SONGWEAVERS CONTEST

 

Here are several of the intriguing entries submitted to the "Your Imaginative World" contest to celebrate the launch of The Songweavers. Enjoy reading them.

Whirlpool of Smoke

by Morgan Carleton

Slowly I opened my eyes partway. I didn’t know for how long I had been asleep, or how I had fallen asleep. I didn’t actually remember falling asleep. I stifled a yawn, and groggily opened my eyes the rest of the way. My vision was obscured by a strange orange plastic. Still not fully awake, I struggled to sit up.
Suddenly it hit me and I realized I was sitting in a small lifeboat. My scrambled thoughts were quickly vanished from my mind, as new ones took their place.
How had I gotten in this boat?
Where am I?
I surveyed my surroundings; I was in the middle of a seemingly endless ocean of some kind. But the ocean (if that was the proper word for it) wa unlike any ocean in the world. It was composed not of water, as an ocean should be, but of smoke. Hazy, otherworldly, shimmering and changing streaks of colour streaked throughout, intertwining at times with one another, like schools of fish of every kind of sort, shape and colour, melding together to form a bright, vibrant place.
But my attention was soon diverted from the obscure array of colours, by a subdued noise. I listened quietly. I could hear something; a voice of some kind. But the voice was distant and too beautiful to possibly be human. I searched around in vain, from the smoky water beneath and encircling me, itself. I closed my eyes, and tried to hear what was being said.
I felt inexplicably drawn to it, compelled by it. And before I realized what I was doing I had clambered out of the life raft.
But I did not drop in, as I’d anticipated; I simply floated above the water, my light footsteps only creating small ripples of disturbance in the water. Unthinkingly, I continued gracefully fo4rwardin my dreamlike, comatose state, atop the cool water, closing in the distance betweeen myself and the whirlpool Until I at last reached it.
I took a step forward... and was instantly plunged deep into the swirling sea of colours.
I felt a light, carefless sensation flood through me.
Then suddenly, and all too soon, it came to an abrupt end. The smoke dissipated and I found myself in the middle ofthe most otherworldly, magnificent underwater world ever to exist...
The “floor” that I was now standing on was see-through. It rippled gently and had a calm, peaceful blue tinge to it and beneath I could see great bands of light streaking around, almost like the northern lights, beneath my feet.
But that was not the part that amused me most, for in front of me, amid the colourful billows and smoke, and thin streaks of light and floating clear, miniature orbs containing spinning beams of light, there were enormous dodecahedrons, each encircled with a slightly different hue of smoke. As I moved forward I touched the one cloest to my right. It had a liquid feel that felt cool beneath her fingertips, but after resting there, her hands against it for a moment, the bubbly dodecahedron sucked me inside...
I found myself staring at thousands of tall, leafy trees, and stocky shoots of bamboo. Intrigued, I took a tentative step forward and peered around. I could see something white poking out from behind the dense foliage. As I solicitously edged my way forward I realized what it was – a panda. No... Not just a panda, many pandas. I walked until I was no more than a meter apart from the closest panda, a baby, nibbling on a small section of bamboo.
But what were pandas doing inside a dodecahedron, in a sea of swirling smoke. And for that matter, what I doing in a sea of swirling smoke?
I turned around, and walked back, blindly trying to feel for the exit. I took a step forward and found myself being sucked back out, just as unexpectedly and swiftly as the first time.
I look around. I could see that there weren’t just a few mere dodecahedrons, but hundreds – if not thousands – all foating around, at different heights.On an impulse, that I didn’t quite comprehend, I leaned forward and tapped an indigo smoke-encircled dodecahedron. My hand rested there for only a fraction of a second, and as a result, it did not suck me in as the other had, but lit up, a vibrant violet, then turned completely translucent, as the smoke encircling it floated away, melding with the smoke the sea was comprised of, leaving only a glimmering outline, and revealing a breath-taking view of a soft navy sea, rippling gently by a dock, complimented by an array of flashing fireworks above, which erupted with an ominous crack and painted the sky in streams of hot pink, tangerine, lemonade and lime light. Captivated, but too curious to linger I forced myself to glance away.
I tapped another, and found a winter wonderland paradise. Another held a waterfall. One, a mountain range.
I began to tap one after another, without even pausing to inhale the beautiful landscapes. As if in a tapping frenzy, I tapped another and another, and before long I found myself surrounded by every scene and landscape imaginable, (among many more I’d yet to uncover). There was a Hawaiian beach, an Egyptian pyramid and sphinx, the Eiffel tower, canals located in Venice, the Great Wall of China.
Some dodecahedrons contained landscapes swarming with animals (like a sea where a group of otters swam idly on their backs and cracked open small, little oysters) were animals of every kind and species known to humans such as bright toucans, small turtles, fairy penguins, monstrous jellyfish, and swinging lemurs inhabited, and many more animals and places and structures beyond words. There were things that looked as though they were too glorious… too fantastic to be real, like things that could exist only in a dream, or were straight out of some charming book of nature oil paintings. Places that I never knew existed. Places so unusual and unrealistic that they could have been created only by a child. Places that I wanted more than anything to just stare at forevermore.
Then the instruments came. Floating instruments of every kind: cellos, trumpets, celestas, chimes, clarinets, violins, violas, piccolos, flutes, pianos, came towards me, circling and dancing wildly, forming an invisible orchestra.
Then, a sweet, gentle sound began to emanate from them. It reminded me of a serene river trickling beside a meadow enshrouded by flowers of every sort and shade. As I listened I could see that the instruments were not simply the reason for the music, but the source, and the instruments were actually being blown, touched, pressed, and strummed as if being played by phantom hands.
For a moment, I forgot about the dodecahedrons and their mini enclosed worlds and closed my eyes and simply let the harmonic music flow through me, and as I did, my thoughts wandered idly.I was sure I had never encountered a place like this before but strangely it felt… familiar to me, like something I’d heard of long ago. But no… It wasn’t that I was sure… but what was it?
Suddenly it all came back to me in a flash of comprehension; it was the place of my childhood. It was the place of my dreams. The place I had dreamed of escaping away to. But now it was no longer a dream; it was reality.
But then, as soon as realization had struck, I could feel it all start to slowly slip away. I struggled to hold on to the strands of illusion that I held so dear, that had created this magical place, but it was no use for soon I could feel it all begin to fade, and I was brought back to reality.
I was laying in my bed surrounded by my familiar brown and orange walls a green carpet. I sighed it had been only a dream. A dream… but yet a dream so realistic that every detail remained etched in my memories just as clearly as the fantasies I had imagined when I was younger.
Suddenly an idea struck me. I crawled out of bed and made my way towards my easel and painting set that had stared at me for hours on end yesterday as I had desperately racked my brain for an image of which to paint for my art competition, in which the winner would win a full scholarship to the college of their choice. A competition for which I had been unable to think of a topic to paint.
But now I knew. I had the perfect image in my mind. A unique scene that I was certain no one else would ever think to paint, because no one else had ever visited the Whirlpool of Smoke.

