Calling all creative writers! This is a column run by Averie Black to inspire readers to become writers. The column includes writing prompts, pieces written by the coordinators, and occasional submissions from readers.
This month: A short story by Averie Black
Attention, creative writers! Every month, Creative Corner hosts a contest for the highlighted writer of the month! Submit your writing to Creative Corner and you will be immediately entered to win a journal.
Below is a set of prompts for different styles of writing beyond journalism. The idea is that you can create some kind of creative writing piece inspired by one of the prompts, but it doesn't have to be. You can submit any piece of writing you would like to share! All submissions should be school-appropriate. You can also suggest prompts to be featured in the next issue.
Each month, one submission to Creative Corner will win a prize! This month's prize goes to Gabrielle A. Hart. Conratulations, Gabrielle! We will be in touch!
Here are some prompts to get you started. You can follow a prompt or submit a unique piece of work. The prompts can be used for anything, though some specify poetry or short stories. This month, the prompts are:
Write about characters sitting down for a meal.
Write about a story that takes place in the woods.
Write a free-verse poem about music.
Write about an athletic team competing at their state championship.
Write an alternative ending to a classic novel.
If you have any prompt ideas in mind that you haven't seen on here yet or would like to see someone else respond to, then drop them in the Google Form below and I'll try to get them in the next issue! I sometimes don't see the response until after the issue is published, so I'm sorry if it takes a couple of months.
Men lead. Women fight. The city's pride was only a reminder of that fact. A plaster statue of the first Emperor gave a speech while his wife pressed against his back dressed in sleek armor. She was fending off a gang of attackers, snarling her teeth and beating her sword against her shield. Her husband was stoic, unafraid-- the deeply carved wrinkles along his eyes relaxed as his mouth hung open mid-sentence. What a jerk, Adrian thought. She reached her hand into the small fountain surrounding the statue, cooling her arms from the scorching heat. Sunburn already threatened her pale skin, and it was all she could do to prevent it from peeling.
Adrian looked up at the statue, a dark pit swelling in her stomach. She wanted to grip the Emperor’s head and squeeze until it exploded into chalk. Adrian wanted to imagine the gray powder as streaks of blood across her palms. She was never really sure what fueled the fire of her hatred. All she knew was she came into the world silent, fragile, and unexpected, and she wanted to live like a storm slamming through the world. Maybe make a few people laugh along the way, too, but that was mostly unrelated.
“Your Highness?” Her escort cleared his throat. “If we wait any longer, then I’m afraid you’ll be late.”
“Yes, yes. I’m going.”
Adrian smoothed the slender silhouette of her dress, the black hem lapping against her exposed ankles. The beige tile road was lined with noble cottages-- white stubby things that jutted from the ground like the tops of mushrooms. Some were fat and tall with a private bedroom for each one of their billion kids. Some were smaller with gingerbread balconies and warm hearths. Sunlight had filled the sky for a few hours by then, but the Sun finally showed his face, peeking over the tall green mountains. Children dived between the houses and shops, chasing each other around the street in their pressed cotton shirts and dresses. Their parents scooped them from behind, flushing with embarrassment and dragging them by the ear towards the church.
The nobles didn't indulge themselves in grand archways or engraved pillars. There were far better things to spend their money on, but what they lacked in material, they made up for in vanity. They were home to the elites, the rich, and the powerful. Though Adrian wasn’t in any position to judge them, if anything, she was the worst offender of them all. The princess with uneven black hair from cutting and re-growing it so many times-- pearls woven into her locks like stars in the night sky. Graced in Mona’s image, Adrian’s father would say to her, crafted by the goddess's own hands. Adrian must have rolled the dice pretty damn well in her last life to win the affection of a goddess and the birthright of a princess.
Her escort, Max, strolled at a leisurely pace, examining their surroundings for any sign of trouble, not like it would do any good. Adrian was the one with a sword thumping against her hip. Being a princess, Adrian had to get used to strangers being assigned to accompany her. However, it soothed her moodiness to know her familiar entourage of four armored women were just a few paces behind. Once in a while, she would try to make small talk with Max, but the words would fall from her lips and splat on the cobble like bird waste. The conversation was dull and uninviting, as if her escort was daring her to say another word. Max was her newest victim. Being a newly declared royal scholar, her father had wanted nothing more than for Adrian to prance him around potential noble sponsors. He’d been proven to be frigid and introverted, as most self-appointed brilliant people tended to be.
She could never tell if her father expected her to take a certain liking to any of the young men or if there was another reason he kept insisting Adrian have an escort despite being fully protected. Perhaps it was nothing and it was just some kind of initiation of trust for all of the new scholars. Adrian hoped it was the latter. As if she would ever be attracted to these snobby academic types.
