Daily: March 2nd

I stared blankly at the daffodil growing in the patch of grass outside my window, then turned back to my friend, who looked back at me accusatorily. “See?” she said. “I blame you.”

“How is it my fault you have magic gardening powers?” I asked her, completely lost.

She glared at me. “You were the one who said I could bloom flowers in the dead of winter with my smile.”

“You’re kidding. There’s no way.”

“Why else would flowers be popping up everywhere I go, even though it’s December? Of course it’s your fault.”

“Well, I didn’t know I was some kind of oracle,” I said, glaring back at her.

“And yet somehow you are.”

I groaned. “Maybe I should study you under a microscope to see how these gardening powers work.”

For the first time since she’d shown up at my front door, carrying a basket full of flowers and looking furious, she grinned at me almost affectionately. “Nerd. Maybe I should study you under a microscope to see why you gave me magic powers.”

Laughing, I squeezed her hand. “I wonder… hey, Lisa, a bar of gold appears in front of you every time you breathe. Try it?”

She took a couple of breaths, then rolled her eyes at me when no gold bars appeared. “I guess your magical oracle powers only work when it’s inconvenient for me, huh?”

“Pretty much. My life’s purpose is to inconvenience you with an astronomical number of flowers.”

“You’re the bane of my existence, I swear,” she sighed.

“At least you’ll never run out of flowers, I suppose?”

“What use could I possibly have for hundreds of daffodils?”

As we bickered back and forth, I relaxed a little. Weird magic stuff aside, it was good to know that I’d have Lisa by my side even if she was going to summon flowers every time she smiled, and even if I did have prophetic powers. No matter what, we were going to stick together and figure out what was happening to us.

She stands in the wings by the side of the stage, sweating, her hands shaking with nerves. Her family is waiting in the audience, and of course she knows they’re rooting for her, as it were. They want her to do well tonight, of course they do. But it also makes it so much more anxiety-inducing, knowing that the people she loves are right there, watching her.

The university’s dean finishes giving his speech, and she takes the round of applause coming from the audience as her cue to walk up the stairs (praying she doesn’t trip over - she knew these new heels were a mistake!) and take her place on the stage next to him.

“Thank you for that warm welcome, and before I begin, I’d just like to say a few words,” she begins, just as she’d planned, just as she’d rehearsed. She gives her speech - gushing about how lovely it is to work as an educator, and how proud she is of this year’s cohort of graduates, before starting to read out the list of names one by one.

Each student comes up to the stage, collects their certificate, shakes her hand, and walks off. Not a single hitch, not a single mistake. She keeps her composure, of course, but on the inside, she’s sighing in relief.

It does get a bit repetitive, after a while, just reading out the list of names - but eventually it comes to an end, and she walks down from the stage, going to find her wife and daughter in the crowd. When she sees them, her daughter immediately runs towards her and envelopes her in a hug, her wife only a few steps behind.

With one hand, she ruffles her daughter’s hair affectionately, and takes her wife’s hand with the other. “Did I do okay?” she asks, still slightly nervous.

“Love, you were wonderful,” her wife replies.

And to be honest, that’s all she needs. No reassurance could be greater or more important than that.

Artemis Fowl II sighs as the knowledge of who he is settles into his mind, then looks around at the people - his friends, he tells himself - gathered around him.

“I only have one more question,” he says. “Why did you do all of this?”

“Because we care about you,” Butler replies. It might be the most emotion Artemis has ever heard from him outside a life-or-death situation, and he has to fight back tears, because he doesn’t cry.

Okay, maybe he cries. He just came back from the dead, alright? He gets to cry.

Juliet squeezes his hand. “The twins missed you, you know. They’ll be so mad that you left them without saying goodbye.”

“I died, is that not a valid excuse?” he says with mock outrage, and it’s as close to a joke as he ever gets.

“Not if you ask them,” she jokes back. “But I look forward to you trying to explain yourself to a pair of clingy toddlers.”

So does Artemis, now that he thinks about it. Even though it doesn’t feel like any time has passed at all since his death - or since the death of his original body, he supposes - he still misses his younger brothers.

“Then what are we waiting for?” he says, standing up and dusting off his suit. “Let’s go and find them.”

Somebody once said that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Well, I’ve never felt more like I walk over the corpses of giants than I do now, preparing my final essay for my History coursework.

We’ve been studying ancient history, and the topic of my essay is the Allaevian civilisation and the magic that used to be such an ordinary part of daily life. It’s still shocking to me that we used to have magic and hardly anybody even realises it. The kinds of things that we read about, that we daydream and fantasise endlessly about - that used to be real.

And then one day it went away, and nobody knows why. We have some remains of the culture, but nothing about the magic. If it weren’t for references to it in other historical texts, we’d never even know it existed. As it is, you have to get pretty far into studying history before it even gets brought up. It’s been a thousand years, and humanity learned to live without magic - that’d be a good thesis for my essay, right? How humanity adapted and changed over the centuries, how different life must have been when magic was just a mundane part of it.

My history teacher isn’t even all that interested in Allaevia, that’s the thing. She talks about it more like it’s just a footnote to other, more important parts of history. So she’ll hate that I’m doing my entire final essay on it, but somebody has to. Some days I feel like I’m going insane - that I’m the only one who recognises how crazy it is that we used to have magic, just like the kind we read about in books, and now we don’t, and nobody talks about it. I sound crazy even in my own head, thinking about it, but someone has to be the one who pays attention, who thinks about the possibilities.

My real question - the one I hardly even dare admit to myself - is: could the magic somehow be brought back?

#1: Mythology
“Genre Swap” - I rewrote the Greek myth of Cassandra in a noir detective fiction kind of style

Cassie is, quite frankly, sick and tired of not being listened to. You would think, wouldn’t you, that working as a private detective meant that the people who hired you to solve their cases would actually listen when you did solve their cases? Apparently not. This is the third client this week who’s listened to her solution and then decided that she couldn’t be trusted and asked for a refund.

There’s only one person who could possibly be to blame for this - Apollo. The rival detective has been on Cassie’s back for months, trying to steal her clients. It’s like he knows that his own agency isn’t as good as hers - because honestly, she’s been working as a private detective for years - and has decided that the only way to get clients is by stealing hers.

Maybe this small town isn’t big enough for two private detective agencies. One of them is going to have to go, and it looks like Apollo is determined that it should be Cassie. Well, two can play at that game. If Apollo is going round convincing Cassie’s clients that she can’t be trusted, maybe she should spread some rumours of her own.

Maybe then he’ll finally listen and believe her when she says she isn’t somebody to mess with.

#2: Hi-Fi
“Original Characters in Historical Times” - I wrote about one of my characters being transported to the Elizabethan era

Suzanne sits down in front of the easel and picks up a paintbrush, her mind working overtime as she tries to figure out what she’s doing here. Honestly, she just can’t believe that nobody’s noticed she doesn’t belong. She has bright purple hair! Wasn’t purple dye supposed to be super expensive back in the olden days?

Anyway, a whole string of unobservant people have completely failed to notice that she’s from the 21st century, and now here she is, and she’s supposed to paint Queen Elizabeth - the first, not the second. The worst part is that she’s seen this portrait. If she looks at the woman in front of her, she can see exactly how that pose, with those props, translates into the iconic portrait that everybody knows.

