Contest Entries - Writing Contest

[Hillary]

Here is the new home for contest entries. Please send them to me and I will post them for anonymity. Some of these are pieces written IC and some OOC. Enjoy!

[Hillary]

Ethen’s Lament

Do you remember the summers of our childhood days
And how’d we’d wander the streets in the sun
Remember the pies
That we’d eat with our eyes
Oh brother, remember such fun

Do you remember the songs that we stole with our ears
And how’d we’d learn them and make them our own
With the strum of my lute
And the voice of your flute
Oh brother, we’d go on for years

Do you remember the nights as we sat in the cold
And how’d we’d keep ourselves warm with our songs
And to our own beat
We would sing with our feet
We would dance until the moonlight grew old

I remember the night when the clouds hid the moon
So not even the snow was snow-white
I started a beat
But you did not move your feet
Even thought it was your favorite tune

I remember the look on your innocent face
As the night all around grew so still
Your heart slowed its beat
And by the cold showed defeat
And the song of your soul left this place

I remember you always in my immortal days
Ironic as though it may seem
Remember the fun
And the warm summer sun
Oh brother, I remember those days

[Hillary]

Timey Limey

"When am I?"
"It's Tuesday, Bridget."
"That doesn't help. Get me my Advil."
"What the hell is Advil."
"Urlggph. Go into my filing cabinet... third drawer... a white bottle about the size of half a Twinkie."
"What the hell is a Twinkie."
"When am I?"
"Are you backlashing again?"
"I was... or I will be. Probably."
"It's only been about an hour since you left."
"You really don't get it, do you."
"Enlighten me, Lady Knight."
"I travel through time. I might be gone from this time for an hour, but who knows when I've been in that hour. It could be years later."
"I got that part."
"Did you? If you did get it, you'd have told me the year already. So, for the first... last... once again, when am I?"
"Tuesday, October 8, 1436."
"Thank you. Now was that so hard to do?"
"Keep your voice down. The prince is asleep."
"I know the future. My job is secure. I know you're not going to fire me, Kelsy. Or should I say, "your wingedness?""
"I'm divinity. I know you can't predict me."
"Are you going to get my Advil or not?"
"Why are you interrogating me?"
"There's no knife, there's no interrogation."
"Bridget, you always have a knife."
"Maybe I left it in another time."
"I'm not going to argue with you, Bridget. But, you can't just lie on the floor."
"I'm still lying down? I thought I stood up already."
"No, you've been lying down the whole time."
"No, that can't be true. I stood up at least four times, sat at your desk twice, jumped up and down, but then didn't because it woke the baby..."
"All while just lying there?"
"Sometimes, the pants of time are very confusing."

[Hillary]

Sundered

Jason pondered the broken device in front of him. He knew it was broken. He was even

certain he knew how, but without being able to see how the gears inside had slipped there wasn't

much he could do aside from dismantling it. Reassembling the control rig for the whirlybird's

motor from scratch would be the work of days. Possibly even weeks, with the way he kept

getting dragged off to save the world ever few days. Seriously, what was the world coming to?

Jason and a handful of his classmates had saved the school, empire, gods, even the world, what?

Eight times now? Or were they up to an even dozen yet? And that was just since the beginning

of the school year. It wasn't even the end of November yet. At this rate it'll be a score by Yule.

With a light grunt, he heaved the device over on its side, took a sip of tea and decided to

give it one last try. Selecting a pair of tweezers and setting up the magnifying glass he slowly

inserted the tool into the broken rig. A few seconds of fiddling was all it took to realize

something was tweaked. If he were only able to see how it was twisted, fixing it would be trivial.

Sure he knew a dozen incantations to repair it, but if the teeth had slipped the spells would have

no way of knowing what orientation they should be in. It was funny for him to think about

finally having magic. A lifelong dream come true, on his birthday no less. Yet here he was and

the magic was useless for the task at hand.

Well useless for direct repair at any rate. Even with his hands weak from the polio that

had twisted him as a youth, he knew he could make the repairs. He just need to stick his head in

there and see what was wrong. How could he do that? Well, turning the part invisible wouldn't

work, the spell would consider it all one object, and scrying was right out since there wasn't any

light inside for him to see by. If he were a phase shifter he could just stick his head inside like a

ghost. A ghost... yeah, he could do that. Just project his spirit for a few seconds and stick his

head in. He'd gone on astral walkabout before. Lighting conditions and solid objects were

somewhat... flexible concepts when one was astral projecting.

