I wake up to sunlight peeking through the curtains and the sound of my alarm going off. It must be 6:45 already.

I lay an arm over my eyes, trying to pretend it isn’t morning yet, that I can just go back to sleep, never mind the fact that I know I won’t be able to. I spend a few more minutes ignoring my alarm going off, too lazy to tell Alexa to just stop yelling at me, I’m up already. Finally, I say, “Alright, alright, I’m up,” grumpily, because, let’s be honest, sometimes your alarm clock just really needs to hear that.

Except…what I woke up to was NOT in fact my alarm clock. In my dazed, still half-asleep state, I did not realize that it was not a new sound. Come to think of it, I don’t know how I mistook it.

It was not the ringing I’m used to, but instead…a meow?

Slowly, I open my eyes. “AAA!” I squeal, finding my cat sitting on my pillow, right next to me, looking down at me condescendingly.

“You silly humans really can’t get up early, can you?” he says. “I’ve already been up since four-thirty!”

“Well, SOME of us need our rest, because not everyone here can actually take the afternoon to just nap, you know,” I respond, a note of irritation creeping into my voice.

Wait a minute. WAIT A MINUTE.

It dawns on me just as the words leave my mouth that this is not my typical, one-sided conversation with my cat. He was, in fact, speaking English to me.

Suddenly, I sit bolt upright in shock. “Wait. What? Since when could you talk?”


He seems to roll his eyes at me. “Who even knows? I could have been hiding it this whole time.”

That is…a scary thought. I want to pick him up and cuddle him the way I usually do, but it’s all too weird with him speaking to me, not by meows or purrs the way I’m used to, but full-on English with perfect grammar.

“Oh, so now you won’t pick me up?” he says, as if he’s reading my thoughts. “I’m still the same cat, you know.”

I shrug. “I guess,” I tell him. “But do you honestly, truly want me to pick you up?”

“Sure,” he responds. “I’ll even purr if that gets me some food. You all haven’t been giving me enough treats.”

Ah. So finally his real motivation comes out. He is looking for food, as always. That cat.

“How about this? If you stop speaking English before everyone hears, then I’ll give you something to eat?”


“Deal.” I’m sure I can see the way his teeth glint in the light, making his very own Cheshire cat smile.
~
Word count: 460 words

Chocolate:
Chocolate, my dearest BLÜ EYES twin!! I absolutely love talking to you about literally anything, from random screams about our favorite music artists (because let’s be real, I do that a whole LOT, oh my goodness) to the sibling rivalry we had this session (I mean, all those 4ks and 4.5ks were absolutely MONSTROUS, but you know. Fun anyway, I guess, sobbing), and everything else! Thank you for bugging me when I asked you to about leader apps, and I have to say that I’m really glad that I joined WUC this session, and you’re probably one of the main reasons why <3

Cat:
CAT! I know we hadn’t talked too much before this session, outside of some critiques for leader apps and whatever, but it was so incredible to finally get the chance to know you a little better when I had you as my co-leader this session. Let me just say, your design skills are absolutely amazing, and I absolutely love how the thumbnails turned out for us this session, ahaha- Anyway, there was genuinely no way I could have done all of this without you, and I’m so thankful to have had such wonderful help from you and for the opportunity to get to know you better this session!

Mouse:
MOUSEEE! I know we haven’t talked very much in the last few months/over the course of this session, but I absolutely love spending time with you when it does happen, ahaha- From that time in JWC like…I want to say a year and a half ago (?) till now, you’ve always been just so fun to be around, and you never fail to make me smile with your wonderful silliness, kindness, and everything else wonderful you bring to the table. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for WUC this session, and it’s been an absolute blast to have taken part in this session with you.

Toko:
TOKO! This session, we spent a lot of time competing for words on the TrackBear (or at least I did, sobs- I’m very competitive), but it definitely made it no less fun to talk to you during the session, do the daily together (your piece was actually SO good; I’m still screaming!! You’re such a wonderful writer), or literally anything else. Anyway, I’ve had you in a few of my SWC cabins before, but I don’t think I got to know you super well then, so it was really nice to have this opportunity to get to know you a little better this session! Thank you so much for all you’ve done for WUC, because you’ve really made my first session an enjoyable, memorable one.
~
Total word count: 444 words

CHOCOLATE!! Obviously, I already wrote you a note yesterday, but I’m pretty confident that I can still do this without being really redundant of my earlier thing, haha

Anyway, without further ado, I will begin!

So we first really started talking after the whole BLÜ EYES thing, and let me just tell you, with the sheer amount that I ramble about my obsessions, it really means a lot to me that you’ve stuck around and have listened to every one of them. You’re always so insanely sweet (I mean, your name IS Chocolate, after all), and you’re just genuinely such a supportive person.

Now, we’ve been friends for…what, a few months? You're probably one of my closest friends on here now, and I love how talking to you always feels so natural. This session of WUC, I’ve really enjoyed the chance to be able to talk to you more and, you know, have the excuse to randomly start screaming, whether it be about BLÜ EYES or literally anything else. You have been SUCH a marvelous hostie (help, it tried to switch it to “hostile”), and we all really appreciate your dedication to setting this up—it just shows how much you care about the things you do.

Honestly, seeing you around and talking to you never fails to put a smile on my face..

All this to say, you’re truly a wonderful, wonderful person and friend that I care about so much, and I am so lucky to have you in my life.
~
Word count: 252 words

Cat twisted a strand of her hair around her pointer finger as the door behind her shut, leaving the tinkling of bells as it left. Surely that would be interesting to the little kittens inside, who must love the way they dangle yet hate the way there’s an extra door separating them from reaching it. She held a cup of hot coffee in her hand, because yes, even though it was cold out (it WAS October, after all), she had made the decision to wear her typical olive green tank top. Maybe not the smartest decision. But it was also her signature look.

Today wasn’t just any old day in October, though. Today was the best day in October, in fact. No, today wasn’t the usual. Today was Halloween.

But first on her agenda: go back home. Why? The cat fur on her clothes, while perhaps extra true to her planned Halloween costume didn’t quite fit the typical aesthetic of a human dressed up as a black cat.

She checked her watch briefly—6:12. Good, she still had a little bit of time before the trick-or-treating would really start. She quickly switched to a heavier black sweater and black pants, paired with a set of, you guessed it, black cat ears to complete the costume. Perfect.

Of course, this was Cat’s typical Halloween costume. After all, what else could you truly dress up as, what with a name like Cat? Yes, this was the only thing that made sense.

After a quick snack, she locked the door to her apartment behind her and went down the road to the best spot in the area for trick-or-treating, holding a little jack-o-lantern basket for all her candies and chocolates. The best were, in her opinion, definitely the chocolates, but she wasn’t much too picky. Any candy was better than none.

She went from door to door, saying, “Happy Halloween!” to all her neighbors. Her new neighbors. She’d just moved only a few months prior, so while she knew it was the best spot, she hadn’t been around for long enough to truly experience it herself; she only knew the information from her best friend, who had been in the area for far longer than she had been.

Cat even dared to go into the most scary-looking houses, the ones with all the creepy decorations. Cat was hardly scared of anything at all, and there was no way she was going to let any decorations deter her from getting any candy. After all, the ones with all the candy bars typically lay behind the gates of haunted houses…

***

After a long night of trick-or-treating, she finally went home, her basket far heavier than it had been earlier. She smiled as she dumped them all on the floor and began to sort through them: the best ones, the ones to trade, the giveaways.

