Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share (2024)

Weekly #1

Part 1 - my own setting

Avery lies on the beach, watching the water dragons jump in and out of the crashing waves, splashing water onto the sands. It’s their last summer here at the cove, and they’re determined to make the most out of it. Their new internship will take them travelling all over the world, which is great! That’s the whole point of working with the magical wildlife rescue team! But it does mean no more summers at this beach, where they’ve been going since they were about three years old.

Suddenly, Delphin jumps out of the sea to land on Avery’s front, snapping them out of their thoughts. They wrap their arms around him - with some difficulty; they befriended the water dragon the very first time they swam at this beach, and he’s grown a lot since then.

They stroke the spines on his back, and try not to think about how long it’ll be until they see Delphin again.

Part 1 - my continuation of @Airfairy934's setting

Poplin scrapes a sample of moss off the cavern walls, collecting it into a small vial and quickly sealing it. For their latest experiment, they need to try and deoxidise the sample before adding the oxidised rust.

See Also

New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia; Their Pastures, Copper Mines and Gold Fields.

Turns out that all of this stuff they’d thought was perfectly normal, if absolutely thrilling, while they were growing up is actually a whole new ecosystem that’s never been studied before. People have lived in caverns for ages, obviously, but somehow when Poplin’s mothers had been looking for a home, they’d managed to settle down in the one cave that had once been inhabited by a wizard. Poplin doesn’t know the details - all they know is that the interactions between magic and the organisms that naturally live in caverns have created an entirely new biome.

And what better way to prove themself as a bioengineer than to be the first person to study this environment? When they’d gotten rejected from the university last spring, they’d thought that was the end of all their dreams - but if they can present the selection committee with their findings, they’d be sure to get accepted this time around.

Part 2 - dual timelines

Kenna groans, looking down at the sheaf of complaint letters in front of her. Complaints about the new chapel building, about the new tithe, about everything that the clergy has been doing lately. Who would have thought that keeping the clergy in check would be the hardest part of holding elected office?

There’s nothing she can really do about it. They have legislative power, held by the head of each of the old clergy families - she’s checked, the documents are all legal, no loopholes. Clearly this is archaic legislation, from a time when it was more than just a huge nuisance, but she can’t change it, so she just has to put up with it.

It’s the tithe she really objects to. New buildings - fine. Obviously that space could have been used more effectively, and it would have been nice if they’d bothered notifying the city council before they started building it, but it’s fine. Imposing an additional tax, though, one she knows perfectly well is just going to get funnelled into those families’ pockets even though the people of the city have never been poorer - that’s just pure greed. Those old clergy families are rich enough as it is, they don’t need the money by any means.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the money might get spent on something worthwhile. Surely the clergy hasn’t always been this completely pointless. Nowadays they rake in money by offering people a chance to speak with the gods - which Kenna is fairly confident is a downright scam, and she’d do something about it if the clergy weren’t entirely immune to any legal consequences. They don’t really seem to do much else, though, and that can’t always have been the case. Right?

———-

“And that concludes the meeting,” the high priest said, rolling up her scroll and tucking it into her bag. “Any questions?”

One hand went up at the back of the room. “What happens if we fail? If the crystals somehow get lost or destroyed?”

The high priest raised one eyebrow. “That should not happen if you are all careful.”

The questioner crept back, abashed, and everybody started filing out of the chamber. Magdalene’s hand went to clutch the crystal in her pocket, nervous at even the thought of damaging it. Her allotted crystal was a deep emerald green with streaks of jet black, the sixth one out of the set of twelve. Possibly also the most dangerous of the twelve, although maybe she only thought that because it’s the one she’s been assigned to protect.

Twelve crystals, each containing the spirit of a trapped god. Twelve people, each chosen to protect one of the crystals with their life, and pass it down their family line until such time as the world was ready to have gods in it again. After the Catastrophes which had decimated the world - a series of natural disasters, caused by the gods and only barely averted by the clergy - they’d been forced to work out what to do with the defeated gods.

And so they’d landed on this plan, where the twelve highest-ranking members of the clergy - the group of volunteer soldiers, sworn to defend the world against the destructive forces that gods could be - were given the honour (or burden, depending on your perspective) of guarding the spirits of the twelve gods.

There was no way this could go wrong.

