that?”

“Yeah, obviously,” I say, and do a mini hand-flip. She grins slightly and walks out, leaving me feeling as empty as the shop.

tell me where I should look for you

tell me where I should look for you
not in the sunlit green-leafed wood of our shared long-gone childhood;
they cut all the trees down, made a street, buried their ghosts under soulless concrete.
do you think they scream as loud as we want to?

back then if we yelled, we yelled together,
said we were friends forever, whenever, wherever,
with daisy-chain bracelets promised not to keep secrets
and danced outside, whatever the weather.

despite what we shared, we both moved on
and slipped away from each other, drifted out of reach.
I never knew if you mourned me along with the debris
of our friendship or if you didn't notice I was gone.

you tried to find yourself in clothes and songs and boys.
maybe you were having fun, maybe you were coming undone.
I studied hard and passed all the exams and failed myself last
but I didn't care because it was an easily accepted choice.

we went away. I started my endless quest
for places and things and people who made me feel like I could be you:
casually sun-bright, everything just right
but all I tried could only buy me second best.

years later I saw you in a building-block cafe
hearing you was how I recognised you first; the tone of your voice as you laughingly cursed
was just the same as back when it was a game
of seeing what you'd be told off for trying to say.

I could've gone over, I could've said hi
but fear you wouldn't know me came alight even though
I shouldn't have cared. but I was still scared
and so you left and I wanted to cry.

(but still a storm in the street, a blue gap in the skies
made me think of the precise shade of your eyes.
time taught me I should've moved from where I stood
talked to you even if I knew it'd draw blood
because I might have got to keep my pride
but my request to get over you was always denied.
lovers never mattered quite the same way as you
you knew me so well that we'll never be through.)

so when I dream about us
I don't dream about what we became
but that somewhere we're sitting on a sun-warmed swing-set
laughing like we're children again
and the birds are singing for us.

Main Cabin, Sci-Fi Cabin, and Sanctuary City (Sci-Fi Word Counts)

Wordcounter

Total Word Count

Main Cabin Dailies: 1 (no points) | 2 | 3 (no points) | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31

Weeklies: 1st || 2nd || 3rd || 4th ||

Word Wars Won:
Word Wars Lost:

Cabin Wars:

Writing Competition Entry || Fanfic Entry

stuff I may want to find later:

The stream sparkles in the sunlight, water reflecting brownly off the pebbles. The nettles at the far side of the bridge seem to be watching as a girl in a blue dress, squatting on her haunches in the shallows, painstakingly folds a square of paper into a boat. She doesn't seem to find it easy, having to unfold and refold several times. But after a few minutes, she seems satisfied. She places a dandelion in the prow and launches her ship into the rippling stream.

It's a delicate thing and already soaking through fast. But the girl watches it, satisfied. She begins to turn away but quick footsteps coming through the path behind her, out of the woods, make her freeze like a wild animal in a car headlight.

A boy storms into the clearing by the stream, glaring at her. “Thought I'd find you here.”

“Anyone could tell I'd be here,” retorts the girl, “I always am.”

“Playing with your paper boats again,” he sneers. His gaze catches the one floating down the stream, and he charges at it.

“No!” cries the girl, divining his intent immediately. “Just leave it be—”

But it's too late. He's splashed into the water after it, already knocking it over with a sweep of one hand. The dandelion falls out and it starts to sink.

He turns to look at the girl, who stares back at him impassively, lips pressed together. Apparently unsatisfied with her reaction, he wades after it, kicks down his heel, and crushes it down to the stream bed.

“Stop being so mean,” the girl says, but he still doesn't get the reaction he wants. Her eyes are fixed on something past him. He follows the line of her sight and sees the dandelion sweep under the bridge, escaping him.

Both children are left with the sense that although she took a casualty, he has lost this particular battle.

marble, leaves, cracked, faint, staircase

https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/695082/?page=1#post-7352794

Part One (310 words)

https://www.onceuponapicture.co.uk/portfolio_page/can-not-replay/

The piano seat was occupied by a teenage boy, dressed in a crumpled white collared shirt and trousers. As he sat down, he resolutely refused to look at the giant cogs reaching into the sky behind him. Instead, his hands were folded in front of him. He stared at the keys, eyes not moving away.

Finally, after several minutes, he tentatively touched a key with the tip of one finger. It rang out, sweet, loud, and clear. His face relaxed a fraction and he placed his hands over the keys, taking an audible, deep breath before starting to play.

At first, the music was slow and tentative, but gradually, the boy began to play more confidently and quickly. Ten minutes in, and the piano was singing.

