NickName - Ava
Content - March 26th Daily
Word Count - 892/200
Topic - Write about how a constellation came to form
Cabin - Horror

LETS GET STARTED

I will represent Aquarius as a woman in this story.
It will be mainly the formation of Aquarius, but 2 others

For those Aquarius out there, you probably feel the same as me. Half of the time you're brilliant, intelligent, playful, witty and of course the dark horse. Then the other half you feel neglected, disrespected, laughed at, the quiet kid, and definitely the one who has the most rumors around them. I'm going to tell you a story. A story about how our great ancestor, the one and only water-bearer, came to be a constellation.

Queen Tatiana ruled over the city of Aruisqa. Aruisqa was noble and beautiful, just like its ruler. Queen Tatiana was famous for her beauty, but she is not the protagonist of this story.
Queen Tatiana had two sisters. One was named Rosemary. She was the great architect of that time period, but she is not the protagonist either.
The third and youngest sister, Piper, was not a well-known person around the world, but she was very popular in her city.
Piper also lived in Aruisqa, as did all three siblings, but she lived in the lowtown. The lowtown was considered the lowest caste of Aruisqa. People wondered why Piper, a sister of the royal queen, was living there. The thing was the people in the lowtown were the most beautifully cultured people you would see in the whole world. Their designs and creations were unimaginably amazing. The pottery was appealing. The carpets were comfortable and stylish. Everything was distinctively special, and only Piper appreciated that. She was also one of the best potters in the whole city, and people came from far to just look at her art.

Piper was very humble. She never let the praise flow to her head, and always stayed modest, which made the community like her more.

One day, Rosemary was on her way to visit Queen Tatiana when she happened to walk past the lowtown. She saw a huge gathering, and with curiosity, took a short detour. When she saw Piper, she was surprised. Piper was making pots in front of a huge gathering. The marksmanship was incredulous. She shaped the mud with unimaginable skill. Each design was integrated directly into the pot, and the crowd ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed.’

Rosemary was the greatest architect in all of Aruisqa. She built the fountains. She built the crossroaads. She even built Queen Tatiana's palace. Usually she was kind-natured, and was cheerful, but that day she felt something that she had never felt before.

Jealousy.

She frowned. She never got this much appreciation. Her blonde braid swished, opposite to Piper's short cut black hair. She built everything in this city, if not designed it at the least. All Piper was doing was building a pot. Now you must think, Rosemary's really nice! She wouldn't do anything to her own sister! She'll just go and ask for tips. You will be wrong. Rosemary had been nice all her life. She did not know what this feeling what. After months of fatigue and hard-work, Rosemary finally cracked, and as most humans do, decided to take it out on someone else.

The three sisters' mother was the former queen and the most popular person you would have ever known (Excpet if BTS had been alive then, I bet my life she would've been second-popular). She had beauty, smarts, kindness and cunning. Tatianna had obtained beauty, Piper had obtained smarts, and Rosemary had kindness, but all of then had cunning. Rosemary just had a bit more. She devised a plan.

The next day, she went up to Piper, and started an amiable conversation, her heart trying to break free of the hatred as Piper truly thought Rosemary was being nice to her. But Rosemary went thruogh with the plan. A part of her brain had shut down.
Rosemary suddenly asked Piper ‘Can you bring a pot please? I wnat to collect water with you.’
Piper was delighted. Her sister had recognized her, and as a youngest child, that was big. Honestly, I'm an older child, so I really don't know, but I'm pretty sure that's what goes through their head.
Piper bent down to collect water. When she found a fish in the pot, she threw the water back in the stream so that the fish could live. This happened everytime she picked up a pot of water, and she let it go each time, no matter how tiring. The same fish was caught everytime, and was delighted to see a human acting so kind. Rosemary only realized this after she pushed Piper into the stream, and instantly regreted it. The stream was shallow, so Piper didn't make it out. The fish looked at her, and Rosemary suddenly felt very guilty. She ran away, sobbing. The fish was devastated. He prayed to Poseidon, the lord of the seas. Poseidon converted Piper into a constelation, and called her Aquarius, the water bearer (and between the sea kingdom, the fish friend.) The fish convereted himself as Peices, and stayed next to Aquarius.

A few months later, Rosemary saw the constellation, and knew what had happened. She prayed to the gods to forgive her, and started crying in the middle of the Town Square. No one understood why, because she didn't tell anyone. She wanted the gods to end her for her cruelty.
Zues took pity on her. He turned her into Virgo. This is why, Virgos and Aquarius in real life, though very different, get along as good friends.

JUST DONI'T HATE ON VIRG'S NOW, OK?

206 words -

''Stay low-'' she said quietly, straightening up slightly, her head bent low so as not to be spotted by her prey. She didn't want to startle it after all, or there would be nothing for her family to eat. But she never did, she had done this for years, and had never been seen yet. Evelyn wasn't about to start now.

Ducking and swerving through the undergrowth, she listened intently for any sounds that would signal the closness of what she was searching for. Onwards she travelled, occasionally jogging lightly to keep up, her eagle flying low to the ground beside her. And then, she spotted it, in a sun dappled clearing. A deer, wide eyed, stared back at her, and she approached with caution. Slow, steady footsteps towards it, preparing herself for what she knew she had to do, even though she'd done it countless times.

It didn't take that long. It didn't take more than a few minutes, after all the years of hunting she had done. So, with the heavy deer slung across her shoulders, she began to retreat home.

''I know, it's getting dark. It won't take long to get home anyway.'' Evelyn looked at her eagle meaningfully, petting it's feathers gently.

constellation daily - 353 words

Andromeda was once the princess of Prisluake. Prisluake was a sorrowful kingdom; its streets filled with ashes and burden. The agony filled the air of the wars once lost. Severely in debt, many Prisluakers were thrown in prison. Andromeda's family was already gone. She was the only royal, and she had no clue what to do with Prisluake - she had absolutely no power anyways, she was just a princess. And nobody wanted her to be the queen. Andromeda was only 13 at the time, an age unfit for a queen, the commoners said. But who were they to talk?

However, throughout the years, Prisluake got desperate. Thieves roamed around the area, perhaps by the enemy countries near them. Archina and Frogale were sworn enemies to Prisluake, addressed by fathers truly, their deceased king. Their relationship would never fix. Prisluake begged Andromeda to become their queen at once, just 2 years later at 15. “A suitable age” they now claimed, though Andromeda wouldn't hear it. Did she have any power against the enemy countries around her?

Andromeda finally retreated into their cries however, sitting on the throne. She released everyone from prison immediately, gave everyone jobs, and helped the homeless on the streets. Everyone adored her; but the neighboring countries hated this change.

They kidnapped Andromeda immediately, spitting curses about her father. It amused Andromeda how they still held grudges even though the man was dead; shouldn't they be happy? Alas, her thoughts were entirely wrong. Prisluake was still a country to hate, and the relatives of Andromeda's father dead. Prisluake would be broken immediately after she was killed, which was the plan all along. Prisluake should be put in their place; Archina and Frogale should be the aspiring ones. Andromeda soon sensed she was about to be killed; she spit curses at the kidnappers and begged them to keep out of Prisluake. Soon they killed her; no guilt involved. Her soul was to be sent up high, and she was proven worthy of being her own constellation. Now she still looks down at her fellow kingdom, guiding it through hardships, helping it grow.

Her eagle squawked in protest, but she was able to get it to quiet down with a couple of gentle words. “Hush. It’ll all be fine. I’ll even give you a treat later, how does that sound?”
She moved swiftly through the woodlands, keeping to the shadows as to not be seen. The occasional twigs and leaves rustled beneath her feet, but it sounded no different from the movement of a small mammal’s.

Evelyn emerged into the light, exhaling with relief. She could never escape from the thrill, no matter how many times she lived it over. Her path was slow and steady now - nothing more against her besides the weight of the deer on her shoulders.

Or so she thought. To the right came the sound of voices - deep and scratchy, by no means friendly. With a strangled gasp, Evelyn dove behind a rock. She grabbed her eagle by the neck and forced it down next to her. Incredibly, it stayed silent.
“Did you hear—”
“Probably nothing—”
“Need to capture—”
Evelyn shrank further away, until the source of the voices were a safe distance away. Then, she sprinted as fast as she could across the empty grasslands.

“That was close,” she whispered, brushing her hair behind her ears. In all her years of hunting, nothing like this had ever happened - unfortunately, it meant terrible things. She and her eagle were okay right now. She would just have to be more alert, from now on.
248 words

constellation daily

warning this story is about war

This is the tale that the grandmothers tell the children when they ask how the constellation Pictor came to be.


Zekurji was a young boy who grew up in a city that time has long since forgotten the name of. But in that time, they were known for their militaristic strength and so when Zekurji came of age at ten years old, his father made him train to be a soldier. But Zekurji was a gentle boy and this training was not for him. He tried his hardest because he wanted to make his family proud. Maybe if he trained harder he would learn to like it more. But after one year, he couldn’t bear it any longer and in the dead of night he ran away, using the stars to guide him. He came home and found that his father had died in an accident with a donkey cart. Zekurji begged his mother to stay home. She was sympathetic, but she was very firm in telling him to go back. Zekurji didn’t want to disappoint his mother, so he headed back, but on the way he got distracted by a man painting at an easel. The painting was a beautiful picture of a warrior and his horse and dog. Zekurji had never seen war for all the wars his city fought were elsewhere, but he knew that the painting was beautiful and that you could see many emotions in the different subjects of the painting.
“Were you in the war?” he asked the old man
He smiled sadly. “The man that I was fought in that war. I lost him in that war too. I hope that by painting him I can find him again, but the war destroys everything in its path.”
They talked for hours about war, about what the world would be like if artists, poets, philosophers, and anyone else like that would be taken more seriously. And then nervously, Zekurji asked to learn how to paint. So the old man brought him to a beautiful spot in a field and taught him how to see the world as an artist and he taught him how to paint. Zekurji and the old man became fast friends, but after they had spent a week together, the old man told him he needed to go home and see his family. Zekurji remembered then that he had to go back to the training school.
When he got there he was punished for deserting, but accepted back into training. He hated it, but he tried his best and every chance he got,he would make paints and he would paint a more beautiful world that he imagined. He also made himself an easel to have an easier time painting. The other students at the school soon found out about this and came to him to ask him to paint certain things such as their families whom they missed, or a pretty flower to cheer them up in the winter.
When Zekurji was fourteen he was thrown into a war across the wide river. He snuck some paints in his pack to see what he could paint while he was there. The old man had been right. The war was horrible and Zekurji thought he understood what it meant to lose who you were after only two days at war. Zekurji hated fighting, he couldn’t bear the bl**dshed, but he knew he had to defend his friends. Every night he came back to the camp he cried. The war raged on for ten years and Zekurji painted all the horrors he could to hopefully show the world why they needed to work toward less war. His general found the paintings one day and he was enraged. He destroyed all the paintings and he forced Zekurji to leave. No longer under the protection of the camp, Zekurji tried to go back home, but he was caught in the crossfire of the war and died. That night a new constellation appeared in the sky. Zekurji’s easel to show the world to contribute to beauty and peace and not to the horrors of war.

atmosphere and setting daily

Abandoned city in the caves of a canyon

partner: https://scratch.mit.edu/users/seIkie-/

The sun beats down from a cloudless sky. From the top of the shining golden cliffs, everything looked tiny. Up here, even eagles fly below and they fly down to the river in the canyon to snatch a fish because life still thrived. The life that does thrive here, has to be tough. Grasses are short and spiky to deter most animals from eating them though a few small deerlike creatures with tough lips graze on them. Similar looking to the deer, are the antelope who make their way down the rocky cliffs, past sturdy, oddly shaped trees whose roots broke the laws of physics to cling to that cliff. This canyon is a place of resilience and according to my grandmother, it is the land our people came from, but now they are all gone. I check my rope is tied securely and slowly make my descent down, though my hands burn by the end of ut and my muscles ache. I pass old rope bridges connecting small ledges of the canyon and various caves. Once upon a time my grandmother said these rope bridges were magnificent, but now most of them are falling apart. Some you can barely recognize anymore, they’re just a bit of rope now. Standing near the edge of the river now, which is little more than a trickle because of the Summer Drought, I am the tiny one now. When I step into the cave I feel my body temperature drop and a layer of ice form over my bones. It’s dark now and I can only rely on my flashlight to illuminate a couple feet ahead of me and so I walk tentatively. It feels like a giant stone mouth in here, with stalactites and stalagmites instead of teeth. I should leave, but I steel my nerves and go in further, looking around. That brown shard of clay there may have once been a pot. That fraying, moth eaten material may have once been a dress. That flat stone slab is still carved in a way that suggests it was a game. All of these things conjure up images in my head of the people who had once lived here, though it is hardly enough for me to get any real idea. As I find myself nearing an underground lake, I see the first bones. Human bones, covered in teeth marks. At the lake, I find the boats. Some of these ancient canoes are rotting with age, others are broken on the sharp rocks, as if there was a shipwreck. Everything is dark, and eerie. The only sound is the lake lapping at the stones, the water dripping from the stalactites. There are no signs anyone has lived here since the people. What happened to them? I wonder. And then I shine my flashlight on the walls of the cave and I see the paintings and perhaps the first warning and I know I must run. But when the voice in the cave speaks, I feel my legs as if they have turned to stone. This is what happened to the people of The Canyon. This is what is about to happen to me too.

532 words

Reflection:

Both of our descriptions had ways in which magic was suggested but I think mine was done in a more cryptic and eldritch way. Mine was much more eerie and his seemed more vibrant and full of life at first. He described his as a sort of metropolis with canyon walls seeming to form skyscrapers. Mine was small signs of human life from long ago found inside of a dark network of caves that is likened to the mouth of a giant monster. I think mine is more eerie and chilling on the surface level, especially in my depictions of the caves, the bones, the rope bridges falling apart, the implications of a monster at the end, etc..but I think his was also eerie because it seems like: once this city was thriving, and then suddenly everyone in this city was either dead or had disappeared. Both of us had places where bodies of water were focused on but while he focused on the importance of this water, I mostly talked about what was happening near it. His was also a much more powerful river whereas mine was hardly a trickle which is hyperbole yes, but still. Both of us described the canyon walls and the sun beating down and since we are both citizens of the USA I wonder if we were both thinking of the Grand Canyon at least partially for this. I think one important difference is that his seems almost like a report of the canyon, and mine is more obviously told from a character’s perspective as she makes her journey into the canyon.