She did a whole fashion show based on that portrait! And now she has to try to recreate it? This is asking a lot of an unemployed art student. Then again, nobody here knows she’s an unemployed art student. As far as they’re concerned, she’s the court artist. They’d have to pay her for this, right?

Starting to paint, half of her mind focused on the queen sat in front of her while the other half tries to picture the portrait she’s trying to imitate, she smiles to herself. Yeah, maybe she could get used to living five hundred years ago.

#3: Fairy Tales
“Using Sparks from the Past” - I rewrote the story of Cinderella and decided to make it sapphic

Once upon a time, I sat on a bench next to a gorgeous girl, and I thought I might be falling in love with her.

I listened to her talk, and felt myself fall head over heels for her. And maybe that’s moving too fast, I don’t know, but it happened anyway. It was the night of the ball my parents had hosted on my behalf, to try to find me someone to marry. They didn’t much care who it was, so long as I got married quickly and started producing heirs to the throne. Being the eldest princess has its pros and cons, you could say.

I was supposed to be networking with all the eligible people in the kingdom - yes, every single one - but I’d got distracted. This girl had walked in, wearing an incredibly ornate blue ballgown, and her entrance had turned every head in the room, including mine.

So I went to talk to her, naturally. And we talked, and we danced together, and afterwards we slipped quietly out of the ballroom and sat on a bench beneath the night sky, just talking and talking, and I felt myself falling in love.

And then she ran off. If I were anybody else, the story would end here - I’d never have seen her again. But I had to know if she felt the same, if she could see a future with me, so I went looking for her. It took weeks, and I’d almost given up hope when I eventually found her. She was living in a small cottage on the outskirts of the kingdom, having moved out of her stepmother’s house.

The moment I saw her again, I knew that she was the only person I could ever wholeheartedly marry. And thankfully, she agreed. I proposed on the spot, and she accepted. (Look, my parents were urging me to get married as quickly as possible, and I have to admit, seeing her again put me in the frame of mind to do something impulsive and reckless.)

I married her six months later, and it was the best day of my life.

#4: Folklore
“Magical Realism” - I wrote a little contemporary story with hints of magic in

Hazel clasped the amulet around her neck before rushing downstairs and grabbing her backpack, checking that she had all the things she would need for school. It was finals week and she’d need all the luck she could get if she was going to pass chemistry, so as well as the protection amulet she always wore, she’d added a talisman for luck to the charm bracelet on her wrist. Maybe magic wasn’t the best way to make sure she’d ace her exams, but honestly it was easier than actually studying.

She rushed out of the door, shouting goodbye to her dad as she left, and got on the bus as it passed the end of her street. There was no way she’d get more than maybe fifteen minutes of last-minute study time before classes started, not with how late she was running, but she might as well cram on the bus. She pulled out her chemistry notes and started looking over them, murmuring equations to herself to get them to stay in her head.

When she finally got to school, there was a crowd gathered around the noticeboard. Probably just the cast list for the summer musical or something, but despite herself, she went to look, pushing to the front of the crowd to see what it was. Pinned to the board in bold, capital letters was the announcement: NO MAGICAL ITEMS PERMITTED IN FINAL EXAMINATIONS.

Oh, she was so screwed.

#5: Mythology
“Retelling” - I retold the Irish myth about the naming of Ireland, but as a contemporary story

Who would have thought that starting a band with your two sisters would be so difficult?

Well, okay, technically they aren’t just starting a band now, they’ve had a band for years, but now that they’ve got Ash on board to write proper lyrics for them, they’ve decided to go public and start working on their first actual album that they’re going to release. The only problem is that now they need a name for their band. Erin thinks that it should be “Erin and the Rooks”, obviously, she’s the lead singer, but Fiona wants her name to come first and so does Brianna, so they’re at a stalemate.

The only way to settle it is by asking Ash, so Brianna calls them on speaker while the three sisters are sitting around in the garage, all tuning their instruments. “Ash, the band should have my name, right? I’m the lead guitarist.”

Ash sighs, and even without being able to see them, Erin can tell they’re rolling their eyes. “I already told you, I’m not getting involved. Maybe the name of the band just shouldn’t have any of your names in?”

“No way,” Fiona interjects. “Wait, could you think of a way to get all our names in there?”

“Yeah, I can give it a shot,” Ash says thoughtfully, and there’s the sound of scribbling as they write something down. “Fiona, Erin, Brianna. F.E.B. What if you called the band “Feb”, like February? Then it has all of your initials in.”

Erin snaps her fingers. “That’s perfect! We can call it February and then release our album in February. Can it be ready by then?”

“Sure, if you guys record the instrumentals,” Ash says. “Do you want me to stay and listen, or can I go?”

“You can go,” Brianna says. “But thank you for solving all our problems.”

So Ash hangs up, and the three sisters start rehearsing again, because the songs need to be perfect if the album is going to come out in three months.

#6: Fairy Tales
“A Journey of Motifs” - I wrote a fairytale-inspired story using motifs such as a quest to break a curse, a forest setting, and a fairy godmother

She stands at the edge of the forest, takes a deep breath, and walks in. For this to work, she needs to find her way to the magical fountain at the very centre of the forest and drink a whole cup of its water, so that she can finally break the curse that she’s had her whole life. The first few turns are easy enough - she’s studied the maps of the forest enough that she knows what she’s doing. After a few minutes of walking, though, all she knows is that she’s very, very lost. She should have realised this would happen; the magic that governs the forest would never have made it easy for her to reach its centre.

All of a sudden, another person materialises in her path. Are they real? She can’t tell. The legends say that being in the forest for too long can cause hallucinations, but surely she’s only been in there for a few minutes. Then again, maybe time works differently in here.

The figure takes off their hood, to reveal an old woman, smiling fondly. “Dear, are you trying to reach the fountain?” she asks.

She nods. “I am, yes.”

The woman produces a wand from her robe, and flicks it gently, making glittery sparks shoot out and towards her. “This should help you find your way,” she says, then disappears.

Hallucinating or not, she can’t afford to waste any time, so she keeps walking and doesn’t bother trying to work out whether the old woman had been a real fairy godmother or just a figment of her imagination.

Word Count

Part 1: 215 words
Part 2: 229 words
Part 3: 355 words
Part 4: 241 words
Part 5: 339 words
Part 6: 266 words

Total: 1,645 words

Hi! I go by Mayhem on Scratch, my pronouns are they/she, and I’m in the UTC timezone. Obviously (as evidenced by the fact that I’m in SWC) I love writing - I mostly write fanfiction for the Grishaverse fandom, among others (on which more later) and original fantasy. You may be noticing by now that I have a somewhat unhealthy love for parentheses.

Currently I’m working on an original fantasy novel which is as yet untitled, and I haven’t actually started writing it because it’s still in the planning stages. I call it Allaeve, which is the name of the universe it’s set in, and the plot centres around a group who all theorise that magic is disappearing from the world - the big plot twist is that it isn’t actually disappearing, and all of their reasons are explained by other factors which tie into their character arcs. For example, one character is going through burnout after starting university which is affecting her ability to do magic, and so on. I could honestly ramble on about this story and its universe for the whole 1000 words of this intro, but I'm cutting this short so I can talk about other things haha.

Actually, wait, one more thing - fantasy is my favourite genre to write in because I adore worldbuilding! My favourite thing about writing is getting to create new universes and come up with all kinds of complex lore for them, and historical backgrounds, and magic systems, and everything like that.

