Melanie
by Jessi

Comment:
She glanced and tilted her head and gave him that grin that told him one thing, and one thing only.

Did he really want to continue this 'discussion'? Well, did he?

He gazed at her and saw the look in her eye just then and decided.

No, he really didn't.

Escape
by hhuddle

Comment:
They thought they knew what it was all about. It was simple geology. Molton rock under pressure in the deeps of the earth, being pushed to the surface, and finding whatever means it could to escape.

Perfectly natural, they said.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

One day, the evil force that kept pushing to escape its confines and prison in the darkest places of our planet would be free, and its reaching fingers of fiery death would destroy us all.

Another finger moved ever so slowly towards that day, and this time it eventually burned out, cooled too quickly. Today was not that day.

No, but it was coming.

Innocence
by shaislip

Comment:
With a force of energy unmatched in his limited experience and scope, the spray of water exploded towards him. The unexpected surge copped a shocked little scream from him, partly from delight, and partly from fear. As it soaked him to the bone, and he realized that this wall of spray and water would not hurt him, the fear turned into full amazement and joy and his laughter rang true.

And so it was that he ran through the mists, the laughter ringing in the ears of all within sound, waiting for the next blast to catch him unawares. Never knowing when it would come, ever anticipating.

It is such a thrill, the discoveries of childhood.

Belly Full of Crickets - Pocket Full of Sunshine
by ErinKirsten

Comment:
He clung there with a silly grin on his face, thinking about the hour before. Truly, sometimes, life was grand and the decisions we make improve it no end. For him, the decision to propose to the love of his life was returned with a positivity and happiness that set his heart afire and his face aglow.

He clung there with a silly grin on his face, on top of the world.

MMKK
by hesitant

Comment:
The palace was beautiful. As he sat down in front of his easel, his pastels laid out beside him, he smiled a sad little smile. Mankind was capable of such beauty sometimes, so why was it that they were also so capable of ugliness? How could one gaze at something like this, created as a monument to imagination and other-worldly power, and then go off and start and fight in the constant wars that humanity seemed always to be engaged in?

He sighed and shook his head. Perhaps there was no answer. Perhaps humanity needed the ugly in order to appreciate the beauty even more. It was not for him to decide.

For him, his only decision was in how exactly to capture this beauty and make it his own.

He began to sketch.

Once Upon A Rose
by IndigoButterfly

Comment:
The wilting petals she arranged just so, as she wiped a tear from her eye. They were her mother's favorite, these flowers. Their hues had always filled her eyes with a shining happiness, and so she had brought them to her daily to replace the ones that began to die, as much to see that brightness in her mother's eyes as because she could not replace her dying body.

She arranged the petals, and kissed her fingertips, and touched her mother's urn and said a final goodbye. She then turned and placed a new bouquet beside a photograph of her mother in her younger days and touched a kiss to that as well.

As long as she had these, her memories would never fade.

Watkins Glen, NY
by smichener

Comment:
She stood there and looked into that place, and remembered a time when the world seemed a little more magical. Less filled with worry and care. A time when wonder and beauty and imagination ruled.

She stood there and closed her eyes and listened to the music of the water as it played its forever song, and her mind took her back to a time when that music wasn't just a sound, but a concert being played by the fairy folk that she had so fully believed in. Not just water, but a symphony of ethereal strings on instruments plucked by the gossamer fingers of peoples living only just on this side of reality.

She stood there and smiled a sad little smile, and opened her eyes, and the concert became mere water once again, the fairy folk flitted away and became the falling leaves, the world returned in stark and unforgiving clarity, and the inner child that had returned to her so briefly ran off with a laughter that drifted away on the breeze.

Then she turned and walked off to her adulthood.

Wolf Dissection: inside the skin
by skennon

Comment:
I can only imagine the reaction you're getting.

Finger Print
by bobonacus

Comment:
The FBI would like a word with you.

;D

Surface tension
by alexandrapaun

Comment:
It's definitely skin. +8

But it has water drops. -3

Nice lighting though. +2

But, water drops. -3

Did I mention water drops? -8.

Final score: 7

I sucked at math.