alright gang, i think that's everyone! you've given me a really hard job!!! ill wait until tonight just to be safe, and then... judging!

actually ignore my entry

blackfooted bobcat, id just started your entry and i thought it was good, but i won't pry.

third place: 

moon wolf! i loved your story! family is a vague enough theme that you can define it in any multitude of ways, and i loved your found family theme. choosing the people in your life is very important, and sometimes that's all you get. i think you portrayed that beautifully, and in a simplistic and brief way, both of which are attributes that i think benefited the story overall. fist bump.

second place:

azalea! you write in the sort of dense prose that i desperately try to emulate, and what's more, you succeed. sometimes my eyes see masses of words and think: wow, this is like word math. this makes my brain inordinately happy. you manage to say more in under 300 words than i can in a thousand, and manage to write tightly packed sentences anyway. im jealous, kind of. it is also the best kind of excerpt, both functional on it's own and sort of demanding that i read the rest. i reach my fist out for a fist bump but then, embarrassingly, miss. I try to play it off as an intentional psych out, but my wounded pride is apparent. 

first place: 

periwinkle! i think it is the nature of your writing that, while various parts of it are clearly functioning to build the whole, and i want to comment individually on these aspects, their function is so uniform that i am rendered almost incapable of elaborating on what exactly it is, beyond very, very good. i think it might be your experience with poetry: your words flow, regardless of their medium, turning my brain into canned soup. what i am saying is that you are a very good author, and your writing is very, very effective. it does it's work. i don't offer my fist for a righteous bumping this time, because i don't want a repeat of last time. it's too embarrassing to even think about.

anyway uh good job everyone. seriously, just a great job, all of you, making this decision was tougher than i had anticipated.

Thank you so much! Everyone did a great job! The next theme is lake and I will judge on the 15th!

ok. piece. canon in the fictional universe i should probably name sometime. 

Season of the Witch

Ten Sokolov was still recoiling in existential terror from the show the previous night. A concert, yes. But once you start piling on the subgenres like the kids around here do, things eventually become loud and unlistenable. Apparently no-fi psychedelic noise-folk-punk just sounds like an angry person attacking various stringed instruments while shouting paragraphs from Moby Dick. Go figure.

They felt felt a little bad, honestly. John, he'd been very excited to bring them, and they'd probably been a downer. It was nice to know another trans-ish person here, they were still adjusting, and maybe they'd come off as rude? Ah, well.

Ten Sokolov was a freshman in College. Their major was, officially, undeclared. They had been, as they liked to tell people, born of the unexpected union between a Swinomish hobby hunter, and a recently divorced Russian immigrant. They had been raised in the Swinomish reservation, and now they were here, in Bellingham. Parts of Bellingham were typical of college towns, but you could also drive for about fifteen minutes and reach your average suburban sprawl. There was a Walmart nearby, just as there was a small privately owned bookstore nearby. The part they lived in went down a very steep hill towards a huge blue lake.

They lived in an apartment with John and some girl who never left her room. John was in Northwest film school, and he had a dumb little goatee. He was always smiling, and he had a weird, cracked voice. Maybe from chain smoking. Maybe he put it on to sound more masculine. He was very good at that, if it was so. He was kind of cute, but there was a mutual lack of interest. 

The lake was lake padden. The hill, and it's roads, stretched down to meet it, and sometimes Ten would ride their bike down the hill and stop at the edge of the water, just missing it. That is what they did now.

The wind whipped their short black hair, and they felt a little cold. The sweater helped with that. There were barely any cars out now, which was rare. Ten prepared to Akira bike slide. The water was bluer than the sky. Shifting. Like a little piece of the sky had been torn out and smashed right there, in the center of town. 

Reaching the bottom, Ten leaned quickly to the side, sliding down, placing their foot on the ground, looking out to the horizon, thinking, consciously, that it must have looked pretty cool.

"Hey!" 

A low, but probably female voice, said that from higher up the hill. Husky, Ten thought. That's what voices like that are called. Like the dog. Ten looked up, and saw a young woman around her age, sitting on a bike, a helmet secured over a messy mop of platinum blonde hair. She had dark skin, and a long, beak-like nose. She was wearing a brown, crumpled suit. 

