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sorry guys you're* |
It's Jaktoko 2, you are gonna have to do a lot more than that to fix his sentences |
The Archipelagic Gem of Gemeinschaftsland Tune in to the conclusion to Europeia's Short Story Competition, and make sure to give all of our winners a big hand! . Short Story Competition For the past three weeks, we've been hosting a short story competition to commemorate UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day 2022. Indeed, you can find the original dispatch right here. Over that time, we received many creative and enthralling stories, and I'm certain we would've received many more if we continued. But alas, we can't keep this open forever. All good things must come to an end. There were many amazing submissions, each of which we all enjoyed thoroughly. We even find ourselves wishing that we could've given every single one of the amazing writers that participated an award, but alas, we cannot. Next, you'll find a list of every rule-compliant story we received, along with their authors, and finally, which of them our voters thought were the greatest! Stories Nestled in a bucolic valley, a clear, sapphire river wound its way between the hills. The morning sun cast its first rays of light to announce the coming of a new day. Lush forests sprawled across the land as far as the eye could see; filled with fauna beyond imagination. They say paradise is an unattainable fantasy, but here was the closest humanity ever got. On the hillside, a small settlement, all but unknown to the rest of China, went by its life: the new days, seasons and years passed as generation after generation inhabited their ancestral homes. Time flowed by for the occupants of this small village, their serene existence uninterrupted for eons. Among the clustered buildings, children ran through the streets, leapt with glee across the river's many tributaries and played for hours in the forest. A mother wound the wool around her spindle and layed it to rest, before turning to the assembled village children inside her home. This array of usually restless infants gathered there in utter silence to listen to one of the wonderous stories she would tell. "A long time ago, thousands of years before now", began Qin Yang, "there were giants. Man and giant lived in harmony, with all the time in the world. Their lives were peaceful and untroubled, but they had nothing compared to the Gods, who could conjure anything at will. The giants became envious, and desired the power of the Gods. One day, an army of Giants set out to ascend to the land of the Gods and take the source of their power. Meanwhile, man had made their kingdom on the slopes of the mountain to be closer to the deities. When the army of giants approached, the Gods ordered the men to stop them. But our ancestors were worried for their lives, and fled in terror. The giants rampaged up the mountain, destroying the kingdom of men, leaving many villages ruined in their wake. When they reached the top of the mountain, the giants were slain, one by one in a furious battle against the Gods. The conflict was short, with no losses for the Gods but extinction for the giants. However, man had disappointed the almighty beings: they had to be punished. Thankfully, one God stood up for the rights of men, proclaiming that they were only mortal, and had fled in fear of their lives. And so man was to be deprived of time, to always be rushing to do things with no instance for calm and no moment to spare. Fortunately, the Gods were lenient, allowing one exception to this rule: the most skilled and wise among the humans would become clockmakers, and keep time turning and flowing forward to allow rest and peace for mankind.", Qin paused, a wistful look on her aged face, etched with memories of times long past. Her mother had always told her that storytelling gave life to the community, and that in doing so she was sparking the inspiration of future storytellers in these children. But beyond that she didn't view herself as the all loving, wise woman of the village like everyone else. She looked down: the eager eyes that were fixed on her held the souls of the children, riveted to her tale. "And that is why, even now, the hut by the stream above the village is home to the clockmaker, whose work allows us all the time that we want. It is thanks to him that we can have peace." Spellbound, all eyes turned as one to look through the window of the storyteller's hut and up the mountain to a small dwelling by the stream, where the clockmaker lived and worked. The entire village adored the clockmaker: whose old, wrinkled fingers worked meticulously away at the most intricate devices. Everyone marvelled at his skill and dexterity, while the children who believed Qin's tale thanked him with all their hearts for the time he gave to them. Up in his hut, a two minute walk away from the rest of the village, Xi Yuan worked tirelessly. His wrinkled face bore signs of pride every time he put down his tools and stepped back to admire his latest masterpiece. Every time a child passed the age of ten, Xi presented them with his most recent creation. But beyond these generous gifts, Xi was rarely present in the village. He preferred solitude, alone in his hut; he had clocks to make, toys to prepare and his tools to provide him all the company he needed. * * * * * Gengxin Lee arose before dawn, stretching at the sound of a rooster. He leaned over to look at his clock; the time was quarter past two. 