First it was a single tick,

The single tick became double tick,

And then turned blue.

All this time his heartbeat was louder than he could hear.

The anticipation level for seeing the reply was way too high for him.

He saw 'typing..' and then a message "Yes".

He smiled and read his text again,

"I<space>Love<space>You.. Do you too??".

(This is the first chapter of my novel in the works, Ugly Beauty)

Mirrors. Sierra hated them. Every time she looked into one, she was reminded of what she wasn't. And that was pretty.

     Of course, her parents assured her that she was beautiful. And at one time, Sierra had been naive enough to believe them. But on her first trip to Siris, the huge metropolis they lived on the outskirts of, she realized that she was what they called Flawed.

     And she also found out why they didn't live in Siris. After all, only the richest and the prettiest could live in Siris. 

     And those two words--rich and pretty--didn't describe her family even if you used your imagination.

     With a sigh, Sierra let the tiny gilded mirror fall from her hands to the rocks below. There was a tinkling noise as it broke, and she regretted what she'd done. But only for a moment.

     She shielded her eyes as she glanced at the sun. It was time to go home. Much like a monkey, she scampered down four or five branches and then leaped to the rocks below. 

     "Ow!" she yelped in surprise, as a shard of glass from the mirror embedded itself in the calloused underside of her foot. Hopping around on one foot, she carefully squeezed out the tiny sliver and wiped away the blood.

     She stared at it for a moment, long suppressed feelings bubbling up again. "Yeah, I bleed everything time I look in a mirror," she muttered angrily, tossing the piece away and limping home.

     Sometimes, as she walked, she imagined that she was beautiful and rich, and living in Siris. And she had a boyfriend. But Sierra was too old for that, now, and her hopes of becoming beautiful when she hit her teenage years had shriveled up and died. So had the dreams of living in Siris before Governor Sharon. It was she who had made the first push to "cleanse" the city from "undesirables" such as Sierra's own self. Fifty years had passed since then, and Governor Sharon's goals had been carried out by her successors, Governor Lyron and Governor Petrie. 

     Upon reaching the small, two-story house that she knew as home, she paused to watch the sunset before pushing open the weathered front door and entering into the dim interior.

     "Hello, honey," her mother called from the stove. The greeting was cautious, testing to see what Sierra's mood would be today.

     "It's getting cooler, so that's nice," Sierra responded, heading for the stairs.

     "Yes, that is," her mother agreed. She didn't press for any more conversation, recognizing that her daughter needed some additional time to think things through.

     Sierra's mother wasn't plain, but she wasn't beautiful, either. However, something about the golden-red hair, blue eyes, and the graceful, proud way she carried herself often turned heads. Perhaps she would even have found a place for herself in Siris if she hadn't have fallen in love with a young man, who was both poor and flawed by a huge scar on the left side of his face.

      Sierra wished she'd gotten her mother's elegance and grace, but she hadn't. She'd gotten the same reddish gold hair, only perhaps more red than gold, and her eyes were sky blue. Her skin was pale with freckles, and something about her face was just...plain.

      It was of these things that Sierra thought as she stared out her window. Rheal, her best--and only--friend, had told her to quit thinking about her looks and try and help her parents out.

     "Stop daydreaming, wishing you were beautiful because you're not. And you've got to come to grips with that," Rheal had broken out, at last, a little harshly. "I used to be beautiful until my face was burned in that big fire in Siris. If anyone has a right to complain, it's me, losing everything I knew. But you don't see me leaving at dawn to wallow in self-pity while my parents and siblings do all the work."

     Sierra hadn't really talked to Rheal after that. She knew that he was right, and she didn't want to admit it.

     "Time for dinner!" Keagan, her little brother, hollered up the stairs.

     Sierra started from her thoughts, then collected herself. Turning away from the window, she hurried down the stairs to the dinner table.

     There wasn't much talk. Her father was bone-tired from whatever it was he did at the power plant, and her younger brother was too busy stuffing his face with food to talk. Her mother, ever sensitive to Sierra's moods, just let her have her quiet.

     Sierra gathered the supper dishes and washed them while her parents talked quietly in their bedroom. Maybe about her? She considered eavesdropping but pushed the thought quickly away. What was the point?