Bright golden light from the keys of the grand piano lit up the pianist's face, flashing and sparking in patterns. Warm, floating bubbles of what could only be pure magic rose from the surface and the strings. They hovered around his face.

Behind him, the giant cogs started to turn. If a listener had been able to focus on anything but the enchanting quality of the music pouring out from the piano, they would have heard an enormous, grinding noise, stretching up into the night air.

The pianist was sweating now, the grain of the skin on his arms illuminated by the floating light around him. He didn't seem to notice the noise of the machinery at all, instead closing his eyes and continuing to play passionately.

The first cog was illuminated now, gold wrapping around its edges. As the pianist continued and it continued to rotate against the other gears, the light seemed to rub off on the other cogs, highlighting their spiked edges. The whole structure was lighting up, reaching into the sky with a light brighter and warmer than the stars.

Part Two (538 words)

I'm so tired. Everything feels pointless.

The world is grey outside. It's that miserable weather where it's not quite raining yet, but it keeps threatening to. Tiny blasts of drizzle keep spattering the windows in bursts, deterring anyone from ever trying to go outside. Wet leaves have gathered outside, clustered together like a crowd of huddled, damp shoppers trying to protect their bags from getting soaked. The spiderweb in one corner of the window is the only thing that's remotely pretty: the tiny raindrops bead it as if with dew in spring, jewellery-like. But even that has an ugly side to it: I can see the spider that owns the web squishing itself into a corner of the window, under the overhang and away from the rain. Its squat form is like a blob of dark, smeared dirt.

I need to get my work done. I have maths homework, and if I want to stay top of the class then I need to get working on it. But I just feel so exhausted. It's not that school was bad today. It just feels like my brain has tuned out.

I wrote down notes for everything — the Virginia Woolf novel we're studying in English, how to conjugate the subjunctive in French — but I felt the entire time as if I was watching somebody else do it. Talking to my friends should have been fun, but instead, I felt nothing. I don't think they even noticed.

Has anyone noticed at all?

I'm cold, sitting in the empty sitting room by myself, staring out at the rain in the sodden brown November garden. The chairs around me are white and empty, as are the walls and carpet, and any dim light that comes in seems to be a mockery of the summer sunshine that filled this room only a few months ago. I want to move and go out but I feel frozen.

I don't know how long I've been sitting there on the floor, my bag and books lying scattered around me, when my mum comes in.

“Are you okay?”

I turn and look at her. “Yeah. I don't know. I think it's just… I don't know. It's so bleak at this time of year. And not even in a picturesque way that looks good.”

Mum looks concerned. She sits down beside me, wrapping her arms around me. “You don't sound great.”

“I feel a bit…” I trail off. “Quiet?” Empty sounds too much.

“Hang on a second,” she says, and walks off to the kitchen. I only have a minute to think bitter thoughts about my abandonment before she's back again. She's holding a cup of tea.

“Mum, I don't even like tea.”

“Look, you should try it.” She places a drink mat on the floor beside me and puts the tea down on top of it. “There's a reason tea caught on in Britain, you know. It's lovely and warm during the winter.”

I shrug and she walks away. But after a few more minutes, I drink a sip of the tea.

I still don't like it. But she's right. It is nice and warm. And I do feel marginally better. Maybe there's something in it after all.

Part Three (403 words)

“As we came out of the sushi café, the Sun was making his final patterns for the day, and I let go of any small hope that he might send his special help in the short time remaining.”

We would go down in the night, fall to the Moon. I could see it now.

Julia would be lying in the room, its warm light not quite managing to mimic the brightness of the Sun. She would be quiet and staring at the ceiling, avoiding looking at the barrier shutting out the Moon. She would try to smile. When we noticed her unusual silence, then she would ask us for something small like a cup of tea. (She has never liked tea.) And perhaps after one of these trips, we would come back and find her completely still. There would be no more breaths that gently raised the coverlet up and down. Just stillness and a dreadful paleness.

And then, when we were still mirroring her stillness in shock, the walls would slowly start to crumble. Down would come the curtains, down would come the walls, falling to the ground in dust. Down would fall all the protection Julia wove so painstakingly those years ago.

And in would come the Moon. The Moon, with her pale light. The Moon, with her callous indifference. The Moon, with her ability to make us freeze, unable to move for the whole night, barely able to recover the next day for a few minutes before sunset.

It would take weeks for us to get out of the garden. The Moon-freeze would be on us all day and we'd still be moving slowly after a day where the Sun was mainly hidden — all too common in the winter. We would have to make our way down to the gates bit by bit, perhaps twenty steps a day, and hope desperately that one of Julia's friends who shared her Sun-gift came to see her before too long.

