[allu]

mark !

[waterglow]

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BIG BIG RES AA A DREAMIE
Dropping, as much as I love them I don't think I can compete. Congrats in advance to whoever wins this babe! <3

[76heart]

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━━━━━ａｓ ｉｆ ｙｏｕ   ｄ  ｏ  ｎ  ＇  ｔ━

ａｓ ｉｆ ｙｏｕ   ｃ  ａ  ｎ  ＇  ｔ━━━━━━

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❝ I remember walking through the
desert, burning, warm, alone
roaming with no place to call
home
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76heart ● male ● 3,154 words
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no mother, no father,
just myself alone to bother ❞
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silhouette - AQUILO ● you are a memory - message to bears ● the moon will sing - the crane wives ● death with dignity - sufjan stevens
earth - sleeping at last
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playlist extra - 1,048 words

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xxxMother Nature was a cruel force. She was harsh, unrelenting, tireless. She never faltered, never found need to stop to breathe. She cracked open the heavens to call rain to fall forth, striking the skies with bright lighting and pounding her Earth with booming thunder. She called oceans to rise and to fall and to flood her lands, to froth and break worlds, leaving them clinging to nothing but old, broken foundations now awash with seaweed and mud. She dried the deserts, and asked the sun to send his burning light upon the sands, to burn and to sear and to crumble, and then asked the moon to watch over it each night as it rained, as she gave it just barely enough to survive, to allow it to keep living, for plants to grow up through the broken cracks and feed a kingdom and allow it to prosper. The Mother of the world was nothing like his. He missed her, but the only mother he had now was the Mother of Nature, and she had taught him to listen. She was cruel, and cold, but she could be giving too, though her lessons, like her, were relentless. They were meant to push until there was a break, because a shrouded world could not grow again after it’s light had died until new cracks were made for life to push through. Because a seed could not grow if it was locked in a cage. Because a power could not be unleashed if it was bound. She had shown him who he was by giving him that push. He had been lost, and she had shown him the way by shattering his cage. No, that wasn’t right. She had shown him the way by giving him what he needed to shatter it himself. She had given the push, but he had been the one to break his shackles.
xxxHe should have listened long ago when his own mother told him to listen if she ever spoke, then he would not have needed to break. He knew to listen now, though, and his ears were open to hear her speak, to hear her words through the wind rustling his fur as he stood a top the cliff side, or to hear her words through the storm of sands she wrought.

xxxWhen he was small, much smaller than he was now, only a babe filled with confidence and no fear of the world, and an unbridled curiosity of it's wonders, and it's magics. His parents were wandering mages, two traveling souls with the rare gift of magic, a blessing and a curse to whomever it was bestowed upon. They met and fell in love and had him, and then took him along their travels, showing him the world and healing and performing acts along the way, and showing him tricks and all they could.
xxxThey had tried to teach him how to use his own many times, but he had none. Magic had not been a gift that touched him, and if it had, it was kept too deeply under an unbreakable lock and key to ever be unlocked by anything but it's perfect match, the key that had been made just to unlock it, it's only purpose to free his power. Forcing it would only harm him, and so they stopped, hiding his lack of magic from him with gentle lies to protect his heart that only wished to use it as they did, to make his halo of wild flowers dance and bend to his will, to warp the light to shine in his eyes and momentarily blind himself because it was too bright. They told him it would come in time, that it would come to him soon, but it never did, and he had always known from the darkness in their eyes that it was a lie. He knew he didn't have it, he could feel it's emptiness in his bones whenever he tried. He knew it would never be there, that it would never bloom, but he appreciated his parents trying to protect his heart.
xxxHe had been so innocent then, so fragile, so easily shattered, and they knew telling him he had no magic would crush him. What they hadn't known though, was that he would be content with seeing theirs, with getting to watch them tell stories in the air with the desert sand and sandstone covering every inch of Erast, and the memories of their tales would keep his heart together and warm once they had gone.

xxxThere was one morning, a sunrise to be exact, that covered the horizon scarlet, then faded to a sunburst orange, then to teal, to turquoise, to blue. Everything had felt right, he knew who he was, he knew his path. He sat with his mother at the top of an edge to one of the many sweeping canyons of Erast, the largest by the capitol of Erast of Ai Saiden, watching the sunrise together upon rocks that jutted out around the edge, like a rock petering off the edge of a carefully hewn table, but attached firmly to it's surface as if it had always been there. He had always liked the way the rocks grew.
xxxHis mother asked him if he wanted to hear a story, and of course he had agreed, so she raised her paw and figures made of sand began to swirl in the air until each grain that glinted in the rising sun found it's place. Four figures wore a crown; a king, a queen, a prince, a son. The son, the second prince, floated beside a woman who bore no crown, dressed in tattered clothes. His mother spoke of a prince who had fallen in love with a young mage, and she for him. They wished to speak permission from the king to marry, but he refused, standing from his throne and shouting, bellowing that his son would wed no peasant. With the end of his shout and whirl of his mother's paw the figures swirled back into dust, and then found new shapes, forming a knew scenes. He watched closely, his eyes glued to the sand. This time it was just the prince, and the woman, and they were packing to go. Their voices were hushed and quick, and a guard entered the room. The woman raised her paw and the guard crumbled into dust, and the two ran, absconding into the night, never to be seen again. The sand then fell away with a whorl like a storm of sands, the magic ceasing to hold them in the air. A few grains fell upon his nose, causing him to sneeze, and he turned to his mother, confused, and baffled. Her eyes were solemn, and knowing, and then he noticed his father had come to sit beside her. They told him that was his story, and his mother's, the story of how their family began, many, many centuries and generations ago. They told him that their family was returning home for the first time in so long, and warned him that old grudges could still be there, even though a new king, a terrible tyrant sat upon Erast's throne.