'Quarter past two for the cockerel!", thought Gengxin, shocked awake. He ran out through the door of his hut, burst into the village square, and there he found the large pendulum underneath the central clock in the middle of the village was unmoving, and the clock's face also displayed quarter past two. It was unearthly, the stillness of the morning filled him with an unnerving sensation. It was then Gengxin remembered Qin's story about the clockmaker. At the time he had dismissed it as myth. However, now he was not so sure; could it be that Xi Yuan had controlled time all along, and now that he was gone, time would stop forever? Meanwhile, in Qin Yang's house, her clock too was frozen. She frowned. Her story was not true, or so she thought. She had heard it from a travelling monk who had chanced upon their settlement many moons ago. But now... * * * * * Outside, a female elder cried out in despair: "O, what have we done to displease the Gods?" And indeed it seemed like there was no other explanation. As Gengxin wandered through the streets, he saw chaos begin to take hold of everything. All were subdued with anxiety. Before long, the storehouses ran dry. Supplies that should have lasted years seemed to have disappeared, as a frantic rush began to secure more food. Just as the situation began to look dire, the inhabitants of this small settlement, hidden away in a secluded valley, became aware of a faint ticking sound. At first, it was barely noticed, but soon it got louder and before long the first hints of hope returned to the villagers' eyes. Shouts of relief and joy could be heard as the machines that told the time suddenly sprang back into life. Eight mighty chimes of the bell in the central clock brought many villagers into the town square, where the mighty pendulum was swinging back and forth at its regular rhythm. The head of the village elders mounted a platform and addressed his people. He proclaimed that Xi Yuan had told him, before the clockmaker had died, that the clocks may occasionally become stuck, and it would take one and a half revolutions of their mechanism to begin again. He assured his people that there was nothing to fear, and that all could return to normal. Before long, most of the villagers had come to accept this explanation. As the elder descended, he whispered to his wife: "I made that up - I really haven't any idea what happened". Despite this, he persuaded himself that it was just by chance, and that he had witnessed an event so very unlikely, but which had happened nonetheless. And so, life began again in the village, and time passed as it had for centuries. However, if someone had been so curious as to wonder what had become of the clockmaker's hut, just a couple of minutes walk from the main village, they might have made the short climb and looked inside. They would have rounded the side and peered through the window to see, in the ambiently lit workshop, a small boy of no more than six years of age, fiddling with the tools of the old clockmaker. He had heard Qin's tale, and though there were parts he had not understood, he made his way to Xi Yuan's hut. There, he took up the old man's tools and, slowly but surely, he began fixing a clock. "As a young man I never lost a moment's sleep concerning myself with waking up in the dark," he once said to me, by way of introduction, "I was as sure as anyone that the next day would follow in due course." Of all the lies Galloway ever told - and he told many - perhaps the one I admire the most is his audacious assertion that neither the dusk nor the dawn, and by extension neither night nor day, are absolute or assured in the experience of human kind. You perhaps suppose he meant that each sunrise should be a blessing and each sunset a blessed relief? I too assumed as much as I heard him speak it the first time, but then of course I did not know what a gifted and prodigious liar he was; nor did I realise he was rehearsing upon me his latest skit; nor could I know, having just recently made his acquaintance, that Galloway was an unpretentious teller of tall tales - if such a thing is not a contradiction of states - and that his lies were so much more digestible for lack of metaphor; and I was yet to learn that the art of true deception is the interwoven tapestry of truth and fiction so finely needled that to stand back and admire it one might be overwhelmed with the simple beauty of its apparent veracity and not see - amidst the harmonies it writes upon one's instincts - the fine threads of enchantment and misdirection that hold such visions in place. "I recall a time when the sun set on a Tuesday, early afternoon, and didn't rise again until well after Lent," - thus introduced to me, he sipped his pint and set it upon the bar, and launched into the recounting of his long days in the Arctic Circle. "I saw such things... such lingering days... such relentless nights... but I never imagined a day that just wouldn't come. It's no certain thing, the day. No certain thing at all." "Well what do you mean," I wondered, presuming this a