Adrian’s saving grace rose over the hillcrest in the distance. The dual-pointed top of the church. Like the horns on a Viking helmet, two funnels stretched up from the sides of the temple; one oozing gold, and the other in navy. As they twisted into the earth, they became thick pillars engraved with stories of their respective deities, Mona of the Moon and Ciro of the Sun. The building itself was grand, the mouth wide enough to fit four people shoulder to shoulder and the large windows made of iridescent glass. The shape reminded Adrian of the castle, a thick, tall square meant for defense if the time arose. A dome-like circle was cut out of the top of the roof, allowing the light of the Ciro to shine a spotlight into the church. It was a common myth around town that, no matter how stormy the weather, that God’s fist would punch through the clouds and shine his heavenly light down on the church. Mona was more temperamental, her moon only radiating enough light to see during her particularly good moods.
A crowd began to clump at the gates. Men, women, and children dressed in their finest attires, a necessity to be welcomed at any royal event, buzzed with excitement as Princess Adrian and her escort paved their way to the door. Two guards waited for them. The women were sunken in their posture, the heavy metal weighing down their bodies like drooping flowers.
“Your majesty,” the left guard said, curtsying despite having no dress to fumble with, “it is our honor to welcome you into the church.”
Adrian bowed her head in recognition. She was out in public, and her parents needed her to behave. When they weren’t around to catch her, she figured she could get away with anything, but the guards tended to have big mouths. Never curtsy, never bow. Just a nod of the head would do. Adrian didn’t understand her parents' logic, but she did understand wooden spoons hurt like hell. The princess could never be too masculine or too feminine. She was thrust from man to woman upon request, upon certain crowds or social situations. Today, she would act as a woman on stage, in her pretty dress and combed hair. However, when that crown was placed upon her head, she too would change hats, vanishing the strength from her body and replacing it with the intellect in her head—woman to man, man to woman, somewhere in between, sometimes nothing at all. Adrian could be whoever her parents needed her to be to keep face with the public. Never let them remember you're a woman, her father would say, but don’t pretend to be a man. Forget who Adrian feels she is inside.
The guards let the six slip between the gates and into the waiting room for the church. Benches were on the sides and the symbols of Crio and Mona hung above the double door that would lead into the main cathedral. A tall man pushed through the double doors, his gaze sliding through the room until his eyes landed on Adrian.
“Porter,” Adrian cooed, grinning and walking towards him.
Porter’s lips broke into a smile, his soft-featured face dripping in symmetrically swirled gold face paint and his dark hair curling around his ears. A paint drip fell from his chin, soiling the pure marble floor, but he didn’t seem to notice. Adrian wasn’t sure she would ever get used to seeing him in pastor’s clothing. Since Ciro represented masculinity, his pastors were required to dress as he had when Ciro had a human form in one of his stories. Flowy, white, cotton pants with a pale yellow cloth wrapped around his shoulders and stomach revealing sunspots of skin. The pastors also applied the swirling gold face paint, but that was not required, just for style, she supposed. Adrian did not think the flamboyance fit Porter’s personality, but who was she to complain? He looked good.
“Princess Adrian,” he said calmly, “I’m glad to see you showed up.”
Adrian pressed her shoulder blades together in a stretch, “It's my event. I kind of have to. I’m just glad I get to see you for more than a few minutes. You are the one doing my crowning aren’t you?”
The boy nodded and held out his hands, palms up, to Adrian. Red dye stained the tips of his fingers down to the second joint. His skin was still swollen from the burning process. The princess shivered at the thought of Porter sticking his fingers into red, boiling water until his flesh began simmering and the dye settled between his pores. What a way to prove loyalty.
“I had to speed up my studies by two weeks to be sworn in in time for this,” Porter said pointedly, gazing at his hands as if they weren’t his own.
“You are so dramatic. All I did was give you an incentive. You should be thanking me. I had to convince my father to send a letter to the head priest specifically requesting you do my ceremony. It should have been a senior pastor doing it. Besides, all of your classmates will be so jealous of you.”
Adrian couldn’t fathom that many children aspired to be a part of the church, yet year after year, the church took hundreds of children under their wing in hopes of raising them to be the next generation of religious leaders or loyal followers. What kind of person wanted to swear to a life of celibacy and sobriety? Porter wasn’t thrilled about it either. There were a lot of candles and a lot of chanting, but Adrian’s father had thrown Porter at the first solution he saw when neither of them had come out to be entirely what the oracle had predicted.
“I guess,” Porter conceded. “Now, if you will follow me, I have the final piece of your garment.”
He led Adrian through a small door on the far right wall of the waiting room down into the basement of the church. All of the Princess’s guards knew Porter well enough by now that they did not bother following them down. Adrian assumed since they had known each other since birth, and at one point were promised to one another, that Porter was considered safe. Unlike the cathedral, the belly of the temple was dark and drafty. The air was frigid to ensure its contents were properly stored, and a sticky substance coated the floor. Adrian scrunched her nose up and lifted her foot as the floor tried to cling to the bottom of her shoe. Usually, when she stepped on something sticky, it was the result of a late-night order of jam and biscuits, but that was just a shameful clean-up job in the morning. This was completely different.
