Creation myth

I was small. Short, skinny. The smallest child in the village in fact. Being only five years of age, I was perfectly obedient and had no mind except to obey the laboring demands of my parents and older siblings. I was diligent and hard working and was tricked into doing most of my older siblings work (although I did not know it at the time.) I remember my younger, four-year old sister Esuma. She was stiller taller than me though. She was the only one who did not inflict more work on me and she was also more than willing to take on some of my work, but I did not let her do this because I loved her to much. Since I was so young and obedient, I was trustworthy and many people in the village depended on me to be a messenger-girl and carry many private letters to other inhabitants of the large village, although sometimes I was needed, to carry letters outside my village of Sadran. I gave this no thought when I was little, but as I grew older; all this hard labor angered me. I became a mischievous and troublesome girl. When I was handed a letter, as soon as I was out of sight, I would read it and make small changes so that the letters would say strange things that made absolutely no sense. This was great fun to me; to change the usual and boring letters into strange ones. However, one day, when I opened the letter, it was much more than usual. The contents of the letter read as follows:

Dear Ma’at,

As you, the god of justice surely know, there is a great famine in the land of Uslamoon. Although we would have died, a young lad named Esmukar came and when he saw our lack of food, he quickly brought bread, meat, and vegetables. He brought sweet corn, fresh fruit, dreamy white milk, dry wheat and white rice. He even went so far as to bring tiny grains of salt for us. We are now back on our feet and producing more crops than ever. This young boy Esmukar saved hundreds of lives. As you are the god of justice, I beg you to please repay him and give him what you think he deserves. This was a great kindness to us. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter and please seriously consider my request.

Sincerely,

Lurak

This letter was marked for the temple in our village. A brilliant idea came to me, and as I made sure no one could see me, I scribbled out the name Esmukar and wrote my name, Shaira, in its place. Then I headed faster than ever to the temple where I deposited the letter into a random priest’s confused hands. Never would I have guessed what happened next.

I soon forgot completely about the letter and went back to my normal life – for a while. After almost a week of mischievous shenanigans, I was going to bed later than usual because of the message I had to carry all the way to the far away land of Childlaborr. I was completely and totally exhausted so as soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell fast asleep.

I awoke to the sound of yelling at me to get up, the slamming of a door and feet stomp, stomp, stomping up the stairs. As the door to my room flew open, I threw the covers over my head. “Get downstairs now! I have been calling you for the last five minutes to come downstairs and chop the firewood. Now stop being lazy and get down here, NOW!”

The door to my room slammed again, and I groggily tripped over my thin sheet and fell out of my bed. I felt unusually clumsy as I tumbled down the steps. “Who in the afterlife are you?” screeched my mother.

“I’m your daughter. Now where is the firewood?” I grumbled, only half awake.

“No you’re not!” she screamed.

She ran around the kitchen for a minute, and then held up a mirror. “See! See!” she yelled.

“Oh my” I whispered.

Then I grabbed the mirror and ran out the door. I stared at myself in the mirror as I ran to the temple. The priests standing guard outside the double doors didn’t even try to stop me and instead just gaped in amazement, I ran to the statue of Ma’at and screamed as loud as I could “What did you do to me? What am I? What has happened?”

“You are a god now, the god of messages because that is what you do; this is the thanks to the village you helped.” A strange voice rang throughout the temple. “I’m- I’m a god?” I straightened up “I’m a god”, I said loudly. “You should be grateful!” Ma’at boomed sounding angry.

And that is when I fainted.

I awoke to all of the priests in Egypt maybe 400 in all pampering me to my every will. They were combing my wings, polishing my shoes and had changed my old ratty dress for a pure white one. It flowed slowly down to my ankles and the sleeves were tight down to my wrist where they exploded into the lightest, but still shiny gold, and hung loosely, but not limply, a good three inches down. The neckline started out huge enough that you could see my collar bones (if not for the next layer) and ran all the way down my dress until it was a neat thin cut, but the second off-white layer ran up behind the cut and peeked out over the neck line where the edge was bordered with brilliant golden stars. It was by far the most beautiful dress I had ever seen.

