Showing posts with label 2025 Prompt #2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2025 Prompt #2. Show all posts

Thursday, 19 June 2025

The Write-In 2025: The Complete List

2025 Prompts

 

2025 Responses 

 

 

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'Cleopatra' by Madeleine Armstrong

It takes me a day to realise you’re missing, because in the summer you barely come inside, preferring instead to roam the gardens long past dusk.

When you don’t arrive for your breakfast, I panic because I’ve known you since your paws were too big for your body, since I was little more than a girl, with everything spread out before me like a feast, and you’ve never disappeared, not even when I moved us hundreds of miles away and that feast started to look more like a picnic, then a ready meal, then a solitary Tesco sandwich.  

I print out flyers and stick them through all the doors on the street, pin them to all the lamp posts, while I call your full name, Cleopatra, because this feels too serious for anything else. I imagine the worst: a speeding car; a locked shed; a half-finished building site of a house.

I can barely sleep without you on the pillow beside me, where you’ve been for the last 4,550 nights, lulling me with your pneumatic purr. You’re not there the next night, or the next, and the posters begin to curl and yellow, and the darkness begins to creep, so slow I don’t notice it at first, then it’s September and it’s been 91 days without you and your demands for food and belly rubs.

I’m just starting to think about donating your Whiskas to a local cat rescue, crying in the garden while I deadhead the roses, when I hear a meow that’s more like a squeak.

I turn, not letting myself believe it until I see your face, your green eyes narrowing in a slow blink, then watch you slink across the flowerbeds like you’ve never been gone.

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'Missing Note: Wanted' by Kate Axeford

It wasn’t the headline,

Woman Freed After Getting Head Stuck In Bin In Auchtermuchty

that stopped me searching for your note, saying it was over.

It wasn’t an ASBO from the council promising prosecution if I didn’t refrain from  playing ‘Your Song’ by Elton John on a loop at full volume that stopped me broadcasting.  If you’d heard it, you’d have rushed home to give me my note in person. 

It wasn’t the café owners who chased me away down the tree-lined boulevard where couples sip coffees and shoot the breeze that made me desist from handing out fliers sporting your photo.

Reward paid for information leading to this owner of a missing note
being found and brought home, alive.

It wasn’t the shrink who gave me a felt-tip and instructions to draw two clear circles. One, I had to fill in with all the worries I couldn’t control, the other with ones that I could. It certainly wasn’t her — that witch wrenched her pen back complaining the court just paid her for an hour.

It wasn’t my adoptive mother that stopped me looking. 

‘Things often turn up when you least expect them to.’  

She’d wise-owled after I’d festooned her drainpipes with your underpants. Vast grey flags of surrender waving in the wind. If only you’d seen them, you’d have brought my note back.

No, it was the fireman, that handsome brute, Bill. Bill held me in his arms. Bill felt my heart beating. 

‘Stop howling like an orchestra of mating cats, hinny, and get your heid out that bin.’   

Bill asked if I was OK – if I needed help again, not to hesitate, just dial the three nines.

Now I don’t need your stupid note, I’ve got Bill’s number. I’ll call if I start to feel lonely.
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'They Need to Clack' by Philippa Bowe

Teeth do. Make that satisfying sound, clack clack clack. Shows you’re alive. So what do you do when you’ve got hardly any left? Fallen, cracked and crumbled. No dentist wants to go near your mouth. Dusty with the breath of decades. 

I’m not putting up with it. I want to clack, I want to crunch nuts. Gums aren’t doing it for me.

I try Jeff next door. A winked excuse, toilet’s blocked, can I…? He knows about bladders. I rifle through his bathroom cabinet hoping for a spare denture. Nothing but pills like smarties. I shove some in my pocket.

I sway along the high street with my trusty cane. A pirate surveying the seas in search of bounty. A fine pair of choppers. 

A couple of incursions into charity shops and I’m still empty-mouthed. But here comes the number 69 and I set sail for the old codgers’ home. Sure to be a treasure trove.

I creak off the bus and the first thing I see is a man lounging against the wall. Natty fellow wrapped in a greatcoat like the ones they issued us in ’39. Smiling at me, teeth so bright I’m nearly blinded. ‘Harold,’ he says, ‘I have what you want.’ I spot the forked tip of his tail below the heavy wool. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to hand over your soul. I’ve got enough of them. Just a little helping hand.’