 

The World Made of Clouds

by Stephanie Yip

I started having this dream in grade two. It wasn’t really the normal kind of dream…like those weird ones where it’s almost like reality except everything’s a little twisted (Michael Jackson at your school, teachers in your house…), nor the ones that have you in a situation that never moves and then turns into a nightmare, (a continuous bumpy road, , witches running after you in a never ending tunnel), not even a daydream at first…although it soon became one. This one also never really went away-I still have it now.
The dream was in this kingdom-a fairy kingdom-situated on clouds. It had been hovering over the human world for centuries without anyone’s knowledge. This place was called the Floating Lands…a prettier name for it was Riverbanks. I was the princess.
At first, I didn’t have many details. It was perfect, basically. No troubles, no nothing. I was perfect, my family was perfect, everything was impossibly perfect. I could work magic. I was a fairy princess…what else could I ask for?
This world was one of the many in my head. Every book I read got its own world. This particular one was forever peaceful. There was a protective shield around the whole place, and no one ever declared war to it. There were also levels of magic. Level one to level five. Only royalty could be level one, nobles were level two, everyone else were leveled from three to five by their own skill. Yet it was still perfect. Peasants could be nobles if they wanted, nobles could be merchants. The heir was decided by watchful judges during their childhood. It was sublimity at its peak. Fairies could also have special gifts that would let them specify in a certain area of magic; teleporting, invisibility, music...
This universe, created entirely by the maze of kaleidoscope walls which is my mind, became my escape. Whenever my hand strayed towards fire, this utopia would swamp me with its beauty, its unadulterated perfection, its desirable carefree way of life. I would simply forget the rain outside the window of my eyes, and I would find myself on the streets of cloud, riding on unicorns that could fly, fencing, and climbing trees that were ladders to stars. I grew up there more than I did on Earth. I am a girl who could get by with life because there was a better one by my side.
As the years went on, I didn’t only dream it, I almost lived it. I pretended my world was that world, my house was that palace of pale marble, my friends were my two friends whom I could speak with through my mind. I developed details as I grew older, added characters, made up obstacles to make it more interesting, but I could always get by them. By the end of grade five, I had created a world I knew so well that it was hard to believe that I didn’t actually live in it…that I was still human…that I couldn’t actually fly.