Tomorrow she would deal with the rest of them, but tonight? It was time to watch a scary movie.
~
Word count: 498 words

GREETINGS, everyone! My name is Snowy, and I use she/her pronouns. This session of the lovely Scratch Writing Camp, I am very excited to be leading The Real-Fi Retreat alongside the spectacular Surf and remarkable Recca! This session will be my (and I always have to count this because I have a real tendency to forget) eighth session of SWC, so I’ve been here for a little while by now!

Anyway. I’m half Singaporean, quarter American, and quarter Swiss, and I’m a very, very busy sophomore in high school who is doing way too many extracurricular activities but doesn’t seem to be able to drop any of them because they’re all marvelous. I’m a soccer player, and this year, I was the captain of the JV girls’ soccer team! Though the season has finished already, I’m trying to work in the off season to make varsity next year, so fingers crossed for that. I typically play left wing on the team, though I’m fine with right wing and striker too! (Striker is so fun!! Although my kick is not so great always, so my coach rarely plays me there, sobs)

I’m also a massive bookworm, pianist, and, obviously, a writer! I’m obsessed with a great number of things (so please do not be surprised if I suddenly start rambling about them in this intro, because I almost certainly will be doing that), which you’ll constantly find me talking about when I’m not trying to scramble to get all my homework and extracurricular-related stuff done. Which reminds me that I need to write an article for one of my extracurriculars.

MOVING ON!

As a reader, I really enjoy the genres of realistic fiction (fitting because of my cabin), poetry, and mystery! Mystery is a little hit-or-miss, though, because it really can kind of depend on how well done it is—generally, I find mysteries to be absolutely stunning or absolutely terrible with very little in between. My favorite book is definitely I Fell in Love With Hope by Lancali, though my favorite series is definitely The Hunger Games (with TBoSaS being my favorite in it, though I’ll have to reread SotR to find where exactly it ranks). I’m very, very proud to say that I was at the first-ever showing of the movie for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in Singapore (November 10th, probably only like 10 hours after it premiered in LA!!), and that was truly an experience, oh my goodness- I have a real tendency to reference obscure (or shall I say “Clair Obscur”—will get to that later) things from basically anything, particularly those books. I have both of Katniss’s speeches in Mockingjay memorized and delivered one of them yesterday. Other than The Hunger Games and I Fell in Love With Hope, though, I’m also a massive fan of any and all of Ocean Vuong’s work, and other favorite authors also include Ruta Sepetys, Kathleen Glasgow, Jodi Picoult, Holly Jackson, and more!

Okay, as for piano. For some reason, I think that lang has really gotten to me with the whole “you must deliver everything you promise in your thesis in your body paragraphs” thing in this introduction, ahaha- Oh, well. It’s good practice, I suppose. So I’ve been playing piano since kindergarten, which means that I’m currently on my…eleventh year (I think?) of playing, which is honestly insane. I’m still, granted, not the best pianist, but I love it anyway. My current favorite piece that I’m OFFICIALLY learning is Fantaisie-Impromptu by Chopin, which is such a cool song and definitely one of the best pieces out there, if you ask me. Other than that, I mostly enjoy trying to play songs I love by ear along with chords I find online, and I’m constantly trying out new Clair Obscur songs on the piano. The two of those I’m most actively playing are Old Lumière - Révérence and Alicia, both of which I love from the bottom of my heart. You do not understand my obsession with playing these songs. I also am occasionally playing Renoir and Lumière’s Opera - Continuer à t’aimer, and I’m learning to transcribe for the first time by attempting to put together a piano score for Yellow Forest - Nightfall, which is proving to be insanely difficult and yet also really, really fun.

And, of course, I’m a writer! My favorite genres to write are fairly similar to my favorite ones to read, though I’d switch out mystery for my strange hybrid genre of tragic magical realism with a heavy emphasis on the realism part all as a metaphor for reality…which is currently the best phrase I have to describe it, but alas, one day I shall figure out what it’s actually called. I’m currently working on a novel (or by “currently,” I mean on and off because I really keep losing motivation for it, despite my loving the concept), and I’ve just finished this morning a poetry collection entry! I’ve been writing for fun for around three years now, and it’s kind of become a major part of my personality. I’m also the leader (or one of them, rather) at our school’s Creative Writing Club, which is a lot of fun! This year, we’re going to try to create a collaborative anthology and get it published together, which is no doubt going to be a huge project, but it would be super cool if we could make it happen.

Wow, I’m at 900 words already and haven’t even gotten to my obsessions yet! Everyone get ready for me to actually start rambling, and please note that I am very, very much so paring this down, so if you are interested in any of my obsessions, PLEASE talk to me, because I absolutely love rambling.

Firstly, I’m just going to list them and then ramble about my current favorite ones because like. I’m going to run out of time and have a bunch of other things to do, so I should probablyyy be limiting myself, given that I’m already at the one thousand words point.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love The Hunger Games and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but beyond that, I’m also a massive fan of BBC’s Sherlock, and I absolutely love watching Shoot From the Hip, which is a British improv group that does a lot of really silly things. You should go watch them!


Obviously, I’m also massively obsessed with music in many forms, and my favorite genres of music would probably be indie and pop, along with their subgenres, though I do particularly enjoy songs with a piano-based instrumental. Oh, and if you can even count it as a genre, I really love French music, despite my not actually speaking the language. I’m thinking I might try to double on languages next year and learn French in addition to Mandarin Chinese as well next year, but we’ll see how the credits work out! I love Gracie Abrams, BLÜ EYES, Noah Kahan, Cœur de Pirate, Maëlle, and Louane in particular, but the rest of my absolute favorites list kind of depends on my mood. I’ve got nearly 1.5k songs in my liked, so it’s quite a long list. Other artists I love that immediately come to mind are Maisie Peters, Shawn Mendes, Luz, Em Beihold, Lewis Capaldi, and others. I have a lot, as I’ve previously mentioned. I’m currently eagerly awaiting the announcement of Gracie Abrams’s and also Maisie Peters’s new albums, while I’m also waiting for any snippets of new BLÜ EYES songs in preparation for the album I know is coming out…at some point. We shall see when.

And, finally, probably my current biggest obsession! Have you all guessed it at this point? Honestly, you probably have. It’s a video game called Clair Obscur, and it’s genuinely the best thing ever. It’s a turn-based fighting game with absolutely stunning graphics, incredible music, and a better storyline and characters (and character interactions and development) than basically everything I’ve ever read, which is really saying something, considering how much I love reading. It’s truly incredible, and I love it with all of my heart. This year for Halloween, I dressed up as Maelle, a character from Clair Obscur, and I must say, I’m really quite proud of my costume for it, despite it being on the simpler side. I’m currently listening to the entire soundtrack all over again, because yes, it’s eight hours, and yes, I love it so much that I will absolutely, 100% just listen to this over and over again because it’s actually incredible! I’ve already mentioned how much I love playing the songs on the piano, so you can probably imagine how much I love listening to them as well. My favorite character is maybe Lune, or at least currently, and I’m constantly begging people around me to play it because no one really knows what I’m talking about when I ramble, save for my dad. You all should play it as well so that I can ramble to you too! It’s truly amazing, and as you’ve probably gathered, I am majorly obsessed with this particular piece of media.