I’m tempted and he grins with those shark teeth. But then I see the boys in the trenches sharing everything, my darling Molly stopping me killing even a fly, a million dazzling kindnesses flying round the world. I don’t want teeth so sharp they’d shred them. ‘No, sir.’ I walk away and try clacking my gums. I like the sound of it. 
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'Long Gone, Living On' by Scaramanga Silk

All of his old records were long gone. Along with his wife. And the cats.

Mind you, he still had the radio and the internet for music.

Recently, he’d noticed that Bill Knightswoon’s ‘Baby, come on home’ never gets played over the airwaves anymore. Even on his Golden Oldie stations. How he yearned to hear it again.

He’d looked online for it too. Nothing came up on Spotify, YouTube, or that new Claude fella. The song hadn’t been released on a major label and only appeared on a 7” vinyl. Yet, it was a hit for a short time back then. Alas, nobody had transferred the classic to computer.

In the town, one record store remained.

“I doubt you’ll have it or even know it but I’m looking for an old copy of ‘Baby, come on home’. It’s by—“

“Billly Knightswoon! The most underrated singer of his generation. You’re in luck. We just took in a collection and that gem’s in there. What a voice!” The assistant wonders out back and rifles through boxes of dusty records. A few moments later, he returns.

“That’ll be $3.”

The elegantly dressed, softly spoken gentleman purchases the record and thanks the chap for his help.

That evening, in his toasty and comfy home, he spends hours staring at the cover, reading the sleeve notes, and admiring the black wax. But he doesn’t set it on his turntable.

Early the next morning he returns to the store before they open. Upon arrival, he posts the record through the letter box and leaves.

Yesterday’s assistant notices the 45 on the doormat and stumbles before picking it up. On the front of the picture sleeve is some handwriting that wasn’t there previously. It reads, ‘To the great kid on the counter. Thank you! Best, Bill’.

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'Teddy Bear Picnic' by Melissa Flores Anderson

Lilly strips the bed of its sheets and the comforter, tosses each stuffie to the far corner of the room. Jack is whining about Blue Bear, the one she and her mother made while she was pregnant, from the leftover remnants of her own baby blanket. The blanket she’d brought to college, to graduate school, that she’d only folded and put into the shelf of her old bedroom at her parent’s place when she’d moved in with Mick. Because Mick wasn’t sentimental. Her something blue on her wedding day had been a piece cut from the cloth and sewn into the inside of her dress by the seamstress who tailored it to her exact measurements. As the dress hung from the bride’s suite at their reception venue, she searched through the layers of satin and tulle to find the swatch, rubbed her fingers on it, silently spoke to her dead grandmother to ask if she was making the right choice. Jack formed an attachment to the bear around age 2, when he carried it down stairs in the morning, back to bed at night, to her mother’s house for sleepovers. Blue Bear went everywhere with him. But now on the one day he could take it to school for the Teddy Bear Picnic, she couldn’t find it. She’d thrown off his routine by getting home late last night, missing dinner, rushing him to bed. Because she had stayed for a reception after work, talking with Charles, not quite flirting, but almost. 

Lilly searches under Jack’s bed, her room, the upstairs bathroom, the playroom. Nothing. Downstairs, she crawls into the fort Jack erected with Mick, of throw pillows and folding chairs, and there in the dark is Blue Bear, waiting for Jack.

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'Amanita Sapientia' by Birgit K. Gaiser

Three hours into the hunt, my phone vibrates. “Final three,” the message reads.

I’ve nearly made it, nearly found Amanita sapientia, the priceless mushroom growing under the tree of wisdom.

I hear a whooshing sound and turn. An owl is flying straight at me. Shapeshifter! I duck and cast a paralysis spell. The bird hoots indignantly and drops to the ground. I gently place it on a tree stump and continue walking.

“Oi!” A squat, red-faced man approaches.

“Go away. Look for mushrooms,” I say, annoyance exaggerating my accent.

“You one of those Polish professional pickers?” he asks, instinctively prioritising xenophobia over his own best interests.

“Professional witch,” I drawl, flicking a palm his way.

Hedera helix, native British ivy, he’ll be pleased to hear, wraps him up tightly. He’s secure but not in too much pain.

Only then do I realise that I’m the only one left. I’m going to win! The tree of wisdom has to be close, what with the last three candidates all converging here.

Eyes on the ground, I methodically work my way from tree to tree. There they are!