I also love fandom and fanfiction, both as a writer and a reader - at the moment I mostly write for the Grishaverse fandom, but some of my other favourites include the Artemis Fowl book series, the Tortall books by Tamora Pierce, and the Percy Jackson universe! I’ve been in the fan-fi cabin for SWC twice which has been really fun (though of course not as fun as folklore will be this session.)

Unsurprisingly for a writer, I also love to read - I’m currently about halfway through the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I’m really enjoying it! I’m not letting myself buy new books currently because my birthday is soon and I usually get a lot of books then, but I’ve been expanding my TBR list in the meantime. I mostly read in the fantasy genre, but I dabble in YA contemporary as well.

I’ve already talked about some of my favourite books, but for fun, some of my favourite TV shows are Bridgerton, AGGGTM, and The Thick of It. (These change all the time, but those are probably my top three right now.) My favourite music artist is Taylor Swift (and my favourite albums of hers are reputation, evermore, Midnights, and TTPD), but some other artists I love include Sabrina Carpenter, Maisie Peters, Olivia Rodrigo, Cloudy June, Fletcher, Hozier, and girl in red!

Some of my other hobbies include baking, debating, photography, and swimming. Last autumn I spent months trying to work out the perfect chocolate-chip cookie recipe, and I finally landed on one which is amazing. My other usual go-to recipe is chocolate brownies, and I use a recipe I created when I was 10 and that surprisingly, has stood the test of time. Baking is generally how I relax and destress because it’s really calming, I think.

I’ve been debating for about seven years now, which seems crazy even to me. I started at my school’s debate club in Year 5, when I was nine (equivalent to American fourth grade), and continued that until I left primary school. I then did debate with my secondary school for four years until I aged out - my school’s debate club was run by an external programme which only goes up to Year 10. This year, I’ve joined a new debate group which takes part in national competitions - I went to a competition on Saturday and came third out of 64 teams!! In November, I plan to try out for the England national debate team… we’ll see how that goes! It’s a bit of a long shot but the coach of the England team was running the competition I went to on Saturday, and he apparently told my debate coach that he was really impressed by me and my teammate, so I’m hopeful that I’ll at least get shortlisted.

I also enjoy photography - although I don’t have a super fancy camera or anything, I get by using the editing software on my phone and it’s really fun. I love using my photos as the covers of playlists I make, or as my profile photos on various websites (including Scratch, whenever I don’t have a SWC cabin profile pic!) - my friends irl can attest to the fact that I’m always using photos I’ve taken wherever I can! Swimming is another hobby of mine, though I don’t get a chance to do it very often - I used to take lessons, but they stopped during the COVID pandemic, and I never really got back into the habit of swimming regularly. I usually swim a lot in the summer, though, so I’m hoping that this year the habit will stick and I’ll continue swimming into the autumn and beyond.

It doesn’t really count as a hobby as such (although it kind of does, I guess) but I’m also super into witchcraft. I mostly do divination, including reading tarot, astrology, and creating sigils. I call myself an eclectic witch because I do a lot of different things. In terms of astrology (in case anybody is interested) I’m a Leo!

In terms of personality, I’m somewhere between an INTJ and ENTJ - I can be more introverted or more extroverted depending on my mood. My enneagram is 8w7, which various websites call the “maverick”, the “nonconformist”, or the “independent” - draw your own conclusions from that, I suppose.

Lastly, since I’m putting this in the main cabin, I’ll drop a few facts about myself as a SWC camper - this is my sixth session, and I’m part of Folklore cabin! I took a long hiatus from Scratch in 2023, but I came back for the March session this year, and I’m back again in July. I’m really looking forward to being a bit more active this session, both in terms of writing and in terms of talking to other campers <3

The city of Lirylia is always busy. Vendors line every street, selling food, or clothes, or magical trinkets. Mages walk through, mingling with everyday citizens. Overhead, a dragon soars, wheeling around the clouds as children stare up in awe. At the heart of the city stands the university, where all can go to uncover the world’s secrets. It teaches not only the most eminent of mages, but also the city’s academics and scholars. People come from all over the world to learn here - from the classes taught, and from its ever-expanding library. A few streets away from the university lies the seat of government, from which the city is ruled by the mages’ high council in coalition with representatives elected by the city’s people. Lirylia is the centre of commerce and of scholarship, renowned by all.

Ten years later, Lirylia’s people are divided, split in two by the war that rages throughout the world. Not a day goes by without a furious battle - mages against mages, the city's ordinary people taking sides against one another. The dragons that once watched over this city now engulf it in flames as they attack those mages who would have all of dragonkind killed or exiled.

In another ten years, the city is completely barren and abandoned. Everybody who once lived there has either been killed in the devastating war, or fled to safer corners of the neighbouring kingdoms. The university lies empty, its library filled with the ashes of the books it used to hold - burnt to nothing by dragon fire. Even the mages have deserted their stronghold, unable to withstand the constant barrage of attacks.

Ten years from then, the buildings crumble. They were held up by magic, and the spells are failing. The old stone can no longer support itself. The mages who once maintained these buildings have either perished, or they are too far from the city for their spells to hold.

Then, one day, a decade later, a solitary explorer stumbles upon the city's ruins. She is armed with decades worth of new magical spells, ways of finding that which has been lost and restoring it. With this knowledge, she begins to tackle what remains of the city's library in an attempt to regain its former contents. She begins piecing together the ashes of books, the fragments of glass that made up magical talismans, and everything else that remains of Lirylia.

Ten years into this work, the city is almost restored. What could not be salvaged from the wreckage has been remade - new knowledge and magics added to what was left of the old, creating an entirely new form of magic that is neither old nor new, but both together. People begin flocking back to the city - first tourists, eager to see this city that was once so grand, then mages, in search of the knowledge it now holds. Piece by piece, Lirylia rebuilds its community. People start to build their lives there, setting up businesses and homes, starting families. It becomes a bustling centre of trade and of learning once more.

Ten years later, the dragons return.

Based on the instrumental version of Snow on the Beach by Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey

The mermaid glides through the water effortlessly, leaving ripples in her wake. At her sides, a shoal of fish follows behind her, trailing her in the hope of sharing even a tiny fraction of what, rumour has it, she is hoping to find. The sun reflects off the clear blue water of the shallows, making glitter dance in her vision.

After some time, which could have been mere minutes or could have been days - time passes differently underwater, or so she has heard - she reaches the point she has been looking for, and readies herself to dive. This is, she muses, much easier with a tail. She could swim even when she had legs, of course, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of the water swirling around her tailfin. It almost makes the bargain she had made for this worth it.

Plunging through the water, she races further and further down. Time is running out, and she has none to spare - not if she wants to reach the shipwreck before her life on land catches up to her. The fish surrounding her have to swim even faster to keep up with her as she approaches her target.

When she does reach it, she fixes her eyes on the door that she must reach, her arms straining desperately to get there. Almost as if somebody is chasing her. But they aren't, she knows they aren't. Even so, her dalliance earlier had cost her precious time - as beautiful as swimming through the shallows had been, as much as it was all she had ever longed for, it had still wasted time.

She pushes through the doorframe, ignoring the splinters of wood digging into her arms and tail. All she needs now is to reach the centre of the wreckage and get to the treasure that it holds.

