Writing Prompt

Birds circle overhead, shrieking their warnings as the storm picks up in swirling, malevolent gusts, stirring the sea so it folds in on itself. Land is near, thank the heavens if there are any, but the coast is so jagged it’s unlikely we’ll be able to land without being torn apart by the cutting rocks and the crushing waves. Though we hardly have the choice to continue on sea.

The raft jolts ba...

Birds circled overhead as we graze at our picnic lunch. I start to wonder if those ravens are here for more, like me, considering this will be my dates last meal. I glanced at my neatly folded cloth napkin disguising my father’s hunting knife which was one of the few items he left behind after the accident. “I’m ready for cake!” My date exclaims as he reaches across the blanket. I whip my hand up,...

Birds circled overhead.

I cannot bring myself to care.

I shut my eyes again.

"I leave you for five seconds and this is how I find you," Jrudon crosses his arms and looks down at me in dissatisfaction with how he has found me. "You, Amadi, are going to have to get used to these temperatures if you want to even get close to any urban areas."

We’re in a dessert. Nowhere close to civilisation....

**Birds circled overhead, denoting the finality of Elmer’s last miserable exhalation. However, even once the lungs stopped sucking and the blood coagulated in his veins, he still stared skyward with dry redend eyes at the birds that signified death descending slowly upon him. He felt the wind, he felt the sun. He felt the ants marching over him, and the flies nesting in his mouth. He felt all of t...

Birds circled overhead.

They can smell it too.

The carcass I stole for you.

And if you, like the vultures, want to pick at my skin and flesh,

I’ll decay quickly, quickly like the development of our passion.

My mind conjures a thousand dreams of you a day, I’ve lusted for you a millennium.

If you want to tear me, pull down the skin strangling me, so be it.

You will be the only one to s...

Birds circled overhead

Preparing

For the ceremony

Today was the day

The children would finally get their gifts

Every 2 years

A wave of children are born

Once they all reach the age of 15

They have their ceremony

To get their gifts

At the last ceremony

Siah had gotten Mimicry

The gift to copy anyone’s or anything’s identity

Makes sense

She was always jealous of everyone

Even her best fri...

Birds circled overhead-

"What? But you don't know birds."

I can try to.

"You're not gonna be immediately good at it."

Maybe that's okay.

"Fine. What kind of birds are they?"

They're ostriches-

"Ostriches don't fly, numbskull."

Okay, then... they're crows.

"How foreboding. And what do they mean?"

Um... I don't know. That's for the reader to decide.

"Well you have to give them at least _s...

Birds circled overhead. My eyes tracked them, even in the distance. Their huge black wings beat against the warm current. If they found me, I'd be their gift. I wondered faintly if they would see me or smell me first. From what I knew about the birds, I guessed the latter. But I didn't know much. As I watched them, the sun moved gradually above the horizon, and the heat encase...

Birds circled overhead as if I were carrion for them to feast upon. Vultures, I thought, how appropriate. Bright light burned my dry eyes as I worked to make sense of what had happened since I left her in that Portland office. Had it been a day or more? I lay on desiccated land, small, angular pebbles biting into my face, arms, and all other parts exposed to the elements. Where is the nearest ...

Birds circled overhead…

Because they were ready to feast…

On what has long been dead.

The old me…

I’ve shed her skin,

Standing over the carcass as we speak…

She was weak.

Too kind, too fogiving.

Me?

Not anymore.

I can’t be…

Look at all the scars in her back,

From all the knives that stabbed her.

All those wounds…

From the people who ‘loved’ her.

Hardened my heart,

Won’t let anyone like that in...