I kneel, knife and basket at the ready, when a red squirrel jumps right in front of me. It chitters angrily, front paws firmly placed on the largest mushroom.

“Yours?” I ask. It takes an affirming bite, then looks up at me, surprised, proof that the mushrooms really do work.

“Yours?” I repeat.

The squirrel nods.

I cut the mushroom and hand it over. It hugs it close, staring over the cap, clearly assessing me. Satisfied, it climbs into my basket, mushroom and all, curls up and goes to sleep. All that new wisdom must be tiring.

I harvest the remaining mushrooms and leave, having won both the hunt and a rather endearing familiar.

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'Lost' by Michele Catalano

There’s a world where everything’s barren, where the wind blows remnants of lives around like pieces of dirt. The wind is unrelenting and there’s always pieces of someone’s heart or the disarray of someone’s past getting in your hair and your eyes. The world is torn, the sky ripped open. Diary pages and unsent letters fall apart against the wind and come down in torrents, creating storms of regret no weatherman knew to predict.

She carries an umbrella and raincoat, but they’re never enough. She thinks one day she’d like to leave, if she could only find the road out.

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'Lost and Found' by Jack Morris

Her broomstick’s not lost. A devil-child took it whilst Geraldine searched a puddle on the town square. The spell calls for a newt but they are impossible to find in the city. Mistress Pirbright won’t cough up until she gets her intimate poultice so—

In her current mood, when Geraldine catches the scrawn-spawn she’ll soon thereafter have a newt. She strides the cobbles. Townspeople scatter before her. Where is the little—? Ah.

Down this alley.

The lickspittle is using Geraldine’s broom—Outrage!— to sweep a doorway.

‘Come here, vile creature.’

The guttersnipe—Amazement!—doesn’t stop.

‘Tuppence for a sweep, Missus,’ it says. ‘Cutting my own throat, but what’s a girl to do?’

The child’s bravado in the face of a witch’s wrath is admirable. Reminds Geraldine of herself, back in the day.

‘That’s my broom,’ she says.

The girl frowns.

‘Nah, Missus. I found it. I’m excellent at finding things. S’in me nature. Do you want me to sweep, or not?’

Geraldine notes the grime on the child’s face, the hollow cheekbones. She hears herself, in a voice unused to gentleness, say:

‘What I really need is an Assistant. A Finder. Of Things.’

The girl's eyes calculate whether to listen or scarper, sharpish.

‘There’s a shilling in it. Maybe dinner.’

The girl swallows. Dinner wins. She spits on her palm and holds it out.

‘I’m your new Assistant, Missus.’’

Geraldine takes her broom back, shakes the wet hand by the fingertips.

‘Find me a newt.’

The girl scurries away. Geraldine sweeps the rest of the dust into a pile. Feels for the shilling on a fine chain around her neck and remembers a fierce old woman with a broomstick.

Smiles.

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'Resignation' by Chloe Cook

If someone broke in now, they would think they had been beaten to this house by another criminal. I might invite them inside and ask for their help: thieves are good at finding valuable things. I have ransacked each room so thoroughly that the floor has been resurfaced, clothes and doodahs rising from it like molehills. How is it that things grow legs in the night? I must have put the thermometer down on the nightstand because I always do before bed. I take it out of the pocket of my jacket or jeans or fleece and I put it there, ready for when I wake up. This morning, it was elsewhere, and it hadn’t left a note, so I do not know where elsewhere is.


I flinch as my phone leaps between two notes.

“Stop calling, stop calling,” I jitter in my limbs as it rings out. I am not going in to work. Doesn’t he realise this is an emergency?

I check the text I sent has been delivered: Not coming in. Lost the thermometer.

I lower my eyes the short distance to his reply: Buy a new one.

Rage replenishes in my gut. A new thermometer wouldn’t have her temperature recorded somewhere in its electric brain. A new thermometer wouldn’t have ever touched her and won’t ever be able to touch her. Does he have a plan for that too? Can he rewind time? If he can, he could do the decent thing and travel further back and force me to take her to the hospital sooner.

“Hang up on the doctor,” he could say. “The doctor cannot see her colour drooping. The doctor cannot see what a mother can.”

I reply: I quit.