“Come on! We can’t be late for the star,” Cara says impatiently, tapping her foot.

Holly groans. “Why are you so obsessed with that stupid star? You haven’t shut up about it for months.”

“It’s like you haven’t even been listening. It grants magical powers to anybody who dares to stare right into its heart.”

She rolls her eyes. “Stars don’t have hearts.”

“Shut up, physicist,” Cara says, throwing a blanket at her and laughing, and for a moment it’s like they’re back to normal, just joking about Holly doing a physics degree, and how Cara, who hated science, would never understand it, the way they were before they ever heard about Goïteia.

It had just been a stupid local legend, one of those stories you tell at sleepovers when you know it isn’t true. But when Cara heard the story, she’d latched onto it and not let go. She’d dived into researching, going deep into old forum posts and rumours passed around town, until she’d found enough details to satisfy her curiosity. It hadn’t ended there, though. For the last eight months, all Cara could talk about was actually going to the hill just outside their small town where the legend says that the star Goïteia shone most brightly. Somehow she’d convinced Holly to go with her.

Obviously Holly didn’t believe in any of it. A star that only shone once every thirteen years, or whatever it was, and gave you magical powers? There was no way it could be real. But here she is now, on her way to see for herself.

It’s a short drive to the spot Cara has identified, and once they’re there, they set up a blanket on the top of the hill, with snacks and water and everything they could possibly need. Holly shivers, freezing in the midnight air.

And the wait begins. Cara has a timer on her phone, counting down to when Goïteia will supposedly appear in the night sky, and the closer it gets to zero, the more distracted she gets. Holly tries to act normal - they play Truth or Dare, then Never Have I Ever, but Cara’s mind is clearly elsewhere. She can’t think of anything but this star. God, why did Holly agree to this? She wishes they had never even heard the name Goïteia.

After an hour and a half, Cara’s phone buzzes, and her attention immediately snaps away from Holly and towards the sky. It’s almost scary how instant it is. She stands up, ignoring the look of worry on Holly’s face.

Even from where she’s sitting, Holly can see the light. So, the legend was at least partly true - there is a star. Still, that doesn’t mean anything.

Cara tilts her head back, her hair hanging out behind her, fluttering slightly in the cold breeze. The starlight reflects onto her face, illuminating it, and she closes her eyes.

The light gets more intense, pulsing like a heartbeat, and Cara’s chest rises and falls with the same rhythm. And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the light fades, and Cara crumples to the ground.

Holly rushes to her side, but Cara is quick to stand up again. Her movements seem slightly different, though. It’s hard to pinpoint the difference, but Holly knows her best friend inside and out, and this… it’s different.

Her eyes fix on Holly, glowing slightly, as if the light that had faded from the star had been sucked into her irises.

“Cara? Cara, you’re scaring me.”

Unseeing, unhearing, Cara walks down the hill - not back towards the car, but further out into the countryside.

And what other option does Holly have?

She follows her.

How to survive high school:

Step 1: know that you won’t. Some irreparable part of you will be lost in the process. Try to hold on to as much of yourself as you can.

Step 2: find your person. It’s like a tactical game: you are permitted one (1) ally. Choose wisely. This person will be the one who is by your side no matter what else happens.

Step 3: be weird, right from the start. Do not hide for the sake of appealing to anybody else; they will find you out anyway, and it will be worse.

Step 4: understand that people will float in and out of your life. Find people who you are happy to have in your friendship group, even if only briefly. Choose people who will hurt least when they inevitably leave.

Step 5: once your group is large enough, develop a fight between yourself and one other person. It does not matter which of you is in the right - who punched whom in the head. They will take the other person’s side regardless. Swallow your pride and allow yourself to stay friends with this person, for the sake of keeping everybody else.

Step 6: lose everybody. Did you forget that people will come and go? Let them go. You still have your person, the one you chose first.

Step 7: be as loud, as visible as possible. Make yourself a refuge for anybody who cannot be themself. Be safety.

Step 8: kiss a girl, but do it in secret. She is still trying to pretend to be straight.

Step 9: your friends - those people who have drifted close to you most recently - are making bad decisions. This is a tactical game once again; dodge the bad decisions, but do not judge them too harshly. Your friend is sensitive and will cry if you point out that sending photos of themself to strangers online is a bad decision.

Step 10: hurt someone. It is inevitable; you cannot play this game without drawing blood. You try to do it as painlessly as possible, but it hurts you both all the same.

Step 11: be angry. Somebody makes your one person cry - you pick a fight with her and she pushes you down the stairs. Someone else corners you in a corridor, yelling about how you are wrong, against her religion. One of the people who you call a friend notices; she intervenes and tells them to go away. You are against their shared religion, this friend of yours says, but only if you act upon your feelings for other girls. She is trying to help, so you never tell her that this feels like a stab wound to the chest.

Step 12: stop caring.

Step 13: later, it will all be worth it. Once you leave school, the girl you loved will tell you that seeing you be so loud and visible was important to her, and suddenly, you know what the agony was for.

“But how are we going to get into the city?” Myantha asks. “It’ll be even more heavily guarded than usual.”

Onelle sighs. “Does it matter? We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Just then, Renna gets back from the forest and tosses another log onto the fire. “Please don’t fight. You’re both right. There’s no way to make an exact plan with how little we know about the city’s security, but we should still be prepared.”

The other two roll their eyes but mutter agreement; as usual, Renna is right. It just feels strange being a trio instead of their usual quartet.
Eventually the fire flickers out, and all three of them decide to get some sleep - there’s no need for a watch. Nobody else would be so stupid as to venture into this part of the Old Forest.

When the morning comes, Renna is the first to wake up, and she waits until she has breakfast cooking over their campfire before shaking Myantha and Onelle awake. They groan but sit up, and the three of them enjoy a relatively peaceful morning. After a few hours, they pack up the camp and keep walking, trudging towards the city.

It takes another week and a half for them to get in sight of it, and when they get there, they stare in synchronised dismay. Finally, Myantha breaks the silence. “It’s not a city any more.”

“It’s an island,” Onelle adds, stating the obvious.

Clearly, at some point in the seventy years since any outsider had been allowed into the city, there had been a flood of some kind that had separated it from the mainland - maybe even on purpose, to keep people out. Either way, there’s only one bridge going from the island-city, so if the three of them are going to get into the city to find the book they came here to get, they’re going to need to cross it.

So they keep walking towards it - they don’t really have any other option. They need to find a spell to break the curse that Dannor is under, and the only spellbook that has that counter-curse is hidden away in the top-secret library of this high-security city. Really, this mission was doomed from the start, but they couldn’t just abandon Dannor without even trying to break the curse.

Eventually they reach the bridge, and all hesitate, not wanting to be the one to cross first. If Dannor were here, he’d have gone across without a second thought, hardly even waiting for them - but he isn’t, and they have to get across somehow, despite how risky it is.

Part 1 - my own setting

Avery lies on the beach, watching the water dragons jump in and out of the crashing waves, splashing water onto the sands. It’s their last summer here at the cove, and they’re determined to make the most out of it. Their new internship will take them travelling all over the world, which is great! That’s the whole point of working with the magical wildlife rescue team! But it does mean no more summers at this beach, where they’ve been going since they were about three years old.