Alright, so I figure that it’s probably time for me to start wrapping this up now, given that I’m a fair bit past the 1k mark, but I hope you enjoyed listening to (or reading, I guess) my rambles. I’m super excited to get to know you all this session, and I’m really looking forward to this month! Real-Fi for the win!!
~
Word count: 1587 words

She tucks a strand of her chestnut-brown hair behind her ear delicately, pinning with it a lily as well. The white stands out against the sea of brown, but it’s only another reminder of all that she’s lost. The irony of it, she thinks. New beginnings. This is not a beginning. It’s an end.

She smooths her black dress down and purses her lips in front of the mirror, wondering the whole time if she could just find a way to skip the day. No, not just the day. That much is far too short; she needs longer than that. She doesn’t think it will be back to normal by tomorrow.

Ha. Normal.

No, she’d rather skip the entire month, or better yet, the entire year. That would be ideal. Skip to the end and never have to look back. Of course, she might have gaps, but right now, she could hardly care less. Her eyes are still tired from crying herself to sleep three nights in a row, and she’s only going to have a fourth tonight—that much she knows.

The girl sighs deeply and forces her lips into a tight smile. She knows, of course, that it’s fake, but maybe no one else will catch her in the lie…

***

It was a mere eight years ago when they ran in the sunflower fields, laughing together, because the two of them had not a care in the world. They had no idea of what would come in the difference of just a few years.

“Tag! You’re it!” the girl’s best friend tapped her on the shoulder and immediately started running, without ever even giving her a chance to figure out what was happening.

“Hey! You never said we were playing.” But in spite of the annoyance in her voice, the girl was running in a matter of seconds, turning on her heel to chase her, because she wasn’t going to let her get away with this. The girl was competitive, and her friend knew it. That was part of the fun.

The girl wasn’t as fast, but she gave it her all anyway. It became more of a game of hide and seek, and with the two of them being so much shorter than the tall stalks of the flowers, there were plenty of places in the dense sunflower field they could hide.

The two of them collapsed, laughing and panting, after a long chase, and they both lay on the ground smiling for minutes before her friend spoke.

“Did you know that sunflowers are supposed to mean loyalty?” She paused. “My mom told me that.”

“That’s cool,” the girl said, only half listening. Now, she wishes she had listened harder. Listened to everything she had said and never said.

In the memories, though, there’s nothing she can ever do to change it. All she can do is to say, “I’m tired. Let’s go back now.”

Every single time.

***

After the funeral, she stays behind, cursing her friend and the universe for the kind of tragedies that came. Mostly, though, she’s cursing herself for her inability to listen.

She stays until sunset and still long after, but then, she kicks a rock over the dirt.

“I hate you,” she says suddenly. She doesn’t mean it. Not entirely.

***

At first, she comes daily, but her visits fade to weekly over the months. While she doesn’t know it, she’s finding ways to live without her, whether for better or for worse.

And where she can’t see it, a little daffodil peeks out of the grass surrounding her grave.

This time, though, it wouldn’t be ironic to call it a rebirth.
~
Word count: 609 words

We haven’t gone to the beach in Singapore at all recently. Why? Well, we’ve got many reasons.

Firstly, it’s really not that special to go to the beach. I mean, when we still lived in the U.S., where it was cold and foggy a solid…what? Ninety percent of the time? Anyway, it just didn’t make sense to go to the beach that often, so it was always a special treat when it was sunny enough out to drive down to the beach together and swim in the still-cold water. Here, it’s nothing special. We’re in 90º weather every day, so we could easily make every day a beach day. That’s why it doesn’t matter much anymore. There’s only so many times you can go before it gets boring.

But that’s only a small part of the reason. I could go on and on about the reasons we might say we don’t go swimming here. We’re busy (true). There’s no kite surfing here (true, but my parents are the ones that care about that, not my sister and I). The beaches aren’t very nice (depends on the beach). Those are the reasons we’d typically share, but the real reason why we don’t go often is because of the “twangers”…

I must have been eleven or twelve when my sister coined the term in our family, and it’s something we all understand without really explaining now.

Every time we would go swimming, we’d feel those cursed twangers. A little pinch-like feeling on your skin that lingered just a bit too long, just enough to be a tiny bit painful but still so small that it made it feel like you were going crazy. One part itchy, one part painful. The only way to really describe it was exactly with the word my younger sister had come up with: twangers.

The thing is, these weren’t just the kinds of things you could deal with by wearing a rashguard or swim pants (or who knows what they’re called) into the water. These were the kind of things that could get into your swimsuit, I kid you not. No matter what you did, you could feel them practically chasing you.

At first, we thought it was a seasonal thing, because, you know, it had taken us a solid year or more to actually feel them. We thought it might not actually be as big of a deal as we were making it out to be. So for a while, we kept going back. This was before we knew what those little twangers really were.

After a while, we got sick of feeling like we were being gaslit by the ocean. The pain must have been real.

I don’t remember how many theories we came up with for this, but it took me quite a while to actually accept the most plausible, almost certainly right one: that these were jellyfish larvae stinging us.

To this day, when we go swimming at beaches outside of Singapore, we all comment on the lack of these little jellyfish larvae. It’s always a race to say, “Hey, there are no twangers here!”
~
Word count: 523 words

Arrête de m’aimer

Painting is an endeavor that belongs to her soul. She throws herself into it, every fiber of her being. The woman gives herself to the canvas, allowing it to take her, control her. She embraces the colors wordlessly, for the words are what have stolen everything from her. No, she will paint until they see, until everything she has created will be true once more…

“Aline, you must stop this,” Renoir begs her, shaking her shoulders, his fingers digging deep into her skin. She cannot feel it.

“Let me go,” Aline says sharply, but her mind is not on her husband, only the painting. He doesn’t. “Did you hear me? Let go of me.”

“Aline, you’re destroying yourself. Please,” he says as his voice fades to a whisper, “you have forgotten the rest of us.”

The sound means nothing to her. Does any of it anymore?

Je t’aimerai toujours

Renoir watches her paint tirelessly, because what else is there to do? He has lost one yet grieves for two.

At least when she paints, she seems peaceful. Her warm brown eyes soften, and for a while, she seems like the Aline he married, even if it is not for him. Even if it is only for a canvas.

But no. He mustn’t think so kindly of this…this obsession. Aline forgets; she has three children, and yes, she has lost one, but two are still living. He must find a way to banish her from the painting, find a way to force her to move on. It’s the only way.

And yet, he cannot help but wonder if she will hate him for it. He still loves her, even after everything.

Lâche ce pinceau, quitte cette toile

In the painting, Aline can twist the world as she wishes. She paints a better place than Paris. Lumière. It will be their light, and she will build them a new life, give them all the things they deserved but never got. He will be in every piece of the painting, and he will never be forgotten.

Renoir will idolize her here, not refuse her. She will keep painting, and the world here will finally, finally be perfect.

“Never again will I leave,” she murmurs, and she adds another stroke to her son’s body. It is beautiful once more.
~
Word count: 388 words

When I was younger, I remember that around Halloween, when we’d be carving our pumpkins, my mom would always take the leftover bits from the inside and make a myriad of desserts with them. Pumpkin seeds, pumpkin custards, pumpkin pie.

I, being the picky eater that I am, wasn’t really the biggest fan of any of them. Pie in general has never really been my thing, and while I loved pumpkin custard when I was younger, for some reason, I had grown out of it. But still, it was fun to smell the spices wafting out from the kitchen from our old home in the U.S. as my sister eagerly awaited the pie that would be coming.

This kind of baking lasted us until…what? Thanksgiving, maybe? Until then, we would have pumpkin custards and pies galore, always with so much to spare. Then around Thanksgiving, when my grandparents traveled to see us for the few days off that we had, we’d always share my mom’s treats at the end of our Thanksgiving dinner.