I begin putting the clothes back in the drawers, working backwards.
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'Joey’s looking for a table' by Katie Willow

It’s the last one he needs. Matty ‘The Bump’ Richards was bragging again, ‘bout how he had the top score on Flintstones (Williams, 1994) and Joey just can’t stand the way he says I’m Top, I’m Number One and bangs his pint down on the table so it sloshes over the side and everyone grabs for their smartphones and curses him for being a wanker and won’t he just shut up about pinball because nobody cares. But that’s how The Bump gets when he’s had one too many. Joey’s the quiet one. He never tells a soul about his quest but ever since Matty got on the IFPA (International Flipper Pinball Association) player rankings he’s been boring the tits off everyone. Joey’s not ranked but he’s beaten every one of the scores The Bump has mentioned, even if his fingers felt sore for days and the change machine swallowed more than one of his twenties without plinking the quids out below. He doesn’t know if Matty has noticed, that’s not the point. He’s doing this for himself. Joey’s not flash but he keeps going until the job is done. That’s his power. He just needs to find that last table. It’s not in the big arcade in town where most of the tables can be found. He doesn't want to ask Matty. He doesn’t want to set that prick off again, on one of his stories about stance, finger position or hitting the ramp six times in a row. He trudges into another bar, Cathy from work thought she might have seen a table there but she doesn’t know which one it is, why? There’s a glow of lights in the corner. Owe you one, Cathy, cos it’s only a matter of time now. Yabba dabba doo.

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'The Vixen' by Abida Akram

Talia looks away from her laptop screen on the dining room table to the garden through the French doors. A vixen sits with her two cubs in a patch of grass graced with afternoon sunlight. The vixen, unblinking with amber eyes, daring her to come out. Talia blinks first. The vixen had come from the wood behind her garden. The low Yorkshire stone wall is easy to clamber over. The house is a new-build, Talia accepts that the vixen had a prior claim.

Talia's gaze turns to look at her walls. They need more colour as the magnolia is a blandness that irks her. The house needs more character, more art, more colour and noise but most of all it needs more people. The house was built for a family. She laughs; she has to remind herself to use the three toilets and two bathrooms in rotation. 

Now where had she put it? She searches her bedroom drawers, her bag and the papers on the table. She still has to process it and doesn’t want to make it public yet. She hasn’t even had the chance to take a photo of it with her mobile to send out to her friends and family later.
Is it the hormones? The changes in her body? Why couldn’t she remember where she had put it? Had she accidentally dropped it somewhere? She looks under the table and on the floor near her bed. Nothing. 

Thirsty, she opens the fridge door to grab a can of diet coke when she spots it lying on top of the pizza box. The black and white ultrasound scan photo of her baby. She strokes the cold photo. How her world and this house is going to change!

She could stop hunting men for their sperm now. 
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'Lost, Maybe Forever' by Jean Feingold

Mirella was distraught. Her computer had crashed just as she’d finished the first draft of her most recent novel. There was no fixing the machine or restoring the document from the hard drive in which it was contained, her computer tech said. “Of course, you backed it up, right?” he asked. 

She had and she hadn’t. Much of the manuscript was on an external hard drive by virtue of an overnight backup program that auto-ran daily. The problem was the drive had become full before the last third of the novel had been saved. Her tech always bugged her to check the remaining disk space. She always forgot. 

He’d also told her one backup method was never enough. She did a second one the old school way by printing out what she wrote each day. The printed manuscript filled a decent-sized box. She put new pages in the box after finishing her daily writing. The box was kept in the hallway closet behind a locked door.  

As a reward for finishing, Mirella had planned a two-day beach vacation. Instead, she bought a new computer and had the tech restore as much of the manuscript onto it as he could. Planning to retype the last third from her printouts, she unlocked the closet. The box wasn’t there. Dust covered the floor where it had been. 

In a panic, Mirella searched her house. She looked in the office, the bedrooms, the living room, every closet and cupboard, the kitchen, the bath. No box. She sat down on her couch and wept. Sure, she could rewrite the last part from memory, but it would take months. 

The ringing phone interrupted her hysteria. It was her sister. “Your copies are ready,” she said. “You know, of your manuscript.”

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Wednesday, 18 June 2025

'The Empty Slot' by Ida Keogh

There’s a tiny slot at the back of my head. I run my hands through purpled hair and it jangles as I touch it, like tonguing a missing tooth. I realise I don’t know how long it’s been empty - a fatal flaw of design. I hunt for the missing sliver in all the usual places. Down the back of the sofa among the cat hair and lint; in the drawer where I keep umbrella covers, expired medicines and keys without doors; between old photographs of the same face again and again, some angelic young thing, now spattered with birthday cake, now blonde hair streaming in an unseen gust, now lip-pierced petulant. I’ve become distracted again. There is no sign of it.

