Our November Flash Contest was based on Creativity Prompt #176 (provided by Sage Millen, former Stone Soup intern), which asked participants to create a character that had everything they’d always wanted, yet still wasn’t happy. Again, we received a massive influx of submissions, all of them worthy of recognition. Interestingly, this prompt also gave rise to more poetry submissions—a welcome sight. The work we read ranged from complex narratives involving time travel to an existential search for ice cream to inspiring poetry surrounding the nature of perfection. In the end, we decided there was too much good work to limit our Honorable Mentions to just five writers, and so highlighted a sixth! As always, thank you to all who submitted, and please submit again next month! In particular, we congratulate our Winners and our Honorable Mentions, whose work you can appreciate below. Winners “Natalie’s Wish” by Josephine Alpert, 13 (Cambridge, MA) “Allison!” by Quinn Brenner, 11 (New York, NY) “Perfection by Sierra E., 11 (Mountain View, CA) “Gone” by Scarlet He, 10 (Scarsdale, NY) “Hole of Debt” by Emily Tang, 12 (Winterville, NC) Honorable Mentions “Realization” by Kimberly Hu, 9 (Lake Oswego, OR) “The Bird and a Boy” by Jeremy Lim, 9 (Portland, OR) “Dare to Dream” by Lui Lung, 12 (Danville, CA) “Pride” by Nova Macknik-Conde, 10 (Brooklyn, NY) “Boredom” by Liyue Sally Wang, 10 (Newton, MA) “A Month of Awakening” by Eliya Wee, 11 (Menlo Park, CA) Josephine Alpert, 13 (Cambridge, MA) Natalie’s Wish Josephine Alpert, 13 Every child of Lisren city was allowed one wish from the Wish Maker. No matter how impossible or crazy, they were guaranteed their wish to come true. Many kids wanted to use their wish right away and regretted it as they grew up. Things like an infinite supply of the “best best best chocolate in the whole wide world!” as Natalie’s little cousin had wished. Some wished for powers, like the ability of flight or time traveling. It only made their world more chaotic and confusing, but it was within the rules of the Wish Maker. Her mother had already made a wish for infinite money and so there wasn’t anything Natalie could think of that she really wanted. She chose to be teleported to the future. She could see what their planet would become. Would there be flying cars? Houses on Mars? Gravity boots? Something she had thought of as a kid of course. In her wild imagination an idea existed that was impossible. What if in the future there existed boots where you could reverse your own gravity. “You could bounce around like you were on the moon!” She had told her mother. Now she was going to see it all. Standing there, the Wish Maker in front of her. “I want to see a glimpse of the future. An hour of it preferably.” “Your wish will be made,” said the Wish Maker, and suddenly, swirls of colors began to surround her. She felt like she was being lifted off the ground, and, in curiosity, reached out to touch the colors. They felt like cotton candy, like she imagined how the clouds felt in fairytales. She was soaring through a portal of colors that her eyes could not comprehend. She never saw them before and it was so hard to take in after she came down to the ground with a THUD. The portal of colors closed behind her and Natalie was afraid to look up. For what would be in front of her would be the future of her planet. She was in a torn up building; in the distance, rubble had caved in and light poured from the crumpled ceiling. The ground was a dusted white. If it wasn’t for the light from the ceiling she would be in total darkness. Why was there no power? Wasn’t this the very advanced future? She stood up and walked around the space. It seemed to be an office, but the chairs and desks were strewn about laying on their sides. Pencils and papers littered the floor. What had happened here? Certainly this was just a small accident and the amazing world was just outside. If she could only find the door. Minutes later, after searching and searching, she came across a stairwell. The stairs were not ordinary. Not some escalator, but a small platform the size of a dining table was there. It wasn’t an elevator, certainly, but the flashing blue button made her want to try it out. She stepped on the platform and pressed the button and a rush of wind came up. The platform was plummeting down at an amazing speed. Was she going to die? Fall to her death? She screamed but it ended as quick as it started, and she floated above what looked like a large fan. She could tell she was on the bottom floor because of the light from outside passing through the huge glass doors. Her feet dangled above as she flailed to get back to the ground. Her feet touched the ground and she ran to the doors. This was it. She noticed the glass of the door was broken when she opened it. Outside, buildings were collapsed and the streets barren. Fire crackled in the distance and she was speechless. A man limped by and caught a glimpse of her. The man attempted to run away but he only slowly limped. “This . . . this can’t be possible.” She walked along the streets. The longer she walked the more her shoulders slumped and her high hopes plummeted. Was this really the future? It couldn’t be. A small girl about 10 was sitting on the ground holding her knees to her chest. “Are you okay?” Natalie asked. “A-another p-person?” The girl stuttered. “What happened?” “What do you mean? There’s a w-war.” “Where are your parents?” “I-I-don’t . . . know” “Can I—can I help you find them?” Natalie asked. “Maybe . . .” The girl stood up.