Suddenly, Delphin jumps out of the sea to land on Avery’s front, snapping them out of their thoughts. They wrap their arms around him - with some difficulty; they befriended the water dragon the very first time they swam at this beach, and he’s grown a lot since then.

They stroke the spines on his back, and try not to think about how long it’ll be until they see Delphin again.

Part 1 - my continuation of @Airfairy934's setting

Poplin scrapes a sample of moss off the cavern walls, collecting it into a small vial and quickly sealing it. For their latest experiment, they need to try and deoxidise the sample before adding the oxidised rust.

Turns out that all of this stuff they’d thought was perfectly normal, if absolutely thrilling, while they were growing up is actually a whole new ecosystem that’s never been studied before. People have lived in caverns for ages, obviously, but somehow when Poplin’s mothers had been looking for a home, they’d managed to settle down in the one cave that had once been inhabited by a wizard. Poplin doesn’t know the details - all they know is that the interactions between magic and the organisms that naturally live in caverns have created an entirely new biome.

And what better way to prove themself as a bioengineer than to be the first person to study this environment? When they’d gotten rejected from the university last spring, they’d thought that was the end of all their dreams - but if they can present the selection committee with their findings, they’d be sure to get accepted this time around.

Part 2 - dual timelines

Kenna groans, looking down at the sheaf of complaint letters in front of her. Complaints about the new chapel building, about the new tithe, about everything that the clergy has been doing lately. Who would have thought that keeping the clergy in check would be the hardest part of holding elected office?

There’s nothing she can really do about it. They have legislative power, held by the head of each of the old clergy families - she’s checked, the documents are all legal, no loopholes. Clearly this is archaic legislation, from a time when it was more than just a huge nuisance, but she can’t change it, so she just has to put up with it.

It’s the tithe she really objects to. New buildings - fine. Obviously that space could have been used more effectively, and it would have been nice if they’d bothered notifying the city council before they started building it, but it’s fine. Imposing an additional tax, though, one she knows perfectly well is just going to get funnelled into those families’ pockets even though the people of the city have never been poorer - that’s just pure greed. Those old clergy families are rich enough as it is, they don’t need the money by any means.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the money might get spent on something worthwhile. Surely the clergy hasn’t always been this completely pointless. Nowadays they rake in money by offering people a chance to speak with the gods - which Kenna is fairly confident is a downright scam, and she’d do something about it if the clergy weren’t entirely immune to any legal consequences. They don’t really seem to do much else, though, and that can’t always have been the case. Right?

———-

“And that concludes the meeting,” the high priest said, rolling up her scroll and tucking it into her bag. “Any questions?”

One hand went up at the back of the room. “What happens if we fail? If the crystals somehow get lost or destroyed?”

The high priest raised one eyebrow. “That should not happen if you are all careful.”

The questioner crept back, abashed, and everybody started filing out of the chamber. Magdalene’s hand went to clutch the crystal in her pocket, nervous at even the thought of damaging it. Her allotted crystal was a deep emerald green with streaks of jet black, the sixth one out of the set of twelve. Possibly also the most dangerous of the twelve, although maybe she only thought that because it’s the one she’s been assigned to protect.

Twelve crystals, each containing the spirit of a trapped god. Twelve people, each chosen to protect one of the crystals with their life, and pass it down their family line until such time as the world was ready to have gods in it again. After the Catastrophes which had decimated the world - a series of natural disasters, caused by the gods and only barely averted by the clergy - they’d been forced to work out what to do with the defeated gods.

And so they’d landed on this plan, where the twelve highest-ranking members of the clergy - the group of volunteer soldiers, sworn to defend the world against the destructive forces that gods could be - were given the honour (or burden, depending on your perspective) of guarding the spirits of the twelve gods.

There was no way this could go wrong.

Part 3 - pacing
For this, I used the three prompts “a lost language (slow)”, “a secret invitation (fast)”, and “discovering a new species (slow)”

Thalia unrolls the scroll, squinting at the strange symbols printed on the paper. This is going to take a while. She sits down at her desk and opens her translation anthology, flicking through the pages. It’s not long before she’s forced to conclude that there is simply no language currently known by linguists that matches the script on this particular scroll. Usually she can at least find something similar - a place to start, even if there’s no exact match. But this looks like no language she’s ever seen before. Which is strange, she thinks, going back through her book to make sure she hasn’t missed anything, because she’s supposed to be the foremost linguist of the magical world.

Suddenly, a piece of paper flutters out of the scroll - not written in the same unfamiliar language, but rather in a combination of several different scripts. As she frantically decodes the message, she realises that the actual words are in yet another language.

Unlike the scroll itself, this note only takes a second for her to translate, and before she can even consciously process the words in front of her, she springs up from her desk and starts running downstairs to the front door, grabbing her keys and an empty bag on the way out.

Less than an hour later, she’s at the address that the note had given, trying to pick the lock with the lockpick she always keeps on her keychain.

She creeps through the building, as silently as she can, trying to look out for any symbols like the ones on the scroll, or anything else that might be of interest. On her left as she reaches the top of the first staircase is a door labelled in the same strange script, so she goes in. The room is empty apart from the immense collection of books stacked on shelves - this must be the library. She pulls one book down from the shelf; it’s written entirely in the unfamiliar language. Then she flips to a page with no words in any script, just a glossy printed photograph. The person in the photograph doesn’t look human at all, and Thalia gasps before remembering that she’s supposed to be being quiet. Closing the book, she slips it into her satchel and starts slowly walking out of the deserted building.

Part 4 - using the passage of times and a dual timeline

The girl slinks backwards, trying to hide behind the crowd of her classmates as they all rush to the front of the room, eager to get started on the new training. But of course it’s her that the teacher’s eyes fix on, regardless of how much she tries to hide - or maybe because she looks reluctant. He beckons her to the front, passes her a sword and shield. The sword is real, not wooden or blunted. It’s supposed to be realistic, mimicking actual battlefield conditions so the students can be prepared.

The teacher lunges at her, barely giving her a second to find her feet and catch her breath. She ducks quickly, then tries to lunge back. The strike doesn’t land - of course it doesn’t, the teacher is about three heads taller than she is, and bulkier to boot. There’s no way she can land a hit on somebody like him, and if she can’t do it even in this practice, in a classroom setting, how is she supposed to do it for real?

It’s funny how things change.

She remembers arriving at this school for the first time, how the ground had been so beautiful, covered with plants. She’d stopped and stared; she’d never seen so many plants all in one place before. It had been a warm summer day, the sunlight reflecting off the leaves of the trees.

Now the plants are gone - cut down to make space for training courts. The kingdom is at war, and they need every soldier they can get, even schoolchildren. She used to grumble about final exams and assignments being due. Now her final exam is a battle.

It’s funny how things change.

She slams the door, storming out of the meeting room. Her students will not be fighting any wars, not while she still has breath left in her body to prevent it. There has been enough of that, enough children dragged into wars they have nothing to do with. Their pens and books replaced by swords and shields, hands that still shake decades later, throats raw from waking up screaming every night. She swore when she became a teacher that her generation would be the last children ever to go through that, and she does not intend to break that promise, invading hordes or no invading hordes.

Shaking off the residual anger, she walks through the door of the classroom, plastering a smile onto her face. The students have already started working on their latest essays - a creative writing piece. She wanders around the room, peering over their shoulders to glance at what they’re writing. The word WAR catches her attention - gods, she’s jumpy today.