     After washing the dishes and drying them, she lingered by the family room to watch her brother play. It was one of the rare moments in Sierra's life when she actually felt happy, watching his youthful innocence, as well as his curiosity at work, crafting impossible stories for his toys to play out. She actually smiled a little as she watched the giraffe and the ant fly to the moon to discover the charm that would make everyone beautiful.

     I wish, she grinned, shaking her head.

     Keagan, sensing her eyes on him, looked at her. "Do you want to play?"

     He asked the question so often, and Sierra had said "no" so many times, she wondered if he would ever ask it again. But he had.

     For a moment, she considered actually playing with him. But then she remembered that she was sixteen. This was a world she'd been shoved out of a while ago. Now it was like she was between two worlds--the world of her childhood and the world of her adulthood. And it was like neither wanted her.

     "Not tonight, buddy. I'm a little tired," she responded, smiling at him. "But maybe tomorrow."

     Keagan considered her for a moment, then smiled wider. "Okay!"

     She lingered in the shadows, watching him return to his ridiculous fantasies, and then turned to the stairs and the haven of her bedroom.

     Emotionally drained, she stiffly lay down on the bed, her sun-browned arms spread wide across the clean sheets. Gradually, as the moon rose in the sky, and her eyelids closed, her fingers worked their way beneath her pillow and closed around the small mirror she kept there.

     For someone who hates mirrors, I sure have a lot of them, she thought wryly to herself.

     The other part of her brain responded It's because you keep hoping that one day you'll look in that mirror and see a different face.

     If only.

Title:Ugly Beauty

Author: Abigail Burchwell

Word Count of Excerpt: 1,105

Genre: YA/Fiction

Age Range: 14-18

Synopsis of Ugly Beauty: Sierra Rosenberg only wants one thing: she wants to be beautiful. After all, your face and your money are what gets you a place in Siris. Unfortunately, she has neither of those. She must learn to come to grips with her reality and learn that looks aren't everything, and ultimately, what true beauty really is.

Why I Believe This Project Holds Potential: Nowadays, a lot of emphases is placed on what you look like and how much stuff you have instead of who you are. A lot of teens are struggling to meet people's expectations of perfection and are left feeling inferior and worthless because they simply can't. It's important for every person to realize that their attitude and their personality is what makes them beautiful, just as Sierra does.

Education: Homeschooled/Private Tutor

Platform: Self-published on Amazon

Website: https://shadoweliteallies.wixsite.com/shadow-elite

Preferred Genre: Science Fiction/ YA

Age-Range: 14-18

Previously Published Works/Experience: The Motto Trilogy Book One: Together We Fight

Article in the Clarion Mirror

Three-year course in creative writing

Currently taking a year-long course in crafting short stories and novels

Likes: Outdoors, running, dog training, writing, swimming, hanging out with friends

Hobbies: Running, writing, drawing, and doing things with paracord

Bio: I've been writing since I was seven, and I haven't stopped since. I've only self-published one book, however, to "test the waters". I come from a large family consisting of four older brothers, a younger sister, a dog, and a snapping turtle. It can be hectic at times, but it's usually pretty fun, and never cease to give me encouragement, inspiration, and criticism!

Hometown: I was born in Hagerstown Maryland, but my family moved to North Carolina when I was three. I have recently moved to Pennsylvania. 