There would be backlash, of course. There always was when he cast magic on himself.

Damned annoying that. But it should be relatively minor. Backlash is almost never fatal even for

big workings, usually just inconvenient and occasionally amusing. Settling back in his chair,

Jason closed his eyes and took a deep breath opening his connection to his Goddess, drawing in

air and power both. Exhalation brought Jason's spirit with it, floating now disembodied over the

workbench. A quick glance told him all he needed to know and back into his body he went.

Well, sort of.

That was unexpected. There he was, a spirit in his own body, but they weren't merging.

Last time all he'd had to do was 'sit' back down in his flesh and the rest was easy. Well, if you

didn't count backlash manifesting as channeling of a past life for an hour. He could see the rise

and fall of his chest so he knew his body was still ok. Likely would be for hours yet left

undisturbed. Now he just needed to find some help.

The only obstacle to that were the walls of his lab. Normal walls would have been no

problem for a ghost, but these were far from ordinary. Each wall had been warded, ceiling too,

against all manner of physical, spiritual and mental intrusion. Precautions had to taken. The other

students had made a habit of messing with his experiments or borrowing his tools while he was

out. Not to mention the random assortment of Gods, Fae, temporal and dimensional travelers that

seemed to find his lab such an ideal vacation spot. Getting out of here though was going to be

tricky.

It took two hours of poking and prodding the seams on all the wards to finally locate a

crack wide enough to slip through without seriously disrupting his spirit, but it was a somewhat

less than pleasant experience none the less. Fortuately, the lab next door was domain of Jason's

friend, Neora. She was in, good. Not that Jason really expected much else, the spark spent nearly

as much time in her lab as he did in his, possibly more. Sitting with her back to the room at large

she was measuring out some alchemical substance. Probably her weekly dose of Jagerbrau. Why

she ever decided to risk drinking that vile concoction was beyond him, but it seemed to have

worked out well for her.

Concentrating on gathering enough ectoplasm to manifest was the work of a few

minutes. "Uh, Neora..." Neora, startled by the sudden voice in what should have been an empty

lab dropped the test tube she was holding, the contents spilling over the metal surface. She spun

around on her stool rapidly death ray in hand. The front half of the potato powered death dealer

occupying the same space as Jason's newly manifested space.

"Jason? Vhat iz hyu doing in here? Und vhy are hyu translucent?"

With a wry smile, Jason leaned to the side to move his head out of the offending ray

gun "I seem to be having a bit of a backlash issue. Would you be so kind as to get Prof.

Dawnrose? I'm feeling a tad chilly without my skin."

[Hillary]

They call us mad.

Madboys.

Madgirls.

Oh, they don’t know how it is to have the Spark thrum through your head and veins. That driving compulsion, the need to create, no matter how ridiculous the creations you design. They don’t understand how once the Madness descends, you can’t stop it. Your mind still has a vague idea of what you’re doing. The screams of pain and horror of the man you’re tearing apart and weaving wires through tissue and sinew. The writhing of the rats you’re testing on, the high-pitches squeals as bodies contort in impossible ways.

You can’t force your hands to stop. Somewhere, in the back of your mind, you’re screaming. You can’t stop; bad things will happen if you stop, your brain tells you. You need to keep going, let the rage and insanity crash together in a beautiful symphony of chaos and creation. Your minions understand. Part of them is willing, swept up by the pure personality of their Master’s Spark. Part of them subconsciously wishes they could be their Master, twisting the laws of science and reality, to dabble in things Man-Was-Not-To-Know-Or-Do. Part of them tells them that they want to see just where this mad ride leads, and know they were part of this experiment.

I’ve heard the stories of myself told by my friends, while I was working heavily, and how they couldn’t help themselves from aiding me.

I’ve caught my wife in my lab, spending far too long staring at a page to be able to write it off as her just cleaning. She reads my notes that I don’t take the time to encrypt. I don’t know why, but it scares me.