 

Liternara

by Sarah McComb

It has grown far more complex over the years, changed names more times than I care to recall, and has had at least ten different flags. But, underneath, it’s still the same world, the same place that I alone can visit.

I guess you could say it all started when I was about four years old, when an incredibly vivid dream left me convinced that if I crawled under the kitchen table and somehow managed to tunnel through the walls, I would end up somewhere. Somewhere that was definitely not in my house, or even my neighbourhood.

I can first really remember visiting, building the place, when I was six. I decided, right off the bat, that this wasn’t going to be something out of a Disney movie or flowery, little kid’s book. Sure, there was a Prince Charming, but I sure wasn’t going to wait around for him to save me. Half of the time, I ended up rescuing him from danger. The other half of the time, he died a gruesome death involving volcanoes. What can I say? I was always a fan of breaking the stereotype.

When I was twelve, I taught myself to make flimsy bows and arrows out of wood. The arrows would kind of swerve drunkenly, and people could probably outrun them easily – although I never actually tested this. Nonetheless, I determined that wood elves should inhabit the forests of my world, and that they should be skilled with such weapons. Because of the Tolkien and the Santa Claus connotation, I opted not to call them elves but Ollyns, which I think I got out of the telephone book. They spread faster than a family of rabbits, and I soon had not only wood but water, ice, sand, swamp and city Ollyns on my hands, all demanding intricate languages and cultures. That right there is pretty much the definition of me biting off more than I could chew.

I procrastinated on the whole Ollyn thing for awhile (as in, four years) and the world, which I’d so cleverly named Sarah Jania fell into a state of... well... disrepair. It became more of a dumping ground than anything else, for absurd story ideas and quirky mythological creatures that really didn’t fit anywhere else in my brain (a werewolf that was hideously allergic to animal hair, a banshee who really hated her job, a girl who sort of had the Midas touch, but turned everything into lip gloss instead of gold). Araminta, my tooth fairy, somehow ended up there, along with about three dozen imaginary friends and a ridiculous number of reindeer. Telepathic fields abounded, as did pixies, gorgons and little green men. “Disrepair,” come to think of it, would be putting things very lightly.

Two years ago this July, I dusted everything off and reorganized it all. I drew maps excessively, made up a new alphabet, tried to construct a language but gave up after about fifty words, and realized just how wonderful make believe worlds are. I even gave it a brand new name to celebrate: Liternara. It might not be a Middle Earth or a Narnia, but it’s mine. And, just like a one-room house that’s been sloppily extended with rooms, extra floors and garages added over the years, it’s something that no one else will ever be able to replicate.

Today, it’s a vast land filled with everything from Medieval-like people to time-traveling high school students to Neanderthals. It ranges from the Artic, to the desert, to somewhere that looks suspiciously like an alien planet. A dragon is usually high in the sky, and a fine layer of pixie dust covers everything. But the best part about it is that no matter how big it gets, there’s always room for more. Every day, it expands a little more, and takes on an even more diverse appearance.

There’s a famous quote that starts, “Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly.” It goes on to elaborate that, upon waking, Zhuangi has no idea whether he is a human who dreamed he was a butterfly, or if he is a butterfly that is now dreaming, in vivid detail, about what it’s like to be a human. In many ways, my feelings are exactly the same. How, indeed, do I know that Liternara is a fantastical, imaginary place? Maybe this thing that I refer to as “real life” doesn’t actually exist. Maybe Liternara is the only real thing, and the rest is but a dream from which I am waiting to awaken.