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Set your story in a place where something valuable is hidden beneath the ice.

Posted in Short Story on Nov 28, 2025

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✍️ 40 stories

You're Melting.

Shortlisted for Contest #331 ⭐️

Trigger Warning: Suggestions of abuse, death and mental health. A whirl of snow chased Becca as she burst through the thick door. She slammed it with a backward kick and darted forward across the cabin, making a direct line for the fireplace. Biting the padded gloves from her hands, she flicked them to the ground and presented her icy fingers to the flames. She panted and sniffed, puffing out cold air from her lungs with intermingled groans. She wriggled her tingling fingers, the heat of the roaring fire slowly bringing them back to life. Cl...

41 likes 32 comments 32
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Skate

Submitted to Contest #331

CW: Mental health, physical violence The ice was a barrier. Literally and figuratively.I spent the better part of most summers out here on and in the lake.Winters were just as frequent, but for different reasons. Nine before you, thirteen or fourteen with you, depending on whether you count this one.I got to know the changing of the seasons very well. I could tell you exactly when the lake would freeze over. Where the first ice crystals would begin to form in the top layer of the freezing lake water. It was along the eastern shore where the ...

26 likes 17 comments 17
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Dreams by Dragons

Submitted to Contest #331

There is a periwinkle diamond singing to me beneath a thick layer of solid ice. I have never wanted anything more in my entire life. Well, maybe not my entire life, as I am only three winters along, and maybe there’ll be something sparklier and twinklier that’ll catch my heart three winters from now. Mama always says a dragon’s hoard is only as big as his heart, and a dragon’s heart can be as big as he can dream. This diamond’s as big as any I’ve ever dreamed of!But, well, maybe it’s not even a diamond. Could be aquamarine, or maybe a delici...

24 likes 7 comments 7
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Delivery

Submitted to Contest #331

I got there first, and I picked up the ax.“Hey!” Aureylia barked, but her crooked teeth were smiling. “Not so fast!”Aureylia was so beautiful, it was like she wasn’t there. Like those weren’t really her clothes; some designer had paid her to wear them. Like she wasn’t really cold; a talented make-up team carefully applied rouge to her cheeks, her tiny nose. Like the minute they captured her long stride through the snow-censored landscape, someone would yell, “Cut!” and she would disappear.Or, someone would yell, “Strike the kid!” and then I ...

22 likes 18 comments 18
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Glass Bones

Submitted to Contest #331

Sophie Hale stood on the frozen lake watching the snowflakes fall. Her breath smeared the surface in cloudy ovals that vanished almost as soon as they formed. Half a metre down, frozen in place lay the wreath: dull plastic pine and a red ribbon caught mid-flick. She did not remember when it first appeared. It felt like something that had always been here, the way the lake and mountain had always been. “You’re doing that thing again,” her dad called from the pier. “Staring at it like it's going to wave.”“Maybe it will.”“It won’t.”His voice wa...

22 likes 10 comments 10
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The Fissure in the Frost: A Psychological Winter Mystery

Submitted to Contest #331

Mara told herself this was a break. The cabin was perfect—a sleek, modern box of cedar and glass tucked into the quiet mouth of a snow-dense forest. It was Emilia’s idea, of course. Emilia, hyperactive and relentlessly optimistic, believed a few lungfuls of fresh mountain air, far from the city’s grime and the memory of the difficult case Mara had just closed, would act as a psychic disinfectant.“Look at it, Mara,” Emilia had exclaimed on arrival, throwing open the glass doors to the cold. “No stress. No sirens. Just... stillness.” The small...

17 likes 3 comments 3
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Null

Submitted to Contest #331

If you’re lucky, you’ll never know the silence of interstellar space. I used to think I would enjoy it, bragged I was built for it, wired for it. I remember back on Old Home, after a late movie in an empty theater, when the credits ended and the lambent aisle lights swelled. I thought that was silence, and I relished it. Aside from humming ambiance, the only sounds were mine: the seat creaking as I stood, the bop when I kicked the popcorn bucket, the scuff of the popped kernels skittering across smooth cement. The rich, creamy crinkling when...