Despite the condition of the room itself, all of the artifacts inside were dutifully taken care of by the priests and their pupils. Glass boxes on pedestals were lined so closely together that Adrian had to walk sideways to move between them. She squinted into one of the cases, but it was too dark to make out more than a silhouette. A doll perhaps? Porter led them to the middle of the room, where he dropped a match into the bonfire-like light source that lit the room. Adrian then saw the case she was looking into was not a doll at all, but a dagger with a particularly knobbed hilt and a wide enough blade to have been mistaken for the line of a dress.
“Hey, Adrian, look at this,” Porter said, popping open the top of one of the cases and carefully extracting an artifact. "It's a good thing you decided to weave your pearls into your hair. Otherwise, you may have had to wear this." He held up an escoffion that looked like a child rolled up in a paper spyglass and placed the wide end on top of someone's head. Its long veil flowed behind like a wedding dress train, decorated with the same type of pearl weaved into Adrian's hair. The length of it was so great that Adrian’s ancestors had to have sewn it into their hair to prevent it from slipping off.
She laughed a bit and felt the embarrassment on her mother's face if she were to teeter down the aisle in that costume, no matter the historic value. Give her a wand and she would look like the fae in all of the folk stories.
"Oh come on, Porter. You're basically a fae already. Don't be shy. Put it on"
He twirled it in his hands and placed it back in the box, "It's an extremely old, royal relic. I am definitely not putting it on."
Adrian did not hesitate to pluck the tip of it out of the case and place it steadily on Porter’s head. He tried to shuffle out of her grasp, but his fear of ruining the hat was far greater than his embarrassment. The princess only took it off once he began to fuss and grab at her wrists.
"Lighten up!" Adrian demanded as Porter finally got the hat off of himself, "And you should really work on your arms more because that fight you tried to put up was pathetic"
Adrian tossed the escoffion back into its place, despite the distasteful look it earned from Porter, and subtly flexed her biceps in the reflection of one of the cases while Porter shook his head and began searching for whatever it was they had actually come down here for.
Adrian was pleased with her progress. Having been trained since she was a little girl, Adrian's body was finally ready to start showing off the muscle she had been working so hard to gain. Her mother was a harsh coach, but she couldn't ask for a better one. Queen Lara pushed her the hardest during weight training, which, of course, was the conditioning Adrian loathed the most.
"Here we go," Porter shuffled over and moved Adrian’s hair over her shoulder, clasping a golden choker around her neck as Adrian looped the chains under her arms. Thin gold chains hung down like a ribcage looping up to attach to the front and back of the choker around her neck. A heavy circular ruby hung heavily resting between her breasts like a bleeding heart.
“This isn’t too bad,” Adrian said, stroking the ruby with her thumb.
“If you had done any actual research, then you would know that this is a very old relic used to symbolize loyalty to Ciro. The choker shows that you will speak with—”
Adrian was already tuning him out, admiring her outfit and swaying to see her skirt’s fluttering movement. She tried to decide whether she preferred trousers or skirts but it was such a hard decision. Of course, it was easier to move and fight in pants, not like she was good at combat anyway, but skirts were much more appealing to the eye and gave plenty of fabric to fidget and play with while she was bored.
“Adrian, if you act like this during the ceremony, you will be banished from your own kingdom.”
She looked up with a smile. “Come on, I’ve been waiting forever to do this. Do you really think I’d mess it up?”
“Yes. Now, come on, it’s time for you to get in position. I’ll see you out there.”
Porter gave her a reassuring smile before slipping up the staircase and leaving Adrian alone with the artifacts of the past. She was not one to get nervous in public. She had been trained well enough for that. The attention of everyone in the room was something she had come to not only expect but also adore. With all eyes on her, she soaked up attention like warm Summer rays, but there was a small knot in her stomach she so desperately wished to reach in and untangle.
Adrian slipped back up the steps and pressed an ear to the heavy wooden door. The sound of chatter and footsteps was everywhere, slowly filtering out into the main cathedral to fill the hundreds of seats. Once the noise was nothing but a hum, the door swung open and Adrian would have stumbled out if it were not for one of the guards that had been outside to steady her.
“Are you alright, Your Majesty?” The guard asked in a soft low tone.
Adrian smoothed her skirts and smothered her twitching mouth with a stern expression, “Yes, quite. Thank you.”
The princess re-steadied herself and glided over to the double doors separating the waiting area from the main cathedral. Porter’s voice was just a senseless noise from there, but her parents had prepared her enough to be able to assume what he was saying.
He was blabbing something about the centuries-old tradition of the crowning, and the history of the throne. Which, of course, was absolutely meaningless since a woman being crowned was against everything her ancestors had ever wanted. Then, Porter would talk about some hopefully flattering qualities of Adrian before introducing her.
During the practice ceremony, weeks ago, when her father thought she was out of earshot, he spoke to Porter in a low voice, telling him never to call Adrian “she”. Only ever Adrian. And finally, when the time was right and the people would be called upon to hail her name— she would not be crowned an Empress. She would be crowned an Emperor.
Adrian’s stomach jolted when Porter’s mumbling voice paused. This was the moment she had been preparing for all her life. The doors opened up to a bright white aisle, lined with benches on either side. The bright spotlight from the sunroof lay at the end of the room calling her to take her rightful place in its rays.