She stands still for a moment, trying to read the rest of the girl’s story. But of course, it’s just a story. Just fiction. Nothing to worry about, nothing that should be making her so twitchy and paranoid.

And then it hits her - it’s just a story. For this girl, war is nothing but a story. It hasn’t come close to her, hasn’t even touched the edges of her life yet. All she knows of war is the books she reads and the stories she can make up about it.

It’s funny how things change.

Word counts:
Part 1: 348 words
Part 2: 565 words
Part 3: 388 words
Part 4: 540 words
Total: 1841 words!

List of good habits:

• Getting enough sleep

• Staying hydrated

• Exercising regularly

• Psychological self-care, like mindfulness

• Taking breaks when working

• Socialising or going outside

• Eating healthily

Thestra groans and lets her head fall down onto the desk, on top of the pile of discarded paper. She’s been working on this essay all day, rewriting it over and over again just to get it right, and nothing she tries seems to be working. The more she thinks about what to write, the worse she feels. She has to describe the effects of the spell that she’s been studying, but she hadn’t been able to make the spell work when she’d tried it earlier in class, and she doesn’t dare try again in case it wakes her roommate up.

That’s the other problem - her awful, horrible roommate, who happens to be taking the exact same course as she is, and is unfairly good at everything they try. Even so, as much as she hates Dregan, she still doesn’t want to wake them up in the middle of the night just because she can’t get this essay perfect. Then she registers what she’s just thought and pauses, thinking about the pros and cons. She doesn’t actually care that much about Dregan, does she? And if they do wake up, well, that’s their problem to deal with.

The components for the spell are already laid out on her desk, ready to be used, so she doesn’t even need to get up. She takes a deep breath, running through the instructions in her head, then starts chanting the words under her breath - if this doesn’t work, it’ll just be embarrassing for Dregan to wake up and see that.

It doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t. Nothing at all happens. She can’t help but let out a small scream of frustration - and she regrets it a second later, hearing a noise come from the other side of the room. Risking a glance over, she sees Dregan very clearly starting to wake up. They sit up in bed, then say blearily, “Thestra?”

She considers staying completely still and silent until they go back to sleep, then dismisses that as a terrible idea. They know she’s awake, her desk light is on. “What?”

“What was that noise?” they ask, still half-asleep, making their way over to her.

She curses herself internally. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

They get to her desk and lean over her shoulder. “Are you still working on that essay?”

“Just making some edits,” she says defensively.

“Gods, Thestra. It’s three in the morning. You go back to sleep, I’ll do the essay.”

And she really shouldn’t let them do that, she really doesn’t want to be in Dregan’s debt. But the idea of going to sleep and just letting them do the essay that’s been bothering her all day sounds annoyingly nice.

Sensing her hesitation, they rest one hand on her shoulder. “Seriously. Go to bed. I’ll handle it.”

Part 1 - based on this comment thread

Remember who you are fighting for.

The words ring in all our ears as the first shots are fired across the battlefield, begging the question: who are we fighting for?

Tollie, over there on the right, she’s fighting to get back home to her ma. Sooner the war’s done, quicker she has the money on hand to feed her family and get her ma’s medicine. Ant, the one charging straight to the front, his girl got killed by enemy soldiers six months ago and he wants to find the guy that did it, get his revenge. Brick just needs the cash, he’s fighting for himself. It’s a wonder any of the others even know his name with how much he keeps to himself in the barracks. Jacks is the youngest in our squad, and she’s got funny ideas. Fame and glory once the war’s done, shiny medals and awards from the crown. None of the rest of us go in for that kind of thing much, but she’s tougher than most of us so maybe she’s got the right idea.

See, none of us really knows what this entire war is about. We’ve all got our own reasons for fighting, whether that’s glory, family back home, revenge, whatever. Doesn’t matter. We still go into battle day in, day out, fighting somebody else’s war. The folk on the other side are just like us, I don’t doubt. We get told that we’re fighting for our country and our freedom, sure, but that’s just what the generals say. Everyone knows you can’t trust higher-ups like that, and I reckon their generals tell them the same thing on the other side.

The war’s been going on longer than any of us have been alive, even Red who’s eighty and could’ve retired years ago if she weren’t so determined to keep fighting. Even she doesn’t know how the war started or what we’re really fighting for.

And the new king’s only forty something, younger than Red. What’re the odds that he doesn’t know why we’re all fighting either?

Part 2

My 50-word blurb:

The two most famous, richest criminals in the world live together as friends and allies. And now they’re looking for a new housemate, and private investigator Holly decides to take up this offer, go and live with them, and see what she can discover about their shady business dealings - but is it a trap?

My piece based on @star_blossom264's prompt

For as long as she can remember, Sarah has loved the ocean. When she was a baby, her parents had lived in a small town only five minutes’ drive from the coast, and even after they’d moved away, they’d brought her back to the seaside for holidays and to teach her how to swim. As she’d gotten older, she’d joined the sailing club at school and learnt to navigate open water on her own.

So obviously, stuck in a dead-end position at her office job, the natural thing to do is take a sabbatical and go for a sea voyage. Getting the time off isn’t easy, and it uses up all the holiday leave she had left, but it’s worth it once she’s out on the ocean in the boat she’s rented. It’s a weight being lifted off her chest the moment she sets sail - all the tension and stress from work dissipates and she’s just left with the breeze in her hair, the smell of the salty water, and the feeling of the ripples beneath her feet. It’s perfect.

But unfortunately, it can’t last forever. She spends a few blissful months at sea, and it’s like rediscovering herself for the first time since she started working in an office nineteen years ago. The thought of returning to work feels like a pit in the bottom of her stomach - now that she’s remembered what life can be like, she can’t bear to drag herself back into that office.

So she doesn’t. When she gets back to dry land, the first thing she does is hand in her notice. The second thing is to start packing up her house, getting ready to sell it. She puts an offer on a house in the seaside town she’d lived in as a baby, and before she knows it, everything is ready at the same time. She drives down to her new house and finds out that her neighbour runs boat tours for tourists, and is looking for a business partner. It’s better than she could have hoped for. She says yes, obviously.

And that’s it. It’s strange how quickly everything happens, really, but it’s all worked out for the best.

Part 3 - a poem about taking a walk in my neighbourhood

Streets paved with uneven grey stone
And trees, spaced five metres apart, on each kerb
Their leaves cast shadows on the pavement
In the mid-afternoon light

Each house is different on this kind of road
Stained glass windows in the door
A front garden full of flowering plants
Or bricks like patchwork, a gate falling apart

Satellite dishes and scaffolding
Children scream in the street as the school day ends
A motorbike revs its engine
Going the wrong way on a one-way road

Pigeons peck at a crisp packet
That someone must have dropped on the ground
And the flies are enjoying the mattress
Left outside somebody’s house

The alleyway is full of junk
So’s the skip just down the road
But there’s pretty hedges
On our next door neighbour’s fence

The car parked two doors down is from the eighties
But there’s a brand new Mercedes up the road
Its roof is covered in pigeon droppings
That isn’t the point, though.

Part 4 - I used my 50-word blurb for this, and got the translation “The world's most famous and dangerous villains are considered brothers and sisters. Private investigator Holledge is looking for a new home, and Holly can't wait to find it. What do we know about his personal life? Is it going to happen?”

