Year 2, Week 33: Results!

Wow! The entries this week were superb. I wish I could tell each author what I thought about their story, but time won’t permit that. Just know: it was extremely difficult to choose my favourites this week.

Honourable Mention

AnnaJailene with Vengeance

Great imagery throughout.

Beware sentence fragments: “I stand a safe distance away. Far away; in a cradle held up by a crane normally used for Dinner in the Sky.” This is one sentence, so don’t divide it with a full-stop and a semi-colon (does the same job as a full-stop). Rather emphasise with a colon, e.g. “I stand a safe distance away: far away, in a cradle held up by a crane normally used for Dinner in the Sky.”

In the third paragraph, replace the semi-colon with a colon (a semi-colon does the same job as a full-stop just without completely severing ideas, while a colon draws attention to what follows).

The loud electronic dance music drowned the sound of the clattering wings. I love this sentence. Well done.

First Runner Up

Sam Lauren with Patient Fruition

I enjoyed the time-travel aspect of this story.

“Counsel” should be “Council”. (Counsel = advice or guidance. Council = local governing body of a region/town.)

Beware sentence fragments. (A basic sentence needs a subject and a verb.) They’re fine in dialogue, but too many in the text can frustrate readers.

The end of your story is brilliant.

The dragons, twelve, stood taller than their ruins. They sniffed the air. They stretched their metallic spines and wagged their tails through steel columns. Their scales, seamless skin, shimmered like gems under water. They combed the streets like a pack of hybrid bloodhounds. 

“You’re an expert on biotechnology like this,” Daniel whispered. “What do you think they're looking for?”

I smiled. “Me.”

Well done.

Winner Y2W33

Sian Brighal

with In the Flesh

This story grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. The question of the dragons’ souls echoed long after this story was read. Well done.

In the Flesh

Dragons stalk the streets, puffing out smoke and clattering their mechanical wings. Most cheer, waving their banners, yelling out the names of their heroes, the beasts that battle for their entertainment. Some scowl, having lost money on the annual bouts between the leviathans of bronze, silver, copper and brass: the mythical made manifest, breathing fire to melt their foes into precious pools to be gathered up with due reverence at the end.

A few simply watched, studying the newly forged and beaten panels, wondering if any of them were still unique…how much of each other resided in each one? For metal had memory…and with each smelting in the arena and reforging at the smith, the dragons’ flesh healed as one: bits of victor and vanquished, old and new, battle-hungry and battle-weary alike. On the outside, the dragons looked no different, recast in the same long adored image, but their bodies must almost be as one by now.

And their souls?

No metal beast had souls! Such talk was seditious…or pandering to the pious who thought gambling a sin and would use any argument to bring down the Dragon Arena. But…a few of the old artisans remembered stories of the beasts’ first forging, when they were weapons and rose from ruined cities to rain down vengeance and hate upon foes: when claws were sharper and buffed skin was anointed with blood. And they whisper the rumour that human souls had put their undying spark into tightly wound heart mechanisms to give the metal monsters ‘life’ and understanding enough to be commanded.

So a few watched the dragons stalk past with a mix of pity and dread of war machines used as toys and what amalgam of hate and anger fleshed out the madness of a thousand souls existing as one.

Thank you all for participating.

Until next Saturday.