In Singapore, pumpkins are hard to come by; they don’t grow here, so all the ones you can find are overpriced, underripened, and all around quite terrible. It’s like that with any autumn thing you’d call a tradition in my old home. Here, they just don’t exist. Whether it’s pumpkin or turkey or anything else, we barely have a seasonal celebration that’s outside of the little one we invite the aunts and uncles for.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of pumpkins, and I’ve never truly experienced an autumn. But I can’t help missing the memories I associate with them either way.
~
Word count: 276 words

I’m riding my bike to school as fast as I possibly can because it’s currently 7:58 in the morning. And guess what time school starts? Yep. Eight. Which is…not so good, particularly considering that I literally just left my home, and I’m a solid fifteen minutes away, and that’s if I’m hitting all the green lights.

Do you still call them green lights if they’re the ones for the pedestrians? Hm. I don’t actually know.

Regardless, I’m distracting myself with these mundane thoughts. I need to be pedaling harder so that I can still get there, because it’s just my luck that on the day I slept in only ten minutes, the first class I have is history. Such a shame. Mr. Smith, my history teacher, is the most strict of all of my teachers about lateness, and I guarantee you, he will make me run and get a pass, even if it makes me even later.

I pass the park that’s the halfway point and breathe a sigh of relief, allowing myself one second to check the time on my watch. My heart sinks as I see the numbers.

It’s 8:03 already? No matter what I do, I won’t be able to wind back the minutes even a little to get to school on time. That’s the kind of stuff that exists only in the sci-fi stories, and rest assured, my life is NOT one of those.

But, wait…

Before my eyes, the numbers morph from 8:03 to 7:33. Momentarily, I get off my bike. This must just be a glitch of some sort, like maybe my watch battery is dying or something like that. It’s got to be something like that, and oh, the irony, considering my thought.

I nearly have myself convinced that I’m just making this whole time traveling thing up when my mom calls me, and I pick up.

“WHERE ARE YOU?” she yells, and I cringe, pulling the phone away from my ear.

“What do you mean? I’m on the way to school. I’m going to be late, mom. You know that.”

“WHAT? I’ve just made breakfast. How can you be on the way to school? You didn’t even come downstairs this morning.”

Now I’m getting REALLY confused. Like, if I were to describe for you what “confused” looks like, it would probably just about be my face right now.

“Uhhh, I’d say I’ll be back,” I begin, still looking at my watch, shaking it a bit now, “but if I head back now, then I really will be late for school, then. I’ll just get something from the cafe there or something. Don’t worry about me, and I guess we’ll…figure it out after school? I must have set my alarm an hour early.” We say goodbye, and then I hang up.

“What on Earth…?” I run through every possibility rapidly in my head. I definitely didn’t set my alarm an hour early, because I haven’t changed it in the three years since I did set it, and it’s been going off at 7:00 for as long as I can remember. That leaves me with two options: I’m going crazy, or I time traveled.

Which is really only one proper option: I time traveled.

I guess I really am in some sci-fi movie or book or whatever now. But, hey, of all the days for this weird thing to have happened, it could have been way worse, right? At least like this, I won’t be late for history.

I keep biking, shuddering to think of what else I might find along the way. Will my bike start spewing rainbows or something? Might I find people staring deep into their holographs instead of their screens? Who even knows.

It’s just then when my bike suddenly propels itself forward, not in a lurch-y way, but just like I’ve suddenly gotten way better at biking than I actually am. Clearly, most certainly, I must not be hallucinating now because I can definitely feel it, but even with my super speed on my bike, all the passersby don’t take much notice of me at all. Is this…normal now? Am I seriously in a world where time travel and super speedy bikes are just the norm?

What a weird way to start the week.

When I finally arrive at school, it’s (shockingly) not as strange as I would expect it to be, based purely on how everything else has turned out this morning. That being said, it’s still awfully strange.

No. Strange isn’t the word. More…terrifying.

Instead of a student council, we have a High Council that walk the halls towering above all of us. Students everywhere squeeze themselves as far against the sides as they possibly can, trying to get to make themselves as invisible as they possibly can.

“Why is everyone so scared of them?” I whisper to the closest person to me.

The student looks at me incredulously. “You mean you haven’t heard? They’ve been killing everyone who gets anything less than an A in any of their classes.” He’s shaking, and he quickly runs off.

This…is going to be bad.

***

I make it through the day, somehow, without being murdered by someone on the High Council, which is, I guess, a plus. Thank goodness, I’ll finally get to go home and figure this whole thing back out again. I’ll wake up tomorrow morning, and everything will be fine and perfectly normal.

And then my watch beeps. Instinctively, I look down at it, and as I do so, I watch the characters morph into 7:33 AM. The world around me begins to reset to its earlier positions.

Oh, no. Here we go again.

I think I might have preferred being late to history.
~
Word count: 963 words

Part One:

I have left too much of my heart in a place
that is no longer mine. My goodbyes lay heavy on my lips,
all of them still
too late, five years too late.
I walked away from you by the bridge, not sure if
I’d ever see you again, only knowing that for now,
for our ten-year-old selves, this difference—
in time, in country, in everything—would be
enough to force us apart with
canyons between us. Never mind our
friendship since birth. Never mind our
memories and conversations.
I think, somehow, I knew I’d never really
be able to talk to you quite the same.
That I’d never be able to talk to you.
Period. End of story.
If I ever did have such a thought, I was right.

I do not know you anymore.
It scares me.

(138 words)

Part Two:

Took a train to the city, thinking it would be easy
For all the nights I spent thinking that you would hate me
I don’t know how I thought that I
Could forget this was the place where we stayed up all night

But the snow’s still falling
And I’m still calling
Out into the distance for a ghost
I’ve known for too long

To find a place where our memories no longer live
To somewhere not missing pieces of our hearts, and I’ve
Left so many times I can’t remember
Where the home we once knew has gone

Now I’m ten thousand miles away
And even here, I can’t stay
I’m still too haunted by our pasts,
Would’ve thought this time would be the last, but

The snow’s still falling
And I’m still calling
For a piece of me I think I’ve left behind
And I’m trying (I promise)

To find a place where our memories no longer live
To somewhere not missing pieces of our hearts, and I’ve
Left so many times I can’t remember
Where the home we once knew has gone

Tried to tell myself to stop it
But find scraps of paper in my pocket
Every one a message to me now
I can’t forget, can’t leave behind,
It seems the memories won’t die
And I’m still searching

To find a place where our memories no longer live
To somewhere not missing pieces of our hearts, and I’ve
Left so many times I can’t remember
Where the home we once knew has gone
Where the home we once knew has gone
Oh

(267 words)

Part Three:

Act I Scene I: In the home of the Ducasse family, Lumière, Monolith Year 49

Enter Vivienne, holding a baby Maelle

Vivienne, whispering: (hushes Maelle) “Shhh, don’t cry, darling. It’s okay. I’m here.”

Maelle: (A small whimper, tiny tears streaming down her cheeks. She does not stop crying.)

Vivienne, softly, so as not to disturb baby Maelle: “André?”

Enter André

André: (peaks around the doorway and smiles at his wife and child) “What is it?” (walks toward Vivienne)

Maelle: (begins crying, tiny features twisting as tears spring to her eyes)

Vivienne: “I don’t think I’m very good at this.” (laughs lightly)

André: “Nonsense, Vivienne. Any child would be lucky to have you as a mother.”