As I opened my eyes I heard shrieks of glee. The priests were all talking- or should I say yelling at me all at once. All of a sudden, one of the priests walked up to me through the mess of people. His face was excited and his voice was loud and echoed through the temple as he yelled “Calm down, fellow worshippers!” when the room got quiet, he turned to me. He bowed low and stayed like that until the rest of the priests followed his lead and bent into low stances. This felt amazing, to have to the world bend to your every whim, the world felt like soft clay in your hand. I felt like I had to say something and so;

“Hello.” At first I was confused, who was talking, was this really me? Could this perfect piano like voice really be mine? Could I really have changed that much? Gasps flew up from the crowd, were they as surprised as I was? I continued ”I am Shaira, goddess of message. My name means poet, as I write beautiful messages and carry them all over this universe. Now, who are you?” They all started yelling at the same time and I ever so slightly turned my eyebrows and the corners of my mouth down and the crowd stopped making noise so fast that I couldn’t have known they were talking before. My eyes fell on the head priest and he trembled with nervousness “So, who are you?” This time, only he answered, “We are the priests, and we ask you to please stay with us. He pleaded.” My response was quick, as if I had been thinking about it for a while. “I can’t,” I responded tersely. “To deliver messages, I must travel far and wide. I cannot stay. Goodbye!” My beautiful wings lifted me higher and higher and soared above the crowd. Someone threw a letter at me and I swooped down to catch it my talons. Then I flew out the open doors and took off to deliver a message.



Eyes

By, Princess Bobo

Most people say that my eyes are the most beautiful feature on my

face. My mom says that it because it’s unusual for a brown-haired

person like me to have the blue eyes I have, but really, what can I say? I

am an unusual girl. I’m a very unusual girl. My mom has turquoise

beauty eyes that hide shyly behind her big brown glasses. My dad has

big brown laughing eyes, joking eyes, my dad has muddy eyes but not at

all in a bad way. My sister’s eyes are thinking eyes, the way that they

can stare at something and never get bored. She has eyes the color of

chocolate, warm and melted; they are the color of chocolate. My brother

has wondering wandering eyes distracting drifting off eyes. His are

curious eyes, yelling ‘Teach me something! I want to learn!’

My eyes are inspiration eyes, Creative ‘Lets have fun!’ eyes.

Surrounded by an army of eyelashes, my eyes have four colors, instead

of three, the creamy white outside, the black pupils, the bluish outside,

and then, there is a strange orange color that surrounds the pupils, I

don’t know what it is. It’s strange that I don’t know exactly what color

my eyes are, I’ve been told that there turquoise or completely orange while some people swear that they’re green or hazel. Someone even told

me they were purple. When I look in the mirror, my eyes are like a lake,

a lake, everyone invasions blue, but when you look closely, they’re

grayish and greenish, only hinted with blue, and sprinkled with some

color that I just cant pinpoint. That color in my eyes that I just can’t pinpoint, that color in my eyes that

I just don’t know.

  Rosa’s Rosy Life

My name is Rosa. I have very straight blond hair, and my eyes are blue. I can whistle. I have an older brother named Rafi, and a dog and two goldfish. My friend Tess and I like to play fairies. In school, we are studying the letter “R”. My favorite food is pizza!! I like it even better than dessert! My favorite animal is a bunny, and I was a bunny for Halloween. I don’t like wearing pants.

This story is a character sketch written by “Rosa”, my six year old friend with a great imagination! “Rosa’s Rosy Life” is a story about an imaginary character that she based on herself.

The Healing Stone

Selia opened her eyes. Her room surrounded her, as usual, all greens and golds and yellows. But then she thought that something was off. Selia rose slowly and put on her tunic, then checked the calendar. When she tore off the previous date to reveal the date, she gasped.

“Midsummer’s Eve!”

Selia and Katalia, Selia’s friend and fellow student, were to go to the woods that day to witness the Ceremony of Ghosts, which had been performed for generations upon generations, to call upon and pray to their ancestors. In this most important of rituals, only priestesses and their apprentices were aloud to attend.

“Selia! Breakfast is ready!”

The call kicked Selia out of her reverie, and she sped to a gallop to the kitchen.

“ Don’t gallop inside the house! I can’t count how many times I’ve said that and you still don’t listen!”

