Xander Michael

Very deserved win @sandradavies, well done! & thank you for an unusual, fun challenge @knickylaurelle. Everyone’s entries were great (& fascinating insights into your psyche!!).

Okay guys, I’ve completed my reading and I really must say these are all so good and left my expectations very well-met.

@squidge – I enjoyed this far-away, fantastical dream sequence, with its lightly pressing sense of isolation, elusive understanding, and finally, lucidity.

@athelstone – Gorgeously streaming subconsciousness with this one,…[Read more]

Hello and thank you to all who took the time to participate. I have just finished up work for the week and really look forward to reading the last few entries over the weekend before I select this September’s winner. Please bear with me as I get it done. Results will be posted by Monday latest ✨

449 words. CW – it’s a little bit dark.

The Hounds

Dark water curls around the bases of the towers and somewhere the hounds are baying. From here, on the bared skeleton of the top floors you can see fires burning on other towers, flags red as blood flying like strings of prayers and there is safety there, possibly, but they are as far away as…[Read more]

Another pieced-together piece, and only 245 words, but best I can manage.

Bourbon dreaming

A bottle of Makers Mark from my husband for Christmas and a wine-free tea (Köstritzer Schwarzbier instead) so I took a glass of bourbon to bed with me, along with John Rebus.

And I dreamt, more vividly and memorably than usual, with more logic than usual…[Read more]

Couldn’t make more than a patchwork quilt of the remnants of my dreams so was forced to resort to the daydreaming option. (Can you tell I’ve been watching Supernatural? 😊)

SACRIFICE

Awareness filters into my consciousness like oil seeps into unleavened bread, slowly and without fanfare. The darkness in my mind begins to withdraw.

I feel not…[Read more]

Most of my dreams are about me being chased, and my running away. Seems to be a recurring motif in my dreamscape. Sometimes it’s horrifying, other times a call to adventure, and most times, something in between the two 😊

The link works, @libby, and the news really warmed my heart along with my morning coffee. The fact that the river was declared dead in the 1950s also brought to mind The Great Stink in @kazg‘s Time Catchers, though the Stink and the declaration were almost a hundred years apart. So happy to hear about the baby seals, sunning on the banks, eating…[Read more]

😃😊 Yayyy! Nothing makes me happier than that which is weird and wonderful. I personally won’t mind teeth-dropping out ones. There’s beauty in nightmare as well ✨

@richardb how cool is that!! Thank you for sharing your special day and moment 😃✨

@athelstone

We are not natural

I couldn’t have said it more aptly myself, nor could I agree more. How beautiful it is to re-introduce a species we made the unnatural choice (and for pleasure no less!) to hunt to near-extinction. And how hideous it is to have hunted…[Read more]

Thank you, @sandra 😊

Late to this, but well done indeed @Knicky, for a poetic tale. Also to @Athelstone – I too had a lane like that in the place where I was born, which decades later had its magic buried beneath tarmac.
Thanks @Seagreen for the challenge and the feedback – I did enjoy the opportunity to just play.

😃 Thank you, @seagreen, for the competition and for choosing my piece! I’m so glad you enjoyed it, it was most delicious to write. I took inspiration from what came to mind with the prompt, which was that scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast when Maurice (Belle’s dad) was on his way to the science fair with his invention, and Phillipe (the…[Read more]

Five glorious entries and oh, so difficult to choose! Many thanks for participating 😊

Anyway, down to business. You know what I’m like with feedback so I’ll keep it brief.

@sandradavies – Loved the voice, the descriptive language (gingerbread brown and the notion of a magical, travelling kaleidoscope – how perfect!) Then, just the hint of threa…[Read more]