Vivienne: (looks away from Maelle and André out the window and sighs)

André, nervously: “What? Did I do something wrong?”

Vivienne, shaking her head: “No, no. I was just thinking…it’s a shame, isn’t it? A real shame. We only have three years with her.”

André, face falling, humor gone: “Oh.”

A pause. The two of them remain silent for a moment that seems to stretch on for ages.

Vivienne, rocking a Maelle that has finally gone to sleep: “I just wish we could have had more time together. She will never know us. She will not remember us when she grows up. Who will tell her the stories about her younger days?”

André, sitting down beside his wife and taking her free hand: “We’ll write it down for her somewhere. So someday, she will know she has people who love her. Even if she never got to remember her.”

Silence between the two of them once again, neither one of them truly satisfied with the solution.

Vivienne: “Alright.”

André, looking outside: “It’s late. Get some rest now; I’ll take care of her if she wakes up in the night, alright?”

Vivienne, glancing from the child she holds against her body to her husband: “You’ll tell me if you need me?”

André: “Of course.”

Vivienne disentangles herself from André and brings Maelle to her crib, gently placing her inside.

Vivienne, quietly: “Sleep well.”

André turns out the lights as he and Vivienne leave the room.

Exit André and Vivienne

(363 words)

Part Four:

I know how to respond to the question “How are you?” in three different languages.

Muy bien, gracias!

我很好，谢谢你！

I’m good, thanks!

Actually, I’m quite well-versed in small talk. It’s natural for me to inquire into your hobbies or weekend plans; it’s habit. I fall into it whenever there’s a lull in our speaking as I meet a new person. As an introvert, small talk is much easier. It’s simple. It’s practically scripted.

For a long time, I liked small talk. Until I realized what it really meant.

“How are you?” is an idle question, a conversation starter for something that will last all of twenty seconds (if that) and will be forgotten in about as much time.

When we’re out for lunch, my dad pulls out his credit card at the same time he smiles and says, “Hi, how are you?” just before he orders. He smiles, and the cashier smiles back. His next words interrupt any possible answer with a follow-up. “Could I get a burger, please?”

Of course, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, we read off a different script.

“Hi, how are you?”


“Good, you?”


“Good.”

And it’s not just him, either. How many people have asked me “How are you?” expecting a certain response? Because clearly, the question, “How are you?” has two right answers: “good” or a nonresponse. Clearly, it’s not much of a question at all. More like a test, maybe, to see if you’re actually socially acceptable or not. Or maybe it’s just a nod of acknowledgement, like, Oh, you’re here.

It’s a conversation most of us find ritualistic, like an everyday item to be checked off our to do list. Had a successful conversation with someone? Yep, done.

At times, when people ask me it, I freeze. Sometimes I scramble for the right answer, the scripted one, for a moment before I can force it out of my throat, because it’s awfully difficult to remember which reply is the right one and which is the true one. It takes a moment for my brain to shut down my heart, because, of course, when a stranger asks you, “How are you?” they aren’t looking for your real response. The scripted one is far better.

I know how to respond to the question “How are you?” in three different languages. But only in one way.

Small talk, I have realized, is more than just simple. It’s black and white. And as much as I know the rules of small talk, I wish I didn’t have to.

(423 words)

During my fifteen minutes (actually, more like an hour and forty five minutes, haha) of getting off screens and doing something else, I was working on my homework for lang. My teacher, who is a massive philosophy nerd and who also loves Plato, had us read a translation of “The Allegory of the Cave.” Initially, I started out not so sure about it. It seemed like a perfectly okay piece of writing, but my teacher had kind of built it up (“I’ve read it at least a dozen times, and it just gets better every time I read it” and all of that), so I was a bit disappointed at first.

However, as I kept going and got further into it, I began to find it a lot more interesting. I think a lot of this had to do with what exactly our assignment was. Our assignment, since we just started this new unit, was to look at his line of reasoning. We were supposed to examine how he used the order of his points in order to ultimately support what his main idea (or the things he would have discussed in the thesis) were. What’s interesting is that it was almost something like a rhetorical analysis of a fictional piece or metaphor.

As I looked into it, I began to come up with some more ideas of what it might be about. Currently, I’ve begun to think it may in many ways serve as a metaphor for colonization and assimilation. At the beginning, you have someone who is happy in their ways of being in the dark, even when it may not include a complete truth, being shackled so they can only see the shadows on the wall. They are then forcibly brought to “freedom”—or light, outside of the cave, in hopes that they will see the whole, what’s true. Instead of the shadows of the things, they are meant to see the real things. The acclimation comes gradually, with the person still rejecting the light in favor of familiarity—reflections, shadows, the things that mimic the reality but don’t show it in its entirety or truth. It’s followed by the adjusting to be able to see the real things and, finally, the sun (or light) itself. Eventually, this person, this prisoner, goes back to the cave in which the story began, only to find themself scorning the rest and being willing to give up anything to not be one of those cavepeople again without that knowledge. But when they go back, others shame them, for they have not adjusted to the dark and are no longer used to it. They’re ridiculed, and when they try to bring the others to the light (to me, civilization is what I read into this). I’m thinking that maybe it’s something along the lines of how the assimilated people eventually can become the ones forcing others to do the same assimilation when they have only been taught to reject their own truths, yet ultimately knowing that trying to be assimilated by the very ones who have been almost “brainwashed” against you have no real power over you, for they don’t represent the values of your culture.

I don’t know if this interpretation is exactly what Plato intended with this piece, but I find it interesting nonetheless. It’s fun to ponder. And I hope, mostly, that I haven’t misinterpreted it.
~
Word count: 567 words

Poem’s verse was meant to be magical. She was meant to be made of melodious words strung together to make something memorable, something gorgeous. She looked down at herself, hoping to find any slightest piece of that description in herself.

She didn’t.

As much as she tried to be otherwise, Poem was far too blunt. Too sharp, not the smooth flow like she was meant to be. Poem was not ethereal, but entirely and utterly worldly, and she hated it.

If only she could be the one people expected from her…

Part of her knew it was not her fault, but instead, the Writer’s. How could the blame belong to her when she was not the one in charge of her own story? She simply existed, a figment, striving to be anything and everything that she was not.

It got lonely, watching all the beautiful Songs dancing by the river and laughing, their voices always like perfectly musical bells in the crisp autumn breeze. Oh, how she longed to be one of them, with impeccable meter and gorgeous rhymes. They were the ones that got caught in people’s heads, who they listened to on repeat. They never did that with the ones like Poem.

Parts of her always wondered what it would be like to be in the spotlight. Part of her wanted it, despite herself, and yet, stepping into the light would always mean putting herself out to be ridiculed. And that scared her more than anything else.

One day, she knew, someone would find her and discover her flaws. All the flaws in her metaphors and reasoning, all the places where you draw breath a little too sharply at the end of a line, the places where the rhythm is just off enough to make you cringe.

But for now, she would remain in her home of Drafts, never to be seen or known. She almost preferred it this way, for otherwise, she would surely have been reminded of her imperfections.
~
Word count: 333 words

How to Adult: A (Not Quite) Comprehensive Guide on Being a Grown-Up

Number One:
The first thing to remember as an adult (particularly as a new adult) is that you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s okay! As an adult, it’s of the utmost importance to acknowledge your lack of knowledge—internally. Embrace the fact that you know absolutely nothing. However, while you must never, not at any cost, reveal the fact that you don’t know anything. So what should you do instead?