270 words

Nickname- Ava
Content- Weekly #4th
Cabin - Horror

LET'S GET STARTED

Challenge 1- Come up with 3 characters for the weekly and write at least 100 words about each of them. (By moss)

Ava- the detective. Ava is usually very smart- but only when it comes to a thing she likes. When it's a boring thing she has to focus upon like studying for her final exams or watching a detective show where everyone already knows who the culprit is, her ADHD and OCD kick in. Her pros- incredibly intellectual, good leader, and a great friend. Cons? Gets bored way too easily, is impatient, and does have a bit of jealousy in her systems. You do not want to be say something rude about her when she's agitated- you won't live to see tomorrow from outside of the hospital. (105)

Marbles- The sidekick. Most sidekicks are side characters who do nothing except help the main character and are their best friends, but not Marbles. Marbles and Ava hated each other, and they still do. The office forced them to work together, forced them to work on the same case and forced them to work in the same department. Ava would have rather died, but for the sake of their jobs, they had to put up with it. No one said they had to be nice to each other, though. In whatever opportunity Marbles gets, he makes fun of Ava or teases her. Ava teases him right back because of his name. The office isn't very happy with the upturned desks. (119)

Twi and Lax- Supporting characters. They are twins who don't look like each other at all, but have the same splitting-image personality. Both are extremely chaotic and disorganized. They both love reading but prefer writing more, have a weird obsession for the same books, and love talking at the top of their voices. Twi pops out of nowhere and is everywhere you go, while Lax pops up just before you're about to forget her. They're not all play though- they are incredible empaths. If you're feeling sad or down, just rely on Twi or Lax to cheer you up. Ava is living proof. (100)

Challenge 2- Describe the mystery in your story in about 150 words. (By alia)
Word count- 235/150

Iris sat on the grass with her hands on her face as she cried. The view was ironic, really. The valleys behind her were almost glowing with the sunshine that fell on the dewdrops on flowers and leaves. The bright orb in the sky was hidden just behind the clouds in the right way, making it a cool summer day. The snow-capped mountains glistened with pride. Iris would have looked up and glared at the sky if she had not been so grief struck with the sight in front of her. She shakily pulled her phone out of the pocket in her palazzos and called up Ava.
“Hey, what's up?” Ava said cheerfully, before sensing in a second something was amiss. “Hey, Iris, what's wrong? IRIS ARE YOU CRYING?! Wait I'm coming- please don't cry, please don't cry, what happened?” Ava rushed to the door with the phone between her head and shoulder as she tugged on her shoes.
“Ava?” Iris said with a shaky voice, dreading breaking the news to her friend.
Ava nodded as she got on her bike. ‘'Yes Iris? Tell me, Tell me what happened. I’ll be right there.“
Iris whimpered and looked at the mountains from her backyard, which was quite huge. She closed her eyes before looking back to the body which lay on the floor next to her feet.
”A-A-A-“ Iris struggled with words.
”A-Ava, B-B-Birdi is dead."

Challenge 3- In the next 350 words, give a few clues which are important (by starr)
Word count- 668/350

Birdi screamed as she slid down the waterslide, getting pushed by Ava. Iris hesitantly followed while Marbles sulked in the corner. Twi and Lax had accidentally gone to the wrong slide- nobody had the mental capacity to drag them to the correct one.
Ava screamed, but not in fright like Birdi did. She screamed in delight at the air blowing in her face. Birdi reached the bottom with a shivering body full of fright while Iris was a bit more composed.
“We're going to do this every year.” Ava said happily. “Oh hell nah.” Birdi said, swimming away from her. “But this water park is a sign of our FRIENDSHIP!” Ava screeched. Iris decided to solve the problem calmly. “We'll go to the beach every year, ok?” “That's not the same though!!!” Ava said. Birdi sighed and swam up to her again. “We don't need a reunion, Ava/” she smiled. “We'll be best friends anyways.”
“YES WE WILL” Twi and Lax jumped into the pool and Lax declared, “BEST FRIENDS UNTIL WE DIE!”
Ava smiled ruefully. “Alright, now let's go get some ice cream.”

The funeral was sad. That was all that could be said before the others broke into tears.
Ava held Iris while she sobbed, barely restricting her own. Twi and Lax were already bawling, being the loudest thing in the gathering.
Ava had requested a special type of send away. In Hinduism or Zoroastrianism, you burn the body so that the coffin doesn't affect the ground and the body goes back to nature. Ava knew that Birdi would have wanted that too.
When the body under the white sheet got a flame touched to it, Ava gathered Iris, Twi and Lax to her and let them cry in her embrace. Ava couldn't cry. She was the pillar of the support, the one who needed to be there for the others. The worst thing about being that pillar was when you needed someone, nobody was there.

The dastur* who had lit Birdi's body was a new one. Ava had been to this agyari** a million times, and Ava always knew who was who and who was new. She narrowed her eyes at the dastur when he seemingly stumbled in the prayers. Dasturs were trained for as long as it took for them to memorize the prayers so perfectly they could start from the middle of the verse and continue it without hesitation. What made Ava even more suspicious was that specific tattoo on the back of his palm.

A sun.

Not only was the tattoo an inconvenience, dasturs were meant to be pure. Ava had not once seen a dastur with a tattoo. It seemed ridiculous to think about itself.

Ava could not help but feel a throbbing sensation as the thoughts clicked around her head. She was a detective, what was she meant to do?

Even Marbles had come to the burning. Marbles had not been the best of friends to either of them, but the whole class had been invited to the ceremony, and nobody had the heart to turn down the request. Birdi was a friend of everyone, whether they were younger, older or hated her. Twi had actually rushed out of her presentation the moment she had heard the news. She would have gotten fired if her boss hadn't known what a loss felt like.

When the dastur caught Ava's eyes, he looked away. The white cloth around his mouth was safety pined to his hat. Ava wanted to shout “INCREDULOUS,” but kept silent.

No, this didn't seem like a real dastur at all.

But Ava had no mental capacity to think about it right now. One of her greatest friends had died, and the others needed comforting, not suspicious thought crawling into their head. So Ava pushed the thoughts away, far back into her head, just after noticing one more thing.

Why did the dastur forget a verse of the prayer?

*Dastur- A Zoroastrian priest.
**Agyari- A Zoroastrian temple.


Challenge 4- Build pressure in the next 300 words. By lio
Wordcount- 634/300

Lax. Lax was the one who was the most emotionally hit person.
Not Twi, even though she was the one who had run all the way from her office to here.
Not Ava, even though she single handedly dealt with the situation.
Not even Iris who had seen the dead body just outside of her backyard.

“Lax, no.” Birdi said, pulling away the lighter from her. Lax pouted. Ava whined with her. “but fire is so coooooL!”
“It'll burn you, Lax,” Birdi said, ignoring Ava, knowing she wouldn't win a debate with her. “You don't want to stay home from school do you?”
Lax loved school, literally. A way to escape home, to be with friends.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAX!!” The kids screamed as Lax entered the class on her eighteenth birthday. “I guess you're 18 now,” the class pervert said. Someone put a hand on his mouth and dragged him away.

“Here you go!!” Birdi visited from the other class, scaring Lax from behind. In college for their freshmen year, the students were devastated to hear that Birdi would be in the opposite class. Lax grinned as she took the present from Birdi's hand and opened it. It was a lighter. Lax switched it on, feeling the warmth of the fire. “If you burn your house down, you can't come to mine.” Iris said, raising her hands as the students giggled.

Lax had spoken with Birdi just a day before she had died. ‘You HAVE to come to my birthday in five days, ok?“ ”Yes I will Lax, go to sleep it’s two in the morning.“ ”Bye Birdi!!“
The had spoken so cheerfully. Lax would have certainly held on to that phone call if she had known what would be happening in the next five hours.

”I'm so sorry,“ Lax whispered to them as Ava drove them to her house. ”I should have gone to her house, I should have been with her-“

”Don't spiral.“ Twi warned Lax softly and put her head in her lap.

Ava reached her house and made them all lie down and go to sleep. They needed it. All of them had been awake the whole night crying their eyes out. But Ava didn't sleep. After Twi and Iris were asleep in the master bedroom and Lax in the guest one who needed some space, Ava crept out to her office where she met Marbles.

”What the hell are you doing here,“ Ava said as she poured herself a cup of coffee to keep herself awake. ”Same goes for you.“ Marbles snarled back.
”I'm working on her murder case.“ Ava said as she sat down on her table and opened her laptop. ”Who, Birdi? Who told you that was a murder case-“ Marbles said with a face before getting cut off.

”Did you see the body?“

Silence.

”Sit your $$$ down and help me idiot.“ Ava told him and Marbles sulkily joined her.

”It has to be a murder case.“ Ava reasoned. ”Where was the weapon you crazy woman?“ Marbles rolled his eyes. Ava froze and stared at Marbles and the drank her coffee cup in one go before saying, ”Well, you're not 100% dumb after all. Come on, we're going to the crime scene.“

”WHAT?! BUT I JUST GOT MY DONU-“

”Out in five minutes or I'm telling them you skipped five days because you were on vacation without asking.“

Marbles groaned as he stuffed the whole donut in his mouth without being able to savor it and walked out the door. ”Good, you had two seconds left,“ Ava who was leaning against the doorframe said. When she turned around, Marbles mimicked her rudely.

”Where are we even going?“ Marbles wailed in the car. Ava's answer made him sit up straight.
”The place where Birdi was killed."

Challenge 5- Withhold information till the very end in 300 words. (by soki)
Wordcount- 501/300

A shovel

That was it.

Ava groaned in frustration as she searched the garden for the third time, almost tearing the tree down as she searched from all sides. Marbles watched from the side, enjoying the frustration Ava was feeling until she glared at him, signaling him to help. “If we fail this murder case and whoever murdered Birdi gets away, I'm firing you.” Marble snorted. “You can't do that.”

“Who's your senior department manager?”
“Tylor of course.”
“Tylor left a month ago.”
“Then the next experienced person would be the manager, right? Which means-” Marbles started to mock think before facing Ava, who had a smirk.

“Get searching.”
“Yes ma'am.”

At the end, the search was fruitful. Ava did not know whether to feel happy or sad.
“A-A bullet.” Marbles said, trying not to lose his marbles. He had never really worked on a real investigation before, and neither had Ava.
“WHAT KIND?!” Ava howled, racing up there. “YOU'RE THE GUN EXPERT, TELL ME.”
“WHO SAID I WAS THE GUN EXPERT,” Marbles screeched back. “I-I-It looks like a-” he pushed his glasses up his nose before Ava shoutd.
“TELL ME YOU IDIOT.”
“I'M THINKINIG IDIOT.”
“DON'T CALL ME IDIOT.”

“WHO'S THERE?” A male voice shouted from inside Iris's house. Ava and Marbles looked at each other in fright and hid in the bushes, barely fitting.

"Oww, your shoe is on my neck!"
“SHH!”

They could hear the man's footsteps, and Ava saw who it was. Fear suddenly closed up on her, making it hard for her to breathe. Marbles noticed, and as much as he hated Ava, he couldn't just let her hyperventilate and die or whatever.

“S-Are you ok?” Marbles asked, and Ava nodded, putting a finger to her lips, signaling him to be quiet. The man was approaching closer, and Ava could hear it. How shameful it was for two twenty-one year old's to hide in a bush like children. “Good god,” they heard the man sigh. “Hey, why is this shovel here? It was supposed to be next to the tree-” Marbles suddenly widened his eyes in fear. What if he suspected someone was investigating the house?

“Dang, it really was windy in the morning,” the man chuckled as he placed it back next to tree. As soon as Ava heard the click of the door, she counted to ten and then peeped her ear out for any motion or breathing sounds.
“Come on,” she said, getting out of the bush and quietly running to her car. Marbles followed. “What happened to you there?” he asked, to which Ava whimpered, “I knew who he was.”

Marbles got into the car with a confused expression. “What do you mean? Tell me!” “I will, but first let's get out of here. It's lucky he didn't notice the car.” Ava reasoned as she drove away. As soon as they reached the office again, Marbles immediately questioned, “Who the hell was that?”
Ava shivered before answering-
“It was the dastur”

Challenge 6- Raise the emotions and the stake in 300 words. (by zai)
Wordcount- 801/300

It had been two hours since Ava had continuously worked on her laptop while the forensics department worked on the bullet. Marbles tried to approach her once more,

“A-A-Ava, are you alrig-”
“Why do you care,” she snarled back at him, not taking her eyes off the screen. Marbles retreated, but decided to slyly see what she was doing on the laptop. He stood up to go to the coffee machine which was behind the seat in which Ava was sitting in it. He got a glance of the browser name, but wasn't able to read it properly.

www.casesabout

Before Marbles could finish reading the whole thing, Ava shut her laptop and said out loud, “Staring at someone else's screen is rude.”
Marbles became red. “W-W-What do you mean?” dang it Marbles, why did you stutter?
“What do you even want dum-” Ava bit her tongue and stopped herself from cursing. Marbles was staring at the doorway. It was Tylor.
“Tylor?” Marbles asked. “What are you doing here?” Ava said coldly. Everyone knew the story between Ava and Tylor. The cousins who hated each other. Tylor had done something to her, and she had never forgiven him…

“What the hell is your problem?” he spat at Ava. She hissed back. Marbles felt like sitting back and enjoying some drama when Tylor turned to him.

“Are you Christian?”

Marbles spluttered and Ava glared at Tylor. “YOU RUDE IDIOT, GET OUT OF MY OFFICE.” Tylor raised his hands. “Hey, it's from the forensics department.” Ava gave him an unimpressed look. “Seriously? Forensics wants to know someone's religion? How bad of a liar can you be?”

Tylor sighed. “I need it for something, ok? It's just really private-”
“Just how trapping me in a cage for fun in a basement with no food and water for two days was private?” Ava snarled, looking purposefully at Marbles, and then giving a dirty glare to Tylor which said “Oops, not a secret anymore.”

Marbles gasped in disgust. He spluttered and grasped for words once again. “B-H-P-W-D-What?!” He stared at Tylor, who had once been a close friend of his. Tylor stared at Ava alarmed, and started to walk backward when Marbles said, “Oh hell nah, you're staying right here.” Tylor stopped and looked at Marbles, disconnecting his staring contest with Ava. “What do you want, Junior?” he said, as if he was tired of socializing with people younger than him.

Marbles gave one of the finest glares in human history to Tylor. “Sit your $$$ down,” he said, and Ava felt an odd distinction that he was copying her words.

After a few minutes of shouting and insulting Tylor he lolled his head back in annoyance. “I'm out of here-” Ava smirked evilly when Tylor noticed his hand were tied with a zip lock. “Please, I can get out of this in five seconds-” Tylor fumbled when he realized there was no opener. “W-WHAT?!”

Ava smiled, making chills go down Marbles's back. “Only I can cut you out,” she said, holding the opener which she had miraculously taken out of the zip lock and a small pocket knife. She pointed the knife to his neck and growled, “speak.”

Tylor must have been really scared of being stuck in a chair his whole life because he mumbled out immediately. Marbles looked at him with feigned ignorance. “Could you repeat that again?”
“The dastur asked, ok?” Tylor blurted out and looked at Ava, who was stunned. “NOW LET ME FREE.”

When Tylor dashed out of the office, Ava slumped down on her chair and put her hand in her head. If she was alone, she would have probably broken down right there and then, but decided to maintain some self-dignity.
“Birdi is dead.” she said, straight out loud. marbles froze and walked up to her. “Birdi is dead, she is gone. I need to find who did this. They can't just, They can't-” a pause- “I can't let them go. I have to catch them. I need to hunt them down and murder them with my own hands.” Marbles was about to say something about the law but decided to stop himself for his life. “What even does a dastur do anyways?”

'A dastur is pure, Marbles.“ she said. Marble had never heard her say his name without annoyance before. ‘If a dastur is helping someone, or is”- she chocked - “o-or is the murderer himself, who can I trust anymore?”

Marbles grimly smiled and sat down next to Ava. “Iris,” he said, making Ava look at him. “Lax and Twi.” he continued, making Ava sit up straighter, remembering her friends. “And me.” Ava looked at him with a “are-you-serious-bro” face and then made a copy of his grim smile before opening her laptop. “Let’s get to work, ok?”

