oh, okay, the new theme is family, sorry! you have got two weeks!

My feet pounded against the pavement as I ran away, tears blurring my vision. I tried my best—I really did—to be the girl that my parents always wanted, but…some things are just inevitable, I suppose. It’s not like they tried to understand or anything…nor did they care as I left the house, telling them I’d never return.

I eventually arrived outside my neighborhood and at the local coffee cafe. Taking in deep breaths, I entered the cafe, the bells ringing cheerfully at my entrance. I ordered a coffee to be polite, putting my name down as my new name—I never liked my old one, and a new one would be a better disguise—then went straight for the restrooms.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror for a few moments, my stormy expression brightening the slightest bit as I noticed my new short haircut—which I did right before I left—before going back out, grabbing my coffee before taking a random seat.

The bells chimed, and I glanced up to see Ivy, my best friend since forever. She was the only one who ever understood me and accepted me for who I am. Ivy noticed my expression and immediately sat down next to me.

After a pause, she asked quietly, “Wanna tell me what’s up?”

I sighed, before saying, “My parents broke the last straw. I…I know it sounds stupid, but I…ran away from home.”

Ivy patted my back comfortingly and said, “I’m sorry it was too much and they didn’t understand. Do you want to…come over to my house and stay until you think you’re ready?”

I nodded, but added hesitantly, “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready…my family definitely won’t ever be ready.”

Ivy paused a few more moments, before saying, “Well, you could stay as long as you want.”

“I…” I couldn’t express how thankful I was for my friend. “...thank you so much, Ivy. I’d…appreciate that.”

~

And from then on, I knew that they would be my found family—even after I sorted things out, whenever things got bad, I knew I could always come to them for guidance.

I wrote something, and I was thinking I'd enter it, but it's 300 words over the limit. Can I still enter it? I don't know how to make it any shorter. If not, I understand

I don't like it as much now that some time has passed, but I've decided to enter it anyway.

"Tales From Solitude"

I arrived in the new country abruptly, with little money and no friends. Whatever was left of my family - which was just a blurry memory, even then - was far behind me.

A fact about myself I’ve come to accept is that I was born to be solitary. I am not easy to get along with, and I have trouble trusting others. But I wanted to trust somebody desperately. Living in solitude for a long time, you see that it is in many ways a beautiful thing. Still, sometimes you want to appreciate the beauty of something from afar, not have it rooted deep inside your heart like I did. Having solitude in your heart makes it feel hollow. But these are just pretty words that go nowhere, like those of the bard who played at the inn where I first stayed.

I believe I first joined a group of mercenaries. They lived in the first city I found, and I had nowhere else to go - eventually staying at an inn gets expensive, especially with no job. I am skilled with a sword and quick on my feet, so after some trials they accepted me. 

Quickly I found, as I always do, that I could not bear to be around them for much longer. I could not find a way to trust them, despite the fact that I fought alongside them every day. I did not feel I belonged among them; they couldn’t seem to understand me. In retrospect, I ought to have tried harder. They were good people, some of them smart and most of them kind. They had many stories to tell. But I was not in a place to listen.

So I continued living in solitude. Eventually I gave up on the city completely and moved on to a small village.

The village had little going for it. It was filled with farmers and the rare young dreamer who talks about escaping to become an adventurer. 

I happened upon one of these dreamers - a young man, one of many children to a tomato farmer. 

“Please, let me come with you on your adventures,” the man begged of me. “I can fight, and I’ve my own sword and armor already. I inherited them from my grandfather. My family may have forgotten what we used to be, but I have not. I am determined to discover something great.”

I thought about it. He was unusually earnest, but I still felt suspicious of him. I was suspicious of everybody.

“What is your name?” I asked him.

“I am called Poe,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I am not quite sure,” I responded.

And so we left the village and moved up towards a city in the mountains. On the way we explored old caves, fighting monsters of legend, and ventured into ancient tombs. Although Poe was fascinated by the monsters and skilled at fighting them, I believe he liked the tombs better because there was always some piece of history in there. From the start, Poe loved to be connected to everything that lay behind him in the past and before him in the future. He’d trace his fingers along the cracked walls and tell me things he read in books.

I would become the most uneasy at night when we set up camp; I disliked the idea of sleeping near strangers more than anything because I was most vulnerable then. Poe didn’t seem afraid of me at all. 

When we arrived at the city in the mountains, again I attempted to find a group of people to trust. This time, Poe followed me. We arrived at a college where they taught magic.

I didn’t much care for magic, but I liked the school, and I liked the people. Poe liked it there, too. We still got to go on many adventures and learned about the history of the power we were being taught. 

Until the day I was framed for cheating. I was expelled from the college immediately. I sat outside in the cold, defeated - they’d taken all my belongings. I didn’t have anything.

Except Poe.

“You came back?” I asked.

“You are an honest man,” Poe said to me. “You wouldn’t cheat. You wouldn’t use something sacred to do something bad. I know you, and I believe you.”

“But - why?”

“Because,” he said simply, “I trust you.”

The words seemed natural on his tongue. I realized then that though it was in my nature to be solitary, it was not in Poe’s. Poe was meant to be among everything. But what was I meant to be among?

Not the mercenaries, and not the mages. 

We went on like this, moving from city to city, joining (and eventually abandoning) group after group. The only constants in our lives were each other. I didn’t even notice that it became less difficult to fall asleep when we made camp at night. It had been easy for Poe to trust me, but I had struggled to reciprocate that for a long time. I was starting to get it though.