I look around the room at the papers strewn everywhere, and groan internally. Like, it’s a loft room that hasn’t been used as anything more than storage in a decade, what was I expecting? A luxury hotel room? Of course not. I should be grateful for Holledge finding me a place to stay at all, not judging it. At least, that’s what I’m thinking up until a mouse scuttles out of a pile of paper in the corner at the room.

So, you’re probably wondering how I ended up here in the first place. Let’s rewind, shall we?

The Siblinghood of Villainy, that’s what the papers are calling it. When I was a kid, we just called it family. And, yes, family that sometimes committed acts of mass violence and destruction, but that was just the day job. My brothers and sisters were lovely people even though we weren’t blood related - at least, that’s what I thought. All I knew was the safety and luxury of the mansion we lived in, not where the money that bought it came from.

I’d never even thought about it, really. Sometimes I was bait on a job, playing the cute, innocent girl and luring in whoever my siblings wanted to trap - but the thought that it was wrong had barely even crossed my mind. That is, until Holledge arrived. He’d presented himself as just a new brother. One of the family. I’d been assigned to look after him, since I was in the house most of the time, and that’s how he’d gotten close to me and helped me realise the truth.

Turns out he was a private detective who was looking into my family. In the outside world, people were becoming suspicious of everything we had going on, and the secrecy surrounding our house. Holledge wanted to try to get me out before everything blew up, and I’m grateful that he did.

Anyway, he’s left a note in my bag and told me to open it when I get here, since we probably won’t ever see each other again. His whole investigation would be accused of bias if people knew that we had a personal connection. I take the envelope out, and - huh, that’s weird. He writes my name the same way I sign it, with the line going across the H extended and all the other letters sitting on that line, and a really loopy Y. Funny coincidence, I guess. I open it and start reading.

Dear Holly -

Okay, no, this is weird, he has exactly the same handwriting as I do, down to the letter. I quickly scan the rest of the note, only to see… oh. Well, that would explain it.

I knew time travel was possible, that’s not the surprising bit, but he’s me? From the future? I guess it makes some sense, our names are so similar, but - I’m a boy in the future? The idea takes a minute or two to settle in my head, but if I’m honest? Maybe it’s not so surprising.

Word counts:
Part 1 - 344 words
Part 2 - 54 + 367 = 421 words
Part 3 - 162 words
Part 4 - 508 words
Total - 1435 words

I never really thought I’d be back here - for that matter, I never wanted to come back here. When I left town seven years ago, the minute I graduated high school, blocked everyone’s numbers and cut ties with my family, the whole point was that I’d left for good. But it looks like I’m some kind of bleeding heart now, because after all this time, I’m back at my old high school, solving a murder.

The building looks the same as it ever did, just smaller. I got the classic mid-twenties growth spurt and now everything seems smaller than it did when I was eighteen. Or maybe I just outgrew this town metaphorically, who knows?

I still can’t really believe I let myself get sucked back into all this. I swore I’d never, ever come back here, not for anything or anyone. And yet, here I am now, back in my old hometown - not that I really think of it as my hometown. It’s just the place where I happened to grow up, that’s all. And the place where my former best friend Thea still lives.

If only it had been anybody but her who told me about the murder. She’d managed to find my website and message me through there, saying what had happened and practically begging for me to help. Normally I don’t take on cases just like that - I may be a detective for hire but random people messaging me isn’t enough to go on, most of the time. I like to have a bit more information to go on before I take a case. But it was Thea, and how could I say no to her?

She’s married now, to that guy she was dating back in high school when we were friends. That guy - oh, I don’t even remember his name. Brad? Chad? Something like that. I always swore she was too good for him, and seeing the pair of them again just made me even more sure of that. They’ve been married for six years and they’ve got a toddler daughter. Seeing Thea again just brought back memories of high school that I tried to forget.

Trying to convince her to ditch her boyfriend and come round to my place instead. Texting her when my parents weren’t home. Sleepovers and girls’ nights - everything we ever said was just platonic. I guess it must have been, if she’s married now.

But I’m getting distracted. I need to stop thinking about high school and get on with solving this case. The sooner it’s done, the sooner I can go back to LA and my actual life, instead of just floating vaguely in Thea’s orbit. I check my stopwatch - three minutes and nineteen seconds so far. I’m timing myself walking through the school to see how long the killer would’ve had to escape. As I keep walking, I pass classrooms that I recognise, every one of them tied to some kind of memory, none of them good.

I take a deep breath. The sooner I solve the case, the sooner I can leave here and forget about this town and about Thea, for good this time.

Today’s just been one of those days when nothing seems to go right and nobody seems to be on your side. So the absolute last thing that I want is yet another horrible surprise - and yet, when I get home, slamming the door like it’ll help get all my frustrations out, there’s… something, lurking in the front hallway of my house. Something kind of see-through, but very clearly there. It looks almost person-shaped, but surely it can’t be. I take a step closer, and - yeah, it’s definitely a ghost.

I wave awkwardly at it, and it raises a hand to wave back. Am I seeing things? I must be, there’s no way. What are the chances? On the very same day that everything implodes at school and my best friend Aster decides to ditch me to go and be friends with the girl who’s been bullying me all year, I suddenly have a ghost in my house?

A thought occurs to me then, and I look at the ghost quizzically. “Can you hear me?”

It nods slowly, like the movement takes effort.

“Can you leave this house?” I ask, and it nods again.

A grin spreads across my face. “Then we’re going to have some fun together, you and I.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it - they? Does the ghost count as a person? - anyway, I’d swear they were raising an eyebrow at me, as if to ask what I’m talking about.

“There’s somebody I want revenge on. And she is terrified of ghosts. Thinks they’re creepy and horrifying.” I have to take a deep breath in to ground myself then, because it just reminds me of when Aster and I were properly close, before all of this started. At sleepovers, whenever we heard a weird noise, she’d make me go and investigate because she was scared it might be a ghost.

Anyway. “Will you help me? I want to scare her and make her regret hurting me.”
The ghost nods.

Part 1

POV: Telyn
Had she done the right thing? Telyn isn’t sure. All she knows is that whatever children she has will be beholden to the Citadel, and she has no intention of giving both her baby girls to them. Living in service to the empire is a harsh fate, and regardless of any promises she may have made, it would break her heart to subject her two daughters to that. But it was common knowledge that she’d been pregnant - it had been too difficult to hide. So she had to make the worst choice of all - giving up one daughter and saving the other.

POV: Cerise
Cerise runs, the baby in her arms, not knowing where she’s going, but just needing to get away. Surely the empire won’t be able to follow her through the portal, not after Telyn closes it. Nevertheless, the further she can get away from the spot where the portal had opened, the better. She needs to protect her daughter. Tears stream down her face as the image of her other daughter springs into her mind. She just needs to remember that she’s doing this for the good of all four of them - herself, her wife, both her daughters. Someday, surely, it’ll be safe for her to bring her baby girl back into their own world, someday when the Citadel isn’t as big of a threat.

POV: Telyn
Very reluctantly, Telyn hands her baby daughter over to the woman who’s come to collect her. It’s the worst thing she’s ever done, and she has no idea if the girl will even survive it. She hasn’t named her baby - it would just make it hurt more. Is it possible for a child so young to have such a vivid, vibrant personality? Probably not. It’s probably just her imagination. If Cerise were here now, she’d laugh at her and tell her that it was cute, how strong an imagination she has. Either way, the few days she’s had with her daughter have given her hope that she might be okay. She seems… resilient, maybe that’s the word for it. Tough enough to survive the Citadel. And if she’s wrong - well, she’s just glad Cerise is safe in the other world with their second daughter.