reference to the Scandinavian condition of melancholia under the long twilight of the north. But, as I've already said, this was no allegory on his part - a particluar Wednesday morning, some years ago on the island of Gr?msey in the Arctic Circle, had failed to arrive and after a long and uncertain wait a Thursday finally dawned to the relief of all. Galloway made a lengthy evocation of his purpose on Gr?msey - his occupations, his accommodations, the food he consumed, the comfort of his bed and his writing desk, his routines and timekeeping, the weather, the coming and going of ferries to Horn and Reykjav?k, the bleakness of flora and fauna, the lack of birds, the various qualities of various mosses, the hospitality of locals, the complexities of Icelandic grammar and all manner of other details to colour the descriptions of passing time in the Arctic before the day that did not come, and then, the days after it. Of the Wednesday that did not arrive, he found himself short on detail, and yet was most insistent nonetheless. "Missing a day and a day going missing are two quite different things," I said and we fell into a discussion about drunkenness and veisalgia and narcotics and narcolepsy and insomnia and amnesia and the many reasons why a man should think that a day had been lost when in fact it most likely the man himself had been lost. Galloway would not concede however, being sure of both his health and his clarity of thinking at the time; he next described the data, denouements and proceeds of his long years since Gr?msey engaged in the practical observation of linear time for fear that his days were numbered intermittently. He had apparently amassed a wealth of anecdotal evidence on the matter and seemed limitlessly generous in disseminating his conclusions that evening at the bar. I will not say that he was not entertaining, for he was; and his evidence was both comprehensive and compelling. But for all that, I had no feeling for this phenomena and I could not bring myself to accept it. His grand deceit - as I now know it - was foundering. "What were you about last week, on Thursday," he asked me, suddenly, "where did you go and what did you do?" A master liar of Galloway's standing may tack close to the wind and skirt the rocky shallows, risking all, yet still have about them a stroke or two of mastery to bring home the bounty of their fantastical voyage. Here then heaves toward port the captain of the rotten ship Beguiler to land his mendacious cargo. "Well of course I was at work... no, wait, not work, I had a long weekend of leave... so I must've had a lazy day at home... I went to the town market for cheese, that's right!" "Town market's Friday," said the barmaid, helpfully. The evening was slow and she'd enjoyed Galloway's recounting of his adventure in the Arctic Circle whilst buffing glasses and pulling the odd leisurely stout for the bar's only other customer, an old farm hand perched at the far end of the long counter. "Yes, you're right, Friday. Then... let me think... Thursday... did I go to the allotments?" "Did you?" wondered Galloway, "did you do your house chores? Did you visit the library or the museum or the theatre? Did you refuel the car or service the bicycle? Did you visit a neighbour or go for a long walk or read a book or even a chapter of a book or a newspaper or magazine or did you go for coffee or watch a film? Did you breakfast in town, or lunch in town, or dine in town for tea or dinner? Did you meet friends or phone them, did you write a letter or a postcard or a list of important things or a cheque or a nonsensical story about soup or frogs or sailors or the meaning of temporality or the evolution of eyes as a proof of God? Did you come to the pub? - " "He didn't come to the pub," interrupted the barmaid. "Are you sure he didn't? Were you here?" "I was definitely here," she confirmed, after checking last week's rota on the staff noticeboard, "though come to think of it, I can't remember the shift. I can't remember him being here anyway, or you for that matter." "Who was here?" pressed Galloway. "I expect he was," she said, thumbing over her shoulder at the old farm hand, the pub's most devout regular. "I don't remember," called out the old man. "No, nor do I, come to think of it," said the barmaid. "Does anyone remember last Thursday?" asked the master liar. Does anyone remember last Thursday? I certainly couldn't. Galloway shook his head slowly, took a draught of his pint, and concluded mournfully, "another one gone missing then." THE SQUIRE Personally, Seraph wasn't much of a fan of loud music. When it was played in public with no headphones or in classroom situations it made everything harder. Hard to concentrate. Either on the test or math problems in front of him, or to be more specific the wall he had 21 seconds to climb. It took 21 seconds to sing happy birthday, especially to a rich spoiled girl who decided it was okay to invite pretty much everyone in the region and somehow her richer father, who somehow was elected a mayor in a country that was beginning to become more and more of a threat to ASTO and LLyudi alike, thought it was okay and gave her permission AND RENTED OUT A PARK BUILT FOR REGIONAL EMBASSIES. WHY THE HECK DID PEOPLE ALLOW THIS. Additionally, the rich person