"That looked pretty cool." Ten smiled up at her. "Thank you!" She talked in a weird way. Monotonous, but light. Like an out of tune piano.  "All right, 'check it.' I'm going in the lake."

She began to rapidly pedal down the hill, her expression not shifting as she accelerated, rushing down an asphalt incline towards the edge of the lake. A pebble beach made up the outer ring of the lake, but the woman on the bike had gotten enough air that the wheels only lightly brushed the stone. 

She fell into the lake, splashing around in the water, and swimming back to shore. She smiled faintly, waving absentmindedly at Ten. Ten thought about what to say, and eventually settled on: "Why did you do that?" 

She frowned, blinking rapidly. "You know how sometimes things just feel right?" "I don't know... I guess?" She smiled, and nodded. "It felt right. I'm named Lillie, hi, hello. I'm, uh, gonna go grab my bike."  

Ten spoke, a little nervously. "Would you like some help." Lillie seemed to consider that for bit, and finally nodded. The two waded  out into the water, and Lillie dove, pulling up the bike. It was difficult, but they brought it back onshore. 

The two stood next to each other, Lillie looking down at Ten and Ten looking up at Lillie. "My name is Ten." Lillie nodded. "I like your name. I also haven't slept in a week." "Okay? You're very tall." Lillie scrunched her face in thought. "I am... Six foot nine." "Really?" "Yes. I think. I am very tall."

Ten got on their bike. "I'm going back to my apartment. Do you want to come? You can sleep there if you need, it's getting a little late." Lillie looked them up and down. "Are trying to hit on or kidnap me? I'd be okay with the first, but not the second." Ten managed to splutter out "No! And... No, I think you could easily crush every bone in my body." 

"Okay. I will sleep in your apartment, Ten." 

It was so. The sun set on Bellingham. The lake continued to be hungry, and that night, Ten dreamed of a small man in a green suit, a fact that means little in the limited scope of this anecdote. The next morning the two rode their bikes to class together, and ate lunch together. The venn diagram of things they did together would eventually become a circle, and then one of them would vanish, for a time.

~~

(don't worry, these are characters in the terminal, and they eventually find each other again. go read the terminal and find out all about that oh man that was some especially shameless self promotion.)

Finally finished my short story~

The lake stretched out before me, its waters shimmering in a breathtaking shade of deep blue, captivating and serene like a perfect dream. Trees of various shades of gold-green stood tall surrounding this, outlining jagged peaks in the cerulean sky. 

It was such a majestic sight, and my hands automatically reached out as if to capture it in my hands—a little world all to my own. However, the moment I touched it, everything blurred and disappeared. Waking up, I turned my gaze outside my window to the dusty, desolate landscape. Factories pumped a steady smoke into the sky, which was filled with a haze. Abandoned houses stood in one corner and pylons towered in another, with wires like snakes slithering through the ever-low clouds.

I sighed, thinking back to my early childhood—when there were rolling hills of green, trees everywhere, birds chirping to one another, and the lake that seemed so magical and blessed by nature itself. Back then, there were only a couple of small houses, including ours, and we’d live side by side with nature, feeding birds with seeds in the morning, picking berries in the afternoon…

Then the change happened. The little village transformed into a bustling town, and then into a ginormous city. People flocked from all over, with what many called the “golden years” of the city. But they too, soon came to pass. There were not enough resources for everyone, especially water, and slowly, the city was abandoned. All that was left were a couple of factories and a few remaining families—including mine.

A drop of rain caught my attention. I watched intently as it slid down the window slowly like a tear. I can’t recall the last time I saw it rain. It must’ve been all those years ago, when there was still fresh, tender grass beneath my feet and nature playing a symphony throughout the day and an orchestra at night.

I couldn’t believe that it was raining. Entranced, I stepped out the door, breathing in the faint scent of petrichor that lingered above the stinging smell of the city. And as a nearby puddle began to form, I suddenly thought of something.