Challenge 7- Outline the fast pacing in 100 words and then write it in 300 (by rea)
Wordcount- 627/300

(SPOILERRR) Outline- Ava finds an important piece of evidence, but just as she is about to find it, her friends call telling her they knew she had been out the whole time. When Ava tells them that she was in the office, they say they were coming there. The problem was, they didn't know that Marbles worked there too, so Ava forced him to get out. Unfortunately, he spilled coffee and broke his glasses, causing extra work and a near-sighted vision. Ava got him out at the end. It was too late, though. Twi is basically a racer, and she reaches so fast that Lax catches Marbles. (105)

Three hours in the office was all it took for Ava to find clues. Honestly, she thought it would take longer.
Three hours her friends had been asleep. Honestly, she thought it would have been shorter.

Ava had shouted in triumph and ran to Marbles to pour out her idea when her phone rang and startled both of them. She picked it up and realized it was her friends who had woken up and wondered where she had gone. Ava said that she had come to the office just fifteen minutes ago, lying so that they didn't feel bad about being left alone. But they had seen through her lie.

'Liar, we've been awake for the last two hours,“ Lax said from the side. Though Iris was holding the phone, it was on speaker, so they could hear what Ava said.
”Where are you,“ Twi asked angrily.

”I'm searching for Birdi's murderer,“ Ava said, closing her eyes and biting her bottom lip, waiting for an answer.
”Good,“ Iris said. Ava did not expect that.
”I'm coming there too.“
”WAIT WAIT WAIT“ Ava said, suddenly eyeing Marbles. The truth was, her friends didn't actually know Marbles was working with her. They knew he was part of crime investigation, but not in the same office as Ava. If they found out, she would never hear the end of the teasing about some boy who she wanted to actually murder. Marbles seemed to have understood what Ava said with her eyes-
”Run. I'll buy you time.“

Marble swallowed his donut whole for the second time that day and started to pack up his papers in panic.
”B-But you don't even know where my office is!!“ Ava said nervously.
”Fxxxxxxx street, 12xx building, 3rd floor is room number 168,“ Iris said by heart. Ava facepalmed.

Marbles started to put on his cardigan when he knocked his coffee off the table. Ava glared at him, knowing her friends wouldn't believe that she had dropped coffee and wasted it. ”CLEAN IT.“ She mouthed to him and he took three tissues in his hand and started to clean it at lightning speed.

”I'm in the car, who's driving?“ you heard Iris telling your friends and Twi piped up, ”ME!“

Oh frick. Twi is like some unearthly racer driver.

”NO NO NO- Er, why are you coming here?“ Ava tried to calm down. ”It's fine, I was about to head home anyways!!“ She glared at Marbles. He stuck his tongue out and started to pack his computer, which he had forgotten on the table. He slammed into the wall in a hurry to get to the door, and when he stepped back his glasses fell of his nose onto the floor.

CRACK.

”YOU A-“ Ava started to say but then remembered she was on a call. Marbles didn't even need to be told to clean it up, but it was pretty hard considering his sight was limited. ”Ouch!“ he shrieked when a small shard of glass went into his sock, and Ava put the phone on speaker so she could help Marbles clean up. ”Who got hurt?“ Lax asked, apparently hearing Marbles's ‘ouch.’ Ava internally cursed. ”ITS NOTHING,“ her voice went up an octave as the glass was quickly put into a bag.

The color drained Ava's face as she saw the car outside the window. ”I'm here!!“ Twi said happily. ”Twi, why don't you change your carrier to professional racer?“ Ava nervously chuckled. ”GO GO GO“ she whispered at Marbles urgently. He nodded and searched for the door with his hands. Ava grabbed him and pushed him to the door, slamming it.

Too late.

”Hey, why is Marbles coming out of your office Ava?" Lax asked as Marbles covered his near-sighted eyes.

Frick.

Challenge 8- Write 100 words of foreshadowing and 300 words of the plot twist. (by penguin)
Wordcount- 601/400 (probably 150 words of foreshadowing)

“I-” Ava was for once in her life at a loss of words, which gave Iris a very satisfying ‘click’ in her brain.
“AVA AND MARBLES SITTING IN A TR-” Lax started before Ava gave her a warning ninja slap on her neck to which she half passed out.
“No.” Ava said simply. “I hate him. He hates me. I would rather vomit and kill myself.” “Agreed.” added Marbles, who had searched his case and found an extra pare of glasses tucked away the bottom.

“Let's avoid that topic right now,” Iris said. “What evidence have you found?”
“I've found nothing yet,” Ava admitted. “But I did find some clues.”
“TELL US.” Lax said drowsily, recovering from her ninja-slap.
“Well, here-” Ava moved her computer so it was in everyone's line of sight. Marbles could see the link clearly now-

www.casesaboutgangsters.com

“What's this?” Iris asked, furrowing her eyebrows. Ava sighed. “You might not like what you see.”

Ava clicked a few pictures and reached one of a buff man with a beard. If this was a TV show, Twi and Ava would have giggled and said ‘Boris’ with a Russian accent.
The thing was, it wasn't.

“This,” Ava pointed at the back of the Man's hand. “This, is a tattoo.”

“Wow, what a genius,” Marbles rolled his eyes. Ava glared at him.

“The tattoo shows a specific thing,” Ava continued. “Do you know what this is?”
They shook their heads.

Ava zoomed in and out of the picture until the right angle was shown.

“A sun.”

“So?” Iris asked, clearly unimpressed.

“Shut up,” Ava deadpanned her. “I'm giving you the clues.”
“Rude,” Iris folded her hands.

“This sun is a mark for a specific notorious gang.” Ava said. “The coronas.”
“Like, the virus?-”
“No Marbles, corona means sun, have you not watched Rapunzel?”
“Um, no?”
“Good. I have more gloating to do now.”

Marbles gave her a dirty look as she continued.

“The coronas have no reason to kill. They simple do it for fun. Like killing animals is a sport, they-” Ava stopped as she saw Lax shivering, still probably grief struck at the words. “Twi, lead your twin outside,” Ava said gently as Twi guided Lax out of the door to go for a walk.

Ava cleared her door, not wanting Marbles to see her vulnerable side. He would definitely have dirt on her then.

“This sign, the corona,” she said. “I saw it somewhere before. I'll tell you about that later, though.”

“OH MY GOD STOP FORESHADOWING AND GET TO THE POINT ALREADY.” Iris glared at me as I glared at her back.

“The coronas have killed over one thousand people just for fun, but only one for revenge- A stupid kind of revenge. The boy had insulted one of the people in the gang- the leader- when he was in HIGH SCHOOL.”

Marbles muttered, “Definitely a Cancer.” Ava glared at him. “WHAT?!” he asked.

“The boy got killed just outside his house. But yesterday, I updated the report. I said they had killed two people out of vengeance.”

“Get to the f-” Iris started but got cut off by Ava. ‘Birdi.“
Iris froze and tried to stop herself from shivering like lax. A way to deal with pain for Iris was to be slightly mean- she hated it, but bringing out her fear on someone else helped her calm down. She hated herself after she had recovered of the fear.

”This, is the leader of the gang.“ Ava clicked another picture.
”WHAT THE-“ Marbles started but then got cut off by Iris raging.

”ZAINE?!’

Ava nodded. “Yup. Can you guess why?”

Iris stopped herself from breaking into angry sobs and Marbles stared blankly ahead. “Got it.” he said with low spirits.
“Zaine always came second, literally. He would come second in Math because of me, Second in Arts because of Iris, Second in Geography because of Lax, Second in English because of Ava and so on. But Birdi beat him not be one or two points, but by maybe twenty or twenty five. And she wouldn't gloat- she would laugh modestly and keep cheering Zaine up.”

“THEN WHAT WAS HIS PROBLEM.” Iris scream-whispered. Ava obliged. “Zaine joined this gang just a week after he graduated. he ran away from home and proved to everyone else that he was stronger. He even killed one of the gang members to prove his strength and capability. His first kill- Greyam John. The previous gang leader. The gang reveres him and does not dare to say anything to him.”

“Zaine hates being degraded. He killed of Birdi because for some reason, she made him feel worthless.” Ava reasoned. Iris was basically fuming by now. “Why aren't you ANGRY?!” she shouted at Ava. Ava looked back at her with a glint in her eyes. “Oh trust me Iris, I am.” Iris pursed her lips together and watched the computer with a small red tint around her eyes blocking her vision.

“I think it's because she never admitted she was better.” Marbles thought out loud. “He wanted to feel sad and angry at that point, but Birdi used to say things like ‘Cheer up! You’re much better in other things” or “Don't worry, I bet you'll beat me next time.” and it made him feel more furious. He probably thought it was her way to gloat. He's a madman. Why should you be angry when someone comforts you?“

Iris spat a curse word and Ava looked at her. ”My exact thoughts, Iris.“

”We're hunting him down.“ Iris quivered. ”We're killing him, I'M killing him with my bare hands-“

Ava went close to her and hugged her. ”Woah, if you become angry, who's going to be the sensible one with us?“ Iris broke down into tears for the millionth time that day, and Ava held onto her until she stopped crying.

”Let's go find him.“ Marbles said, determined. ”He's gotten away too many times.“

Ava nodded, agreeing.
”He's not getting away ever again."

Challenge 9- Write a satisfying conclusion in 100 but leave a few lose threads. (by luna)
Wordcount- 1111/100

“Here he is,” Ava says through the extremely low-voiced walkie-talkie. This was a filter put on so that it wasn't loud and didn't alert Zaine.

That's a pity, Marbles thought to himself as he remembered Zaine in his mind. He really was a good writer, he could have become an author.

“Marbles are you there?” Ava asked through the walkie-talkie when she didn't get a reply. Marble fumbled and pressed the correct button. “Sorry, I pressed the wrong button.” He could hear Ava tittering through the speaker.

“Iris, do you have the team with you?” Ava asked, and Iris replied, “Yes. They are armed and have a warrant.”
Iris had collected the whole police offense section except a few who might have to go for urgent emergencies with the order Ava had given to her.

Marbles was in the car with the sniper. It was the first time he was holding a gun. He slowly crept out and went to the roof, where he told the panicked people to quietly evacuate. From the roof of the mall, he could see Iris's house in a clear view, along with Zaine who had just exited to the backyard from the backdoor and was doing some stretches. Marbles marked his point and was careful not to switch on his red dot yet.

Ava was hiding in the bushes- properly positioned this time. She had him in her line of sight even though he couldn't see him. Her face drained of color when he chuckled and went to a spot in the grass which was red.

Birdi's blood.

“You should have listened.” he chuckled. “I told you to stop comforting me. Look what happened to you now.” he shook his head. “I wasn't supposed to kill you, you know. It was supposed to be Ava.” he chuckled. Iris sucked in a breath, not knowing what she would do if Zaine caught Ava and murdered her too.

“But I couldn't find her,” Zaine said, bored. “And you were right there in front of me. I directed all of my hate on you Birdi, I'm sorry I guess.” he shrugged. “If you were in heaven right now with me, I bet you would have said ”oH nO iTS FInE ZAiNE“” Zaine mimicking Birdi made Marbles's blood boil. Who could ever hate Birdi?

He kicked the grass. “I hate you.” he said, chuckling. “It's a good thing it was you anyways. I wasn't going to kill Iris- My cousin liked her and I didn't want to deal with annoying wailing from him.” Ava could feel Iris's disgusted face from the speaker even when she said nothing.

“Speaking of Iris,” Zaine's eyes suddenly locked onto the hedge where Iris and the police were waiting with bated breath. “Come out. I know you're alone.” The police widened their eyes, looking expectantly at the walkie-talkie, waiting for Ava's orders.

Ava whispered, “Do you trust me?” Iris's shaky voice answered back, “Yes.”

A few seconds later, Iris walked out from behind the hedge with totally feigned bravery. She stared defiantly at Zaine and did the habit she was glad she had at the point- take out her fear on someone else with hatred.

“Get the $$$$ out of my house, creep,” she snarled. Ava was glad that she had left Twi and Lax to monitor the cameras which they had hacked into of the gang's base to see if anyone was coming there to help. They would have shouted ‘SLAY’ and broken their cover.

'Why, Iris?' Zaine asked innocently. “Aren't I your friend?”

Iris answered, “It's not my fault your homeless, go take over someone else's house.”
Ava nodded and continued to speak comebacks into the ear piece which the police had given her last minute.
Marbles covered his mouth a submerged and ‘OHH’ which was dying to come out.

Zaine said, “I just called for help, my gang members will kidnapper you anytime now.”
“Bluff?” Ava asked Twi, who was monitoring each and every members' precise location. “Bluff.” Twi said, agreeing. “Lax, has the alarm been set in the hideout?” Lax, who was monitoring what was happening in the hideout and whether or not people got called, responded with her eyes on a guy who was chilling on a bean bag, “Definitely Bluff.”

“Bluff, you're really bad at lying Zaine,” Ava whispered to Iris through her ear piece.

“Bluff, you're really bad at lying Zaine,” Iris repeated, her head high as she stopped her legs from shaking. Who knew whether he had a gun?
The gun.
“Ask him about the bullets,” Ava urged. “tell him we know he has a gun.”

“We know what gun you have,” Iris lied through her teeth. Zaine chuckled. “No you don't, I stole the bullets from the forensics department.”
Iris stopped herself from crumbling on the spot. Her eyes conveyed the silent message- Deduct his gun.

“Colt Single Action Army,” Marbles blurted out, and Ava conveyed the message to Iris.

Zaine's face slightly flinched. “How did you know?”

Iris chuckled through her fear. “So you did shoot Birdi with that.”

Zaine smiled. “Of course! It was a pity she was coming to see you, I wouldn't have shot her otherwise.” The red dot switched on, and Zaine looked down in confusion.

Marbles wasn't going to shoot him- It was a distraction.

Ava urged the police, “ENOUGH CONFESSION RECORDED, PROCEED ATTACK.”

Zaine was stunned, which gave the police an extra five seconds before one of the, got shot in the shoulder with a pistol. Three went down, but Zaine got restraint the moment he tried to hit the constable.

Wrong move.

“What the- BUT YOU WERE ALONE!” Zaine howled. Iris did not try to give a snarky comment, but instead slumped to the floor shivering with fear. Ava stood up from the bush. Zaine gave her one sinister grin and whispered the words only audible to Ava, “I'm coming for you next.”

Ava ignored them and went to Iris, along with Marbles, Twi and Lax who ran up to them as fast as they could. They sat on the ground sobbing, sobbing out of hatred, out of fear, out of happiness, out of vengeance.

“I'm sorry she came to see me,” Iris cried. “It's not your fault,” Lax soothed.

“Let's go home,” Ava said, crying for the first time after Birdi's death.

“Yeah, let's go home.” they said as the hopped in the car and Ava drove them to her house once again.

“You're really a genius,” Lax chuckled in between sobs. “Only took you four days to launch this mission.”

Ava smiled as tears slid down her face. “Couldn't have done it without you.”


(can't upload picture since the link isn't working dang it ;_;)

Credits-
The last weekly omg ;_; I couldn't have written it without these amazing people-
Marbles
Iris
Lax
Twi
Zaine (IM SORRYYYYYYYYYY)
Birdi (IM REALLY SORRY-)

We'll meet you next session, happy writing and reading, and let's look forward to July!!