had a region-wide famous band perform there with the volume set to max. It was irritating. Even a good distance away he could still hear the screams and cheers as the band was about to play. He felt a firm tap on his shoulder. Seraph waited a few more minutes and after he deemed the figure was out of earshot, released a quiet, pent-up exhale of relief and scrambled up the chimney just to be safe (and extravagant). Thousands of years ago before humans ruled the world there was a society of dragons that ruled the world. They had medieval human-like society's stretched across the world ruled by 7 dragon tribes. The Icewings, Rainwings, Nightwings, Sandwings, Seawings, Skywings, Mudwings all ruled by their own queens. These dragon tribes have trade routes, farmers, shops, hunters, and soldiers. Though these dragon tribes are advanced, they still have many wars against other tribes. The current war that is happening is a civil war between the Sandwing queen who was overthrown and gone into hiding, and the revolutionaries who have control of the throne and set up a dictatorship. Long ago The world as we know it didn't exist. There was no light,no magic and no sound. Then there arose out of the darkness light and it filled the void. This light also gave birth to a race of beings known as Angels, they began to craft the world and fill it with magic. Soon they created two races of beings to inhabit the world, humans and monsters. In turn the beings gave each race magic, the humans used the magic to become warlike and used the magic to dominate each other. While the monsters used the magic to live in peace with each other, they also had the ability to absorb a human soul and become a beast of legend known as a boss Monster. Soon in the heavens there arose discord between the angels, one side wanted to keep the balance of peace in the world and the others wanted to completely destroy the world and recreate it. This led to a very very long brutal war between the two factions, no side could gain the upper hand on each other sense the angels themselves where matched in ability in magic. Finally the two sides came to an agreement, the fate of the world would be decided by a human and an angel. On that prophesied day the fate of both humans and monsters shall be known, the angels then withdrew from the world and left behind objects known as deltarunes, each rune corresponding to an angel. While the warlike angels retreat to a realm devoid of light known as the dark world, there they stay along with the monsters that choose to follow them.
Results & Awards Now, without further ado, it's time to announce our winners:
The second runner-up, receiving the Bronze Story Globe...
The first runner-up, receiving the Silver Story Globe...
Finally, for the champion; the Storywriter Supreme, recipient of the marvelous Gold Story Globe...
Congratulations to our winners, and to all, Gemeinschaftsland and Europeia wish you a happy three weeks after World Book and Copyright Day!!! |
The Greater Commonwealth of United Tropics of Torchland in the even that your governor gets killed or dies, the lieutenant governor would take over the role of governor |
The The strong Democracy of Ladiva tell me wich party you support most |
The Greater Commonwealth of United Tropics of Torchland it was previously still a part of the commonwealth, thats why at the end it says "this eleventh day of November in the Year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fourty-eight" Jaktoko 2 and Ilyavan |
hmmmm HRE or NPG |
The The strong Democracy of Ladiva i like npg cus its good for the wrold |
Is there any socialism? |
The People and States of New Straits Can you expound on this? |
I got into the world assembly!!!!!!! |
Congratulations! |
The New Remixed Empire of Matamorosia Lucky.. i wont be outa school until June |
The DADHPRDGBCHGASKGCBDP of The Twelve Rivers School's just ended for me... like a day ago. |
The Democratic Federation of Jaktoko 2 Right. Alright Mine Well Be Avolio Johnson. (Her BF) |
The Democratic Federation of Jaktoko 2 |
The People and States of New Straits PORTLANDER NEWS SCAN "Remaining ex-members of old UPP distance selves, denounce revived UPP" (The Portlander) "New Straits among most inclusive globally" (Noticias de negocio) "President commissions new nuclear weapon delivery systems" (Ultra mar) "New Liberal leader begins campaign caravan in major mainland cities" (El cuidadano libre) "Intra-trade eases more with newly renovated Portia canal" (The Northerner) "Conservatives denounce UPP-far right alliance" (La guardia moral) "Old parties threatened by new UPP popularity among youth" (Golden Era) |
Have you finally given in to the fact that you have lost? |
The People and States of New Straits Lost to what? |
The DADHPRDGBCHGASKGCBDP of The Twelve Rivers Oh of course you haven't. Don't even bother. Ilyavan and New Straits |
@The Ghost Ships of The Twelve Rivers btw I endorsed you a little bit ago, can you endorse me back? |
The Greater Commonwealth of United Tropics of Torchland ehhh i'm pretty sure that's not allowed unless if he's actually elected as such |
The Greater Commonwealth of United Tropics of Torchland At least you're not waiting till late July! |
The Greater Commonwealth of United Tropics of Torchland Ilyavan and The Twelve Rivers |