xxxThat night when they entered the city, and passed through the wide, sprawling city gates, his parents were apprehended by guards. They were taken for their magic, not for his family, for the tyrant king snuffed out all the with gift, and his mother screamed, and so he did, his heart shattering with each step as he turned and bolted through the gates, no guards noticing the small boy racing away with tears and dust trailing behind him.

xxxAs the sun rose, he had known who he was, and everything had been right, but as it fell, so did he, and now he was lost, with no path to follow.


xxxFor days he had wandered, tired, far too hot, scared, and alone. Wind whipped sand into his face, and his paws felt worn and rough and raw from the sand, sand he had once thought to be soft and smooth. Now all it felt was painful, and anything but soft like feathered pillows he only knew in inns. He wanted to rest, but he was too scared to stop. He already didn't know where he was in the middle of the desert, he didn't want to fall asleep and then never wake up or wake up to find himself covered in sand from the drifting winds at night and become even more lost. There were no ravens to guide him, no crows, not even the massive horned snakes that burrowed in the sand and emerged during the rains. There was nothing, he was just alone, and lost, and scared. He didn't know what to do, to think. It all happened so fast, so suddenly, and he had just been running without thought until he could only walk. He had his parents, and then he didn't. He had his path, his journey all set and laid out before him, and now he was lost, in the middle of the sprawling desert, with only sand and the oncoming stars that were rising with the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon to keep him company. They weren't company, though, they were just sand and stars. Stars millions of distances away, and lifeless sand, sand that had no magic, no life, that had been filled with it so recently in his memory, the last memory he had that contained a smile, and the warm eyes of his parents. He felt his paws push at the sand as he stumbled to walk, it's magic so clearly empty and gone. There was none running through it, like there was none in his bones.