Proof for Word War - 393 words

A concussion is a type of brain injury that cannot visibly be seen through medical procedures such as x-rays, CT scans (Computed Tomography scan), as well as MRIs (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). This makes it an extremely harmful injury as without the proper treatment and diagnosis, concussions can prove to be fatal - just as it did to Rowan Stringer, resulting in Rowan’s Law. Although others can not visibly see that you have a concussion, you will be able to feel the effects and symptoms and seek help accordingly. To do so, it is first important to know how to recognize a concussion as well as some of the symptoms that correlate with concussions.

Common signs and/or symptoms of a concussion are further seperated into 4 categories: physical signs, emotional signs, cognitive (thinking) signs, as well as sleep-related signs. The following are some examples of symptoms that you potentially have a concussion: (physical signs) - headache, ringing in the ears, balance problems, blurred vision, (emotional signs) - irritability; getting upset easily, depression, sadness, nervous/anxious, (cognitive signs) - slower thinking, problems remembering, trouble focusing, feeling confused, (sleep-related signs) - sleeping more or less than usual, having trouble falling asleep. Now that we now some of the symptoms/signs of a concussion we should also learn about how people get concussions and what steps can be taken to prevent them from occurring.

Any type of blow to your head, neck, or face can result in a concussion - it may also be caused by a blow to your body if the force of the blow causes your brain to move inside of your skull. Since a concussion is an extremely serious injury, it is important to take proactive steps to prvent them when possible. Some ways to prevent concussions are by learning about them and how they are caused - once that is done, you should also look at safety precautions that can be taken to prevent concussions such as: making sure that your sports equipment is in good condition, ensuring that your equipment fits properly, respecting the rules of the sport you are playing (if any), following your school/sports club’s Concussion Code of Conduct, as well as reporting any injuriesto an adult that you trust (ei; a parent, coach, guardian, etc.).

Even though there are ways to prevent concussions, sometimes, it just “happens”. In that case it is pertinent

Horror: “The Showdown”

Prompt: “The Stars are Crying Tonight”
Word count: 240

The stars are crying tonight. From the pain, the sadness, that the world they have always looked upon. For it is no longer what it used to be. Over the last few hundred years, it has been exploited. And there is only one thing to blame: humans.

Humans have taken the Earth's resources, and used them, inconsiderate of the impacts of their actions. And after they realised what they did, they continued to do the same thing. Landfill sites, burning fossil fuels, mining from the ground. It was torturous for nature itself. It could do nothing as the world it cherished was burnt to a crisp, and everything it knew, everything it cared about, was lost.

The stars could only watch as the humans dug their own graves. They were looking for new ways into the future, ways that were beyond their eyes. But they failed to realise one thing: that the problems stopping this was right in front of their very noses.

There was no way anyone could stop them. They had already gone too far. The sea levels rose, the population rose, the animals dropped like flies. Sustainability was the only way out, but they didn't do it. The pure ignorance of the eight billion humans doomed them all.

But the stars could only watch in shame as their world was ripped apart by those who were supposed to cherish it. The stars would certainly be crying tonight.

weekly #4 - a smarllsy adventure on the high seas

4329 words total

whoo this was fun to write - if a little (a lot) tiring ajfksak

I'll include a list of characters at the start, and then the parts with how many words each they all were - and the full story at the end!

(tw: death, murder, blood)

characters (optional - it might just make it a bit easier to read)

The characters were all based on the picture cards in a deck of cards - apart from the main character (Ace, who's based on the Ace of Spades), the main character's sidekick (Locke, the Ace of Clubs - name explanation, I have this deck of cards where the clubs look like keyholes, so that's where thats from) and one other character (Rafflesia, Six of Hearts). (And a character I never ended up including, but would've been a three-legged cat called Joker who's based on the Joker.) The other character's are:

King of Spades - Mr. Arledge
Queen of Spades - Seraphina Arledge (the only queen who isn't the king/lord's wife - she's his daughter)
Jack of Spades - Jack Mercury (all the jacks (which are the king and queen's / lord and lady's servants) are named Jack - though most go by other names too)

King of Clubs - Lord Azure
Queen of Clubs - Lady Azure
Jack of Clubs - Jack Xenon

King of Diamonds - Lord Pantaleon
Queen of Diamonds - Ms Quince
Jack of Diamonds - Jack Pyrite

King of Hearts - Lord Alto
Queen of Hearts - Lady Belladonna
Jack of Hearts - Jack (the only Jack who doesn't go by another name too)




Main story - in weekly parts format



Part 1 - characters (389 words total)

(warning - spoilers!!)

Ace - the hero, main character and detective of the story. He and his friends are the only characters who aren’t rich lords and ladies or the rich people’s servants. He was mysteriously invited to the mansion for no apparent reason - until the mansion’s owner was found dead in the swimming pool, and he was needed to solve the case. He’s never met any of the suspects, but knows them from afar - and knows that they all have motives, and they all have secrets they would do anything to protect. He’s a smart detective that solves cases no-one else can (with the help of his trusty sidekick, the ace of clubs, of course) but he’s not a very well known detective and doesn’t know why he, of all people, was sent to solve the mansion’s murder. Based on the ace of spades.

Belladonna - the murderer! Also known as the Poison Queen, she’s devious and mean and has been known to kill in the past. Based on the queen of hearts. It’s all a game to her - decided to kill the mansion owner because he was ‘getting on her nerves’ and threatening her husband’s (king of hearts, who’s actually really nice - poor thing) musical business, and then when the mysterious invitations arrived, decided to bring along a double agent (Rafflesia, six of hearts) to make sure she isn’t caught - and uses her servant Jack (jack of hearts) to kill other suspects that overhear anything, or get too close to the truth. At the end, she’s thwarted by Ace and the mansion’s three-legged cat (the Joker).

Rafflesia (Sia) - a mysterious girl who also doesn’t know why she was invited to the mansion either, and who quickly becomes friends with Ace and Ace’s trusty sidekick (Locke). Based on the six of hearts, and is smart, friendly and kind. However, she’s often seen with Belladonna (queen of hearts) and denies it afterwards. Ace soon realises she’s hiding just as much as the suspects are… It turns out she was helping the murderer all along, and was brought along with Belladonna to try to get Ace on the wrong trail, or even frame other suspects. She betrays Ace at the end, and it turns out she’s actually mean and rude and will do anything to get what she wants. She’s based on the Rafflesia flower, which smells like rotting meat.

Part 2 - suspense (174 words total)

Fifteen people are mysteriously invited to a mansion, with no idea why they’ve been invited - four lords, whos wives and one servant each are also invited; the main character / detective Ace and his sidekick Locke; and a mysterious girl called Rafflesia/Sia who quickly becomes friends with Ace and Locke. Upon their arrival, they see that there’s been a murder - the owner of the mansion and presumably the person who invited them was dead in his luxury pool. His three-legged cat, Joker, was standing right next to it, meowing. (i didn’t end up including that oops haha)
The obvious cause of death was drowning - but when digging deeper, Ace finds out the pool was also filled with poison - and is now determined to find the murderer. The guests decide they’ll stay for the three days they were invited for anyway - and on the first night, all the mansion owner’s money gets stolen, and another person is killed (one of the servants). This can only mean that the murderer is one of the guests - and so all of the guests become Ace’s suspects.

Part 3 - clues (400 words total)

It was midnight when they arrived.
Each had an invitation clutched in their shaking hands, each covered up against the winter night’s cold.
Snatches of conversation floated on the biting wind –
“I hope our rooms are ready when arrive, it’s jolly cold out-”
“- I’m not sure what’s gotten into the old chap, inviting us to his place at this hour-”
“Jack, fetch the wine, will you?
“Well, it’ll be lovely staying at his mansion anyhow, I haven’t seen him for years-”
“Why were we even invited, anyway?”
“I- I don’t know exactly?”
There weren't any servants to open the great onyx gates - the guests had to do it themselves, grumbling the whole time. They lugged their suitcases onto the expansive front lawn - they would stop to admire the grounds but it was far too dark and they were all far too cold - and stumbled up to the mansions gilded front door, pushing on the already unlocked door and falling inside, ready for a hot bath and a ready-made bed. There was none. They didn’t know that yet.
The detective followed them inside. He didn’t know why he had been invited - he was not a lord, or a lord’s wife, or a lord’s servant - but he certainly couldn’t turn up the offer of looking around an ancient mansion. It seemed like the exact sort of setting a mystery might take place. He didn’t know, then, how right he was.
They all gathered in the library, as their invitation stated - the lords, the ladies, the servants, and the detective and his sidekick. They made small talk, waiting for the mansion’s servants to show them to their rooms, waiting for the mansion’s owner to offer some explanation. They waited.
They waited for an awfully long time.

The detective stood by the window, looking over the grounds and the neighbouring forest. Behind him, he could hear the strained talking of the other guests. He noticed things.
His sidekick nudged him.
“What is it, Locke?” The detective sighed, his gaze wandering over to his friend’s outstretched finger, pointing at the grounds, pointing at -
a figure. A figure, face-down, floating. Dead in the mansion’s luxury olympic-sized outdoor pool.

The detective did not gasp. He was not all that surprised, really. Why else would a detective have been invited to a strange mansion in the middle of the night? Why else, unless there had been a murder?

-

Part 4 - building pressure (364 words total)

“He’s dead.”

The guests were gathered around the pool, looking despondently down at the man floating, face-down, in the water.

“I can tell,” Ace responded, dryly.

“Well,” sputtered one of the ladies – Lady Azure, in her blue and gold silk dress that floated around her ankles, almost like the poor man in his watery grave. “Who did it?”

“W-well, maybe no-one did it.” Mr Arledge stammered, fidgeting with his hands. “Maybe he f-fell in and c-couldn’t g-g-get out.”

“Unlikely.” Ms Quince declared, her nose in the air, waving her signature goose-head cane. “It’s a murder!”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with her,” Ace murmured to his sidekick, assistant, and best friend - Locke Clubs.
“We haven’t looked at all the evidence yet?” Locke responded, leaning closer to Ace. “I mean, whatever you think, but-”
“But what else could it be?” Ace interrupted. “Fourteen people are mysteriously invited to a mansion, told to arrive at midnight and come to the library, which just so happens to have a perfect view of the grounds. Upon arrival, the detectives that were invited see a man floating in the pool. Dead, and has been for a while. There are no servants, and the guy who owns this mansion is nowhere to be seen. Of course it’s a murder. We’re meant to figure it out.”
“Like Cluedo?” Locke asked, sceptically. “You’re saying we’re in a real-life cluedo.”
Ace nodded rapturously. “Exactly!”

“But who,” Ace recognised the familiar squeaky, staccato voice of Lord Pantaleon, and inwardly groaned - “is the dead one?”

“Um.” A girl Ace hadn’t seen before - dark brown hair, piercing green eyes, average height - spoke up. “I think it might be the mansion’s owner. Sir.”

“The Lord that invited us?” Lady Belladonna asked, incredulously. “But he- he invited us! He’s meant to host us! What are we meant to do for three days if he’s dead?”

“We’re meant to solve his murder.” Ace muttered darkly.

Everyone turned to him.

“And I imagine we have the three days to do it.”

Seraphina Arledge spoke up next - a little wisp of a girl, skin and bones with shadowed eyes, her voice a quiet rasp.

“Or we’ll be next.”

-

Part 5 - withholding information (359 words total)

It was morning already.
The sun had begun to drag itself up into the sky, welcoming a beautiful day onto the mansion’s ground.
Except it wasn’t so beautiful. Because someone had been killed.

The other guests had gone inside long before - finding a hall of rooms with empty beds (but unfortunately no chocolate on the pillow) and sleeping through what few hours remained of the night.
Ace and Locke, however, had stayed up, identifying the body (it was indeed the billionaire who owned the mansion) and looking around for clues. If there were any fingerprints on the body, they had been washed off by the pool water. If there were any footprints, they had been covered by the frost that had blanketed the grounds during the night.

Basically, the detectives were stuck.

“Um. Maybe he was pushed in the pool with, um, a fence post?” Locke offered.

“The fence is not broken. There are no fingerprints on anything near the pool. He was not pushed in while conscious because he did not try to get out as there are no signs of a struggle.” Ace slumped in one of the deck chairs. “I hate cluedo.”

“He was pushed in while unconscious?” Locke asked.

“He could have been but then there’s the question of what was used to knock him out, it can’t have been any blunt or sharp objects as the body doesn’t show any signs of damage, it’s likely it was some type of drug but we’ve already searched the house and there’s nothing suspicious in there - though we haven’t searched the whole thing, I’m still sure there was a secret passage in the library - but of course the murderer could have taken whatever they used with them-”

“Why are we even trying to figure this out?” Locke asked. “There are too many possibilities? I think. You’re the detective.”

“You’re right.” Ace sighed. “I’m tired. But we really have to - hold up.”

He leaned closer to the pool. “Hold up…”

“What? What is it?” Locke asked, peering into the water.

“The water.”

“What about the water?”

“We should test it.”

“Why?”

“Because I think we’ve got our weapon.”

-

Part 6 - raising stakes (582 words total)

It didn’t take long for Locke to test the pool’s water - and the detective's suspicions were confirmed.
It was poison. The entire pool had been filled with poison.
What type of poison, they didn’t yet know. Something colourless and odourless. Possibly acidic. All they knew was that it was strong - strong enough for the billionaire to die almost instantly. All the murderer would have to do was to give him a little shove -
and done. Dead. Floating face-down in poison, the chemicals slowly eating away at his expensive suit.
It also confirmed something else - that it was, indeed, a murder.

-

“He’s dead.” Ace was saying to the guests. “It’s murder.”

They were collected in the library again. This time, the window had been covered with velvet curtains. They hadn’t managed to get the body out of the pool yet.

“We have to call the police!” Lady Azure fumbled with her phone, her midnight blue acrylic nails clicking against her bejewelled midnight blue cellphone case.

“We’ve tried that,” Ace leaned back, sighing. “There’s no signal. No reception. I can’t even get emergency calls through.”

“Foul play!” Lady Belladonna declared. “This is not fair!”

“What type of poison was it?” Lord Alto asked, quietly.

“We can’t tell. Not yet.” Ace replied. “Whatever it was, it worked fast.”

There was a pause, a momentary silence. A heaviness settled over the guests. They were beginning to realise the true gravity of their situation.

A whisper broke the silence. A quiet hiss, words shaped on an exhale of breath.

“Do you know if the poison could be - airborne, too? If the fumes could slowly be killing us, right now?”

Ace turned to the voice. It was Mr. Arledge and Serpahina’s servant, Jack - though that didn’t mean much. All the servants were named Jack.
Although he was a servant, he dressed like one of the Lords. The collar was turned up on his expensive-looking blue jacket, and his hat was turned down, both hiding his face. His hands were pale and thin. He looked like a skeleton.

“We’ve,” Ace paused. “looked into that.”

He swallowed. He would have rather not told the guests this - but it looked like he would have to.

“There are, indeed, fumes from the poison. They’re much less strong than the poison in its liquid form. But… there was a lot of poison in that pool.”

A growing sense of dread began to fill the room - fumes from a different kind of poison.

“This poison, we haven’t been able to figure out what it is or what it’s made of because it’s not a usual poison. The murderer made it themself. They’ve said so - or someone who knows what they were up to said so. In this note right here.”