I try to retrace my steps. I start at the park, my stick dragging as I traipse backwards along muddy tracks, interrogating birds in the hedges. At work, I am greeted with blank stares of non-recognition and at the spot where my computer ought to be there is only an indecipherable password and a parody of middle management who pats me on the shoulder as she leads me back to the street.

I am drawn to the beach, where under the scream of seagulls I steal a child’s red spade and dig until stinging saltwater seeps into the widening hole. Crabs come to squabble in this new fighting pit. I ask them, knees soaking, “Where is it?” They click and clack in impenetrable language and scuttle away, tawny shells glistening.

I amble home in salt-stained shoes, content with a day which must have been well spent, because I have ice-cream-sticky fingers and sand in my purpled hair and a crab in my pocket. There was something I meant to do. Perhaps tomorrow I will remember what it is.
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'Perditus' by Lynda McMahon

The first rule of looking for lost things: you know you’ve put it somewhere. The object you seek is ‘here’ somewhere. Just now ‘here’ is an elusive abstract, a non-place, an imaginary location in time and space.

“Have you looked in the usual places?”

That was Claude, all Gallic charm. I tried Zen-like calm.

“My dear Claude, it very much depends on what you mean by ‘the usual places’."

I smiled beatifically. To the casual observer it might look like I wished something malign to happen to Claude. I assure you this was not the case.

“The cooker, the fridge, the broom cupboard.”

I gave him my best wither, “Of course I have!”

I hadn’t thought of the broom cupboard but he didn’t need to know that. I casually mentioned needing to check my broom for twig moth. Not there! The dratted thing was always missing when I needed it most. Claude had followed me and languidly lowered himself into the nearest chair.

His body language said, “Well, I’ve done all I can. You’re on your own now.’ Within seconds he was fast asleep.

Asleep! That’s it! I had it in bed! I raced upstairs, flung back the covers and… no, it wasn’t there. Under the bed? Nope. I really must sweep under there! Just as I was about to abandon it for good something caught my eye; something dragon green and salamander-fire red; something I recognised.

“I’ve found it Claude!” He opened one eye, stretched and yawned showing his perfect little teeth.

“You don’t say!”  Cats can be so scathing.

I carefully carried my volume of Lost Objects and How to Find Them: Spells for Advanced Witches back to my laboratory. I must remember where I’ve put it. It’s so hard to find things without it.
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'It’s My Destiny' by Allison Renner

She drove slowly, glancing at her phone before taking the next turn. She hoped she could hide the device quickly if she was pulled over, or convincingly lie and say she was using its GPS. Maybe she’d get off with a warning to buy a phone mount. But she was being careful; she couldn’t risk getting caught now, not when she was so close.

There! She slammed on the brakes, seatbelt pulling so tight she couldn’t breathe. Or maybe it was from excitement. Because there, just feet away, was the magnificent creature. She picked up the phone and tapped the bottom of the screen. With a practiced flick of her wrist, she tossed the ball and…

Mew’s stats filled the screen. She’d finally caught them all.
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'Fred Number Three' by Bronwen Griffiths

She is searching for her reading glasses, wondering where, this time, she has put them. Car keys are the same - who knows where they go? Last week her son found her keys in the washing machine tub. He asked if she was getting forgetful, she did not welcome the implication. 

The glasses are on her head. She should have known. Now that she has clear sight she discovers Fred isn’t swimming around his bowl. He has gone missing before, just that once, the day she won him at the fair. He jumped out of his bowl into the washing-up. Lucky that. Otherwise he might have perished. She was disappointed he’d tried to escape. 

Fred is Fred Number Three, and he’s always Fred. She can’t bear the idea of starting up with another Fred. She’s been married three times and never bothered with a fourth. None were called Fred. 

Fred is not on the floor, in the plant pot, or the washing-up. Fred is nowhere. She sits on the kitchen stool and sheds a few tears. This Fred was her favourite. Those brilliant, shimmering orange scales captivated her right from the start.  

She wipes away her tears and heads for the garden. The roses need dead-heading, the weeds pulling up. She has just tugged up a clump of nettles growing amidst the dahlias when a flash of orange light catches her eye. So that’s where you’ve gone, is it Fred? Looking for a bigger pond like Husband Number Three. 