1. Paint Something, anything you want

2. Super water fight with friends

3. Make up a holiday and celebrate it with friends

4. Lay down on a grassy field with someone you care about. Just talk.

5. Make a short film

6. Collect 50 of something

7. Create a scrapbook

8. Anonymously leave a handmade gift on someone's front door or in their mailbox

9. Master a really hard tongue twister

10. Watch the sun rise

11. Dance in the rain

12. Have a food fight

13. Carve yours, and a friends name in a tree

14. Say "Yes" to Something That Scares You

15. Get a Henna Tattoo

16. Take a great photo of you and your family

17. Also snap one with your friends, aka your chosen family

18. Learn how to use chopsticks

19. Have a book exchange for you and your friends

20. Have a picnic

21. Volunteer

22. Push someone into a pool (just make sure they don’t have their phone on them

23. Play flashlight tag (if you don’t know the rules you didn’t have a childhood)

24. Skip rocks across water

25. Get ice cream from the ice cream truck

26. Make a t-shirt for a nonexistent band

27. Eat Smores

28. Go to a drive in

29. Draw chalk pictures on random people’s sidewalks

30. Get over a fear

31. Make snow cones

32. Have a bonfire with your friends

33. Bob for apples

34. Go to a store late at night in your pjs

35. Complete a 1000 or more piece puzzle

36. Watch the sun set

37. Leave happy quotes on strangers front doors

38. Make smoothies

39. Put your deepest worry in a balloon and let it go

40. Have a movie night with your friends

41. Go on a hike

42. Stand under a waterfall

43. Surprise someone

44. Bring baked goods to a neighbor

45. Send someone an anonymous gift

46. Send a care package to a soldier

47. Send a fan letter

48. Make root beer floats

49. Catch fireflies

50. Ride a Ferris wheel

51. Decide which song represents your summer

52. Go to the beach

53. Feed the ducks

54. Build a fort

55. Correct a regret

56. Read an amazing new book.

57. Create a Vision Board

58. Pretend to be a tourist in your own city/town. Take random photographs. Go out and buy souvenirs. Have a coffee in a local shop.

59. Meditate for 5 mins a day for a week

60. Buy a canvas, throw some paint on it and call it your Signature Painting

61. Look through your wardrobe, get rid of clothes you haven’t worn in a year and donate them.

62. Organize and/or participate in a treasure hunt

63. Learn how to juggle

64. Commit to 24 hour silence

65. Make your own bread

66. Play in a kiddie pool

67. Have a cousin sleepover

68. Run in the sprinklers

69. Go the local fair

70. Have an ice cream party with lots of toppings

Disclaimer: The following text is a description of an elderly Jewish couple on the train towards the Auschwitz camp. Characters in it are completely fictional, but all of their experiences are based on factual events, which means something similar to this would have happened to them.

I've been trying to keep count of the passing days while feeling the warmth of day and the cold whispers of the night's wind sliding through the wooden gaps of this walking prison. My children, and their children, they all got on the train before me, for that reason they were put in a different cell. We’re traveling together, though I am not with them. But I'm not lonely; beside me is my true company, my wife Vida, a true baleboste (master of the house). We both share the food we've brought to the train- in secret. A few others have also brought food, but some of them were not wise enough to keep it a secret, they've let other travelers see the food. Now, they carry no food and their bodies are soulless, while the thieves of this train feed on the bloody bread.

What's happening? I can hear the screams of rusty metal being dragged across rotting wood. The same sound of when the doors were closed. Suddenly, with the sound of an opening door, a mountain of light collapses into our cell with only one shadow being cast by a man that starts helping everyone out. The oldest ones cannot compete with the force of the young ones that fight to freedom and push us to the back. We were the last two to leave, leaving behind a cell furnished with corpses of the unfortunate ones.

After we leave the train they begin to take away from us what they believed we shouldn't have. My eyeglasses are taken from my face without a request and thrown into a hill of confiscated objects, in it, though it was hard to see, I recognised a unique familiar bag which belongs to a friend, and I now wonder: if it is a comfort or a burning sadness that he too is here with me in this place.

For now, I do not know what awaits me, but I do know I’ll find it impossible to sleep by the end of the day. I see the pain of the young ones that walk with naked feet on the hard gravel; they walk in front of me in a straight line not allowing me to see their faces of misery, but I can hear the torment in their gasps and involuntary shakes with every step they give. For an odd reason, Vida and I were allowed to keep our shoes.

The line is too long. We're the last two in a long, long, long line of people. In fact, people from the front are just dots. At least they appear to be so. Some moving left while others moving right. We wait and wait, as time is the only thing we have with us. My wife grips my hand with such strength that it makes me wince and awakes me from my thoughts. I look up to see what caused her a disturbance and see my family: my children in the company of their own children.

I might not see as well as I once did, but I can see a mile away when my little girl, Kiva, is upset. My children go right and their children go... left. They're not allowing this to happen, they will not be separated! They scream and demand to go with their children, they're threatened with guns aiming at their heads, but they're too brave.

I yell as loud as I can to go with their children.

The "doctor", which decides who goes left or right, fixes his eyes on me, his eyes move up and down- judging my appearance- his focus shifts to my walking stick, he remains unimpressed. In a rough accent, he asks me "Is this your wife?" I say "She is my wife, yes..." His face turns away and he whispers to the man on his right, he then proceeded with his work of pointing left and right. The man he whispered too approaches me with a warm smile and says "Come, you and your wife can accompany your grandchildren." and so we go towards the left side.