Ace let the paper slip from his fingers. It fluttered to the floor.

“The note says we’ve all ingested the fumes of this poison already, and it’s already enough to kill us. But it works slowly. We’ve got three days. Less than three days.”

He let that sink in.

“Exactly the time we were invited for. This was all planned.”

Again, he stopped. Let the guests digest what he was saying. Before he got to the punchline of whoever’s lethal joke this was.

“The good news is that there’s an antidote. The bad news? We have to find the murderer and their antidote in the three days. And if we don’t - let's just say the doctors won’t be able to save us in time.”

-

Part 7 - fast pacing (941 words total)

Outline -

Event #1 - Ace meets the girl mentioned in part 4, and they start trying to figure out who the murderer is.
Event #2 - They talk, and the girl wonders whether the murderer will strike again.
Event #3 - Locke suddenly runs up to them, out of breath, and tells Ace that there’s been another murder! They rush to the scene of the crime, but the murderer is long gone. They then realise that the murderer has to be one of the guests…
Event #4 - Lady Azure then comes and tells them she saw the murderer leaving - and it was one of the servants. Ace finds that it fits - and begins to have an idea of who the murderer could be.

The guests, shell-shocked, left to go back to their rooms. Ace didn’t know what for. It wasn’t like they could say goodbye to their loved ones from home - the phone signal was cut off. They were isolated from everything, in a house where a murderer had been, with grounds filled with deadly fumes.
What fun?

It wasn’t until he was packing up to go, and Locke had already gone, when Ace realised one of the guests had stayed behind.

The girl. The girl with dark brown hair and green eyes and average height. The one who had known it was the mansion’s owner dead in the pool.

“Hello,” said Ace.

“Hello,” said the girl.

A pause.

“I’m Rafflesia,” said the girl. “But I go by Sia.”

“Hello Sia,” said Ace. “I’m Ace.”

“Hello Ace,” said Sia.

Another pause.

“I wonder who the murderer is,” Sia pulled the curtain back from the window, studied the pool and the crime scene.

It looked different from above, Ace realised. Different. But still similar. Still someone dead.

“I… I know you’re detectives, and I’m not,” the girl continued. “But I’d like to help. If you wanted.”

“We sure need help,” Ace sighed.

Sia smiled. “So you’ll let me?”

“We’d love to have you.” Ace looked at the floor. “However, we currently don’t have any leads.”

“Any?”

“Any.”

“Hmm.”

When Sia spoke again, her voice was quiet. A whisper, not unlike the dreadful question asked only a few minutes ago.

“Do you think the murderer will strike again?”

Ace considered. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“They don’t need to.”

“Explain?”

Ace sighed again, for the fifth time that day. “They’ve got us where they want us. They wouldn’t throw that away by doing something as reckless as killing again. They’re, like, fifty steps ahead. Anyone sane would want to keep it that way.”

And that was when Locke ran into the room, the library doors banging behind him, his breath coming quick and fast and frantic, his whole body shaking.

The quiet, almost peaceful spell of the library was broken. Ace rushed over, pulling his friend up before he could faint - he certainly looked like he was going to faint.
“What’s wrong are you okay what happened –”

Locke interrupted him, speaking words as clear as crystal through his wheezing breaths.
“The room across from Mr. Arledge’s, next to Lord Azure’s. Lady Azure’s servant’s room. Hurry.”

There was no ‘I think’, or ‘maybe’. No question mark on the end of his sentence. For once, Locke was absolutely certain, of something.

Something bad.

“Sia?” Ace looked up. “Can you take care of Locke for me? I think he’s about to faint.”

She nodded. “Will you be okay?”

“Probably,” Ace replied, and without a backwards glance, took off into the hall.

-

It didn’t take long to get to the room Locke was talking about - there was already a crowd clustered around the open doors. Ace pushed it - and his breath caught in his throat when he saw what the guests were all looking at.

He thought he, too, might faint.

There’s been another murder.

The words pounded in his head, a drum matching the frantic beat of his heart.

Slowly, carefully, he took a step into the room. The scene of the crime.

It was chaos. This time, there had certainly been a struggle. Most of the furniture was tipped over, scattered across the floor. In his addled state of mind, Ace thought it looked like a room where a giant toddler had had a tantrum and thrown all its toys.

But this was clearly not the work of a toddler, not even a giant one.

The Azure’s servant - Jack, Ace recognised, Jack Xenon, the one Lady Azure affectionately called ‘her Genie’ - was lying in the rubble. The marks on his throat made the cause of death obvious. Strangulation.

He was always smoking a pipe. Ace had always said that it would get him killed one day.

He began shaking.

Dimly, he was aware of Lady Azure pushing through to stand beside him.

“I saw him. I saw the murderer with my own eyes.” She was whispering. “He came out the room and ran down the hall. I thought silly Genie, making friends with other servants already. He was always very social. And then I opened the door and- and-”

“Who? Who did you see?” Ace pressed, his own voice a whisper too.

“Jack. You know, the servant? Lord Alto’s Jack.”

The wheels began to turn in Ace’s mind.

The newest servant. The only one who never went by a name other than ‘Jack.’ The servant of Lord Alto - one of the kindest of the lords, but his wife - well, she was a nasty piece of work. Bella, she was called. Lady Belladonna. Though she wasn’t always called that. They called her something else, sometimes - due to her famous affinity with medicines and antidotes and chemicals.

The Poison Queen.

Part 8 - plot twists (475 words total)

Foreshadowing (to be included in the scene where Ace meets Sia)

[“Hello Ace,” said Sia.

Another pause.]

“Why were you invited, anyway?” Ace asked. “You don’t seem to be a Lord or a Lady or a servant. Are you a detective too?”

“No, unfortunately.” Sia said. “I’m not entirely sure why I was invited. Maybe it was for a special reason. Like how you and your friend were.”

“A special reason like….”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m meant to help you. I could be moral support.”

Ace chuckled. “I don’t know why I was invited either, really. They could have invited any other detective, but they chose me? An apprentice? It’s not like I’m well-known or anything. Maybe the murderer was the person who sent the invites and they didn’t want anyone super smart figuring them out.”

“Or maybe it was the billionaire who somehow knew he’d get murdered and decided to put his faith in you.” Sia smiled.



-

His heart thudding in his chest, Ace turned around - and there she was, in the crowd, her face a mask of horror, wringing her black gloved hands. Lady Belladonna herself - and if Ace’s suspicions were right, the mastermind behind the two murders. Though her hands were clean.
She really did put on a good act.

Their eyes met for a second. Ace quickly looked away.

“I- I have to go,” he whispered to Lady Azure, though his voice sounded unnaturally loud.

He ran.

-

He burst back into the library, the doors swinging wildly behind him - not unlike Locke had, not very long ago.

“I think I know who did it,” he panted, out of breath – and then he noticed three things at once, his detective mind cataloguing them like he catalogued everything else.

One - Locke was face-down on the library floor. He really had fainted. (it would’ve been funny if it didn’t look so much like the billionaire face-down in the pool)

Two - There was blood on the side of his head. Not fainted. Knocked out. (“i leave you for five minutes and you get yourself attacked and knocked out?” ace would’ve laughed if this had been any other case. this was not any other case.)

Three - Sia was nowhere to be seen.

A horrible feeling began to creep over Ace.

She was invited for a special reason, wasn’t she? She was helping them all along. She was Lady Belladonna’s other servant.

Or maybe not. Maybe she had been paid to do this. Maybe she does things like this for a living.

He felt sick.

And suddenly, he heard noises in the hall. Banging on the doors that he hadn’t realised he’d locked - she’d locked them for him and left them open, of course, of course…

He looked down. His own briefcase was lying next to his friend, the perfect heavy object to knock someone out with –

He realised it a moment before the doors were forced open.

This. Looks. Bad.

Part 9 - conclusion (645 words total)

The guests burst in before Ace could do anything.

“We’ve caught you,” Lord Pantaleon rasped, waving a red-gloved finger at him. “Now give us the antidote before I have my servants tear you limb from limb!”

Ace tried to calm his racing heart. I can get out of this. I know the truth. They’ll believe me, they always do.

“There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” he said smoothly, with much more confidence than he felt. “You see-”

“LIAR!” Lord Pantaleon shouted, advancing forwards.

Ace started again. “You see, I-”

“HE’S LYING!”

Ace gritted his teeth. Well, if Pantaleon was going to be dramatic, so was he.

His voice was quiet - almost a whisper- yet he was still heard.

“Here it is.”

He slipped the ace from up his sleeve.

A shining bottle, filled with clear liquid.

“The antidote,” he said. “Though it’s only enough for one. Let me help you. Let me show you where the others are.”

And suddenly he leaped forward, grabbed the red jacket of Lady Belladonna the Poison Queen, and pulled it off.

Fourteen more bottles tumbled out, skidding across the library’s floor.

Fourteen shocked faces moved from Ace to the bottles, to the jacket, and finally to Lady Belladonna.

“I figured it out when she killed Azure’s servant.” Ace began. “But I had inklings before that. You see, there was someone here that wasn’t invited. Belladonna’s servant. Her name was Rafflesia. She was, of course, the one who framed me with his.”
He looked down to Locke’s prone body.

“She was also the one I stole this bottle from.”

He held it up. It certainly didn’t look like much - but there was so much power in that little glass case.

“But then, of course, there’s the matter of the invitations. It didn’t take me very long at all to figure that one out.”

Ace was really in his element now.

“Someone knew the billionaire would be murdered - or found out he had been murdered before we were invited. They had a list of suspects - each one was rich, had a reputation to uphold, and had a secret they didn’t want to be found out - I’ll get to exposing you all later. But the billionaire found out someone’s secret. The someone - Belladonna, of course - killed him, and thought she had gotten away with it. But she, of course, was on the suspects list. Invitations were forged and sent, as well as invitations to two apprentice detectives who proceeded to solve the case. The invitations were sent by none other than my detective mentor - so this was all a test.

“But Belladonna was far more dangerous than anyone bargained for. This was all a game to her. She thought by giving everyone the antidote to the poison - the poison was never airborne by the way, we don’t need any antidote and this is all just water - she’d be able to bribe them into not telling anyone that she had killed the billionaire. The billionaire who she saw as a threat to her husband's business, and therefore to her own money.

“But she slipped up in killing Xenon - most likely because he overheard something he shouldn’t have, or maybe he figured out that Rafflesia wasn’t invited. Anyway, she got scared, she killed him, tried to frame me, which only ended up in her being found out.”

Ace smirked. “I think I passed the test, don’t you think?”

“THAT POISON QUEEN!” Lady Azure screeched.

“I’ll tear her limb from limb!” Pantaleon exclaimed. “Where is she, anyway? That LIAR!”

“That’s… actually a good question.” Ace swallowed. “She’s gone.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, GONE?”

“She left. Ran off. While I was talking.” He looked guilty. “…and now we need to find her. Within three days. Before my detective mentor gets mad at me.”

Locke stirred from his position on the floor, and spoke.

“The game is afoot.”

-


(fin <3)


-

Main story - without breaks for word counts


It was midnight when they arrived.
Each had an invitation clutched in their shaking hands, each covered up against the winter night’s cold.
Snatches of conversation floated on the biting wind –
“I hope our rooms are ready when arrive, it’s jolly cold out-”
“- I’m not sure what’s gotten into the old chap, inviting us to his place at this hour-”
“Jack, fetch the wine, will you?
“Well, it’ll be lovely staying at his mansion anyhow, I haven’t seen him for years-”
“Why were we even invited, anyway?”
“I- I don’t know exactly?”
There weren't any servants to open the great onyx gates - the guests had to do it themselves, grumbling the whole time. They lugged their suitcases onto the expansive front lawn - they would stop to admire the grounds but it was far too dark and they were all far too cold - and stumbled up to the mansions gilded front door, pushing on the already unlocked door and falling inside, ready for a hot bath and a ready-made bed. There was none. They didn’t know that yet.
The detective followed them inside. He didn’t know why he had been invited - he was not a lord, or a lord’s wife, or a lord’s servant - but he certainly couldn’t turn up the offer of looking around an ancient mansion. It seemed like the exact sort of setting a mystery might take place. He didn’t know, then, how right he was.
They all gathered in the library, as their invitation stated - the lords, the ladies, the servants, and the detective and his sidekick. They made small talk, waiting for the mansion’s servants to show them to their rooms, waiting for the mansion’s owner to offer some explanation. They waited.
They waited for an awfully long time.

The detective stood by the window, looking over the grounds and the neighbouring forest. Behind him, he could hear the strained talking of the other guests. He noticed things.
His sidekick nudged him.
“What is it, Locke?” The detective sighed, his gaze wandering over to his friend’s outstretched finger, pointing at the grounds, pointing at -
a figure. A figure, face-down, floating. Dead in the mansion’s luxury olympic-sized outdoor pool.

The detective did not gasp. He was not all that surprised, really. Why else would a detective have been invited to a strange mansion in the middle of the night? Why else, unless there had been a murder?

-

“He’s dead.”

The guests were gathered around the pool, looking despondently down at the man floating, face-down, in the water.

“I can tell,” Ace responded, dryly.

“Well,” sputtered one of the ladies – Lady Azure, in her blue and gold silk dress that floated around her ankles, almost like the poor man in his watery grave. “Who did it?”

“W-well, maybe no-one did it.” Mr Arledge stammered, fidgeting with his hands. “Maybe he f-fell in and c-couldn’t g-g-get out.”

“Unlikely.” Ms Quince declared, her nose in the air, waving her signature goose-head cane. “It’s a murder!”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with her,” Ace murmured to his sidekick, assistant, and best friend - Locke Clubs.
“We haven’t looked at all the evidence yet?” Locke responded, leaning closer to Ace. “I mean, whatever you think, but-”
“But what else could it be?” Ace interrupted. “Fourteen people are mysteriously invited to a mansion, told to arrive at midnight and come to the library, which just so happens to have a perfect view of the grounds. Upon arrival, the detectives that were invited see a man floating in the pool. Dead, and has been for a while. There are no servants, and the guy who owns this mansion is nowhere to be seen. Of course it’s a murder. We’re meant to figure it out.”
“Like Cluedo?” Locke asked, sceptically. “You’re saying we’re in a real-life cluedo.”
Ace nodded rapturously. “Exactly!”

“But who,” Ace recognised the familiar squeaky, staccato voice of Lord Pantaleon, and inwardly groaned - “is the dead one?”

“Um.” A girl Ace hadn’t seen before - dark brown hair, piercing green eyes, average height - spoke up. “I think it might be the mansion’s owner. Sir.”

“The Lord that invited us?” Lady Belladonna asked, incredulously. “But he- he invited us! He’s meant to host us! What are we meant to do for three days if he’s dead?”

“We’re meant to solve his murder.” Ace muttered darkly.

Everyone turned to him.

“And I imagine we have the three days to do it.”

Seraphina Arledge spoke up next - a little wisp of a girl, skin and bones with shadowed eyes, her voice a quiet rasp.

“Or we’ll be next.”

-

It was morning already.
The sun had begun to drag itself up into the sky, welcoming a beautiful day onto the mansion’s ground.
Except it wasn’t so beautiful. Because someone had been killed.