So eventually I trusted him. Make no mistake, this didn’t mean I always liked him. He talked too much and was too impulsive. But what mattered was that he was good.

We’d both been injured fighting before, but one day we were fighting a particularly large, particularly strong beast. I’d hurt my leg the day before, but hadn’t bothered mentioning it to Poe. He always took those things too seriously and would’ve gotten upset.

I was fighting well, all things considered, but the beast caught me off guard. It came up behind me and struck me hard in the back. I fell to the ground, unconscious.

The next thing I remember is waking up at a healing ward in a village near the cave we’d been fighting the beast in. Poe lay on a bed beside me. He was injured pretty badly, and exhausted, but he perked up when he saw I was awake.

“Thank the gods,” he exclaimed. “The healers had told me there were no guarantees…”

“You… saved me,” I said slowly.

“Of course I saved you.”

It was then that it finally clicked in my head: I could give Poe my complete trust, because he would never break it; not only that, but I already held his trust in my hands. I felt a swell inside of my no longer hollow heart that wasn’t just trust - what else, then?

I survived and healed - mostly. Not enough to get back out and fight. I could no longer be a warrior, nor could I be a nomad. Fortunately, Poe and I had made good money on our travels - hunting bounties, finding gold in ancient caves. I didn’t have enough money to purchase a house on my own, but Poe gave me his share without hesitating.

Once I’d settled into the house, I thanked him for saving me and giving up his riches all so I could have a roof over my head. He nodded.

“My only regret,” he said, “is that we didn’t find you a group like you said you wanted. A family to fall back on. And now you’ll never get to go back out and fight like you loved.”

“I didn’t just love the fighting.” 

Poe looked over to me, surprised. “But what else - ”

“All this time, looking for a family,” I sighed. “I was foolish, Poe. Stay here with me a while. Would you? I know it’s not the exciting life you wanted.”

“Yes. I’ll stay.” He seemed to be getting it now. He smiled.

I wasn’t born to live in solitude, you see. It was just that I wasn’t born to live among mercenaries or mages or nomads or thieves or bards. I was born to live among Poe, and that’s what I’d been doing. I wasn’t going to stop then.

“I found my family,” I told Poe. “So don’t worry.”

yo, judging is. tomorrow.

ok, im gonna judge tomorrow afternoon, just in case there is someone working feverishly on a last minute submission. I've loved both the stories!

Hopefully this is not too late! It's part of a longer story I'm writing.

It’s February at the beach when my grandmother tells me we’re moving.

It used to be a tradition of ours to walk every Sunday on the beach, no matter the weather. But this year when winter came, Grandma has been too cold, too tired, too achy to walk. It felt wrong to go out on my own, for a while, but I’ve gotten used to the sound of waves as I walked alone through November, December, January, into February. Where once we’d collect shells together, I now spend walks scanning the beach for shells to bring her. She had trained me from childhood on her encyclopedic knowledge of shells, the species they belonged to and their common names and the rarest ones, carefully collecting only the ones up to her standard. I love to find the unique ones, the ones riddled with holes or oddly shaped– even if she thought they were ugly, the novelty of these singular objects brought joy to us both. In the spring though, she said, she’d get back on her feet. Today promises warmth, but the morning is cool. So when I see her figure huddled in a fuchsia sweater against the light breeze on this bright white morning, it feels like things are coming back to their places.

I jog over to her, my feet and the wet hems of my cargo pants picking up sand where I’d dipped my feet in the chilly lapping waves. The winter is over! An early spring is no good sign these days, but joy blooms in me anyway. I don’t mind sounding like a child when I tell her breathlessly, “Look, Gramma–” I open up my hand to show her the whelk shell, chipped and worn but colored beautifully. 

“You should keep that one,” is all she says, “to remember.”

“Huh?” She knows that I don’t really ‘collect’ shells anymore– though I take them home, I only borrow them from the sea. Anyway, they’re prettiest on the beach.

“Callie… you know we can’t stay here forever.” She says it like a recited line. “You know how your father’s work is. And everything… it’s getting to be too dangerous.” She glances in the not-too-far distance where an avalanche sliced off a portion of the shore, where waves still lap hungrily at the sandy cliff. Then she sighs. “We’re moving. You’ll finish out the school year, and summer break, but we’ll be on the mainland by August. Hurricane season.”

I stand in shock. “But… we can stay! Don’t you remember…?” My hand grips the seashell, feeling its weathered spikes press into my fingers.

And I’m thinking of being a kid with a bathing suit dripping on hot wooden boards on the porch of our house, where Grandma’s friends, my aunts and uncles, even my parents sometimes, would gather to gossip, at first, but also to plan protests, to write speeches, to make sandwiches for events, to dream– of a day when the government would care about our little island. When they’d talk about the Treasure like it was always somewhere around the corner, waiting to bless us with something better. When our family was united in belief that was once so clear but now washing away. When believing in a future I could spend in my home– my island– wasn’t crazy yet. But Grandma had always kept being crazy with me. Until now.

“Come on, Callie,” Grandma’s raspy voice is hesitant. “I think today is a good day for a walk.”

So we do. When we climb the dunes to return home, though, I drop the whelk back into the sand. I won’t need to remember, I decide. Because I– we– are staying here. I can’t imagine a version of my family anywhere else. 

I wrote an entry, but I'm deleting it.