Story writing Competition- June

Being a roleplay site based off a marvelously written book, HiO accommodates quite a few amazing writers embedded deep in the system. This competition is to bring those talented authors out to the spotlight.
I am looking for a minimum of 7 submissions, by the end of June. Everyone is free to participate! If this idea is appreciated much, I might hold it every month.

Rules:

1. Use of AI or plagiarism from another user's work is strictly prohibited
2. Kindly mention me in each submission so it can be validated.
3. If you want to change what you have submitted, please add a tag and mention me again
(example- Edited @Rosy Parker)
4. The minimum count is 100 words and there is no maximum, let your creativity know no bounds!
5. Have fun, and be creative!

Prizes

As the quills you use influence your writings, I shall personally hand out a black quill to the first-place winner, a blue quill to second place and a grey quill to the third-place winner. And of course, bragging rights for the rest of the month!

Form to participate:

Name of writer:
House:
Year:
Story: (Please attach in Reducio)
Mention me here
Tag and Re mention if edited

Code-

Code: Select all

[quote]
[b]Name of writer:[/b]
[b]House:[/b]
[b]Year:[/b]
[b]Story:[/b][reducio]The story[/reducio]
[mention]Rosy Parker[/mention][/quote]

Code for edit tag-

Code: Select all

[color=#941b05][b]Edited[/b][/color] [mention]Rosy Parker[/mention]

Name of writer: Mary Cornelia Littoreus
House: Ravenclaw
Year: First
Story:

Reducio

I’m sure there has been a time in every child’s life when they have tried to cut their own hair. Maybe it is the sense of individuality you get from doing it. For me, my parents always chose the haircut I would end up getting, and no matter how many times I tried to persuade them to let me dye my hair blue – like my favorite TV character, Coraline – they never once even considered it; I could see it in their eyes. When I first cut my own hair, it felt like an act of rebellion. The looks on my parents’ faces when they came up to my room to wake me and were met with the shortest, most unevenly cut bangs they had ever seen were absolutely priceless. I remember my mom screaming at me, but I didn’t regret it. Inside, I felt a strange sense of freedom, as if I could finally take full responsibility for my actions, and it wasn’t a bad thing.
You could say I always wanted to grow up. Growing up meant leaving the house I was raised in and traveling the world. Familiarizing myself with different cultures has been my dream ever since my family flew all the way to Barcelona, for our summer vacation. I’m not one to settle down; maybe that is why I always insisted on changing my haircut and style. I believe we only live once – this is the only chance we get to squeeze every bit of life out of the world, so why not do it? I want to experience so much more than just the repetitive concrete buildings and trashed streets of Chicago.

@Rosy Parker p.s. this doesn’t really have anything to do with H.io, so lmk if that doesn’t fit the requirements

Name of writer: Briar Anderson
House: Ravenclaw
Year: 1
Story:

Reducio

TBA

@Rosy Parker

Name of writer: Mikaela Hendricks
House: Ravenclaw
Year: First
Story:

Reducio

Deep down in the town, the house lights went off. The parents said goodbye to the daughter. The dog played with his toy before falling asleep.

Deep down in the neighborhood, a shadow came by. Slowly, subtle at first. Greeting the houses like an old friend. Inside the house, the dog barely even moved. The parents kept sleeping.

Who notices if a star vanish? When a flower rots?

Who noticed the shadow crawling, slipping through the stairs, inside the daughter's room?

Who noticed the way she had been retreating herself lately? The way her pockets kept filling themselves with stones. The way her eyes lost their spark. The way her preciated childhood toys dissappeared. Who noticed when the girl vanished?

And who cried when, the next morning, the sun kept shining, the dog kept barking, the mom made breakfast while the dad went to work? Who grieved when all that was left for her was the shadow that crawled into her bed and replaced her body?

Or when they found her, peaceful, forever sleeping in her room?

Cause when the sun goes missing, aren't the flowers just as pretty? Aren't the oceans just as deep?

@Rosy Parker

Name of writer: Ophelia Vanderbilt
House: Gryffindor
Year: 1st
Story:

Reducio

Inspired by: The Maze Runner; 1984; The Last Of Us

The weirdest thing about the Necrocore Plague wasn't that it made people act defensively against each other -any other virus would do the same thing since people want to stay safe and healthy-, it was that you didn't know who was infected by it. Now, that was a better reason for other people's defensive and unusual acting. Some didn't know what the Necrocore Plague did to one's body to make them act like monsters. Scientists were still researching it, or were they? Didn't they give up on NP-Project after a few months because some of their people got infected by it? But the government is still telling the people that they're working on finding a cure. Everyone believes the government.