Number Two:
Pretend. And you had better get good at it awfully fast, because you’re going to be doing rather a lot of it. The thing is, when you have not a clue in the world, you have to pretend like you know everything. You’ve got to lie your way through it. Not sure about the answer to a question some little kid asks you? Make it up. Need a good historical example to prove your point? Just keep it vague enough and it’s guaranteed to be at least half decent! Your imagination is your friend. Whatever you do, do it confidently, because no one will know that you don’t know a thing as long as you fool them into thinking that you know everything.

Number Three:
In addition to acknowledging your own stupidity in the areas of…many things (and no offense! This applies to each and every one of us, after all), you must remember that everyone else has a similar stupidity. Here’s a little secret: no one knows what they’re doing. We’re all just acting like we have some semblance of a brain when really, we all know of ourselves that we’re all just functioning on our one half-dead brain cell. You don’t know anything? Cool, neither does anyone else. We’re just all really wonderful actors pretending like we know everything.

Number Four:
Unfortunately, you have assumed the role of an adult. That means, most sadly, you must act like one in a variety of contexts. Most people will not accept when you throw a temper tantrum anymore. However, we’re currently trying to subtly change the status quo to allow for a bit more tolerance of toddler-like behaviors in the workplace. After all, we all had to start from somewhere!


(Edit: Mission is a work in progress. We have infiltrated nearly two thousand companies with our best undercover workers to reintroduce the idea of adults that act like two year olds. We’re doing our best for you all. Please stand by.)

(Edit: SUCCESS! This has now been revised. Please proceed to Number Four A for the new version.)

Number Four A:
Acting like a two year old is acceptable in the workplace, however, given the norm’s newness, it’s still considered a bit strange. As an adult, it’s your responsibility to make this norm something that’s not just acceptable but encouraged. Throw a temper tantrum every once in a while. Whine when you don’t get your way. And most of all, act like you know everything. We could all learn a little something from our two year old selves.

Number Five:
Well, that’s about all you need to know! Good luck, and you’ve got this…and if you don’t, at least no one needs to know that.
~
Word count: 539 words

Part One

The end of World War II brought the dawn of a new era: the nuclear age. With the emphasis globally on nuclear development that had only months earlier decimated Japan in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear detonations, the United States began their research into creating bigger, better bombs.

The questions were simple. How soon could they start? And where would they do it?

They turned to the Marshall Islands, a territory in Micronesia over six thousand miles from the continental U.S. that they’d recently claimed in the war from the Japanese. The population was spread across a number of different atolls, but all in all, there weren’t enough people there to merit true caution toward the Marshallese. And even so, the Pacific Island people were thought of as primitive, later even compared with mice. It was, to the United States, a way to protect their people and assert their dominance, particularly toward the Soviet Union.

The next things to come were straight out of a horror story: increasingly large detonations in islands less than a hundred miles away. It started with Operation Crossroads, but Operations Sandstone, , Greenhouse, Ivy, Castle, Redwing, and Hardtack quickly followed—a total of sixty-seven nuclear tests conducted over a span of just twelve years, from 1946 to 1958. The yield, spread across the years, was enough to be the equivalent of launching 1.6 Hiroshima bombs on the tiny island country per day.

On the other hand, the Marshallese were given little information regarding the topic. They were told they were being moved off their atoll, Bikini, “for the good of mankind,” and even this was only for show. When Navy Commodore Ben Wyatt asked if they would be willing, it was filmed time and time again before being broadcast to prevent the Americans from being morally wrong. Their new island had no lagoon for fishing, and the coconut weren’t good to eat. Soon, the food supplies ran out, and the Marshallese began to starve.

When it came to the time where they began testing, it quickly became clear that this safety measure of moving the Marshallese was hardly one at all.

The Castle tests brought only renewed horrors. The U.S. set off Castle Bravo, a fifteen megaton yield H-bomb (1,000 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb) that remains the largest test ever in United States history, which they predicted to be nearly a third of its yield. And not only that, but the bomb was detonated in bad weather, which spread the radiation for miles. It reached the Marshallese on the islands to which they had been relocated, and they laughed and played in what they thought was snow. In reality, it was nuclear fallout.

Nearby, Japanese sailors on a fishing boat known as “Daigo Fukuryū Maru” noticed the fallout and attempted to escape. Upon their arrival home, the 23 crew were sick, and the tuna in it had been contaminated with radioactive material. Still, while the crew ended up in the hospital, people learned too late of the radioactive tuna, which made its way into the market. With Japan’s prior knowledge of the effects of the nuclear bomb, having experienced them firsthand, they began to report this horrific incident. Shortly afterward, women in the U.S. began to advocate against nuclear testing on the basis of their fears of contaminated milk, reminding the government to think of their children.

1958 brought the end of the era of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, but the tests were only the beginning for the Marshallese.

Not long after the tests, the United States published a message saying Bikini was safe to return to. This was after more than twenty tests, including some of the largest in U.S. history. The Marshallese eagerly returned to their home island only to find themselves becoming violently ill due to the high levels of radiation.

The Americans realized their lack of research on the long-term effects of radiation and commissioned Project 4.1—a study of the long-term effects of radiation on humans, namely, the Marshallese. The Marshallese people were given pills with no explanation as to what they were for, exposed to radiation with the U.S.’s knowledge of its detrimental effects to human health—and all this with a translator rarely present to explain the situation to the Marshallese people. Merril Eisenbud described the islands as “by far the most contaminated place on Earth,” but asserted that it would be “very interesting to get a measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment.” And yet, it quickly became clear he didn’t consider them people at all. More like test subjects, primitive, inconsequential, and only to further their research. He remarked that “While it is true that these people do not live civilized people, it is nevertheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”

And the consequences weren’t just immediate, either. For two decades, the Marshall Islands remained a contaminated wasteland, with the cleanup being delayed until the 1970s. When the United States finally cleaned it up, it was mostly with the care of an everyday item being checked off a to-do list. Rather than focusing on the effects this would cause for years to come and treating it as a danger, they simply attempted to store the nuclear waste under a concrete dome. The Marshallese call this a “poison” and refer to this dome as “the Tomb.”

Today, the dome is leaking. With climate change and rising sea levels, the dome is likely to slide off into the ocean, releasing massive amounts of radioactive debris.

And yet, in spite of the dangers, many Marshallese only hope to one day go home. To be buried among their ancestors.

(959 words)

Part Two

The air here is always sticky and humid, but at least there’s sometimes a breeze to make up for it. It’s eternally summer here, everyone’s tropical dream, but they always forget that it gets a little too boring after living it day in and day out. It’s idealized so much that people forget to think about the flip side of it—it’s kind of nice to get a little variation. Not that anyone else would ever think about it.

At Bikini, you’re always close to the ocean, but you’ve got the lagoon as well. The scent of the sea is with you wherever you may be on the island, so it’s the kind of smell that will always carry a sense of home. Just like the weather, it’s something that you’d feel wrong without, even if it does get a little tiring after a while.

The palm trees sway ever so slightly as the air rushes through their large leaves, and fallen coconuts decorate the sandy earth. The trees stretch up high, so even when you look up to the blue sky, they seem to be striving for it, too. The coconuts here are the best you’ve ever tasted—fresh and full of flavor. Even if they are the only ones you’ve ever known, you couldn’t imagine ever having anything less than this.

In the lagoon, the water is calm, at least compared to the ocean. It makes for much better fishing, and you’ll often find your elders catching fish for dinner for your family and theirs. The fish here are, like the coconuts, fresh and delicious, and for your birthday every year, your mother makes them in the way you like them—perfectly seasoned. It’s always a treat.

