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Teen Literature Podcast Submissions
Poetry, short stories, and other prose accepted. Several pieces will be read and analyzed on the air, with a link in the transcript/audio description to your prose page or other social media (if desired). All winners will be properly cited in the final project, according to each author. Any participant selected as a winner will be asked to write a short description of extended metaphors, symbolism throughout the piece, and the inspiration that led to it. In terms of rules, write like you have to show it to an English teacher, but like, a cool English teacher that you want to impress, you know? Work published elsewhere is accepted and encouraged, as long as it isn't plagiarized. To be totally honest with you, I can't really check. Who's going to stop you? Podcast cops? I also can't check if you're between 11-19, but I don't know what kind of weirdo is going around pretending to be child just to get on a podcast that 12 people are going to listen to. I just thought I should include that because it's in the project specifications that I wrote. There is no monetary reward, but there is some fame-- not much fame, but a little! The real reward is getting to talk about your writing as much as you want and have someone actually care enough to analyze it (that's me!). There will be about 16 winners total, but I'll likely only get a couple submissions through this competition and that's fine. And if they are all by the same author, it's not my problem, babes. Once again, it's the problem of non-existent podcast cops.
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Tessi
• 61 reads

The watchers vigil

The harbor was silent with age, and the mist that hung heavily over the water, seemed to still the world and quiet the gentle lapping of the gray swells.

A single figure stood on the edge of a crumbling stone pier, unmoving as if caught up in the same timelessness that flowed trough the air.

Aearandein gazed out across the dark shrouded ocean of Lanaia, his deep green eyes ancient and weary.

The Fortress port had not always been desolate and forsaken as it was now. It had once been the greatest hub of trade and the capital of the Silvi realm, bursting with life and activity.

Now, Deleienvail was a mere shadow of what it once had been, its crumbling walls, eroding statues, and empty fountains, bearing testament to what had once been the pride of the Silvian people.

The ocean fortress Deleienvail, had seen many trials but had always stood through them all, unyielding to attack, storm, or magic. But then the men had come. They were unlike anything the Silvian people had ever seen. Where their other enemies knew and feared Silvi magic, these men from the north refused to believe in it at all. They destroyed the Silvi magic with their own, though it wasn’t like any magic the Silvians knew of, for they did not wield it, at least not consciously, but their disbelief fueled a repelling magic so thick that it decimated the Silvi with its force.

The Silvians fled after that, unable to survive within the crush of darkness brought down upon them. With them fled the light of Deleienvail, which had guided the humans of the west for thousands of years, and without its bastions the fortress crumbled, succumbing to the darkness.

The Silvi ships had departed like swans across the ocean in a stream of brilliant white sails and arching sterns. Every ship had departed leaving the once overflowing piers empty of their proud vessels.

Never more did anyone see the magnificent ships of the Silvi grace the waters of Lanaia with their ivory masts, and flying pennants, and the waters of their beloved ocean turned to gray, as the presence of the Silvians forsook its swells.

Still though, thought Aearandein with deep bitterness. The poets descended from the northern men and the western peoples, still sang songs during the long fire lit eaves of the winter moths, of the great and beautiful departure of the people of Deleienvail, who sailed way to places unbeknownst, nearly seven hundred years ago.

Aearandein hung his gray head and clutched his failing heart as he slumped down onto the rubble of the pier. What would he know though? Of the goings on seven hundred years ago? He was just the old man the children called the watcher, because of the way he stared out over the waters. He was only the old man who told the little ones his stories of the old Silvi people, and the tales of their mighty king. The king who would not abandon his fortress. The king they called Aearandein.

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