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Write a story where the weather mirrors a character’s emotions.

Posted in Dramatic on Jan 31, 2025

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✍️ 60 stories

Salt, Then Silence

Shortlisted for Contest #288 ⭐️

The sea had quieted by the time they found her. She was a ghost against the dawn, lashed to the broken mast of a half-drowned sailboat, her body wrapped in the stiff embrace of soaked lines. The searchlight swept past once, then flicked back, steady on the tangle of girl and wreckage. A man shouted. The hull of the Coast Guard cutter groaned as it came about.She did not stir.The sky, a watercolor smear of gray and gold, stretched low over the Gulf. Gentle swells rocked what was left of the boat, an old Catalina 22, its mainsail long since st...

40 likes 27 comments 27
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Affective Defense

Submitted to Contest #288

WOM-07 should never have emerged this early. The rest were dormant in the tunnels below, in the intricate labyrinth wrought to frustrate, to confound both those who’d pursued their flesh for eons etched into tribal memory and the New Ones that had intruded into this world as theirs had betrayed them and they sought fresh prey under heightened competitive pressure.WOM-07 had held tight to the stream line, where even during these harsh months, the waters offered up vegetative scrub, insects, the occasional snails he needed paradoxically to fue...

28 likes 11 comments 11
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Thomas Takes a Photo

Submitted to Contest #288

He sets up the camera on top of a trash can. The lighting is questionable, but he can’t worry about that right now. He knows he can fix certain things with adjustment apps, but bad lighting is more difficult to repair than one might think. These are things he would probably know more about if he was a real photographer, but he’s not. He’s just a guy with a phone and a nice suit that he wants to document. There’s nobody around, because it’s so cold, but the cold is also creating a small window of time to snap the photo. He’s willing to suffer...

25 likes 11 comments 11
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Shades of Grey

Submitted to Contest #288

The world was grey. That was how she had always defined it — on a scale of white to black, how grey the world felt to her every time she remembered feeling. And for the past few years, it had usually been grey, reducing in brightness, silently inching towards black when no one noticed, sometimes even her. It was always people. The more people she met, the greyer she felt, as if they were drops of dark paint mixed together, their blackness only increasing in intensity as they joined each other. It was people that made the world cruel.On the r...

25 likes 9 comments 9
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The night the sky fell

Submitted to Contest #288

Do you remember the asteroid shower? It was absolutely breathtaking but never did get a mention from astronomers and weather experts alike. It was much darker than expected and eerily quiet allowing perhaps too much space for usually submissive thoughts to come to the forefront of one's mind with a bitter scream when one really needs them to be compressed and know their place. It was the time of year when revelations are made and people tend to have clarity as to how the year ahead will pan out now New Year's resolutions had long been forgot...

17 likes 8 comments 8
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The Azure Tempest

Submitted to Contest #288

Alyson lived in a coastal village nestled between the jagged teeth of the Dragon’s Spine mountains and the restless embrace of the Azure Sea. The villagers, seasoned by generations of living at the mercy of the elements, were well-versed in the language of the sky. They knew a gentle, sun-kissed morning promised a good catch, while bruise-coloured clouds whispered of a coming squall. But no one, not even the oldest among them, had ever seen the weather behave quite as it did with Alyson.From the day she was born, the sky seemed to reflect he...

16 likes 1 comment 1
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Seasons Must Change

Submitted to Contest #288

Seasons Must Change The air carried the crisp and bitter scent of dying leaves, as if the world itself were mourning. The trees stood half-empty, their golden remnants tumbling in slow spirals to the pavement. The wind brushed past, cold and insistent, urging the season forward. But I remained still, watching.A man stood outside the café, his violin resting beneath his chin. The bow glided across the strings, coaxing out a melody so delicate and haunting that it nearly shattered me. Each note trembled in the air, wrapping around me like a me...