Part 2 - my unreliable narrator was trying to cover up the murder she committed; she was ambitious and manipulative

“Headmistress,” I say, smiling prettily at her. “Do you really want the authorities to get involved with this? I know the whole cheerleading squad is really upset about Lilly dying, and the last thing we need is for the whole thing to be dragged on for longer.”

Lilly was the glue of our squad, in a way. She was what brought us together. Only a sophomore, but we all knew that she was going to be captain next year. It was a shame, of course - I would have liked to keep captaining the squad as a senior, but if our coach thought that Lilly would make a better captain, I was happy to accept that for the good of the squad.

Now she’s dead, though, which is horrible. They found her body in the gym - she’d been strangled. Nobody knows who did it, but I think I do. I look at our principal again.

“Besides, it’s obvious. It must have been Matthew, Lilly’s boyfriend. He isn’t a footballer like the guys most of us date - he’s in the chess club. We always said Lilly has weird taste in who she dates, and I guess it must have come back to bite her. Even though he’s not athletic, he’s tall and bulky, and would easily have been able to strangle her. And he had a motive, as well - Lilly was getting too popular. They started going out in Lilly’s freshman year, before she joined the cheerleading squad. He must have been resentful of her.” I’m rambling a little, but I need her to understand what I’m talking about. Obviously it was Matthew who killed her - it had to have been.

The principal nods reluctantly, but clearly she sees the truth in what I’m saying. “Very well, Skye. Is that all?”

I nod, my ponytail bouncing. “That’s all. I have to get back to practice now. The girls are really upset, like I said, but we still need to be ready for the championship.”

She dismisses me, and I race back to the gym. With Lilly gone, I’m practically guaranteed to be captain of the squad again next year - unless we screw up really badly at our next competition, so we have to win. There’s no way I’m letting this opportunity slip through my fingers. Not after all I’ve done to secure it.

Part 3 - the trope I was playing on was a character from our world being transported to a secondary, magical world

I’m supposed to want to go back home. That much is obvious. I’ve stumbled into a world that isn’t my own - one with magic and faeries, and everything I’ve never believed in. Now, of course this world isn’t perfect. It never is, in books. But home is so much worse, and I can’t go back. I just can’t. But that’s what always happens, isn’t it?

The main character finds their way into some kind of magical world, which seems great on the surface but actually hides some kind of deep dark secret, and they have to solve the new world’s problems while also trying to get back home. I know how it goes. But I don’t want to go home.

And yet, it feels like the whole world is conspiring to push me that way, back to the place where the veil is thin. See, I always ignored my mother’s warnings about Samhain - how the veil that separates our world from the Other world gets thinner at that time of year. I thought it was just old superstitions and myths - some kind of Celtic pagan thing that I didn’t want to believe in. Looks like my mother is getting the last laugh with that one. (It feels weird to call her “my mother”, but there’s no way I’m going to call her Mom, not even in my head. Not after everything.)

I’ve spent the last two days wandering around the city that I landed in. Well, technically, I landed in the middle of someone’s house; some old guy who looked like a classic wizard. Yeah, I know how that one is supposed to go. If this were a book, I’d be getting a wise old mentor who’d teach me all kinds of life lessons, and maybe show me how to do some magic along the way. But I ran off pretty quickly, before he had a chance to talk to me or impart any wisdom. I don’t want or need a mentor.

If I can just avoid everything that usually happens in these books, then I’ll be okay. No mentor, no prophecy, none of that. I just want to live out my life here and avoid going back home. In this world, nobody’s fighting over getting custody of me. In this world, sure, I have to confront the fact that all my mother’s pagan myths might actually be true. But at least I can get away from home. So the longer I can stay here, the better.

Part 4

Oh no. The guy whose house I crash-landed in is following me. It’s like the story I want to avoid is just walking around a few metres behind me. I don’t know what he wants, but I can’t help the sinking feeling of dread, pooling in my stomach, telling me that if I let him talk to me, then that’s the first chapter of the story which ends with me going back home.

So I do the only sensible thing - I dart into the nearest bookstore. Libraries and bookstores have always been a refuge for me. Last year when my parents were getting divorced, I spent practically all day, every day in the little bookstore a few streets down from my house. It wasn’t a chain store, just a small business. I’d go straight there after school each afternoon, maybe grab a snack at the café next door, and the owner would let me just sit in a corner and read. I’d try to buy the books I read whenever I had the money, but he didn’t care whether I did or not.

Anyway, instinct and habit compels me to basically dive through the door of this bookstore, which seems like it fell right out of a fantasy novel. Maybe it did.

The owner’s standing at the counter - a woman with dark hair cut short; their curls just about reach their chin. They’ve got glasses and light skin, maybe a bit tanned. They look up as I enter, but I just nod hello and speed-walk towards the shelves; unlike the local bookstore, where I know pretty much every book they’ve got, this one is full to the brim with unfamiliar books.

Maybe the owner sees the worry on my face, or maybe they just know the guy who’s been following me, because I see them glare at him as he walks in.

“Mayhem,” he says curtly.

“Lindon,” they reply, equally sharply. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for my apprentice,” he says, and my heart skips a beat. His apprentice?? This is exactly what I’m trying to stay away from.

They shake their head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but they’re not in here. Go look somewhere else.”

He grumbles, but leaves - maybe because of the owner’s words, or maybe because of the glare they’ve got fixed on him.

Once I’m sure he’s gone, I emerge from the shelves and go up to them. “Thank you,” I say. “You didn’t have to lie.”

“Did I lie, though?” they ask quizzically, raising one eyebrow. “Are you his apprentice?”

I shake my head.

“I thought not. I wouldn’t recommend it, quite frankly.”

A small laugh escapes me. “Good to know.”

They give me an equally small grin, like they’re trying not to scare me off. “You can stay here as long as you like. Lindon won’t come back.”

My tentative smile breaks into a huge grin. “Thank you!”

I race off into the shelves, not looking back. A whole bookstore to explore, where I don’t ever have to leave? Honestly, I could spend my entire life here.

Word counts:
Part 1 - 370
Part 2 - 391
Part 3 - 417
Part 4 - 517
Total - 1695 words

There’s nothing Laurin can do about it. That’s the main thought going through their head as the building collapses right in front of them. After all these years, it’s come down to this, and they’ve failed. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

But the world is ending, despite all of their best efforts. The demons they’ve spent their whole life guarding the world against have succeeded, and they’ve failed, and they’ve let everybody down. What is a failed superhero supposed to do with their life?

Well, die, Laurin supposes. They don’t have much of a life left, not after this.

They’d only turned their back for a second, they swear. Somebody had been trying to get into the vault, and they’d looked away from the door they were supposed to be guarding, and somebody else - they suppose the first person must have had an accomplice - had snuck past them. And they’d got the top-secret book of spells, and then it was all over, quicker than Laurin could think about it.

So it’s all their fault, essentially. This would probably be the kind of thing they’d tell a therapist about after it was all over, if it weren’t for the fact that there would never be an “after it was over”.