The other guests had gone inside long before - finding a hall of rooms with empty beds (but unfortunately no chocolate on the pillow) and sleeping through what few hours remained of the night.
Ace and Locke, however, had stayed up, identifying the body (it was indeed the billionaire who owned the mansion) and looking around for clues. If there were any fingerprints on the body, they had been washed off by the pool water. If there were any footprints, they had been covered by the frost that had blanketed the grounds during the night.

Basically, the detectives were stuck.

“Um. Maybe he was pushed in the pool with, um, a fence post?” Locke offered.

“The fence is not broken. There are no fingerprints on anything near the pool. He was not pushed in while conscious because he did not try to get out as there are no signs of a struggle.” Ace slumped in one of the deck chairs. “I hate cluedo.”

“He was pushed in while unconscious?” Locke asked.

“He could have been but then there’s the question of what was used to knock him out, it can’t have been any blunt or sharp objects as the body doesn’t show any signs of damage, it’s likely it was some type of drug but we’ve already searched the house and there’s nothing suspicious in there - though we haven’t searched the whole thing, I’m still sure there was a secret passage in the library - but of course the murderer could have taken whatever they used with them-”

“Why are we even trying to figure this out?” Locke asked. “There are too many possibilities? I think. You’re the detective.”

“You’re right.” Ace sighed. “I’m tired. But we really have to - hold up.”

He leaned closer to the pool. “Hold up…”

“What? What is it?” Locke asked, peering into the water.

“The water.”

“What about the water?”

“We should test it.”

“Why?”

“Because I think we’ve got our weapon.”

-

It didn’t take long for Locke to test the pool’s water - and the detective's suspicions were confirmed.
It was poison. The entire pool had been filled with poison.
What type of poison, they didn’t yet know. Something colourless and odourless. Possibly acidic. All they knew was that it was strong - strong enough for the billionaire to die almost instantly. All the murderer would have to do was to give him a little shove -
and done. Dead. Floating face-down in poison, the chemicals slowly eating away at his expensive suit.
It also confirmed something else - that it was, indeed, a murder.

-

“He’s dead.” Ace was saying to the guests. “It’s murder.”

They were collected in the library again. This time, the window had been covered with velvet curtains. They hadn’t managed to get the body out of the pool yet.

“We have to call the police!” Lady Azure fumbled with her phone, her midnight blue acrylic nails clicking against her bejewelled midnight blue cellphone case.

“We’ve tried that,” Ace leaned back, sighing. “There’s no signal. No reception. I can’t even get emergency calls through.”

“Foul play!” Lady Belladonna declared. “This is not fair!”

“What type of poison was it?” Lord Alto asked, quietly.

“We can’t tell. Not yet.” Ace replied. “Whatever it was, it worked fast.”

There was a pause, a momentary silence. A heaviness settled over the guests. They were beginning to realise the true gravity of their situation.

A whisper broke the silence. A quiet hiss, words shaped on an exhale of breath.

“Do you know if the poison could be - airborne, too? If the fumes could slowly be killing us, right now?”

Ace turned to the voice. It was Mr. Arledge and Serpahina’s servant, Jack - though that didn’t mean much. All the servants were named Jack.
Although he was a servant, he dressed like one of the Lords. The collar was turned up on his expensive-looking blue jacket, and his hat was turned down, both hiding his face. His hands were pale and thin. He looked like a skeleton.

“We’ve,” Ace paused. “looked into that.”

He swallowed. He would have rather not told the guests this - but it looked like he would have to.

“There are, indeed, fumes from the poison. They’re much less strong than the poison in its liquid form. But… there was a lot of poison in that pool.”

A growing sense of dread began to fill the room - fumes from a different kind of poison.

“This poison, we haven’t been able to figure out what it is or what it’s made of because it’s not a usual poison. The murderer made it themself. They’ve said so - or someone who knows what they were up to said so. In this note right here.”

Ace let the paper slip from his fingers. It fluttered to the floor.

“The note says we’ve all ingested the fumes of this poison already, and it’s already enough to kill us. But it works slowly. We’ve got three days. Less than three days.”

He let that sink in.

“Exactly the time we were invited for. This was all planned.”

Again, he stopped. Let the guests digest what he was saying. Before he got to the punchline of whoever’s lethal joke this was.

“The good news is that there’s an antidote. The bad news? We have to find the murderer and their antidote in the three days. And if we don’t - let's just say the doctors won’t be able to save us in time.”

-

The guests, shell-shocked, left to go back to their rooms. Ace didn’t know what for. It wasn’t like they could say goodbye to their loved ones from home - the phone signal was cut off. They were isolated from everything, in a house where a murderer had been, with grounds filled with deadly fumes.
What fun?

It wasn’t until he was packing up to go, and Locke had already gone, when Ace realised one of the guests had stayed behind.

The girl. The girl with dark brown hair and green eyes and average height. The one who had known it was the mansion’s owner dead in the pool.

“Hello,” said Ace.

“Hello,” said the girl.

A pause.

“I’m Rafflesia,” said the girl. “But I go by Sia.”

“Hello Sia,” said Ace. “I’m Ace.”

“Hello Ace,” said Sia.

Another pause.

“Why were you invited, anyway?” Ace asked. “You don’t seem to be a Lord or a Lady or a servant. Are you a detective too?”

“No, unfortunately.” Sia said. “I’m not entirely sure why I was invited. Maybe it was for a special reason. Like how you and your friend were.”

“A special reason like….”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m meant to help you. I could be moral support.”

Ace chuckled. “I don’t know why I was invited either, really. They could have invited any other detective, but they chose me? An apprentice? It’s not like I’m well-known or anything. Maybe the murderer was the person who sent the invites and they didn’t want anyone super smart figuring them out.”

“Or maybe it was the billionaire who somehow knew he’d get murdered and decided to put his faith in you.” Sia smiled.

“I wonder who the murderer is, anyway,” She turned away, and pulled the curtain back from the window, studying the pool and the crime scene.

It looked different from above, Ace realised. Different. But still similar. Still someone dead.

“I… I know you’re detectives, and I’m not,” the girl continued. “But I’d like to help. If you wanted.”

“We sure need help,” Ace sighed.

Sia smiled. “So you’ll let me?”

“We’d love to have you.” Ace looked at the floor. “However, we currently don’t have any leads.”

“Any?”

“Any.”

“Hmm.”

When Sia spoke again, her voice was quiet. A whisper, not unlike the dreadful question asked only a few minutes ago.

“Do you think the murderer will strike again?”

Ace considered. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“They don’t need to.”

“Explain?”

Ace sighed again, for the fifth time that day. “They’ve got us where they want us. They wouldn’t throw that away by doing something as reckless as killing again. They’re, like, fifty steps ahead. Anyone sane would want to keep it that way.”

And that was when Locke ran into the room, the library doors banging behind him, his breath coming quick and fast and frantic, his whole body shaking.

The quiet, almost peaceful spell of the library was broken. Ace rushed over, pulling his friend up before he could faint - he certainly looked like he was going to faint.
“What’s wrong are you okay what happened –”

Locke interrupted him, speaking words as clear as crystal through his wheezing breaths.
“The room across from Mr. Arledge’s, next to Lord Azure’s. Lady Azure’s servant’s room. Hurry.”

There was no ‘I think’, or ‘maybe’. No question mark on the end of his sentence. For once, Locke was absolutely certain, of something.

Something bad.

“Sia?” Ace looked up. “Can you take care of Locke for me? I think he’s about to faint.”

She nodded. “Will you be okay?”

“Probably,” Ace replied, and without a backwards glance, took off into the hall.

-

It didn’t take long to get to the room Locke was talking about - there was already a crowd clustered around the open doors. Ace pushed it - and his breath caught in his throat when he saw what the guests were all looking at.

He thought he, too, might faint.

There’s been another murder.

The words pounded in his head, a drum matching the frantic beat of his heart.

Slowly, carefully, he took a step into the room. The scene of the crime.

It was chaos. This time, there had certainly been a struggle. Most of the furniture was tipped over, scattered across the floor. In his addled state of mind, Ace thought it looked like a room where a giant toddler had had a tantrum and thrown all its toys.

But this was clearly not the work of a toddler, not even a giant one.

The Azure’s servant - Jack, Ace recognised, Jack Xenon, the one Lady Azure affectionately called ‘her Genie’ - was lying in the rubble. The marks on his throat made the cause of death obvious. Strangulation.

He was always smoking a pipe. Ace had always said that it would get him killed one day.

He began shaking.

Dimly, he was aware of Lady Azure pushing through to stand beside him.

“I saw him. I saw the murderer with my own eyes.” She was whispering. “He came out the room and ran down the hall. I thought silly Genie, making friends with other servants already. He was always very social. And then I opened the door and- and-”

“Who? Who did you see?” Ace pressed, his own voice a whisper too.

“Jack. You know, the servant? Lord Alto’s Jack.”

The wheels began to turn in Ace’s mind.

The newest servant. The only one who never went by a name other than ‘Jack.’ The servant of Lord Alto - one of the kindest of the lords, but his wife - well, she was a nasty piece of work. Bella, she was called. Lady Belladonna. Though she wasn’t always called that. They called her something else, sometimes - due to her famous affinity with medicines and antidotes and chemicals.

The Poison Queen.

His heart thudding in his chest, Ace turned around - and there she was, in the crowd, her face a mask of horror, wringing her black gloved hands. Lady Belladonna herself - and if Ace’s suspicions were right, the mastermind behind the two murders. Though her hands were clean.
She really did put on a good act.

Their eyes met for a second. Ace quickly looked away.

“I- I have to go,” he whispered to Lady Azure, though his voice sounded unnaturally loud.

He ran.

-

He burst back into the library, the doors swinging wildly behind him - not unlike Locke had, not very long ago.

“I think I know who did it,” he panted, out of breath – and then he noticed three things at once, his detective mind cataloguing them like he catalogued everything else.

One - Locke was face-down on the library floor. He really had fainted. (it would’ve been funny if it didn’t look so much like the billionaire face-down in the pool)

Two - There was blood on the side of his head. Not fainted. Knocked out. (“i leave you for five minutes and you get yourself attacked and knocked out?” ace would’ve laughed if this had been any other case. this was not any other case.)

Three - Sia was nowhere to be seen.

A horrible feeling began to creep over Ace.

She was invited for a special reason, wasn’t she? She was helping them all along. She was Lady Belladonna’s other servant.

Or maybe not. Maybe she had been paid to do this. Maybe she does things like this for a living.

He felt sick.

And suddenly, he heard noises in the hall. Banging on the doors that he hadn’t realised he’d locked - she’d locked them for him and left them open, of course, of course…

He looked down. His own briefcase was lying next to his friend, the perfect heavy object to knock someone out with –

He realised it a moment before the doors were forced open.

This. Looks. Bad.


-

The guests burst in before Ace could do anything.

“We’ve caught you,” Lord Pantaleon rasped, waving a red-gloved finger at him. “Now give us the antidote before I have my servants tear you limb from limb!”

Ace tried to calm his racing heart. I can get out of this. I know the truth. They’ll believe me, they always do.

“There’s been a terrible misunderstanding,” he said smoothly, with much more confidence than he felt. “You see-”

“LIAR!” Lord Pantaleon shouted, advancing forwards.

Ace started again. “You see, I-”

“HE’S LYING!”

Ace gritted his teeth. Well, if Pantaleon was going to be dramatic, so was he.

His voice was quiet - almost a whisper- yet he was still heard.

“Here it is.”

He slipped the ace from up his sleeve.

A shining bottle, filled with clear liquid.

“The antidote,” he said. “Though it’s only enough for one. Let me help you. Let me show you where the others are.”

And suddenly he leaped forward, grabbed the red jacket of Lady Belladonna the Poison Queen, and pulled it off.

Fourteen more bottles tumbled out, skidding across the library’s floor.

Fourteen shocked faces moved from Ace to the bottles, to the jacket, and finally to Lady Belladonna.

“I figured it out when she killed Azure’s servant.” Ace began. “But I had inklings before that. You see, there was someone here that wasn’t invited. Belladonna’s servant. Her name was Rafflesia. She was, of course, the one who framed me with his.”
He looked down to Locke’s prone body.

“She was also the one I stole this bottle from.”

He held it up. It certainly didn’t look like much - but there was so much power in that little glass case.

“But then, of course, there’s the matter of the invitations. It didn’t take me very long at all to figure that one out.”

Ace was really in his element now.

“Someone knew the billionaire would be murdered - or found out he had been murdered before we were invited. They had a list of suspects - each one was rich, had a reputation to uphold, and had a secret they didn’t want to be found out - I’ll get to exposing you all later. But the billionaire found out someone’s secret. The someone - Belladonna, of course - killed him, and thought she had gotten away with it. But she, of course, was on the suspects list. Invitations were forged and sent, as well as invitations to two apprentice detectives who proceeded to solve the case. The invitations were sent by none other than my detective mentor - so this was all a test.

“But Belladonna was far more dangerous than anyone bargained for. This was all a game to her. She thought by giving everyone the antidote to the poison - the poison was never airborne by the way, we don’t need any antidote and this is all just water - she’d be able to bribe them into not telling anyone that she had killed the billionaire. The billionaire who she saw as a threat to her husband's business, and therefore to her own money.

“But she slipped up in killing Xenon - most likely because he overheard something he shouldn’t have, or maybe he figured out that Rafflesia wasn’t invited. Anyway, she got scared, she killed him, tried to frame me, which only ended up in her being found out.”

Ace smirked. “I think I passed the test, don’t you think?”

“THAT POISON QUEEN!” Lady Azure screeched.

“I’ll tear her limb from limb!” Pantaleon exclaimed. “Where is she, anyway? That LIAR!”

“That’s… actually a good question.” Ace swallowed. “She’s gone.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, GONE?”

“She left. Ran off. While I was talking.” He looked guilty. “…and now we need to find her. Within three days. Before my detective mentor gets mad at me.”

Locke stirred from his position on the floor, and spoke.

“The game is afoot.”


-

March 28-29, 2023

Part 1:
Setting - castle

The castle glittered under the soft warmth of the sun. It had to be at least 60,000 square meters. The environment around the castle was just as grand and majestic. Large populations of flowers filled the fields. Fountains were sprinkled around every corner, spraying a light mist of water that gave the area a whimsical mood. At the edges of the castle, stone slabs smooth as marble and beige colored made up the tall walls. The wall encircled the whole castle, with four entrances on each side of the walls. Large elaborately carved statues were placed just about everywhere, commemorating a whole roster of famous people.

The path to the castle was wide, smooth, and sparkly white. It was almost like walking on glass. Small shrubs and trees expertly pruned lined the outside of the castle. But it was the actual castle that stole everyone’s hearts. Off white with navy accents and a multitude of windows, the castle stood towering over the neighboring villages below. Standing at four stories tall, the castle practically screamed majestic and powerful. It was quite the contrast to the overly populated busy streets not far from it. Where the buildings were way too close to each other and the dark alleyways could hold a plethora of dangerous things. The castle stood in its own magical bubble. Dark, evergreen, ornate, sparkly. It evoked wonder in those who passed it.