“Mother, I was just trying not to miss breakfast!”

“No matter! Your punishment will be to clean out the pigsty.”

“You know I have the Ceremony to go to!”

“Well then, you’d better get cleaning.”

Selia mumbled, “No fair, Katalia never has to clean out her pigsty,” but only so her mother couldn’t hear. Selia knew very well that Katalia couldn’t, because she didn’t have one. When she realized what she had just said, she tried not to giggle.

To avoid further questions, Selia rushed out of the house, making a clopping noise. She quickly mucked the pen and put down fresh hay, replacing the pigs, and then feeding them. She knew she wouldn’t have very much time left for eating, and had taken a cheese sandwich with her. As she galloped to the village center, she noticed the woods and decided to take a detour through there.

The woods were silent as the wolves during a solar eclipse. As Selia galloped through them, she spotted a glitter, and stopped. The glitter turned out to be a stone, and quite a pretty one at that. She turned it over in her hand, wondering. The Priestesses were supposed to have removed all of the stones from the woods that morning, to use for the Ceremony.

She heard a rustle and her torso spun around.

“Katalia! You scared me!” Selia cried accusatively.

“Well, at least I didn’t sneak up on you and say ‘BOO!’”

Selia sighed. She knew this was a hopeless attempt at making Katalia slightly more civil. Then came the sound of hooves, coming from the west.

“Don’t be late! Get to the East, both of you! The Ceremony’s about to start!”

Both of them nearly kicked in surprise. It was the Mistress Thel, head of the village. She had short black hair that was graying slightly, with olive toned skin and a palomino body.

“Oh!” Katalia and Selia both cried in unison.

As they walked through the woods, the sun began creeping westward, and they sped to a gallop to get to the Ceremony on time.

The Ceremony was like a dream. The sun had set, and there were torches all around the clearing, creating an eerie light. Mistress Thell walked slowly toward the center of the clearing with a bag of sage and eucalyptus, to summon all of the non-flesh-eating ghosts in the area, and poured it over the ceremonial fire.

The effect was a column of black smoke, rising up to about Selia’s chest, and then disappearing. The smoke was quickly replaced by a swirling fume that smelled like sea salt. An ear-splitting shriek filled the clearing, and then all went black and utterly silent. It was like a cloth was being pressed against Selia’s eyes and ears, lifted and then, with a small swirl of smoke, the ghosts appeared.

They were like the faint images left in your retina after looking at the sun for too long, only more solid. One of them came up to Selia, and whispered in the echo of a voice,

“You are the one.”

When Selia had regained her bearings, the ghosts had disappeared and the centaurs in the clearing were just recovering.

“Now I know why the priestesses don’t look forward to the Ceremony all that much.” Katalia whispered in her ear. Selia giggled. As the party of ceremony-goers proceeded to the village, yet another centaur galloped into the woods.

“Mistress Keltar is ill!” the messenger gasped.

Selia simply stood there and gaped. Mistress Keltar was her mother, and she had seen her, healthy as, well, a horse.

Soon everyone in the village was infected with the strange sickness, including Mistress Thel. Selia decided to figure out what was doing this, once and for all. It didn’t go quite as well as expected, because everyone who Selia met wanted her to go away, or weren’t really sick. Then, when she took with her the stone she had found on the day of the day of the ceremony, it all changed.

Selia went down the path at a brisk trot. “This should be it,” she mumbled to herself wearily. She knocked on the door.

“Hello? Oh, it’s you. Come in.”

The woman who spoke was lying in a straw bed, with her tail swishing somewhat with anticipation. Selia took off her bag of supplies and put it on the windowsill, so that her stone glimmered in the summer sunlight.

“Could I see that stone? It’s very pretty.”

“Yes, of course. Here,” Selia passed her the stone.

Suddenly the woman twitched. Then a stream of black came flying from where her heart was. The woman was knocked out cold, and Selia went to check her breathing, pulse, and temperature. Amazingly enough, her heart was back to normal, her lungs were clear of fluid, and her forehead was no longer burning with the heat of fever.

Selia gave the stone to many others who were diseased, and the scene repeated itself every time. Selia was then known for the rest of her life and perhaps longer, as the healer who cured the Great Disease.