16 likes 19 comments 19
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Beneath the Silent Glacier

Submitted to Contest #331

The outpost rose from the ice like a cluster of metal bones, half-buried in wind-carved drifts. It sat on the western edge of a nameless Arctic island, a point on the map that might as well not exist. The crew called it Frostbite Station—mostly as a bitter joke. Several squat buildings, made of corrugated steel bristling with frostbitten bolts, clung to a foundation of ancient blue ice. Every winter storm rattled the walls so violently that the men often wondered if steel could endure the cold at all. The latest storm had passed two days ear...

15 likes 4 comments 4
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Frostbitten Hearth

Submitted to Contest #331

It’s dark. It’s cold. Memories lash at Adam with the same ferocity as the tiny crystals of ice hurled at him by the wind. It can’t be much farther. He can feel the heartbeat vibrating through the ice. Is it calling to him? And if so, is he truly the one meant to answer? He already knows. Adam glances behind him, though he won’t see anything through the storm. Still, something in his soul shivers like a rabbit catching the shadow of a hawk. He cannot see his pursuer, but he knows the Hunter is close. Close enough, perhaps, that Adam might fee...

14 likes 1 comment 1
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Beneath the Obsidian

Submitted to Contest #331

The first crack appears where nothing has cracked in millennia. I feel it before it happens. Planets always do. A simple line. A simple reminder. Before you ask—yes, planets can break. I am Aetheris, a world accustomed to silence, stillness, control. Which is why the fracture shimmering across my obsidian plateau feels wrong in a way only I can understand. The crack glints across my skin, a thin silver incision cutting the darkness with surgical precision. It shouldn’t exist. Not here. Not in the place I perfected into stillness. Days don’t ...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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Frozen Dahlia

Submitted to Contest #331

A cold wind scraped my chin as I was walking down the street, blue and green neon lights so bright. I’ve never noticed before how so many cafés and diners had put out their tantalizing signs to allure clueless customers that are walking around, searching for something to distract them from their loneliness and boredom. I hate to admit that I am one of those pathetic losers, but lately I have been lonely. I was once in love with the most caring and loving guy, but the only thing left of this relationship are memories of our sweet time togethe...

13 likes 5 comments 5
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A Forgotten Christmas

Submitted to Contest #331

A FORGOTTEN CHRISTMAS The empty stares hid the treasures of a lifetime.“These people seem like they want to say something but just can’t seem to remember what they want to say.”Her eyes wandered through the room. Piercing looks from the scattered faces made her uncomfortable. Nothing seemed alive. For a moment, she was afraid.“They just seem to be thinking about something,” she murmured, “but nothing is coming out.”Is it possible to forget what you forgot? The paradox seems unlikely because how would you even remember what you did forget? Th...

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The Collector of Almosts

Submitted to Contest #331

Snow had just begun to fall when my youngest climbed into my lap, her mittened hands still dusted with frost. Outside, the world was turning quiet and white — the kind of stillness that makes secrets feel heavier. It felt like the whole house was holding its breath. She looked up at me with a seriousness that didn’t match her small face. “Mama… is the Collector of Almosts real?” The question settled over the room like another layer of snow. The fire cracked softly. Her siblings lifted their heads from their blankets, watching me with wide, w...

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Ice Harvest

Submitted to Contest #331

Marina Kovač did not inherit the fish business so much as step sideways into it, like a puddle she hadn’t noticed until it soaked her socks. Her father needed a job when the plant shut down. The owner of Heartland Seafood Distribution wanted Florida, or at least a horizon that wasn’t railroad tracks and grain elevators. Her grandfather had been an accountant. He liked ledgers, not nets. And yet fifteen years later, Marina was still hauling cod and halibut through landlocked states that had no business smelling faintly of ocean.The truck’s hu...

13 likes 1 comment 1
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Warmth Beneath the Ice

Submitted to Contest #331

WARMTH BENEATH THE ICE By Jennifer Talkington Copyright ©️ November 2025 all rights reserved. My name is Bryn, Shadow Fang of the Moonfell Pack. I am second only to Aric and sworn to guard his flank through storm and shadow. I have fought bear, I have run beside lightning, yet nothing matched the night the ice woke beneath our paws. It began with stillness. Snow fell thick as the breath of gods, coating Moonfell Forest in white silence. The lake lay black beneath a perfect sheet of ice, wide as the sky and just as unknowable. Even the wind d...

12 likes 0 comments 0
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