Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists

Our August Flash Contest was based on Prompt #214 (provided by Stone Soup intern Sage Millen), which asked that participants channel their inner Dickens and write about two cities—utopian and dystopian—that were right next to each other. We received a wide breadth of submissions (including a couple poems), all with brilliant world-building. Two of the winning submissions were epistolary, though their plots were completely different; one was a letter from a condemned father to his saved daughter and the other was a series of letters between strangers turned friends. Many submissions decided to flip the trope of “utopia,” crafting utopian cities with sinister motives, while others stuck to the literal definition. Others took their cities into space as well as the future. As always, we thank all who submitted and encourage you to submit again next month! In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “Tend to My Grave” by Sophie Li, 11 “The Unknown War” by Evan Lu, 13 “The Oasis” by Lui Lung, 13 “Magic Wands” by Pranjoli Sadhukha, 12 “Crimson Messenger” by Olivia Yu, 13 Honorable Mentions “The Peacemakers and the Jupiters” by Arnav Bansal, 12 “A Glimmer of Hope” by Reena Bao, 12 “The Light in the Darkness” by Samantha Lee, 12 “Where the Utopian Meets the Dystopian” by Aryaman Majumder, 11 “Two Worlds” by Madeline Male, 14 Tend to my Grave Sophie Li, 11 Dear Amelia:  I am your father. You may not remember this, but when you were ten years old, you were kidnapped and brought to the bottom of a strange mountain. I tracked you down but when I arrived, your captor had been killed and you had disappeared. All evidence pointed to you traveling up the mountain, so I went up. It was a long and perilous journey and I had begun to fear that you had died along the way, but I continued up the mountain. When I reached the top I was engulfed in blackness for approximately 25 seconds, which left me extremely disoriented. There was a man at the top who asked me who I was, and I remembered, but just barely. He told me I could not enter Paradise because I remembered my name. He was about to push me off a cliff when I asked him about you. It turns out that you had your memory wiped only one hour before I came, and you had been admitted to Paradise. I was too late. You no longer remembered who I was.  Paradise is not what it seems. They have given you a new identity and a wrong sense of the world. You do the small duties in exchange for the most luxurious place to live. It is the closest ever to a utopian world but you have missed out on the more beautiful part of life.   There is no love in paradise because love can create conflict. You may miss your family if they are not all there. There are no ideas in paradise because ideas can create disorder. There is no choice in paradise because you may choose wrong. And there is no memory because you may long for the past. But by removing these elements, they are also removing the rewarding parts of love, ideas, memory and choice. But paradise cannot have a fault, cannot have unhappiness.  The man pushed me off a cliff, but I did not die. Instead, I found myself in the opposite of paradise. It was an overcrowded nation where everyone lived in dumpster-like conditions. A cruel government killed anyone who resisted the government’s orders. The health conditions were disastrous and society was riddled with robbers, bandits, murderers, and illegal drug dealers.  Tomorrow I will die at the hands of the government. I have received the death sentence and I need your help.  But you will not understand. I am a stranger to you. To you, I am lying about a made-up world. To you, what is love? What is thought? What is choice? You will stay in paradise, while the father you once loved will die.  I hope that when this reaches you, you will know, and one day you will break free of the bonds that hold you to Paradise and tend to my grave.  If you will ever love again,  Dad  P.S. Your real name is Rose.  The Unknown War Evan Lu, 13 Another dreadful morning for David. Prince David. The Utopia City had been ruthless to them these past few days, and today might be one of the worst yet. While both cities were monarchies, Utopia seemed much more lax in keeping their citizens in check compared to Dystopia. Forty-seven years prior, Dystopia had been forced to sign a peace treaty, which strictly required them to be amiable with their former adversary. Today, however, things had gone sour. The two cities hadn’t had many recent problems, but there didn’t seem to be an easy resolution for the current obstacle. “David! Are you there?” “Oh yes, Dad!” David brought his attention back to the present, “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” David’s father, Christopher Thompson, oversaw and managed most things that happened in Dystopia. Being the king, he was tasked with today’s meeting with the Utopian government to ensure the prosperity of their own people. Today was going to be a big day. A day that could change everything for the rundown, desolate little city. “Dad, promise me you will stay safe meeting with them. Okay?” They both looked down into the courtyard where the local Utopians were shouting at the Dystopians who had traveled up from their canyon home to bear witness to the meeting. No one really knew how the two cities had originated, but perfectly settled in the recesses of the ravine was Dystopia City while perched on the precipice above laid Utopia City. The geographical difference of their locations had caused quite a bias to form, and had caused them to be at odds with