Part 3 - pacing
For this, I used the three prompts “a lost language (slow)”, “a secret invitation (fast)”, and “discovering a new species (slow)”

Thalia unrolls the scroll, squinting at the strange symbols printed on the paper. This is going to take a while. She sits down at her desk and opens her translation anthology, flicking through the pages. It’s not long before she’s forced to conclude that there is simply no language currently known by linguists that matches the script on this particular scroll. Usually she can at least find something similar - a place to start, even if there’s no exact match. But this looks like no language she’s ever seen before. Which is strange, she thinks, going back through her book to make sure she hasn’t missed anything, because she’s supposed to be the foremost linguist of the magical world.

Suddenly, a piece of paper flutters out of the scroll - not written in the same unfamiliar language, but rather in a combination of several different scripts. As she frantically decodes the message, she realises that the actual words are in yet another language.

Unlike the scroll itself, this note only takes a second for her to translate, and before she can even consciously process the words in front of her, she springs up from her desk and starts running downstairs to the front door, grabbing her keys and an empty bag on the way out.

Less than an hour later, she’s at the address that the note had given, trying to pick the lock with the lockpick she always keeps on her keychain.

She creeps through the building, as silently as she can, trying to look out for any symbols like the ones on the scroll, or anything else that might be of interest. On her left as she reaches the top of the first staircase is a door labelled in the same strange script, so she goes in. The room is empty apart from the immense collection of books stacked on shelves - this must be the library. She pulls one book down from the shelf; it’s written entirely in the unfamiliar language. Then she flips to a page with no words in any script, just a glossy printed photograph. The person in the photograph doesn’t look human at all, and Thalia gasps before remembering that she’s supposed to be being quiet. Closing the book, she slips it into her satchel and starts slowly walking out of the deserted building.

Part 4 - using the passage of times and a dual timeline

The girl slinks backwards, trying to hide behind the crowd of her classmates as they all rush to the front of the room, eager to get started on the new training. But of course it’s her that the teacher’s eyes fix on, regardless of how much she tries to hide - or maybe because she looks reluctant. He beckons her to the front, passes her a sword and shield. The sword is real, not wooden or blunted. It’s supposed to be realistic, mimicking actual battlefield conditions so the students can be prepared.

The teacher lunges at her, barely giving her a second to find her feet and catch her breath. She ducks quickly, then tries to lunge back. The strike doesn’t land - of course it doesn’t, the teacher is about three heads taller than she is, and bulkier to boot. There’s no way she can land a hit on somebody like him, and if she can’t do it even in this practice, in a classroom setting, how is she supposed to do it for real?

It’s funny how things change.

She remembers arriving at this school for the first time, how the ground had been so beautiful, covered with plants. She’d stopped and stared; she’d never seen so many plants all in one place before. It had been a warm summer day, the sunlight reflecting off the leaves of the trees.

Now the plants are gone - cut down to make space for training courts. The kingdom is at war, and they need every soldier they can get, even schoolchildren. She used to grumble about final exams and assignments being due. Now her final exam is a battle.

It’s funny how things change.

She slams the door, storming out of the meeting room. Her students will not be fighting any wars, not while she still has breath left in her body to prevent it. There has been enough of that, enough children dragged into wars they have nothing to do with. Their pens and books replaced by swords and shields, hands that still shake decades later, throats raw from waking up screaming every night. She swore when she became a teacher that her generation would be the last children ever to go through that, and she does not intend to break that promise, invading hordes or no invading hordes.

Shaking off the residual anger, she walks through the door of the classroom, plastering a smile onto her face. The students have already started working on their latest essays - a creative writing piece. She wanders around the room, peering over their shoulders to glance at what they’re writing. The word WAR catches her attention - gods, she’s jumpy today.

She stands still for a moment, trying to read the rest of the girl’s story. But of course, it’s just a story. Just fiction. Nothing to worry about, nothing that should be making her so twitchy and paranoid.

And then it hits her - it’s just a story. For this girl, war is nothing but a story. It hasn’t come close to her, hasn’t even touched the edges of her life yet. All she knows of war is the books she reads and the stories she can make up about it.

It’s funny how things change.

Word counts:
Part 1: 348 words
Part 2: 565 words
Part 3: 388 words
Part 4: 540 words
Total: 1841 words!

the only thing that's left is the manuscript
~ mayhem (they/she)

folklore fan fest ftw SWC july 2024!!