What if we created a lake? This struck me and as I mused over it, I realized that it could answer the city’s problems. It could attract nature back here, and there would be more water for everyone. And water meant life.

I bravely went over to the city hall and told the people in charge about my proposal: a man-made lake right where the old one used to be. And they listened to me! Soon, the lake building, or re-building, began, and after a couple of months, a shimmering blue lake appeared once more.

I walked outside, smiling as I spotted it. The lake stretched out before me, its waters shimmering in a breathtaking shade of deep blue, captivating and serene like a perfect dream. Trees of various shades of gold-green stood tall surrounding this, outlining jagged peaks in the cerulean sky. 

It was such a majestic sight, and my hands automatically reached out as if to capture it in my hands—a little world all to my own. And when I felt the cool water touch my fingers, I knew that life would be better from then on. 

Since we only got two entries (and I won't have any time until this weekend), I'm extending the date to the 21st.

Okay, nobody else decided to enter this week, so I guess I won't make you two wait any longer.

Second place: Lord Entropy - I loved getting some backstory for the terminal! Although Alex was my favorite character when I read it, I remember being quite fond of Ten and Lillie, and it was wonderful to learn how they met. I'm very fond of your writing - how clever and funny the tone is while still managing to be serious and allow the reader to connect to the characters emotionally. I will catch up with the terminal eventually, I've just had much less time lately :')

First place: Moon Wolf - This was a good story! I loved your use of imagery and the contast in your descriptions. Generally the word choice was really good and I felt that it all flowed very nicely. You've always been very good about how a piece of writing sounds as well as how it feels, and this shows. Well done and congratulations!

a halcyon field 

The sky is that kind of flat blue that it often is. No clouds, nothing. The air is clean. I'm in a field, I suppose. Tall grass, maybe yellowish, maybe tan. There's a building behind me that I'm staying in right now. Florescent lights that flicker, a pool table, a bunch of couches that I'm sleeping on, with people I barely know. Snoring and the sound of an air conditioner. People do not believe me when I say that I am happy. But I really am. 

This is not a good place, this town, but I am in a good place. There's a building that used to be a church, and a graveyard. There's a thick patch of woods, and some overgrown trails. We are sheltering, we are hiding down in our corner, but God as my witness, I like my corner. We set up a projector and watch Slacker and I wish everyone well, everyone on screen deserves happiness. I feel good about most things these days, and I allow myself to feel that way. I give the feeling space, and I try to learn my roommates names. 

Things are not perfect. Maybe it wouldn't be good if they were. Although that is certainly an unsafe way of thinking about things. People are hurting, and they shouldn't. If everyone was happy, I would be happy. Maybe it would be a little boring. The grass moves slightly in the faint breeze. A crow lands on a pile of gravel and looks at me. I stretch and feel bones popping. 

People do not believe me when I say that I am happy. I saw my mother the other day, driving further into town. She looked at me like I was insane and I felt like a refugee from another timeline. No way to relate anymore. I looked at her and realized that I had nothing in common with her anymore, at all. I could not believe that we were from the same planet.

I remember people fleeing their cities, heading out into the forest, hunkering down, playing it safe. Not everyone came back. We didn't come back. We do not want what you have. We like our corner. Just outside our territory is an eternity of interlocking dirt roads and trailer parks. There are stretches of forest you can wander aimlessly for hours. You'll get tired doing that, of course. You can see animals.

I haven't called anyone on a phone in months, and I haven't used a computer in years, probably. I like this weird quiet feling I get. When I'm tired, I can almost see something, or feel something, timeless, ancient, wild like am animal. I feel like an insane person occasionally, staggering around. I remember seeing people walking on the side of the street, when I was younger. Weird people, you know? Now I am a person walking on the side of the street. I have never been happier, I swear this to you, hand raised at my side. Another hand on a bible, or possibly a hole puncher. 

The solar field miles away are probably absorbing the sun's blazing heat. The cities are probably still about as unpopulated and dirty and dark as before, but I am okay. I am more than okay. I am going to be alright.

Hey...

Can you please extend the deadline to tommorow? I'm almost done my story. 

I'll extend the deadline to October 10th for any other entries!