I’ve gotten letters from my daughter, her notes on her own experiments, and the flat tone in which she described how she’s done things that a normal person would have never dreamt of doing for terror of retribution.

There’s a reason it’s called the Madness Place. We are insane. Brilliant, but insane. We can never be mundane. Normality? That leisure will never grace our lives.

[Hillary]

“I’m gonna get it this time.”

“Uh hu. And I’m gonna sprout wings and fly.”

Hanna turned the boy who spoke with a glare on her face. “Don’t make me try. I’d use you as a test subject.”

The 7th year laughed and leaned back against the wall of the practice room they were in. “I’m not worried. You’d probably backlash and turn yourself blue first.”

Hanna let out a sigh and rolled her eyes. “Will you give it a rest and let me concentrate?”

“Not like it’s gonna make a difference. This whole thing is crazy.”

“It is not!” She protested. “I told you already. I’ve been watching some of the firestarters and firebenders practice and I think I get the basic principle. Combining Druidic and Innate magic is a valid line of study.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever...”

“Why are you even here if you don’t think I can do it?”

“Cuz Asher said you wanted to go try out a new spell and I’m supposed to make sure you don’t blow anything up.”

“I’m a 5th year already! You think he would trust me by now.”

“After the incident with the squid?”

Hanna started to blush and turned her back to him. “I was trying to see if I could duplicate a book one of my classmates had. Not my fault it turned into a squid the size of the common room! And that was 2 years ago!!”

“Of course it’s your fault you idiot. You’re a Chaos mage. If you cast it then it’s gonna explode.”

“Shut up!! I’m gonna focus now.”

“Sure what--”

“FOCUSING!”

“Ok, ok!! Shutting up now. Jez...”

Hanna closed her eyes and held out her hand, palm facing up. Chaos was raw power just like any other magic. All she had to do was shape it into what she wanted. True, most of the time she barely got something close to what she wanted, but that wasn’t the point.

After a few minutes of concentrating Hanna willed her power out and into her hand. She opened her eyes and had to contain herself from jumping for joy. It was five different colors and kinda translucent in spots but that didn’t matter.

She had fire in her hand.

“See! I told you! I told you!!!!” She turned to face the boy who had been taunting her and pointed at the fire with her other hand. “Take that!”

“What the...you ACTUALLY got it to work and nothing exploded?!”

“Of course I got it to work! I told you I...huh?” Hanna looked back at the hand with the fire as it started to hurt. “I thought fire didn’t hurt the person who cast... ow!!! ow ow ow it hurts ow!!” She winced, clutching her arm with the hand not on fire as her own magic started to burn her.

“Put it out!!”

“Do I look like a water bender to you?!!?!” Hanna started shaking her hand, willing the fire in it to go out. Instead it jumped onto one of the wooden benches in the room, which promptly caught into a very colorful and very large blaze.

“Oooooh shit.”

“Gods damnit Hanna! I said put it out, not bend it!”

“I wasn’t trying to bend it!! Though this proves my theory that --”

“Enough with your theories! Make it stop!”

“You said Asher sent you in case this happened! You do something!”

“I didn’t think you’d be setting things on fire!”

“What did you think I meant when I said I was gonna combine Druidic and Innate magic!?”

“Something other than FIRE!”

The two students stopped fighting as they heard the bench start to fall apart under the heat. A second bench along side the first was already starting to burn with a nice green fire.

Hanna gulped and looked back at the boy. “Let’s call a truce while we get a water bender?”

“Agreed. Though if we get back and the room burned down i’m telling Asher it’s all your fault.”

“Just shut up and start running!”

[Hillary]

Lady Tyralia Kellenton gazed into the smiling face of her new husband, lips still tingling from the kiss that had sealed their marriage, the priests’s words still echoing in her ears--I now pronounce you husband and wife--and felt tears spring to her eyes. A perfect bride, he had called her, that morning when he’d snuck into her suite to see her in her dress before the ceremony. Such a breach of tradition, but he couldn’t stand to wait. A perfect bride for a perfect wedding to a perfect groom. That word floated on the lips of every guest throughout the hall, and it pressed on her heart, filling it up to overflowing. Perfect.

How had her life come to this?

