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Weekly Contest #323
Told through the eyes of the Ballerina Every performance begins with a ritual. I arrive two hours early always.The theater is empty, the stage still asleep. I unlock the dressing room with the key I've kept since my first solo-its brass teeth worn smooth by years of nervous fingers. I light the candle. One wick, unscented, white. It burns beside the mirror, not for luck, not for ghosts, but for the silence it brings. I need that silence before the music begins. I lay out the shoes. Three pairs each with a ribbon stitched by hand. I choose th...
Weekly Contest #322
The BallerinaAs told by by her dresser, MinaThey don't see the way her feet bleed. Not on stage, not under the lights. They see the turn, the lift, the impossible stillness mid-air. They see the Swan Queen, the final bow, the bouquet. But I see the moment before-when she's crouched behind the curtain, trembling, her hands pressed to her ribs like she's holding herself together. Tonight was the gala. The one they said she wasn't ready for. Too quiet, too inward. Not enough fire. But fire isn't always loud. Sometimes it's the way she rehearses...
Weekly Contest #321
The Root that Refused to DieAs told by Asha, Forest Goddess and keeper of the Verdant SilenceThey call me protector. Goddess. Warden of the green hush. I do not mind the names, though none are mine. I am not named-I am known. By the moss that curls around the bones of fallen deer. By the wind that forgets its direction when it enters my woods. By the roots that whisper secrets too old for language. I have stood here since before the first axe was carved. Before the first fire was begged to stay. My forest is not large, not famous, not mapped...
Weekly Contest #320
A forest tale told in the voices of three Nymphs-Ashen, Liri and ThistleASHENI speak first because I am the eldest and the trees listen best to me. My roots are deep-not in soil but in knowing. I do not move quickly. I do not speak often. But when I do, the moss hushes, and the wind stills. We are not guardians in the way humans imagine. No swords.No spells. We do not fight. We endure. The forest is not a place. It is a rhythm. A breath. A long, slow exhale. I tend the rhythm. I walk the perimeter each dusk, touching bark, whispering to the ...
Weekly Contest #319
"I Am the Crack Between Stone"I do not begin. I do not end. I am the pressure that splits granite, the breath between tectonic sighs. You call me Earth, but I do not answer to names. I am not the soil you till or the mountain you climb. I am the tension beneath both. I move slowly. You do not see me move, but you feel me. When your walls shift. When your walls dry. When your bones ache before the storm. I am there, not watching-being. Above me, wind dances. She is restless, always brushing, always whispering. She Calls me Brother, though I d...
Weekly Contest #318
In the northern reaches of the forest, where the wind speaks in cedar and the moss remembers every footstep, there lived two flames: Solen and Brin. Solen was the sun's chosen-bright, golden and revered. She danced across the canopy, kissed the river's skin and was summoned by every sprouting seed. Her warmth was the promised of growth, her light the signal of day. Brin was the second flame. Not lesser, but later. She came when Solen left-when the sky turned indigo and the trees whispered secrets too shy for daylight. Brin was the hearth fir...
Weekly Contest #317
In the underbelly of New Geneva, beneath the humming monorails and flickering neon lights, there was a district known only to a few: the Quarter of Forgotten Trades. It was here that Elian worked as an apprentice to Master Virek, a Clocksmith whose shop was filled with ticking relics and impossible gears. Elian had no illusions about the grandeur of time. He didn't philosophize about fate or destiny. He simply liked machines-especially ones that obeyed rules. One evening, while repairing a fractured regulator from a 19th century marine chron...
Weekly Contest #316
I hear it every morning before the sun rises—the bell in the tower that no one else seems to notice. It’s not loud, not even particularly melodic. Just a soft chime, like a breath held too long. I pretend not to hear it, like everyone else. That’s part of the secret. The town thinks the bell is ornamental, a relic from a time when we still believed in omens and guardians. They walk past it, heads down, earbuds in, coffee cups steaming. But I know better. I know what it’s guarding. Or rather, what it’s warning against. I was twelve when I fir...
Weekly Contest #315
It was 3:17 am, the hour when even the city's hum seemed to pause. The streetlights flickered in their own rhythm, casting long shadows across the cobblestones of Alder Lane. On the rooftop of the old observatory, Maren adjusted the brass dial of the weather vane, her gloved fingers steady despite the chill. She wasn't there for stargazing. The telescope had long since been retired, its lens fogged with age. Maren's vigil was quieter than that-less about watching the stars, more about listening for what didn't belong. Every night, she climbe...
Weekly Contest #314
AS TOLD BY GHILLIE DHU GUARDIAN OF THE FORESTS UNDERGROWTHI do not walk as you do. I do not speak in the way your kind understands. But I am here, always-woven into the moss that carpets the forest floor, nestled beneath the roots of the silver birch, listening to the hush of leaf loam. I am Ghillie Dhu, the quiet one. The moss child. The root keeper. I was born when the first birch unfurled its leaves to the sun. When the wind learned to hum through hollow trunks. I do not age. I do not change. I watch. The forest is not a place. It is a pu...
Weekly Contest #313
In a forest untouched by time, where moss grew thick as velvet and the trees swayed not with wind but with memory, a curious thing began to happen. It started with the sparrows. One spring morning, they stopped their usual songs and instead whistled a memory none had heard before-a haunting trill that seemed to echo off the stone outcrops and ripple through the underbrush. The foxes paused mid-hunt, the bears mid-slumber and even the beetles felt it vibrate in their carapaces. Some said the melody was a warning-others claimed it was a call. ...
Weekly Contest #312
They met every evening at the observatory's edge, where the dome curved into the sky like a question mark. One sat inside surrounded by blinking consoles and soft hums. The other stood outside, beneath the stars. The glass between them was clear, but thick. It distorted sound, just enough that they had to speak slowly, deliberately. They never touched. "I saw a comet today," said the outside. "It burned like it was trying to remember something." "The one inside titled their head. "Comets don't remember. They follow paths." "Still, it looked ...
Weekly Contest #311
The river had always whispered to Jonah, even when he tried not to listen. Ten years had passed since he left the village, after the fire, after the trail, after the way the townspeople looked at him as if his shadow scorched everything he touched. He hadn't meant for it to happen. Just a prank between teenagers, a tossed match in the wrong direction. But Mrs. Ellery's barn burned to the ground, and with it, the only place she kept the harvest that winter. Her heart gave out a week later. Jonah stood at the edge of the river, now holding a s...
Weekly Contest #310
In the sleepy town of GreyStone Hollow, where fog curled through cobble stone streets and secrets lingered like the smell of old pages, Clementine Voss ran "The Hidden Chapter," an indie bookstore nestled between a bakery and an antiques shop. Her clientele were loyal, quirky and devoted to stories-but none as enigmatic as the man who walked in that Friday afternoon. He wore a faded green coat and asked for The Drowned Ledger, a book Clementine kept locked in a glass case. It wasn't for sale-not really. It was a relic tied to the still-unsol...
Weekly Contest #309
The kettle hissed long before it whistled. Mira stood barefoot on the cool title, her fingertips tracing the chipped rim of the porcelain cup. She hadn't used it since her mother passed. Not out of grief-at least not solely-but because it always felt like a ritual and she hadn't known what she was invoking anymore. The Jasmine tea leaves, curled like sleeping beetles, lay in the faded tin with its leaves half-peeled. She scooped a spoonful into the steeping basket, inhaled. The scent rushed up-flowers in a summer rain, memories buried under ...
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