My parents thought she was a genius.  At age 3 she could walk, talk, run, skip, pace, hop, and jump. On her first day of kindergarten she was all smiles. I couldn’t help but smiling when I looked at her. I sighed, I was a little jealous about how excited she was. After the bell rang and ended the school day, I ran to meet her so that we could walk home together. But she didn’t even respond to me when I asked her how school was, she just bit her lip and stared at me, unsure about anything. And so that was when she became her. I wondered why nobody noticed it sooner, but how could they? When we got home mom hugged her so tight.  I was so sorry when she found out…and I was so mad at Alexa even though I knew I should be worried, for turning and walking out even when she saw the scared expression on my moms face.

“L-Lexie…”I called after her. I tried not to yell you could hear it in my voice that I was frightened. It just made her walk faster.

We named her Alexa but now she wouldn’t respond to anything but Alex. She was born with long black gorgeous hair and on her seventh birthday, she learned how to put it up with a slim wooden stick. She had carved it herself; it was beautiful, thin and smooth. There was a tiger glaring at you from each side. It was so well carved, every little detail, it looked as if they would break through the wood and run around Alexa like tiny guard dogs. This is the story of how my happy life became miserable.

My parents were going to have a baby, a girl. My only hope for the baby was that she wouldn’t be like Alexa. While mom was resting and my dad was taking care of her, I was busy with the charge of cleaning, working, and making sure Alexa obeyed the law. This new job was not easy to maintain, and I often fell asleep around 7:30. Then I dreamt terrible dreams of Alexa silently walking to me and the tigers would jump out at me from her hair and become real. They would circle me growling and roaring for my death. I would wake up early, wanting to scream through the lips I kept pursed, shut tight and I would get to work, sweeping and washing dishes as I waited, dreading the moment Alexa would wake up.

Alexa woke up like a robot, opening her eyes in swift sync. She always seemed to be on the verge of yelling, screaming, but she kept quiet and to herself. The last time she said something to me was about 3 months ago when she found me snooping in her closet. “Watch your back, girl,” she said “That was strike one. If you ever, ever, get three strikes, I’ll kill you.” So now I’m dead. Mentally. Now I’m just like Alexa.  Now I’m dead.

Excitement bubbles

Up inside me, oh the joy!

I just cannot wait!

Not

“Yeah? Well do you ever do anything for me? Huh?” She slammed the door shut in her face. And locked it. She was trembling, and tears poured down her face, she felt so weak she couldn’t stand and so she toppled over onto her bed. But that was what you could see. A crying child. Inside, she burned with anger, she boiled with fury and rage and hatred. She tried to swallow her tears, and anger overcame her. She turned around and kicked over her music stand. She stared at it then started crying again and picked it up.

She sat down at her desk. She took three deep breaths and counted to ten. Her grandmother had taught her that, she started bawling harder, her grandmother had died from cancer three months ago. Her mom was a writer and had put a pencil in her hand as soon as she could draw a legible A. Writing had always calmed her down,

‘“Yeah? Well, do you ever do any thing for me? Huh” She slamed the dore shut in her face. And loked it. she was trembling and tears poured down her face she felt so weak she couldn’t stand and so she topled over’

She wrote. She threw the wet paper into the trash. It was so tear-stained that you could barely read her sloppy handwriting. She picked up her phone and called her best friend Eliza. She lived really close, down the block, kitty corner, go three houses down and then cut across the yard into hers. When Eliza picked up, Katya didn’t say anything, she just sobbed into the phone and Eliza was knocking on the Sunstrum’s front door in 93 seconds flat.

Eliza pushed by Katya’s mother and stood in front of Katya’s door “Sunstrum” she said quietly “Katya Sunstrum” she whispered to the door. She said it in rhythm, as if it was a song that had only three words. The door opened and Eliza walked in. She sat on Katya’s bed and picked the piece of paper out of the trash and started reading it out loud. The crying got quieter and quieter. Eliza knew Katya like no one else did. She knew a lot about Katya, more than anyone else did. She knew about her abusive father, her dyslexia, her dead mother, and her goth sister who had threatened her more than once with a knife. She was the Cinderella that had lost her prince.