Dervla Writes

“You could tell her she has a nice smile?” Sam asked, his arms spread out for balance as he carefully walked heel to toe along the wall, not caring about the steep drop below him. “Maybe,” The thing was, he wasn’t sure she had a nice smile. It had been an entire year since he saw her last and while her face in his mind was beautiful, it had also began to fade. He actually wasn’t sure how much of her features had distorted over time, his brain editing out all her imperfections. “Or nice hair?” His friend moved closer to the edge of the building, and Aidan ’s stomach seemed to overturn. Since he was a child he had hated heights, but somehow landed himself a best friend who seemed to relish in the danger of being tens of feet from the ground, in abandoned buildings where no one would notice or care if you fell. “I don’t remember her hair being that nice.” He laughed at that, “It’s that brutal honesty that girls really appreciate.” Sam must have realised that...

The Princess of Dusk never knew what it was like to live in darkness. Her world was in perpetual sunset, the sky in hues of orange, yellow and red. Candles and lamps and other things that existed as protection from the dark gathered dust in the corners of attics and in old drawers, relics of a forgotten age. People were always on the streets, in the markets and around the parks. Hard days ploughing the fields never seemed to end, but neither did long days lying in the grass, listening to the birds and watching the clouds in the amber sky. Darkness was something only talked about in hushed whispers, a long forgotten foe that had been banished from the land. It was the monster that lay under the bed, a nightmare from a children’s story. For the kingdom believed that dark meant deceit, villainy and deception. Darkness was a place of great evil, where people revealed the worst in themselves. The Princess had a different perspective. She had grown up in a palace of gold...