Would they? If Julia was in disgrace, as she had told us, would they ever dare to visit? Julia had refused to tell us what had happened or what she had done, instead staying indoors and saying that she could not bear to see the Sun when she had betrayed him so badly ever since she had come back from the meeting. She lay in bed all day, growing gradually weaker throughout the month. As did the protections on the walls and the windows and us.

Another Sun-gifted, however unlikely, was all our hope now. Unless, perhaps, we could persuade Julia out of that dark room and into the Sun again.

Part 4 (405 words)

The giant cogs were silent, menacing in their enormity as the teenage boy approached the piano. He refused to acknowledge their eyeless stare as he sat down, but he could still hear their wordless promise of doom.

No matter. He was here to take back control of them, and take back control he would. He knew he could do it. But even so, the mental image of them, a darker mass of ragged-toothed circles against the dark sky, made him want to give up now.

No. He couldn't. This was the only way he could possibly generate enough magic to save his city.

It was still a few minutes before he pressed the first key. Suppose the piano wasn't magical, as rumoured, and had instead withered away over the years? Then everything would be lost. He had to force himself to find out, a second away from either doom (in his mind, the cogs rose up in new clarity) or hope (and he imagined a golden bubble of magic).

He took a deep breath and reached out and discovered that the piano worked. It more than worked; the tone of the note was clearer and more beautiful than anything else he'd ever heard. And golden light flashed off it.

He started to play properly, at first slowly, careful not to make a mistake. But somehow, playing this piano felt different. It felt almost impossible for his fingers to slip, even though golden bubbles were floating between his face and the keys.

As he sped up, focusing hard on the music, he thought he could dimly hear something else. A grinding, maybe? A growling? He didn't dare look around or stop; even the brief pause in concentration was making the golden light die slightly instead of rising in intensity. He forced himself back into playing, and the sound seemed to bury itself behind the singing of the piano.

Gradually, he became aware that the left side of his face and body were becoming lit up intensely, with more than just the golden bubbles or light from the piano. He glanced sideways and saw a sight that he would never forget.

The machinery was covered in golden light, the edges of the spiked wheels illuminated brightly. They ground against each other, sparking and light flooding around them. The landscape around him was becoming lit up as if it were day, but with a warmer and brighter light.

“your character hears the voices of her dead ancestors giving her advice every day” — @lilyjen
“your character can see someone's future when they touch them, but only their death”— @-rainyskiies-

Bianca di Angelo had been having a bad day. First, there had been an attack by a deadly monster. Second, they had been saved from this attack by a group of strange people who called themselves “half-bloods” and then needed to be saved themselves. Third, the people who had turned up to save the saviours weren't people at all. They were an immortal goddess and her equally immortal hunt, who then decided to inform Bianca and Nico that they weren't actually normal. No. They were also half-bloods, and being pursued by deadly monsters was a thing now.

You'd better just go with the flow, cara.

Yeah, looks like you're stuck with these people for the foreseeable future if you don't want to get eaten.

Looks like she is definitely stuck with these people for the foreseeable future. She just joined the immortal huntress club, remember?

Hopefully that'll keep her alive for longer, although judging by those animal pelts, she's going to have to chase after some pretty enormous beasts. That has to raise her life insurance rates—

“Shut up,” Bianca muttered. The last thing she needed right now was the return of the Voices.

The Voices sounded like a name for something much cooler than what they actually were. Instead of being cool and giving her prophecies or something, The Voices were a series of vaguely Italian-sounding voices, both female and male, that decided to volunteer advice they seemed to think was helpful whenever anything remotely out of the usual happened in Bianca's life.

You'd regret it if we left you alone. Who helped you pick out a dress for the dance? reproached one of the voices.

“Not like it's much good now,” muttered Bianca, but her heart wasn't in it. She was focused on something else.

Other than the voices, Bianca had a small problem. Whenever she touched someone else, she could see their death. (Except with her brother Nico, for instance.)

And this evening, she'd taken Zoe's hand for just a few seconds. It'd been enough, though — she'd seen a dragon baring its jaws, mouth full of poison, and a huge man in battle armour swiping towards her. It'd been so intense, so vivid, that she'd almost jumped back. Zoe had given her a weird look and Bianca had played it off as a shiver.

An actual shiver went down her back now, just thinking about it. Should she say something? Or should she leave fate to itself?

Leave it, the Voices said unanimously, making her jump.

Well, if they were that insistent…

Bianca rolled over and tried to sleep.

my twist: everyone swaps bodies with someone else once a year for a day