xxxA rain drop fell onto his nose, startling him, and causing him to look up as he finally came to a halt. The sky had filled with clouds, dark storm clouds, stormy clouds filled with mad rumbling. He felt another raindrop fall upon his cheek and trickle down, or maybe it was a tear. He looked down, and realized the wind had picked up. It pelted his fur, whipping and rustling it and began to pull the sand up and around him, swirling in the start of a storm. His eyes widened, and he knew he had to run, he didn't want to be caught in a sandstorm. He knew how dangerous they could be, and his paws already felt sore enough. He tried to take a step forward, but when he did, and his paw touched the sand in the wind, a shock of pale blue ran through the storm, illuminating the night, and blocking his path. He leapt back, but now the sand storm was whirling fiercely around him, the light crackling through it like an energy, a magic possessing nature's wind and forcing it to form an impenetrable whorl around him, locking him in the eye of the storm, like a tornado forming around him. He froze, and shut his eyes tightly as whispers began to echo in his ears, voices, sounds, memories he knew too well. His paws covered his ears tightly, but the whispers only grew louder, only grew more insistent. They were his mother's voice, his father's, and his own, but something was different about them, something off, something wasn't right. They were darker, warped. He could feel sand buffeting against his small form, hitting his eyelids, roughly scraping his paws, but something told him to open his eyes, and he did. Before him, made in the sand moving all on it's own was a painting of himself and his mother on that canyon edge. Her paw waved through the air as it did before, the five figures forming again, but their eyes were red, and the crowns were black. The prince asked again, but the king shouted, and slashed the woman with a sword. Sand exploded from her, and the grains spilled outward, hitting the king, the queen, the prince, and her love, causing them to shatter too, and as they did, the sand making his mother's figure, and his own, began to fade, blowing back into the storm as if they never had existed. He stood on his hind legs quickly, reaching for the sand with his paws, desperately trying to pull it back together. "No, no!" He cried. That hadn't been what happened, that hadn't been it. His mother hadn't faded, and neither did he, and the king hadn't killed her, the mage. They had run together, in love, and happy, and started a new family of their own. It hadn't ended there. It hadn't. A new shape began to form, and he fell back, watching as an older memory took shape. The kind eyes of his parents turned red, and unkind, and his eyes both blackened and empty. He was much smaller, so small, and his mother began to speak. Telling her child with hope in his broken gaze that he had no magic, that he never would. That he was a failure, a disappointment, the first in a line of so many who wasn't strong enough to posses the magic too. His father laughed as black tears of sand fell from the small Fiero's eyes, echoing his mother's words, and where he was fallen and watching, he shook his head, tears of his own now falling. That wasn't the memory, that wasn't how it had been, but it felt like it was. His mother's face, his mother's eyes, they were red, and warped, but hers. Had that been what she really thought? What she felt? Had the darkness behind their gaze been that? Had their intent not been king? His heart ached, it burned, it cracked. His father's laugh wasn't the joyous one he knew better than anything else, it was cruel and cold, but it was still his. His father wouldn't ever be like that, would he? No, that wasn't them. His parents were good, and kind, they would never be like that, but his heart still burned, still ached, and his tears still ran. That wasn't the memory, but as he stood again, his paws just caused the sand to flow back into the storm, his batting to push them away fruitless. Another memory formed in the sand, twisted and warped from the happy one it had been in his mind, corrupted and cruel. He batted at it desperately, not wanting to hear their voices hurting him again in ways he knew his parents would never do. Memory after memory began to form around it, all playing out through animated sand, while the storm swirled around him, growing thicker and more intense, and louder, so loud he could just barely hear the voices now. He began to scream, to shout for them to stop. His eyes grew desperate, his paws helplessly scraping at the memories that only reformed when his touch was gone, and his crying grew louder and tears more intense. His movements were wild, even more desperate than his eyes, and his heart only burned more intensely as each of his memories were turned darker, twisted, corrupt. What was happening? What had he done? None of these memories were real. They weren't right, they weren't what they were. They were wrong, so wrong, but he hurt and he couldn't bear to watch them. "No!" He pleaded. "Please no." He let out a sob. "Stop, no more! No! This isn't how it was!" It continued for what felt like hours until he didn't have the strength to fight them anymore, until he couldn't bear another swipe that only caused the sand to reform around his paw as he went to swipe again and spun in circles trying to destroy the memories, until only one was left. He was sitting now, in the center, watching with hopeless, tired eyes. This memory was different, it started sooner, and was filled with color, and the blue light crackling through it. His family was entering the gates to Ai Saiden, and his heart sank. His heart had already broken at this memory, how could it corrupt it even more? He didn't want to see. "Stop!" The storm didn't listen. It continued on coldly. The gates opened, and they stepped through, and then the blue light swept into the figures of the guards animating them, and their sharp spears. They swarmed towards his parents, and surrounded them quickly with their spears. His mother shouted at them to take him too, and his father pointed to where he stood. Fiero rose as he watched, a sudden anger beginning to flow through him with the pain. "They wouldn't do that!" He shouted, his fur beginning to bristle as he stood on shaky legs. The guards ran towards him, but his figure didn't move, he stood there, watching as the guards moved closer around his parents, spears pointed into their backs. Fiero shook his head. "No!" As the guards surrounded his figure, and closed further in on his parents, he felt something begin to crackle through him, something that began to set his bones alight and his veins burn with a fire he hadn't felt before. He felt a scream rip through him and a snapping of something burning around his heart at the first splatter of red. "That wasn't how it happened!" Magic rushed out with his scream, flaring out from his form and whipping into the storm with a force, shattering it and snapping the blue light. The sand from the storm fell all around him, piling in a heap around him, encircling him with the dust, and then he collapsed. Everything grew dark around him, and he felt the darkness take him.

xxxWhen he woke, he was surrounded by a bed of blue flowers with yellow grass, flowers that matched his halos, and his colors.


xxxThat had been years ago now, the night Nature had told him to listen. He still didn't know why, but it had, and it had awakened something deep within him no one knew he had, and it was something he would never forget. Even the last memory of his parents was not most prominent in his mind, though it was his most cherished. Sighing, he stood from his bed of flowers upon a canyon cliff side, and turned his gaze to the gates of his rusted and worn memories, to the last true place he knew, when he had last known his path. He didn't know what he would find, but he knew his path was there. It always had been. It hadn't ended or broken that night, he had just strayed from it, and nights later he had been shown his way back, and now it was time he returned to it, with nature watching by his side.

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oh god, I am so so sorry for how over this is! I completely understand if this doesn't count ahh, I got the time very very wrong and only realized far too late. I wish you loads of luck judging and loads and loads of luck to everyone else who entered! all your entries are incredible and whoever this child goes to will give them a most prefect home <3

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[HoneyLavender࿐]

Username: AngelDo
Name: Hunaja
Gender: female
Prompt:
Other:

[Mnemosyne]

markin

[nermal1999]

🌳Please click the Beehive to view entry🐝

pixel art beehive was made by: DaffoLily on deviantART

[quit-cs]

mark !
will likely link to something off-thread

[magnapinna]

Username: keiikoa !
Name: teitrun
Gender: female
Prompt: wip
Other:

[khvoxtic]

Hey all!! Had a couple of questions so im going to post them here for everyone!

How long can the animation be?
Likely no more than 4 minutes, a lot can be told in an animation if its long so, please keep it below 4 minutes.

How many pages can the comic be?
3 pages, of max A4 ratio [2480 pixels x 3508 pixels], this is just so one page isn't like dummy long as with above, a lot can be done in a comic.

Can I link a song?
If its a playlist, that will coming under your 1000 extra words!
If it's one song and it's to help your story, feel free to link it.

If there are any more!! Feel free to message me

[sprinkleshake]

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Other: res