234 words

Part 2:
TBD

-I wrote this at the end of a camp studio-
Nayeli puts on a hat and starts slowly eating rice as she imagines how confused the person reading this must be as it suddenly changed into 3rd person. She waltzes across the large wooden cabin in her high boots and large top hat looking for an opportunity to eat chicken with the rice she held. And a plate would be useful as well. Scrolling across she saw a large bowl that held 4 pieces of chicken and an apple. “Finally” she whispered reaching her hand out toward the plate. Hunching toward the plate she noticed a shadow that was much larger than it should've been standing in the corner. It was history's worst monster: jackets that had far too many zippers or at least it was in Nayelis eyes. As soon as she glanced at the jacket her eyes turned narriw. “Why here?” She crossed her arms, looking at the jacket with great despair. A voice then appeared saying “Why're staring at my shirt?” It was coming from the direction of the hideous jacketLooking up Nayeli realized that there was a person inside the jacket who was annoyed at her. She stared at her for a few seconds and apologized. Nayeli retorted back staring into the soul of the water. She stood tall and straight with perfect posture looking at it's beauty. “Are you interested in this story?” She asked, looking into the ponds clear water. “Well you're reading it right now which means that you were interested enough to read meaning you like reading.” she smirked.

bidaily #3 part 1 & 2


part 1 - me and @MouseLoverr described a mountain-top (368 words)

based on my real tramping experiences

They weren’t joking when they said this is the most spectacular place in the world.
Everything was just so… big. Other mountains towered around us, the valley was spread out like a map below. I’d be able to see the coast from here, if the jagged mountain peaks circling around us weren’t blocking my view.
It was one thing to see grand-scale landscapes like this in touristy gift shop postcards - and something completely different to actually be in the middle of it.
It was larger than life, it was everywhere, and I was so, so small.
I looked down on the path below - if you could call it that, it was more like a trail of neon markers and pegs protruding from the landscape - winding through slabs of rock as big as cars, the descent sharp and swift and almost vertical. The waterfall trickled down water-slicked stones, its whisper almost melodious.
It looked so calm, so peaceful - but I wasn’t fooled. People had died here.
I know better than to brag that I’m an experienced tramper, that I can handle this. If you’re arrogant in nature this big, this isolated, you became the next statistic on the national park’s death toll.
I looked up one last time before attempting the trek downwards - it took five hours coming up, and in the intense heat of midday, it would be even worse on the way back. I let myself relax in that moment, to take in the view, again.
I’d take a photo, except the landscape didn’t fit inside my rectangular phone screen.
The sky looked so much larger out here than it did at home, even with the mountains crowding around it, hemming it in. The mountains themselves were knife-edged, tearing a wound in the sky, piercing the clouds. They were huge and grey-black and dangerous, but they were beautiful all the same.
Beautiful, and cruel. Unforgiving as nature often was.
I groaned as my eyes lowered to the path in front of me. Going down was actually harder than going up most of the time, especially on terrain like this.
But I got to the top. That’s what matters.


Another tiny human standing atop a big, big world.


Go check out Mouse's part here - https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/664056/?page=29#post-7091293 <33


part 2 - reflection (107 words)

Our descriptions were actually really similar! Both conveyed a sense of feeling ‘on top of the world’ and things much bigger than you, as well as the isolation and magnificence of the wilderness. Mine focused more on a character on the mountaintop - Mouse’s was more of a description, not necessarily from the point of view of anyone / anything. Mine also focused more on the landscape and the feelings of being immersed in that landscape, whereas Mouse’s included a lot more about the animals, plants and wildlife in the landscape - she described things like grass, wildflowers, birds and trees, where I mainly described the mountains, sky and rocks. (yum, rocks)

She sat down with her plate of donuts grinning. “Donuts for dinner!” she exclaimed, opening up her napkin to grab her spoon. You see this was a special donut, the dunkaaa donut special where basically at Dunkaa they make this thing where they put a meal into a donut! Genius many would say and that includes Haisa! Halsa loved donuts so when she heard about the donut dinner she smiled. She had never tried anything like it before and was excited to see what it would taste like! So she carefully grabbed her napkin and started poking at her dinner with the sharp side of the fork. It looked interesting after all the inside of the donut had many different colors than what she would usually see in donuts.
“Neat!” she thought to herself as she slowly placed a part of the donut into her mouth. Instantly her mouth started exploding in color at all the tastes she was feeling, she felt vegetables, sugar, and is that cinnamon? She was more than excited to be eating such an amazing taste for dinner! It was like a firework in her mouth and she was more than excited to be eating it!
Immediately she called her friend over.
“You have to taste this!” she exclaimed over the phone her friend dashing over. Her friend rushed in and asked, “where's the donuts?” Haisa became a bit sheepish and felt bad because she only bought one. They instantly called the donut place asking for a donut meal and her friend started to smile was excited and ready to eat something amazing if it was what Haisa described it to be. Her friend chose it to be delivered and it was a speedy delivery.
They gave the delivery man a tip and Haisa got a plate for her friend to eat the donut with a tall straight back and a perfect smile. Haisa was proud to be serving this meal to her friend after all. When she placed it on the plate and gave her friend the fork she could tell how happy her friend was. Her eyes were sparkling and her mouth instantly opened up. She then started eating it and her friend smiled while eating the donut. Haisa was

–word war - 376 words!

weekly 4 ༄ a smarllsy adventure on the high seas

PINK:
THE SUSPECT:

He was but a young lad when it all happened, four years old, and he didn’t even do it on purpose. He was just curious, that was all. But he got the blame anyway when he was found holding a bloody knife at the scene of the crime, framed by his own sister no less. Anything to distract the police from the real culprit, every person for themself at its finest. He’s been running away from the authorities for a decade now, and it didn’t even matter that his sister framed him—she was still taken away and sent to the gallows for other crimes found years later. He might’ve not committed the crime he is now hunted after, but he’s turned “insane” after everything he’s been through. There’s nothing left to him but an “unfeeling” monster. (didn’t commit the crime, /isn’t innocent)

GREEN:
THE ANTI VILLAIN:

A golden child in the midst of a horrible life, struggling to survive and provide for her brother. She “accidentally” killed their parents when she was only eight and he was two. It wasn’t her fault she was born with too many disorders and illnesses, constantly being bullied at school despite trying her hardest at all times. Her brother meant everything to her, but not more than her own life. The urge to murder that bully was too great and strong for her to control. Framing her brother was the only way she could survive, and luckily for her, she escaped the gallows before they could get her. Authorities might’ve announced to the public that she had fallen, but the public has never been convinced. She’s proud of her escape, but she knows now she’ll have no one anymore. She wants to bury herself alive, but she knows she has to keep on trudging through the blood. Like her brother, her soul has been drained of almost every emotion possible. (has a good reason/is actually a horrible person)

• Dementia
  
• Belongs in an insane asylum

LAVENDER:
THE CAREGIVER:

Calm, collected, soft-spoken, innocent. Unable to say no, at least that’s what everyone thinks. She’s just too shy, and everyone always speaks over her. No matter what goes on though, she’s always taking care of even the tiniest creatures, an ant or even a tick on her cat’s fur—a quick, painless, and precise death. Her mother taught her and her grandma taught her and her great-grandma taught her, always be kind to those around her. You’ll never know how much it’ll mean to them, you’ll never know what they’re going through. It’s better to heal than damage even further. Most see her as weak for that, but they’ll never know how dangerous she was when provoked, they’ll never know what it’ll take it took for her temper to rise and erupt and kill them all. (a mother figure/will not back down)

Suspenseful Event.

They thought it was all over, twelve years ago she had been taken care of. It was safe to walk the streets again. It was only a matter of time before everything was wrapped up in a neat little bundle to be carried to the authorities. Yet, now, it’s like the dead have risen from their grave and decided to haunt the ones who ended them. More killings were being broadcasted recently, more than what she had done in her time.

Murderers were waltzing into the city pretending to be tourists—taking advantage of people’s kind nature for their own selfish needs. And, of course, the children who had started it all. They were still prowling the streets for all anybody knew. (It wasn’t announced to the public, but the police had fumbled their mission.) The more you ran away from them, the more it seemed they would follow you till your end. (Unfortunately, no records were kept of any prisoners for they would all be slaughtered immediately after capture. Meaning nobody knew what they looked like, sounded like, how they acted, nothing. Before long, it would become a ghost city with nothing to its name.)

Adding Clues.

2/17/XX

The leaves are golden today. Nothing has begun to spring up, no flowers, no sun, no nothing. It’s still gloomy outside. Perfect weather. Nobody in this god-forsaken city will dare to venture out for a couple of minutes at a time, especially with everything she’s been causing. This is my favorite season by far, if only it was always like this. It does get pretty boring quickly, with the same bland expressions, and tasteless screams with no emotion at all.

February 21st, 19XX

There’s no way in hell anyone will be willing to act, not even the police. They think they have done their part, and that we civilians have to take part in the grand scheme of things. Yet we’ve never learned self-defense, we’ve learned first-aid, we’ve never learned CPR. That’s why this city has been so calm for so long, nobody is strong enough to act up. We can’t defend ourselves. What do they expect of us, that we’ll magically solve all the problems this city has? The government is malfeasance, the people are worthless, and any trouble that comes our way that is bigger than Marie Antoinette’s hairdo will eat us alive. This city is corrupted again, after a short period of a simple, content life. Why can’t they just stop acting up, and do what they’re supposed to?

February 24th, 19XX

I think I might’ve seen something. I was staying up late for one of my projects, and I heard a commotion outside. Somebody was screaming at the top of his lungs, shouting, “Help! Help!” while pounding footsteps chased after him. Nobody helped him though, nobody had the courage. He was becoming a victim of the killers. Everyone, including me, wasn't ready to sacrifice their own life for a stranger.

I know people were waking up because of the cries for help, yet they all went back to sleep without a thought. Perhaps I had something last night, however, because, in truth, I peeked out of my window to see what was happening. I saw a shadow of a man running, and another person sprinting after him. What I saw could not be described in words, it was enough to make someone traumatized. I didn’t watch long enough to see him getting butchered, but I did catch some features of the culprit. I assume it was another man, but he seemed quite short for someone over their 20s. In the dark, I saw the silhouette of a mask, ragged clothes, and a terrible ax. A lunatic.

Adding Pressure.

February 27th, 19XX

Over the past few days, everything’s been shutting down. The city’s in quarantine, a curfew has been put in place, the government has completely closed the city off. No more visitors, but no way for the murderers to get out.

Security has tightened tenfold. When I walk down the streets, I see officers everywhere, and I mean everywhere. They make us go through metal detectors, pat us down, and make us show our ID cards, citizenship, birth certificates, and everything you could ever imagine. Nowhere is safe anymore, and the worst part is, even with all these measures the government is taking, they still won’t even lift a finger at night when the terminators strike most. During the last few nights, they’ve been attacking more violently than before. It’s only a matter of time before they get me too.

March 3rd, 19XX

I escaped a murder, just barely. Isn’t that ironic? I was just talking about how they’d get me sooner or later, and now they almost did. I’m not quite sure how I managed to get away almost unscathed. I can’t feel my wrist anymore, it’s gone ghastly white. My veins are showing more than ever but otherwise, I’m perfectly intact.

It grabbed my wrist and threw me to the ground, I think it was the same murderer I saw chasing the man. I was like one of those characters in a book, frozen with fear. It really is quite a feeling seeing a humongous murder weapon crashing down on you while you can’t even fathom the action of rolling to the side.

I think God was looking down at me right then and there, and decided that another life was not to be sacrificed to these bloodthirsty monsters. The killer missed, and I had recovered enough from my initial shock that I skedaddled before it could get its ax from the cobbled road. I managed to grab a piece of the fabric it was wearing, maybe I can use it to track them down. Ha, if only I had the bravery.

Withholding Information.

March.

Foreign are the streets I walk in today, a sharp contrast to the smoothly paved roads of yesterday. Without a ray of light guiding me, there is no more point in struggling, but didn’t I tell myself all those years ago that I should keep on no matter what happens?

It’s not safe, I can’t even go to school half the time anymore. Remember all those memories we made? This city is corrupted again, after a short period of a simple, content life. Why can’t they just stop acting up, and do what they’re supposed to? I want my life back. It used to be so simple, I would wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, come back, and play. Nowadays who can even be sure who their real family member is? Who can be sure that the people walking alongside you on the street are innocent? Who can be sure that you won’t get killed down the alley? Who can be sure?

March 10th, 19XX

Now that I think back about the whole incident, I swear in God’s name that it was a sign that I need to act now or never. I’ve smelled that particular scent before. It may seem weird, but it’s so familiar that it creeps me out. I feel like it's been with me my entire life, yet I don’t know where it comes from. How could I have forgotten such a strong scent? Strange that a near-death encounter would bring up this buried memory again. Life is a strange curse to me. Whatever happened to me trying to find out the murderer? I can’t spend my time diddle-daddling on forgotten memories that won’t matter in the end, I need to end everything once and for all, or at least try. I need to forget this whole ordeal about knowing the killer. Who cares if I do? It won’t change my opinion of it. Whoever does such dastardly deeds should be sentenced to eternal hell! There is no turning back from this anymore. I will face my problems head-on if that’s the last thing I do.

3/9/XX

A failed murder is something I’ve never done in my entire career. I leave no witnesses behind. It’s just that, I know her. I’ve known her all my life. It feels like falling, it feels like losing my innocence all over again knowing I could’ve almost murdered her without a single worry in the world. I wonder if she still remembers me, how long has it been? I’ve waited my entire life for this moment, and it just walks right through without a hitch in the road. This is will be my downfall, but it will be worth it in the end. I will have finally achieved my goal after so many years of striving.

Raise the Stakes!

March 17th, 19XX

I’m afraid that tiny scrap I snagged is the only hope this city has. I’ve been too scared to turn it into the authorities, 1) I doubt the government will actually do anything, and 2) I’m horrified by the fact I might become another victim. The question I’ve been asking myself constantly for these past few days has always been, “To turn in the scrap or to not turn in the scrap?”, a twisted form of Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be?”

I’ve seen no signs of improvement, in fact, everything has been collapsing in a burning pile, already lit up, awaiting the beginning spark to heed its call and start it all. I don’t know what I’m expected to do nowadays.

3/15/19XX

I know exactly what to do nowadays, it's been suddenly so clear for me all of a sudden. A veil has been uncovered in my brain, all my troubles leaving my mind in droves. I think this might be enlightening. All I’ve worried about has been cast aside to become ash in a burning pile. It's all been lit up for me and I’ve started to grin like never before. If my plan doesn’t work I’ll change my name and become a law-abiding citizen.

March 18th, 19XX

I’m going to do it. I have to. I need whatever I had back when I escaped and when I looked out of my window to witness the cold-blooded homicide. It’s literally only me left in this city with a spine anymore, everyone I know has been a chicken for the past months. Why am I left to make all the decisions, suddenly? I was going to write that I don’t want all this responsibility, that I wasn’t prepared for any of this, but what’s the point? I need to control my life, I guess. I can’t stand still idly anymore.

Fast Pacing.

EVENT #1:

She manages to work up the courage to call the government, unfortunately for her someone gets there first and the secretary gets killed. What will she do now?

EVENT #2:

Pink breaks his way further into the city hall, killing everyone that gets in his way, and guess who he sees in the thick of it all? His sister, Green.

EVENT #3:

As Lavender races to the government building with absolute certainty something is wrong, the siblings duel it out in their corpse-filled battleground, and Pink commits sororicide for what he thinks is the greater good.

EVENT #4:

His sister’s body lies on the ground, still. Now no more killings will ever happen in the city, not now, not then, not ever. His goal has been accomplished, and he is ready for the police to take him at long last.