It’s only a short walk from your home to the communal areas in the village, where you have the meeting place. Really, it’s more of a clearing with little tufts of grass here and there, plus a log that doubles as a bench, but it’s good enough for all of you, and it would be strange to think of anywhere else.

Your own home is simple, with a straw-like roof and dirt floors, but you wouldn’t give it up for anything. This is the place you’ve grown up in, the place that is home to so many of your memories. You have a view from the beach from the doorway of your home.

There’s a ship in the harbor, and they say they’re going to be taking you away. It’s hard to imagine leaving all of this behind.

(424 words)

Part Three

Charity Kabua is a girl who’s grown up on Bikini. She’s fourteen years old (subject to change) and has spent every one of her years in the Marshall Islands, having never left her atoll before the beginning of the story.

As an only child, she can often get lonely when staying at home, but thankfully, her home is set up so that everyone lives fairly close by. She spends most of her time with her best friend, Ruth, who only lives a few minutes’ walk from her home, and together, they go on adventures together—despite the fact that their home atoll isn’t very big.

This leads into character traits. As a Marshallese person who’s never been further than her own home island, she simultaneously is curious about what else is out there, and yet, she also can’t imagine ever leaving home. She loves the place she’s grown up, which contributes to her anger when she’s told that she must be leaving her home.

Charity is devoted to the people and places she cares about, and she’s fiercely protective of both her home, the life she’s grown up with, and the people she loves. When Commodore Wyatt comes to Bikini to tell the Marshallese people to leave their home island, Charity is first shocked. Her first instinct is to be excited about the chance to get to see the rest of the world, but it’s quickly followed by her horror at the thought, because she’s paranoid enough to understand it probably means she won’t be back—not for a long time. Her shock quickly turns to anger, because in her mind, these people have no right to take her home. She is angry that while they know nothing about the Marshallese people—and none of their colonizers from the past decades have, despite her not knowing/remembering the rest of it, but understanding this from the elders and her parents, treated them like people, only like assets.

While Charity is quick to get fired up about this, she’s also not a very confrontational person. She understands the power dynamic in this situation, and while she hates it, she knows there’s little she can do to stop the Americans from forcibly taking her home from her. Still, she refuses to accept it quietly, which causes her to turn to making remarks more privately with Ruth, venting her anger to her friends.

Later, though, she begins to grow braver as the conditions get worse, because her care and concern for the places and people she loves begin to outweigh her fears of confrontation.

(428 words)

Part Four

The day isn’t a spectacular one when they call us to the square. It is ordinary, perfectly routine. That is, until our leader, Juda announces we must meet in the clearing, our town house equivalent, for some important matter.

Naturally, I assume it has something to do with the pale-skinned people who have come to invade our home, and I’d rather do anything but talk to them, so I beg my parents to let me skip it with Ruth. We are, after all, only fourteen, and there’s no reason for us to take part in these discussions when we are still considered children, after all. Our votes, while informative, won’t really determine much of anything, so why bother?

Mama’s argument is that wouldn’t I like to listen and just figure out what he’s going to talk about? And besides, she told me, it could be important.

So, fine, I wait until the last minute before running to Ruth’s place so we’ll walk together. It’s a slight detour, sure, but this way, it’ll be much more fun.

We joke together on the way, making up more and more ridiculous things Juda could be telling us.

“Maybe he’s going to tell us that we ought to hold a swimming competition,” I say. “And the winner will get the nicest coconut on the island. Or something.”

“No, that’s too regular,” Ruth responds. “He wouldn’t call us over for that. He’d just keep the coconut for himself, or maybe his kids. I bet he wouldn’t even tell us about it.” I nod, seeing the logic of her point, and she pauses for a moment. “Ooh!” she exclaims, her eyes brightening. “I know. He’s going to tell us that we should all climb to the top of the trees and jump off them and try to be birds.”

I burst out laughing. “Can you imagine how stupid that would look? We’d all just be flapping our hands about, and I bet they’d be able to see us all the way from Enewetak.” I look out toward the clearing and see, through the gaps of the trees, people gathering. “Oh, we’d better hurry up. Baba and Mama won’t be happy if we’re late. Says it’s disrespectful.”

“Ugh, manners,” Ruth sighs, but we both pick up the pace anyway.

Mama shoots me a look when we sit down only just as King Juda starts speaking, and I roll my eyes when she turns away. Whatever.

This, though, is strange. They have the pale-skinned man up front too, not just Juda. And our translator. What are they doing here? Usually, it’s Juda who will relay every message to us, even if it’s about the pale-skinned people. What merits their presence here today? Don’t they know they’re not wanted here?

The pale-skinned man stands up and adjusts his uniform. Vaguely, I wonder how uncomfortable it must be to stand in that crisp of fabric, but his speaking interrupts my thoughts. It’s all gibberish to me, of course, but our translator tells us what he means.

“This is on camera.”

I barely know what a camera is, but he points to the strange mechanism to the left.

“They will see it. You just have to sit here.”

Strange directives, seeing as we’ve been doing little else.

Another sentence of gibberish, but this one isn’t translated to us. I fidget with my hair as I wait for them to say anything relevant. I wish they’d just get on with this.

“Now, we ask you to vacate your island for the good of mankind.”

What? What is for the good of mankind? My confusion must show, because when I turn to Ruth, she just shrugs.

It takes a few more seconds for what he just said to fully dawn on me. Leave? See the world? I have never been beyond the shores of Bikini.

But wait, no, we can’t leave Bikini. He doesn’t mean a vacation, surely, because nothing this pale-skinned man can tell us will be good. He must mean for good.

For good. For the good of mankind.

What does that even mean?

There’s silence. Even Juda seems to be stunned silent. The pale-skinned man sighs and yells some order at the people near the cameras, which isn’t translated. He says something to the translator, who in turn whispers it to Juda. And then the pale-skinned man repeats himself from the very beginning.

Does he think we’re dumb? We understood him the first time. Well, at least in part.

This happens far too many times, before finally, Juda tells him, “We will go, believing it is God’s will, it is good.”

No. We will not leave Bikini. This is my home.

The translation comes too late for it to matter, but I’m hollow enough that I can still only listen. “Well, if it is in God’s will, it must be good!”

I hate him.

(814 words)

Hello, hello happy crocheters and knitters and all the craftspeople in between. I know, we’ve all heard it before. You need more yarn. After all, there is never, ever any such thing as having too much yarn.

And yet, you don’t want to be spending money unnecessarily. This, too, I know. I once was a wee child who had just started crocheting, and I decided that it was absolutely imperative I keep a nice, large stock of yarn because I was always needing new colors for gifts and my own projects. As such, I ended up buying the most affordable kind of yarn I could find.

Well, today, I stand before you as an ambassador for the very company whose yarn I once bought so often: Seasons. Ah, but what’s so special about Seasons yarn? I mean, after all, it is just regular acrylic yarn. Why should you spend your money on this kind of yarn and not some nicer merino or cotton blend?

That’s easy. The thing I quickly discovered about Seasons yarn was its excellent quality, particularly when you looked at it with regards to how much you paid for it in the first place. You spend, what, five Singapore dollars? For two hundred grams of yarn? That’s a pretty good deal, and it’s always held up nicely for me. It’s perfect for all of my projects. Plus, it comes in a nice variety of colors.