16 likes 3 comments 3
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Audelia in August

Submitted to Contest #288

The August sun felt warm on Audelia’s skin as she laid comfortably on his pontoon. The river waves rocked the boat gently, peacefully, while a  90’s pop playlist streamed from the speakers. At the other end of the boat, James recast his line and took a sip of his beer. Audelia looked at him and smiled. He caught her eye and began dancing to the music making her laugh. He put down his rod, and moved toward her. She sat up, and he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her deeply. Then, nose to nose, he looked into her eyes and whispered,...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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Vivienne

Submitted to Contest #288

Warning: contains themes of miscarriageThe summer was proving to be an exceptionally hot one; a rare occurrence for this small, coastal community in Nova Scotia. The refreshing sea breeze had been stunted by the sun’s dead weight for a few weeks. Vivienne had been dragging around this heaviness for a while, too, unsure who carried more pressure—the air or her.Vivienne had worked all day at the flower shop, assembling the most cheery and vibrant bundles of sunflowers and pastel peonies. An uplifting symphony of floral scents surrounded her, y...

14 likes 14 comments 14
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Unsaid

Submitted to Contest #288

"For the last time Annie, it's not us! It's one of these other cars." Annie looked around the road, four lanes of traffic, plenty of other vehicles speeding along the route alongside them. Every driver's foot to the floor, just like her husband's was. Spray glittered past headlights, kicked up by tyres sliding over the slick road, threatening a loss of control with any slight adjustment on steering wheels. Annie caught the eye of a woman driving a battered looking red Ford speeding past their car. An accusatory glint in her eye. Her passenge...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Void

Submitted to Contest #288

Eliane Ishaan did not adhere to the laws of science, and because her parents, Morine and Isaac, lived by those laws, she was expected to conform to them as best she could. When Eliane was scared, sudden bursts of wind appeared; when she was sad, clouds formed, and rain began drizzling down.Morine and Isaac, though they loved their daughter dearly, were also afraid for her. They taught Eliane how to live life without feeling anything, and by the age of thirteen, not feeling anything became easy. Eliane could stub her toe and wouldn’t feel pai...

13 likes 5 comments 5
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Death in Space

Submitted to Contest #288

(Note: this story features death.)A storm. Clouds were gathering overhead as buckets of rain sledged through the air. Droplets so thick that they could have been used as coke bottle lenses. The air was moist, but still breathable. As the light of the sun became subsumed, there was an issue of conscience. Miralda walked down the street, dodging puddles and the occasional taxi. The air was choking in its finality, each drop separating her from herself even more. As she walked, she noticed a sensation in her boot. “Hull breach. Hull integrity f...

11 likes 0 comments 0
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Rider In the Storm

Submitted to Contest #288

Note: Pyrgi is an existing village in Chios, Greece. The walls are indeed covered with geometric patterns. The story however is pure fiction. Pyrgi had always been different from other villages on our island. While the rest remained pristine white under the Greek sun, our walls tell stories in black and white geometries—diamonds, stars, and ancient symbols that earned us the title "painted village." During dawn or dusk, these patterns seem to shift and dance, as if trying to speak in a language long forgotten.I first saw him in the depths of...

11 likes 10 comments 10
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The Sun Always Shines (Even When It’s Raining)

Submitted to Contest #288

Lyla's Her boots clicked against the old cobblestones – tap, tap, tap. The sound bounced between the buildings lining Main Street, those ancient brick beauties from back when people actually cared what things looked like. Not like the glass-and-steel boxes they were throwing up downtown these days. These buildings had stories etched into their walls, decades of city grime in their pores.God, she loved mornings like this. The sky stretched endless and blue above the old brick buildings, and somewhere nearby, coffee was brewing – that rich, bi...

10 likes 2 comments 2
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Storm of Duality

Submitted to Contest #288

“Not again. Not so soon.” Margaret’s whisper carried over the silence of the house. With a fierce grip, she bit her remaining fingernail, tearing a piece off and causing the skin to bleed. Margaret stood at the window as the sky brooded, thick with the weight of an impending storm. Dark clouds churned in slow agony, twisting and folding over themselves as if writhing in torment. This storm, she knew, would continue for days. Long agonizing days. A sharp gust of wind rattled the glass, and she flinched. The leaves outside skittered like restl...

10 likes 9 comments 9
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