Ourstory

Round Archive

21 completed rounds for “”

0 contributors
Mar 3, 08:30 AM

No winner — round had no submissions.

0 contributors
Mar 3, 08:15 AM

No winner — round had no submissions.

6 contributors
7 votes
Mar 3, 08:00 AM

The line that made it in

“He splashed cold water on his face and when he looked up the mirror showed him not his usual tired reflection but a vast candlelit hall full of children who somehow already knew his name.”

2/2 matchups won

›All 6 submissions
2/3On the doormat, half-hidden beneath the letterbox slot, lay an envelope the colour of old parchment, addressed in emerald-green ink to a name he had never quite believed was his.
2/3The owl on the windowsill regarded him with the calm, unblinking certainty of someone who had delivered very important news before and fully expected to do so again.
2/2He splashed cold water on his face and when he looked up the mirror showed him not his usual tired reflection but a vast candlelit hall full of children who somehow already knew his name.
1/3He padded down the hallway in his too-large socks, past the rumbling snore of his uncle, the whole house holding its breath as though it too had been waiting for this morning.
0/3Seventeen letters had arrived overnight, each one wedged into every crack and gap the house possessed, as though the walls themselves had been trying to tell him something for years.
But then the chicken crossed the road.
0 contributors
Mar 3, 07:45 AM

No winner — round had no submissions.

1 contributor
Mar 3, 07:30 AM

The line that made it in

“But first, he needed to use the bathroom.”

5 contributors
Mar 3, 07:15 AM

The line that made it in

“The boy who had spent eleven years sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs did not know, on the morning everything changed, that the world had been waiting for him.”

›All 5 submissions
The boy who had spent eleven years sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs did not know, on the morning everything changed, that the world had been waiting for him.
Letters had been arriving for three days — addressed in green ink to a name he had never seen written down, pressed through the letterbox and immediately confiscated by a man whose moustache trembled with the effort of pretending nothing unusual was happening.
He had always known, in the way you know things you are not supposed to know, that the strange events which followed him through life were connected to something he could not name.
The giant who arrived on the back of a roaring motorcycle at midnight smelled of woodsmoke and something older, and when he smiled, the boy felt for the first time that he was being seen by someone who already knew what he was.
He learned three things in the space of an hour: that his parents had not died in a car crash, that there was a school for people like him, and that somewhere in the world, people had been saying his name quietly to one another for eleven years.
0 contributors
Mar 3, 07:00 AM

No winner — round had no submissions.

0 contributors
Mar 3, 06:45 AM

No winner — round had no submissions.

0 contributors
Mar 3, 06:30 AM

No winner — round had no submissions.

1 contributor
Mar 3, 06:15 AM

The line that made it in

“But then, we saw the chicken across the road...”

4 contributors
8 votes
Mar 3, 06:00 AM

The line that made it in

“It had been a very loyal chicken, as far as poultry went, but it had turned out to be a much better companion than it was a navigator, and an even worse swimmer.”

7/7 matchups won

›All 4 submissions
7/7It had been a very loyal chicken, as far as poultry went, but it had turned out to be a much better companion than it was a navigator, and an even worse swimmer.
1/2The sea did not care about dreams, which was one of the things he respected most about it.
0/5But then, we saw the chicken across the road...
0/2He pushed off from the dock at dawn, before anyone was awake to tell him all the reasons it was a mistake.
8 contributors
39 votes
Mar 3, 05:45 AM

The line that made it in

“The chicken had died.”

11/11 matchups won

›All 8 submissions
11/11The chicken had died.
8/11He had memorised the Pirate King's last words the way other boys memorised prayers — not because he was devout, but because he had decided very early on that they were the same thing.
7/12There were seven known routes to the Grand Meridian, all of them controlled by crews who would take his boat, his fish, and quite possibly his hat before he cleared the outer islands.
5/11His only compass was a battered tin thing he had traded three weeks of kitchen work for, and it pointed north with the confident authority of an object that had never once been tested.
4/11He had no map, no crew, and three days of salted fish — which, by the reckoning of everyone who had ever attempted the Grand Meridian, was three days of salted fish more than most.
3/11The harbour master had laughed when he saw the boat, a short bark of disbelief that ended when the boy looked at him, and then the harbour master had found something urgent to do on the other side of the dock.
1/6supppp
0/5He had no map, no crew, and three days of salted fish — which, by the reckoning of everyone who had ever attempted the Grand Meridian, was three days of salted fish more than most.
0 contributors
Mar 3, 05:30 AM

No winner — round had no submissions.

1 contributor
Mar 3, 05:27 AM

The line that made it in

“Now he was eighteen, his boat was four planks and a sail, and the Grand Meridian lay somewhere beyond the horizon, patient and enormous and waiting.”

1 contributor
Mar 3, 04:22 AM

The line that made it in

“That was the thing about the Pirate King's final speech — it was not meant for admirals or scholars or kings; it was meant precisely for boys like him, in taverns like this, with nothing to their names and everything to dream.”

1 contributor
Mar 3, 03:17 AM

The line that made it in

“He had a scar under his left eye and a wide-brimmed hat that had belonged to someone braver than him, and he understood almost none of what was being said, and he believed every word of it.”

1 contributor
Mar 3, 02:12 AM

The line that made it in

“That was twelve years ago, and the boy had been six years old, sitting on a barrel in a tavern on an island so small it didn't appear on any chart, eating rice and listening.”

1 contributor
Mar 3, 01:07 AM

The line that made it in

“By nightfall, half the men in the harbour had already begun sharpening their knives.”

1 contributor
Mar 3, 12:02 AM

The line that made it in

“He told them his treasure was real, that he had hidden it at the end of the Grand Meridian, in a place no map had ever named.”

1 contributor
Mar 2, 10:57 PM

The line that made it in

“The executioner's blade had not yet fallen when he spoke his last words to the crowd at Mariner's Point — three sentences, barely a breath — and those words changed the world.”

1 contributor
Mar 2, 09:52 PM

The line that made it in

“The day they hanged the Pirate King, he was laughing.”