But the main selling point of Seasons, the thing that makes me keep coming back to it again and again and again is that it changes based on the season, just like its name. In Singapore, where it’s so hot all the time, it adjusts perfectly well to become a much better-feeling cooler material, which allows me to wear it regardless. And when I walk into an air-conditioned space, the stitches contract, and the yarn gets a much more warm feeling.

This much is also true in places with actual seasons, not just tropical places. In the summer, it allows you to feel cool, but when it’s winter, it’s the warmest thing you’ll have in your closet. It adjusts perfectly yet keeps the same style, and also, it changes color depending on your outfit to make the best combination!
~
Word count: 377 words

A Recipe for an Orange Chocolate Cake (and yes, that word order matters…it’s probably more orange-y than you think it would be)

For the cake:
2 cups flour (sifted)
2 cups sugar
1 ¼ to 1 ½ cups of unsweetened cocoa powder (it’s an ✨estimate✨)
Zest from 3 oranges (after being washed, obviously)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt (fine)
1 teaspoon espresso powder (not the most necessary, but it does bring out the chocolate flavor)
1 cup milk
½ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs (the recipe says large, but honestly, I just use whatever’s in the fridge, sooo…??)
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract (more or less is fine! In the wise words of my friend’s friend, “You measure vanilla with your heart.”)
1 ⅓ to 1 ½ cups of really hot or boiling water (basically, until the texture looks right. This depends on how much cocoa powder you use.)

Making the cake:

Preheat the oven to 350º Fahrenheit. I can’t remember what that is in Celcius, but off the top of my head, that must be something like 170º…maybe? Don’t trust me, though.

Line two 9-inch pans with parchment paper or spray them with oil (lining them with parchment paper makes them come out easier and cleaner, but we all know how annoying it is to do that)

In a large bowl, sift and whisk together all dry ingredients (baking soda, baking powder, flour, salt, espresso powder, cocoa powder, sugar).

Whisk in (with a hand mixer or stand mixer…I mean, you could do it by hand, too, but it’s a lot slower) milk, oil, eggs, and vanilla on medium speed until fully combined. Then, slowly, add the hot water, mixing it in at low speed.

Add the orange zest in and mix until it’s evenly distributed

Split the batter evenly into the two pans.

Bake until done. Somewhere around 40 minutes for me, but it depends on your oven. You can use a toothpick to check.

Let cool for…it always feels like ages. You probably want to wait at least an hour or two before frosting it.

For the buttercream:
1 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)
4 cups powdered sugar (is this the same as confectioner’s sugar? I think it is—)
1 tablespoon vanilla (or more or less)
¼ cup milk
Zest from one orange

Note: My friend makes a much better buttercream than this that’s a lot lighter and less sugary, but I don’t have her recipe. You might just be able to reduce the sugar. I’m not fully sure. I don’t think it should affect the chemistry, so you should be fine?

Making the buttercream:

Whip butter until light and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar in parts along with the vanilla and orange zest and mix slowly.

Mix in milk until fully incorporated.

Frosting the cake:

I don’t know, this seems pretty self-explanatory?

Decorations:
I decorated my cake with chocolate chips and homemade semi-dried oranges (I got lazy and also couldn’t cut the oranges very well), but this part is really up to you.
~
Word count: 514 words

For people critiquing this:
Thank you so much for reading/critiquing this! This is a fanfiction of Clair Obscur, my favorite video game ever and currently my biggest obsession, that came out earlier this year. While the events take place before and up to the end of Act I, they also spoil a fair bit of Act II at the very end. If you have not finished playing that far and that kind of spoiler makes you uncomfortable (I truly don't blame you, ahaha), then it's probably best for you to stop reading now.

A few things that would be really helpful to me if you could think about as you're reading this:
1. Does it make sense to someone who knows nothing about the original game?
2. Is my sentence variety good enough, or do I need more of it?
3. Is there anything you feel is unnecessary or needs more elaborating upon?
4. Do you think what happened to Verso is clear enough for this to make sense? The story thread in the actual game is left somewhat ambiguous, so I did the same here, but does it inhibit your ability to understand what's going on?
5. Similarly, does the worldbuilding establish the difference clearly enough? Obviously this runs in two parallel worlds with two parallel sets of people (which I have done my best to prevent from sneaking into this too much to prevent confusion), but do you think that needs further clarity?

If you think of anything else as you read, I'd also love to know about that. Thank you so much, and happy reading!

Notes and Credits
Firstly, wow, thank you so much for making it to the end of this! I really, really appreciate it.

Of course, there are a lot of people who have made this fanfiction possible, and I'm so thankful to all of you.

Thank you to everyone involved on the Clair Obscur team for creating such an incredible game/storyline/literally everything. In particular, thank you to Jennifer Svedberg-Yen (lead writer) for her absolutely insane writing—you're such an inspiration. Thank you to Lorien Testard for composing a beyond incredible soundtrack to this, which in part inspired this. And, of course, Alice Duport-Percier for singing in so many of the compositions. It's genuinely one of my favorite albums of the year. (I'm listening to “Stone Wave Cliffs - Missing Hope” on repeat as I write this).

Thank you to my dad for getting me into Clair Obscur, and him along with my friends for enduring all my rambles, even when I was probably being super annoying.

Thank you to everyone who has and will critique this for truly helping me to make this the best possible piece I can.

As for the notes, I'd like to preface with the fact that I don't speak French. Not yet, anyway. I wrote the title based on my limited knowledge of French words, but it was incredibly grammatically incorrect, so the internet and my French-speaking friend really were invaluable in helping me to clarify (or to Clair Obscur-ify…I'm going to make that joke forever) what I meant in a language I do not speak.

The rest of the lines in French in the short story are all from Clair Obscur songs, most from “Une vie à t'aimer,” with one of them being the title of another song. Here are their English translations, according to Google Translate and my very limited knowledge of French. I invite all French speakers to correct me if I'm wrong about anything. Again, I don't speak the language, haha-

Peindre la vie • Painting life
Arrête de m’aimer • Stop loving me
Je t’aimerai toujours • I will always love you
Couleurs embrasées • Colors ablaze
Rouge feu, vie ôtée • Fire read, life taken away
Lâche ce pinceau, quitte cette toile • Drop this brush, leave this Canvas
Une vie à rêver • A life to dream (title of another song in the soundtrack by the same name)
Sur la toile, notre vie s'écrit • On the Canvas, our lives are written
À travers l'or, son rire persiste • Through the gold, his laughter persists
Tendre la main et t'implorer • Reach out and implore/beg you (the next line of this is reviens, which means “come back”)
Mon amour reste, attend • My love stays, waits
Si nos pulsations jouent à contre-temps • If our pulses play out of time/if our heartbeats are out of sync

And, of course, the title means (supposing I got this right) “Our love, painted on a canvas of dreams.” I think it's more meaningful when you have played the game.

The interlude is largely based on Alicia's letter to Verso, hence some similarities in language and meaning there.

I have also used a couple of other lines from the game, and I thank the creators for their utter genius. The first is “Life keeps forcing cruel choices,” and the second is “She invokes the flowers of the Gommage,” which is adapted from “The one who invokes the flowers of the Gommage” in Alicia's letter.

Thank you so much again for being here. It means so much to me.

I looked in the mirror,

I looked in the mirror,
Having no clue who I was
I walked away

A tear went down my face.

And that tear turned into a puddle.

Scrolling my phone,
I opened the camera app.

I doubted myself.

And that tear turned into rain.

And that tear turned into a hurricane.