Tyralia blinked back the tears, because it would not do to leave tear stains on her white satin gown. Slipping her hand through Francis’ offered arm, she turned to face their guests, donning a smile of gentle radiance. Her too-bright eyes made it genuine enough; she knew no one would question the sincerity of her joy, though her throat ached with held-back sobs that stemmed not from joy but from sorrow. But her mask was well-practiced, and she held it in place. If anyone saw the burning desperation she truly felt, it would all be for naught.

The audience had risen to their feet, applauding and cheering the beautiful couple. What a precious tale they thought it was, a true love story. He, a man who expected to die a bachelor, and she the noblewoman whose reputation had been lost with the birth of her bastard daughter--the man without love falling for the unloveable woman. It was fit for a bard! And she stood, arm in arm with that man, acknowledging their applause with such grace and dignity that surely they must wonder how they could ever have spurned her, ever have thought her less than the very definition of a fine and proper lady of the court. What a wondrous thing, that she should rise so gracefully after falling so far!

As Francis lead her down the aisle, Tyralia let the noise wash over her as a distant roar. Her eyes sifted through the crowd, picking out the most notable guests. Duchess Corra, of course, gossiping busybody that she was, wore a satisfied smile. Beside her sat the consort, also smiling, though there was a hint of sadness in Soriana’s expression that made the bride uneasy. Tyralia had grown quite close to the king’s love in the time she had served in the Order of the Rose, and perhaps at times she had spoken more freely of her own thoughts than was wise. Or perhaps she was reading too much into the should-be queen’s visage. In any case, Soriana would not betray her efforts.

Her gaze slid past the consort to King Alfour himself, but his face was much harder to read. The faces began to blur together: rows and rows of ladies and knights and nobles of all sorts. Half the kingdom, it seemed, had turned up for the occasion. The one she sought, the one she both longed and feared to see, was nowhere to be found. But she expected as much, and was as relieved as she was disappointed. Tyralia was not sure she would have been able to maintain her composure, had he been there. He was a busy man; no doubt he was at that moment working through a mound of paperwork. Besides, when they could not even make eye contact passing each other in the halls of the palace, why would he attend her wedding? It had been foolish of her to hope, and she let the hope go.

There was one other face worth noting, one she almost missed. Her heart constricted as she glimpsed the three-year-old melting into the wall, and the smile almost slipped. Oh, Laura. Her beautiful, talented, misunderstood daughter. The only one who might see through her disguise--and the one who, above all, could not be allowed to. Through sheer force of will Tyralia maintained the mask, even as she met Laura’s dark brown gaze. What she saw there shattered her already broken heart. Anger, betrayal, distrust. These were not the eyes of a toddler, whatever the age of the face that housed them. Laura was so intelligent, so very observant. Too much so, and if the child had looked back at her for a second longer, all of Tyralia’s willpower would not have been enough to maintain her disguise. But then the young girl phased the rest of the way into the wall and disappeared from sight.

The bride turned her blue eyes upward, to her new husband. For all the lies that he represented, he was still easier to focus on than the still-cheering crowd. She could not shake from her mind the look in her daughter’s eyes. She had done this--all of this--for Laura’s sake; she had to remember that. Too long she had pined after a man she could not have. Too long her daugher had lived without a father, the subject of palace gossip, scorned and pitied by those who did not outright ignore her. One might argue she was too young to know any better, to realize that she was different from any other noble child, but Laura knew. She deserved better.

Tyralia did not love Francis Kellenton, and in spite of all his words and actions to the contrary, he did not love her. But the marriage would benefit them both. He would gain ownership of the entirety of her family’s lands and property--no small fortune, all told--and the chance at a proper male heir. And she... she would gain a stable family, a respectable reputation, and her daughter’s chance at a future unmarred by her origins as a bastard child.

It was not perfect. It was so far from perfect as to fill her with black despair that this, he, was what she now had to live for. But with her joyous smile, and his proud composure, the romantic fairy tale of the lonely bachelor and his unloveable maid became perfect in the eyes of the court. The play was written; she only had to act it out.

They reached the door. In a moment of spontaneous romanticism, Francis swept her off her feet. With a surprised gasp and a gentle laugh, she slid her arms around his neck, settling into his arms. As he carried her away, their guests cheered with such excitement that they could have been riding into the sunset. And the sun set on her last, missed chance at Happily Ever After.