There's a repulsing smell of sweat and unwashed people, familiar to the one in the train, as we go into a room that was built underground, it has no windows and not much light survives in the sea of darkness that covers hundreds of people in the room. They're taking their belts off along with their shoes and jackets. I proceed to do the same. A man next to us has the same bag as mine. One of the soldiers approaches me and gives me a piece of chalk "For you to write your name on it." he said, "You should also tie the shoe laces together, we don't want you to lose anything when you come back."

We take our time and again, we are the last ones to leave.

The next room is... the next room is crowded, even more than the train, I thought such thing wasn't possible, but it is. My dear wife grabs my hand not to lose me. The children grab our legs. The man that advised me about the shoes approaches me on the edge of the entrance and pushes us to the crowd while another man closes the door. The arms and legs of those in the room move around like fishes out of water, all trying to fight for space to breathe; my chest is squished against the wall allowing no air into my lungs. In this room of movement, Vida can't stay still and she's swallowed by the crowd. I scream her name, hold her hand with a strong grip not to lose her, as the sea of people tries to take her away from me. Suddenly, I hear the voices of the little children- they're not with me! I travel towards them but the waves of movement are too strong- the bodies around me trap me as I hear the children scream for my name. A desperate man grabs my shoulders and pulls me down onto the floor so that he could put his head over the crowd and breathe. I try to knock him down, but I fail and fall on my knees… What smell is that? A repulsing smell. I open my mouth trying to breathe but I cough and cough, the harder I try to breathe the harder I cough. Everyone around me is in the same struggle- painful coughs, violent gasps and slow deaths. I still feel the hand of my darling- she no longer struggles, and neither do I.

I am made of paper

Like the little cut outs people made in elementary school

In my purest form, I was a strong tree standing tall

I was a marvel of nature

I was turned into paper

Chopped down, shredded, and bleached

Lined with blue horizontal lines so I stay on the track they have given me

Lined with two red vertical lines to keep me inside their boundaries 

Covered in invisible scars from where they pressed to hard on the paper on top of me

There's ink on my paper that I put there

A path with a moon cause I've only ever known to walk in darkness

An anchor to remind me why I stay

And a word to take all the invisible scars away

I am made of fire

It flows through my veins

I am a creater and destroyer 

But I've learned to simmer it

Because they didn't like it when it lashed out and seared them

I am made of mountains

The places I've called home

Paper is flimsy and my fire is dying

But mountains are made of stone 

You can see them hiding in my cheekbones

Or when I set my jaw

I am mighty, I am unmovable, and I am strong

My origins are pure nature

Mauled by mankind. 

Hi, everyone! At the moment I'm taking part in a challenging task and I need help from the prose community to do it.

A few weeks ago my school offered the chance to two students to take part in a program from the Holocaust Educational Trust where they would teach us about the Holocaust. The first step was to hear a seminar from a Holocaust survivor, the second was to visit Auschwitz camps, and the third is what I’m doing now- sharing what we learn and proving we done so. I think that the prose community is perfect to do this, for how supportive, educated and willing to share and learn about experiences people had.

For the next few weeks, I will be sharing pieces of creative writing about my experience in Auschwitz and about things that happened in Holocaust, these could be known events, like the gas chambers, or other less known things. The aim is to re-humanize people involved in it and to share it with as many people as we can.

For this to be possible I need you to help me share these writing pieces and be free to comment your thoughts, I have a list of names that I will post in the comments of every post so that you could help me share my emotional experience. If you want to be added or taken off the future list please be free to let me know.

I want to thank everyone who will help me on this task, you're the best :-)

PS: Some extra information you might want to know:

-Some texts might not be appropriate for sensitive readers (nothing graphic).

-This will only be occurring until 10th of May (the date which this task needs to be completed).

-The link about the charity that made all of this possible http://www.het.org.uk/about

-Their tweeter @HolocaustUK https://twitter.com/HolocaustUK

Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know about the e-book I wrote and is published on Amazon. I normally wouldn't, well, advertise it this way, but I'm hoping to sell enough copies to make enough money for summer camp.

    You can use the link below by cutting and pasting in your browser. Please check it out, share this post...whatever. Let your friends know!

     Thanks, you guys are the best!

https://www.amazon.com/Motto-Trilogy-Book-One-Together-ebook/dp/B01NCVACJU