Stone Soup Magazine for young readers, writers, and artists
Peace, a Poem for our Veterans, by Mason Li
We see the words on veterans’ graves – all powerful, all dark, nothing left, no heart, winners or losers – don’t care – both in the dark. Only left behind are their bodies, filled with peace, sadness, and bravery. Try remembering when he or she gave us peace, harmony. For that, we can thank them, but it’s too late. Their hearts cannot be seen. Now, we only can thank them by bringing peace to our world..
The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, Reviewed by Pragnya, 13
One of the hardest things to do is to unlearn. To completely reset everything you’ve ever learnt and to replace it all with new ideals. Realizations that, as hard as they are to understand, have the capacity to change your life forever. In The Troubled Girls Of Dragomir Academy, 12-year-old Marya Lupu finds herself caught in the middle of a struggle between her parents and the town of Torak, her peers at the mysterious school she has been sent to, and everything she starts to unravel inside of it. In the kingdom of Illyria, every boy has the potential to become a sorcerer, to hold invariably large amounts of magic. Our protagonist, Marya Lupu, however, has spent all her life in the shadow of her brother, Luka Lupu, who, solely because of his gender, has caused his conservative family to glorify him to an agonizingly large extent. Marya, no matter how much she longs to be more than a helper, or more than a documenter of history, has always been told that she was meant for this by her parents. When she accidentally manages to ruin Luka’s test for magical ability while also talking back to a sorcerer of high position, she gets sent to the Dragomir Academy for Troubled Girls, a secretive school for girls with supposedly distressing pasts to turn over a new leaf. While Marya starts to find her way around the school’s ways while also starting to make new friends in the Rose Hall, the threat of the Dread, a deadly fog-like force that went from town to town to devour its people—the result of the magic of the witches of Kel (according to High Count Arel, one of the sorcerers from the sorcerer’s guild, a group dedicated to fostering magic to the boys in Illyria and protecting its citizens from the Dread)—starts to make its way closer to the Academy. She starts to explore the secrets of the academy and its deviously rich founders, and slowly the puzzle pieces of an entire hidden past start to fall in place. Stuck between her teachers, her newfound family, and an unexposed fourth wall of magic, will Marya navigate through the murky waters of Dragomir Academy to finally figure out what the magic of Illyria truly is meant to be? There were a lot of things that stuck out to me in this novel, one of them being the foreshadowing and core messages tucked inside the vivid characters of the story. Marya’s character arc consists of her learning to unlearn everything, to use conscious thought to analyze everything she has ever learnt before coming to a conclusion. One of my favourite characters, Mademoiselle Lucille Bandu, is a Master Weaver and one of Marya’s earliest influences. She helped her look past the stereotypes Illyrian society placed upon her and kept in contact as long as she could during our protagonist’s time at the academy. The world-building and magic system were well developed without being confusing; all the characters in the story got their own character arc without being left behind. My most favourite thing about this book was how the magic itself was introduced. It made use of the characters and plot lines to elevate its significance, and, rather than being specific, it was introduced as a life form, an abstract default of sorts that existed all around them, thought of as you’d think of a particularly beautiful natural environment. When I first finished reading this book, there were so many intricacies to think about that it left my head in a daze for nearly a week. The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy is a spellbinding piece of fiction that will leave you thinking about Illyria and its tapestries for a long time after. The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy by Anne Ursu. Walden Pond Press, 2021. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process!