“Hello, this is Lucy, secretary to the city. What is your message to the mayor?”
“I’d like to hand in something I found about one of the killers.”
“Any information about the murderers can be deposited in the re-”
All she heard after that was a scream, the phone clattering to the ground, then soft static, like the line had been cut. Somebody had gotten there first, it seemed.

***

The blood drenched the carefully tiled floors, dyeing them a bright red. He felt a twinge of remorse seeing all the chaos he had caused, yet he reminded himself that this was necessary to the plan. All of it led up to what he was going to do next, and hopefully, he would finally be able to rid the monster inside his sister before it would come out again. He wished they wouldn’t have bellowed, that would attract passersby and then they would have to die as well.

Exiting the room, he made his way through the hall. He knew that she would already be at the mayor’s office. She always had to one-up him, didn’t she?

Sure enough, when he opened the door (labeled quite helpfully, he might add) he saw her starting to sit down in one of the plush seats. Thank God the city government was idiotic enough to not protect the hall to the mayor’s office and to make two of them no less! The icing on the cake was that the room was soundproof. It was enough to make him guffaw.

***

Her hair whipped around and around in the fierce wind. It howled in her face, trying to stop her from advancing to her doom. If she knew what was going to happen, what she was risking, and how the entire city’s future would be changed by the event that would occur at city hall.

Braving the wind, the girl trudged along the cobblestone streets to the grand, marbled city hall. She remembered when she was a young girl the construction of such a fancy and vintage-looking building had stunned her every time she passed it. It seemed like something out of a fairytale to her, but now she just viewed it as another useless piece of garbage that didn’t deserve all the dollars that were invested in it.

***

As soon as the mayor saw who had just walked in, he shot out of his seat with both eyes popping right out of his head. Muttering a quick excuse, something along the lines of, “I’ll be back in a jiffy! Just need to get something vital, hang on!” he escaped out of the emergency door without a second thought. The jangle of keys frantically trying to lock the door disgusted him. What pusillanimity.

“Hey.”

Twisting around at a leisurely pace, he knew she expected no more than a guard asking her to go through a metal detector again. Seeing a mass murderer was at the bottom of her list, especially one that had gone undetected by all the guards. Unlike the mayor, she stayed still and narrowed her eyes. “I can take you.”

***

When she arrived at the scene, something sharp as a needle tore through the wooden door of the mayor’s office. Years of practice gave her blistering instincts, and before she was pierced she ducked in time. Running to the cleaner hallway, she crouched and tried to create a plan.

She had taken the long way around which she regretted immensely. The horrors that littered the place would take hours, maybe even days to clean. 911 was already on their way, yet she wanted to see for herself the reason for it all. It was obvious what was going on. The siblings were fighting, weren’t they? Al— There it was. A cry to stop, for mercy. Then a metallic throng and the voice were muffled.

Plot Twist.

(look for a big chunk of italics for the foreshadowing)

The police arrived just in time, bursting into the square where all the important rooms were located. She hid behind a tall vase, watching everything unfold silently. They pushed the door open, and a wave of maroon slithered out. Unexpectedly, no problems arose. The culprit let the officers shackle him down, he wasn’t even trying to resist. Had he given up? She couldn’t be sure with that hideous mask covering his identity. She wondered who could possibly lie behind the disguise, who could be evil enough to act on such crazy ideas?

The body was dragged out in all its wicked glory. The green hair of the victim still shone beneath the coat of red.

Later, it would be known to all in the Daily Windmill that she was his sister who had previously gained dementia after an incident. She completely forgot about her past as a menace to society and had been living out her days peacefully. Her brother, however, had no such plans. He wanted to hunt her down until she no longer remained on the earth. It seemed like his life mission, almost.

The sister, also known as Green, had risked her life to help the authorities catch her brother. A mysterious benefactor had called for help when the two siblings were fighting in the mayor’s office. The benefactor had disappeared from the public and remained unknown, but their single act had changed the future for the better or the worse nobody seemed to know quite just yet.

The brother also known as Pink, one of the more dangerous murderers that used to roam the streets went to prison without any problem. The police say he was a gracious man in those moments, and when faced with the penalty of death, did not try to escape. He accepted his death with modesty. The execution would take place on April 1st, 19XX.

Conclusion.

Green was the main offender after all, and everyone who had followed in her footsteps frightened that they were going to meet the same fate as her scrambled to pack their bags. Soon after the Daily Windmill released their paper, all killers had run from the city. Everything was going as planned, but not all stories end.

On the date of Pink’s announced execution, something went horribly wrong. When the police went to his cell the morning was supposed to be killed, they found his cell empty. The makeshift bed they loaned him had been folded in a neat little pile. There was no sign of struggle, nothing that showed an escape. It seemed like he had just walked out of his cell and into the city once again.

Daily 28-29
220/350 words

Location: enchanted lake

Description: 220 words
Lake Iridescent rests in a quiet valley between two snowy purple mountain ranges. The lake is inhabited by many creatures. There are common animals, like fish and octopi, but there are also grindylows, rainbow fish, and many undiscovered monsters. Lake Iridescent is surrounded by deciduous trees that sprout a rainbow of sweet, fragrant flowers in the spring. Each evening, the pixies dance over the water, glowing like stars from the night sky. This lake is a popular destination for hikers, who traverse the jagged mountains for a glimpse of its beauty… and its wisdom.
The waters of Lake Iridescent are rumored to have their own intelligence, peering right into your heart. At just the right time of day, when there is no wind and the sun is in the perfect position in the sky, you can gaze at the lake's surface and see your true self reflected in the glassy water. Some think that this is just a rumor, started by the grindylows to lure people closer to the shore, and spread by the mischievous pixies. Others claim it's true. Some tell stories of what they saw and recount their daring escapes when the grindylows tried to pull them in.
Step closer to the water. Do you believe the legend is true? There's only one way to know for sure.

Reflection: 6 words
My partner didn't do theirs! Yay!

bi-daily part 1
location: mountain top–202 words

A sharp wind engulfed the mountaintop, rustling the tall brown and green grass and wildflowers that grew there. A small grey bird trilled a sweet melody from its nest in one of the large pine trees, then spread its wings and flew in the direction of the other mountains the panoramic view offered before swooping out of sight. The tracks of a moose could be seen in the slightly dirty snow, which was slowly melting in the heat of spring, leaving the ground wet and squishy in some places. Some of it would never melt, of course. The thin altitude and cool atmosphere and silence–which was broken only by the sounds of nature–made it seem like another world. If you were quiet enough and listened, you could faintly make out the sound of a rushing river, gurgling around rocks and rushing down the mountain, gathering size and speed as it went, to the little town far, far below. A slightly overgrown hard-packed dirt path wound for miles up the mountainside–interrupted only by rocks and tree roots–was the only man-made path to the top of the mountain. Standing there, in the untouched wilderness, you can feel like you’re on top of the world.

bi-daily part 2
150 words (exactly!)
My story (hopefully!) conveyed an air of magnificence and wonder, feeling the power and beauty of standing on top of a mountain. Ave’s was so similar and so, so different. It conveyed a sense of beauty and majesty, and the character whose eyes we were viewing the scene through sounded to me wise and well-versed in traveling. They could see the beauty of the landscape and also realize that it could be cruel and unforgiving as well, and those two contrasting elements really helped paint the scene. Mine was more of an ‘outside’ description, the only time a potential human in the scene was the last line. Hers focused on more of the wonder seen through the eyes of a human, while mine was more of descriptive monologue where you’re seeing the scene through an unknown narrator or perhaps even a rock (*wink*), but overall, the two were very similar.

((AAA I LOVE AVE'S SO MUCH–))

Bi-Daily : Atmospheres
372 words

Partner: See
Setting: Library

My setting (216 words)

The candles danced around the dark library, illuminating on the burnt bister shelves full of books. There was no voice to heard - just silence all around. The library, as I perceived it to be, was a door to many portals, each having a magical world behind it. Beneath you foot, there is a marbled floor, various patterns engraved in it. The library was filled with crimson couches, soft as a feather for readers to sit on and enjoy the world inside their chosen book. Tiny yellow lamps were attached next to all sitting areas, providing light to the reader on stormy days - not unlike today. A library is am enchanted place where you can travel to any world you like, learn the secrets of the world and get answers to any question. Small desks were also placed every few meters where readers could study and focus - also accompanied by quills and ink if you would be interested in writing your very own story with inspiration. Closer to the end of the library, there was a tall reception where reader’s could find people to assist them. Wether it was to help them attain a particular book or to issue one for them - the reception was open throughout the day for any guidance required.

Comparison (156 words)

My and See's descriptions of the library were quite similar in the way that we both mentioned about each book opening a magical world for the reader. We both have perceived the atmosphere of the library to be quiet, peaceful and magical - although I've talked more about the library's interior and functionality whereas See has described about the books to a greater extent. See's description is written in a solemn manner about the library being a quiet setting, available to all, while my atmosphere seems to be written in a rather pensive and enchanted manner. We both mentioned about their being comfortable sitting in the room - perceiving it to have a comfortable and friendly area used for exploring out new worlds created by authors. All-inclusive, See and me do distinguish the library quite likely, I believe there are still a few differences on the information we added and the style we wrote it in.

BIDAILY FOR THRILLER! 330 words

I partnered with @WillowShine45!

PART ONE:

Darwyn felt the soil brush against his spindly fingertips as he sat down cross legged. The wind whistled through the pinprick gaps that you could see between the imposing pine trees’ tall tops. He breathed in the damp, earthy scent and exhaled again. This was the Maege Academy, the only school that witches and wizards could attend without fear. Any other magically gifted children had been driven away.

It is rare in a classroom to see each and every student’s face fully engaged, but the Maege Academy had a strange way of teaching that drew all of its young pupils in. This was a sanctuary. A refuge. A home.

At the centre of the classroom stood a great brass pot, or, cauldron - it was perhaps a touch aged and rusty in some places, but more or less well-kept. Inside, it seemed a potion was brewing. A strange bubbling noise came from within, like something was inside. Maybe it was, but at Maege you were taught not to ask questions. To the pot’s right there stood a rickety old table that, unlike the pot, was /not/ kept in pristine condition. It had been there since the school was first founded many moons ago, and was to remain there for several more. Atop of the table was a collection of frog parts; legs, eyeballs, even tongues.

Scattered miscellaneously throughout the classroom were around thirty stone-carved desks and stools. Each of them were in use, with some students - such as Darwyn - even reduced to sitting on the forest floor. The potions professor was weaving through the students to check on their work, either smiling or frowning disappointedly. With Professor Hardlocke, there was no inbetween.

Camped outside in the woods, hiding from the rest of the world, Maege Academy didn’t have too much. But what it did have - that quite a few schools lack - was a community. And in a world of danger for witches and wizards, that was the only thing you needed.

@WillowShine45 ’s:

Once the bubbly teacher left the room, the Classroom sighed in relief. Firstly, the seating chart. Desktops connected to chairs, made of a cool, hard, and cold metal. Like a ghost, Classroom seeps in the cool gray mist of the outside, letting the sparkles clean off the tables from dust. As if a jigsaw puzzle, the tables make grinding sounds. They re-arrange themselves, moving like cogs in a work machine. Classroom shifts its mood next. Dark mist comes in through the tiny, used cracks in the walls, and fills in the edges of the classroom. After making sure everything is in pristine condition, the Classroom lets it's guardian appear. Out of the black mist comes Naomi- the guardian spirit. She smiles softly at the condition of her home. (She's the only one who cares about the teacher's belongings, so she always makes sure its clean.) Carefully, she inches her way over to the mahogany desk of the teacher. Piles of papers, labeled, “grading”, “to grade”, and “graded” are lined up neatly on the desk. Naomi is one of the few guardian spirits that watches over a classroom. Each classroom has a soul, and lets it out in the form of a human-like shape.

Here at Liava Academy, where during the day non-magiks study, and during the night, the magicks study, everything is at peace.

PART 2:

There are quite a few differences between my partner's descriptions and mine. First of all, @WillowShine45 ’s piece describes a seemingly high-tech, magical school, whereas in mine, the school (as the text states) ‘didn’t have too much'. Everything is quite rickety or rusted, meanwhile the other fantasy classroom always cleans itself to pristine condition. Furthermore, in @WillowShine45 's school, it had its own guardian spirit for each classroom (I love this concept by the way!). In the Classroom, it seems that people don’t really value their resources, as the guardian spirit is the only one that cares for them/their learning space. However, in my piece, Maege Academy cares about everything they own, and, as shown with the table, never throws anything away. In @WillowShine45 ’s, the Classroom changes itself constantly.

The last difference I’m going to highlight is that in the day, the Classroom is used by ‘non-magicks’, and at night by ‘magicks’. On the contrary, in my piece, people that don’t have magic are terrified of those who do, and would never set foot in their school.

bi-daily 3/28-29

Welcome to the third (and final) bidaily of this session! Bidailies are just like dailies, with two days to complete instead of one. Today is day one of our atmosphere bidaily. First, check out the amazing Alana (@-NightGlow-)’s workshop here ( https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/7042744/ ). For the first part of the bi-daily you will be working with a partner. Both of you will agree upon a setting or location and describe it in at least 200 words. Afterwards, compare the differences in how the two of you interpreted the setting, and write an additional 150 words reflecting on some of the differences and similarities in your interpretations. The workshop contains more information on the activity–make sure to read it before getting started!

a crowded room - 202 words


Red carpets line a marble tiled floor, their swirling rock reminiscent of the flow fo hundred of people milling about the room, delicate flutes of rose red champagne in hand, their sips elegantly cautious, as every word they spoke in this room would be. Perhaps the band might play from their corner of the room, but not a soul in attendance is in any mood to listen to their arcing melodies, much less to dance – not a soul could ever understand the meaning of the word “fun”. Still, they wander, heels taping along stone cold floors, reflections shimmering in the cups they carry, as if looking for something they’ll never find. Not here, certainly, and perhaps not anywhere – fascinating, considering the many tiered velvet cake sitting atop a glass platter, entirely untouched. Along the edges of the room lie dozens, hundreds, thousands of gold leaf littered rose petals, some of them crushed into wrinkled spheres, others shredded to a million pieces. The ceiling, arcing far out of reach of the solemn crowds, seems well beyond the concern of the echoing silence; it lets one final note from the band ring through the room, only to leave it guests inevitably alone once more.

Bi-daily part one <3

The cottage was something that, on the outside, may have appeared completely normal–perhaps even something out of a dream–but that was only its tactic to lure others in. The exterior seemed positive, cheery, even, full of blossoms and vines and bright colors, but one would not think the same of the interior.

It was not dark and horrific, as some would think.

It was simply… sad.

There were no fires burning in the hearth. There were no rocking chairs, no soft rugs, no mugs or books piled up. There were only cobwebs and nests and mold and grime. So much that one could smell them in the stale air, the freshness of the outdoors having completely left the indoors. Though there was warmth outside, a cold draft whistled through the cottage, rustling torn, tattered tapestries and stealing comfort.

Nothing felt right here. Even those who had already disliked the outdoors would dislike this more. It gave one an eerie feeling, one that was uninvited. And it came with a feeling of sorrow, of thoughts of grandeur passed by.

As one drew further inside–and they always did–one discovered the note. It lie in the hearth, and those curious souls always took it. They shouldn’t have. Not if they wanted to live.