The only ways to know if someone was infected were by:
1. smell
........An infected would smell like rotten eggs at the beginning of their "transformation", although the person would still have control over their body, so they could notice it themselves and spray perfume on. This stage would only last for a month.
2. looks
........Throughout their life as an infected, NPs would look less and less like a human. Their visuals would change to a scarier one every 2 weeks, until they'd changed so much that one couldn't tell if another change was happening; nobody has gotten to that stage yet.
3. sounds
........If the NPs, so were the infected called, were infected for longer than three months, they'd start making throaty sounds. Some of them sounded like gagging, coughing, or hiccuping.
4. Actions
........Last but not least, after the first stage is done, NPs would start to act differently than they would have. They'd react quickly to noises made by non-infected, run toward them, and... unalive them. Infected have different ways of doing so, but they'd do so without thinking, because they can't think anymore.

18092080

It had been around fifty years since the humans first got infected by the Necrocore Plague, and only around 50 to 100 million people out of the 8 billion in 2026 remained human. Only God would know how many of those weren't in the early stages of infection, though. Some of those 100 million people were Kajax, Sergey, Rosetta, and Mikaela. The quad had the survival skills of ants, probably, but had somehow managed to survive longer than was expected for their generation.

One would think that people wouldn't think of having children in this situation, but these kids' and many other kids' parents didn't think of the virus part as much as they thought of having children. Being a child or someone under thirty years of age meant that they were the smarter and stronger generation. It was always like that, and due to that, there were a lot of expectations set by the elderly and the government that had to be fulfilled by them.

The four kids weren't any different than the other 5% of the population, which included sixteen to nineteen-year-olds. Children between these ages were to take part in different activities operations set by the government. Most of these operations were killing the NPs.

Children between thirteen and fifteen also had some tasks to do. These tasks were more like classes, as if they were at school. Although there was nothing as such anymore, kids learnt survival, reading, writing, and more survival. Maths and Algebra weren't taught anymore, because they wouldn't help the kids survive the NPs. So, when the survival classes took place, kids learnt to make a fire, shoot with fake guns (and learnt to use real guns at the age of seventeen), and any other survival skills in case they get stuck in the wild, such as which plants could be used for medications.

The positive side of the Necrocore Plague was that humans couldn't stay outside for long if they didn't have specific masks, which meant they couldn't harm nature more than it had been. The Necrocore Plague was like Earth's revenge. These masks weren't for everybody, though; only the politicians and the soldiers had these, since they were specifically made to survive the infected air for longer than one should have, and they weren't easy to get. If a "normal" individual had one of these masks, they'd be accused of stealing it or having killed its former owner, who was either a soldier or a politician. No, individuals couldn't get hold of these masks for long; if they were caught with one, they'd be sent outside the walls so that they could get infected by the air or the NPs.

14082030

Five years ago, the Necrocore Plague started. It didn't scare everyone as it should have at first, not until everyone saw with their own eyes what was happening. The governments' idea of protecting their people was to find a section in their state with the least amount of infected air, measured by an airborne activity, similar to measuring radiation. In that area, they'd built a huge wall, as the population was moved inside it. Of course, not everyone could go there; governments' priorities were the politicians, soldiers, and the wealthy. If enough space was left, individuals would fight to get a roof over their heads. The former preferred to have kids, teenagers, and young adults inside the wall, because 'elderly would die anyway'. Sooner or later, they'd said.

Just the wall had taken four years to build. Not only builders from all across the country helped, but individuals whose jobs had nothing to do with the task. But everyone wanted safety; the sooner they got it, the better. For reference, none of those builders and individuals got a place inside the walls in the USA, and most of the other countries.

@Rosy Parker

Name of writer: Lillian McMason
House: Gryffindor
Year: Second
Story:

Reducio

TBA

@Rosy Parker

Name of writer: Jay Valkyrie
House: Slytherin
Year: First
Story:

Reducio

Colour had appeared for the first time when I dyed my hair, before all I remember was black and white until brown became blonde and blonde became red, bright red running down the sink, staining the white porcelain and the tiled floor. The flickering bathroom light and the half empty bottle of bleach were my only friends here.
My brown hair was clustered in the sink, the chunks I had cut off were on the floor all around me, my hair was now at shoulders instead of my waist, the layers I had just cut sat almost perfectly. They had the air of not being cut properly like someone had to bend over backwards to cut the back. I sat on the toilet seat and stared out the window and watched the stars wink down at me while I waited for the bleach to sink into my hair. It was strange seeing my hair lighter, like a white chocolate bar. It had always been like the black coffees I made at work and the ones I drank to chase away the curse of sleep, I would need one soon my mind told me as I washed the bleach out, my head in the sink with the warm water rolling off my hair taking the bleach with it.
I dried my hair with my black hairdryer, stickers from various origins coating the handle. I washed out the bowl, ready to go again, this time with the red. I thought about how much I should put in as I pulled on the gloves, the cheap plastic ones that came with the packet. I quickly abandoned them though, they were too loose and sticking to the dye. The smell of dye filled my nose when I coated my hair in it, still black and white. Soon I repeated waiting for the dye to sink in, still I sat patiently on the toilet seat and thought deeply, about colour and meanings. Soon enough my hair was ready. This time, I used cold water, someone in the apartment had probably turned off the hot water but it didn’t bother me. It never did. I was numb, and being numb was how someone like me survived. All I wanted was colour. I stared at the dye slowly draining down the sink before I lifted my head. I was scared, something I would never admit. The mirror was scratched and cracked in places with droplets of water that had little storms of dye in them but I could still see myself. The air inside the bathroom seemed to stop like time itself had stopped for this moment yet the outside world was still bright and busy, the lights of the city outside were still moving and flashing like nothing was happening, like there wasn’t a war on their doorstep and there weren’t people fighting and I wasn’t black and white anymore. No one knew that the teenager in the apartment on the twelfth floor was colourful now. No one knew that she hadn’t been.
I was colourful. I was colourful and I was alive. Alive. Alive and alive.

@Rosy Parker

Name of writer: Emi Sato
House School: Mahoutokoro
Year: 1^st
Story: I wrote this earlier this year

Reducio

Emi was greeted then by the headmaster of Mahoutokoro, Kotoka Sako. He smiled warmly and said, “Sato-chan~ Welcome to the cherry blossom event, I’m glad that you have managed to make it, would you come with me please, I have already prepared a boat for you with your senpais, perhaps you could gain a little wisdom from them about er – anything really.”

Emi followed him toward the dock taking in the scenery as cherry blossoms drifted through the air. The garden seemed a dream, suffused with the colors of pink and gold, as if the world was drenched in the light of spring.

When they got to the river, a decorated wooden boat was already waiting for them. There were two Japanese boys inside, who seemed to be brothers judging by the headmaster’s tone.

Emi climbed onto the boat cautiously and sat down, shifting her posture slightly before looking at them. She smiled them back politely but slightly. She felt a bit weird considering that she is the only girl.

“Er… Hi, I’m Emi Sato, but you can call me Emi-Chan! You’re Kabukimono-senpai and Fujimoto-senpai right?”

*sigh* I hope I didn’t offend them by calling them senpai! Her eyes again swept briefly over the boat. The carvings along the wood were detailed and elegant, and the soft decorations made it feel more like part of the festival than just transportation. Emi thought it was almost too pretty to be real.

After a moment, the boat started moving forward on the river.

In the beginning, it was all serene and calm. The water was calm, reflecting the sky like a mirror, and the cherry petals descended in slow, subtle spirals. Emi watched them fall, some of the petals landing on the surface and being immediately spun off with the current.

She leaned just a bit closer to the edge of the boat, taking in the sight without a word. The trees that grew along the riverbank bent over the boat, their branches laden with pink blossoms that glowed softly in the light.

But then, after sometime, the atmosphere started to change.

Emi felt the change in wind direction. It wasn’t loud at first—a differential in the air, but the cherry blossoms began to fall heavier, cousins clustering together during their descent to the ground. The wind currents started to become more defined again as if unseen rivers were shaping routes for the petals to move around.

Increasingly, blossoms filled the air around the boat. More and more blossoms filled the air around the boat. Not yet scary but definitely unusual, this was like a reaction of nature on some unknown force.

Emi blinked as a stronger gust passed by, sending a thicker wave of petals across the river. The boat’s movement was consistent, but the air around it was filled with motion and movement.

She looked ahead one more time, observing that the blossoms were no longer falling randomly but moving in certain patterns. The random falling of the petals seemed to have given way to patterns in which the blossoms now moved. Maybe it was her stroke of luck, but she somehow managed to dodge the cherry blossoms. How did I manage to dodge all the cherry blossoms? I must be that lucky today…

@Rosy Parker