The following day a heron flies in. Maybe it’s for the best. 
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'Crystal Healing' by Julie Cunningham

Her treasured green agate gem stone was missing.

Millie had taken a few blows in the last year and after some googling about how to protect oneself emotionally had landed on a page about Crystal Healing. It promised to restore harmony and balance to her life through the positive energy of crystals. Not scientific, she knew, but something about the array of gems and their different colours attracted her. She chose a beautiful, calming green agate and very soon she and the gem were inseparable.

Her morning ritual was to hold it in her hands, notice it change from cool to warm, close her eyes and take a deep breath in and ease away her worries on a long breath out. It helped, but not completely.

But this morning it was missing. She sat at her desk, the contents of her bag strewn everywhere. She searched the office floor, her coat pockets, the toilet, even re-traced her steps, but nothing. Panic overwhelmed her.  The next few days tears were never far off, meetings went by in a trance, she longed for her crystal and wondered at her state of mind to get so upset by a small, seemingly insignificant object. 

A few days later she noticed the man from reception walking towards her smiling.

‘I think you dropped this the other day. I’ve been off for a few days and forgot all about.’

She blushed at her earlier drama and felt instant relief.

As he placed the small green gem stone into her hand their fingers touched, a slight buzz ran between them and a flicker went straight to her heart. It was then that she noticed that his eyes were the same colour as the beautiful green gem resting in her palm. 

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'The Mystery of the Missing Last Nerve' by Athena Law

Even as I screamed at you that you were getting on my last nerve, I had an inkling that it was a big fat lie. Did I even have a last nerve? Perhaps it vanished along with my last fuck, around the time that we lost our home due to your inability to pick the fastest horse.

I check my handbag first, just in case. I tend to carry a lot in this, from snacks to first aid kits, and it would make sense that my last nerve would be in there. I remember pulling it away the time I found you looking for the credit card, that one in my name only. Nope, not in here. 

I look in my car’s glovebox, the one that swings open if I brake too hard, which is often as the brakes are indecisive and touchy. Sound familiar? No last nerve here, but I do find my Zoloft prescription. This is tucked into my handbag (first aid section). 

You’re asleep on the couch. It’s barely noon and you’re snoring, one hand on your belly and the other in a bag of cheese Doritos. You’ve obviously managed to get yourself a beer since I refused, and the (probably not quite) empty can lies on the carpet. There’s a pale brown stain, in the shape of a maple leaf, a stain that’s taken months and many (not quite) empty cans to create.

I stamp on the can. It crumples under my sneaker, the sound satisfying but not as much as the way it wakes you up.  You snort, drop the Doritos, look around, dumb and confused. I’m smiling down at the maple leaf stain, because that’s where I left it. My last nerve. I pick up my handbag and it feels lighter already. 

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'Offerings' by Karin Hedetniemi

The most famous person buried in Julie's hometown cemetery is Canadian painter Emily Carr. Visitors will make pilgrimages to adorn her grave with tokens of affection: pinecones, feathers, painted stones. Sometimes little jars of wildflowers, or handwritten poems. Julie likes to stop by the grave every now and then, inspect the recent tributes, and listen to the crows. She'll empty out her pockets, leaving behind pebbles and sea glass.

Emily's grave is where Julie first got the idea to leave food out for the crows. See if they'd bring her an offering: a curly twig, or some shiny bauble. It only took an hour for the crows, a mated pair, to snatch those first peanuts on the deck. Each morning thereafter, Julie would sprinkle a few nuts, and the crows would appear out of nowhere to gobble up the goods.

It took all summer to build trust, but one morning, there it was: a small red button. Julie was deliriously happy. From that day forward, their reciprocal exchange was affirmed. She'd leave out seeds, cashews, corn; the crows would bring her petals, feathers, ferns. One time they left a paintbrush, which Julie thought was odd. She used it to paint two crows on a smooth rock, then placed it at Emily Carr's grave.

The next time Julie made a pilgrimage, the painted rock was missing. Her heart sank a little. Who would steal a sacred offering? But then she heard two crows cawing back and forth in a daisied patch of grass, an empty plot nearby. Between them was Julie's painted rock. She reached into her pockets, tossed a few peanuts in the air. The crows snatched them, flew away, and the exchange was reaffirmed. They've been decorating Julie's grave ever since. 

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