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The Howl in the Dark · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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The Shooting Star
I was born and raised to perform a single action, first and final: grant humans wishes.

In my early days, drifting in the blackness, I asked my mother, "But why humans?"

She said it is because humans like making wishes, and they are the only living things for millions of miles who even understand the concept of a "wish." Meteors are born, live, grant wishes, and then die. If not for wishes, what would we have?

Just dust, I suspect. And endless, formless blackness.

The humans live on Earth, or Terra, or Gaea—however one may call it.

In the beginning we stay with our mother, stuck to her, stuck with each other, and then each of us leaves, shooting out into the great unknown with only one goal in mind.

Some meteors survive their trips to Earth, but many do not. It depends on one's size and how deeply you penetrate the atmosphere, as those who've returned have said. Not that there is much of a purpose in surviving the voyage.

I am a small meteor when compared to most of my siblings, but that is okay.

All I need is enough time to grant even a single wish. The worst fate of all would be to die before granting any wishes. It is not the dying itself which would be most terrible, but rather dying without being able to fulfill one's sole duty.

I was made to be what the humans often call a "shooting star."

My voyage to becoming one is almost over.

I can see Earth now. It is getting bigger, but also moving very fast.

I know I am reaching the end of my pilgrimage. If I can just—

Yes! I think I can get within reach of the atmosphere.

This side of Earth is dark, and this darkness is how I know I'm getting near my destination.

I can feel myself entering it, that first touch of thinnest air.

The top layer of the atmosphere starts to peel at my skin. At first it is a ticklish sensation, something utterly harmless, yet I see the very outer layer of my skin being torn off in small chunks by this all-consuming force.

It's starting to hurt now, the deeper into the planet I go, in what seems like hours but more likely seconds.

It hurts. It's ripping at my skin, and I see myself bleeding.

I'm bleeding.

I'm bleeding dust all around me.

—please stop hurting me please—

I start screaming.

It is a soundless scream, as not even I can hear it.

Instead it seems to be the atmosphere that is screaming, howling, crying in a way that I'm sure does not resemble any living thing. It simply can't. Earth itself must be howling at me as it kills me.

The thickening air rips at my flesh, and I feel like my insides are threatening to spill out into the darkness.

No. No! I cannot die yet. I must keep myself together.

Just a little longer...

...wait...

I start to hear something.

Something different, like someone talking. Not just one person, but many in unison—so many that at first I can't even tell what each of them is saying. Are these human voices? Is this what they sound like? They can't be talking, all the way down there, for I am not physically able to hear them.

No, they must be thinking these things!

Our minds are telepathically connected in this moment, and I hear variations of the same two words amidst all the voices:

"I wish..."

Yes! I've made it.

The pain grows, but no matter; I've finally done it.

Glowing, burning up, I must be a beautiful sight as I pass overhead in the nighttime sky.

I can hear all these emotions in their voices, this wonderful ocean of sounds within my being. So many people wanting so many things. Yet it occurs to me now, in my time of dying, that I can't possibly grant all these wishes.

A lot of them wish for world peace. Or to solve world hunger. There are a few who wish their parents would get back together. Others wish for more money, or more social status, or better looks, or a nice car.

I cannot grant even half of these wishes, as some would cancel out others.

This is too much to take in, and I'm losing more of myself with each passing second.

—death is coming—

I only have enough time to grant one wi—
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#1 · 2
· · >>BlueChameleonVI >>Monokeras >>No_Raisin >>No_Raisin
My quest to find out what's keeping me awake tonight has brought me to this story, the only one that has yet to be commented on. It will suffer my insomnia-driven wra - - hang on, that was good. What's everybody waiting for?

Hmmm.

I wager that this will be a top ten story this round, top five even, and yet something has to be said about how quiet the comments section has been. There's been a bit of chat in the discord channel, but nobody has dug very deep as far as I can tell.

To start, let's be honest. The idea is strange, personifying a shooting star. It's ambitious, and it might be one of the best takes on the prompt. But all that being said, it's hard to relate to an inanimate object, especially when the object itself is reminding the reader every now and again that it is inanimate. It is specifically presented as being entirely different from people. The only similarity seems to be that it talks like us, which is a good start, but that's really all we have in common.

I hate to say this, but I'm wondering if this idea is just limited for this reason. Because I can hardly fault the execution; the voicing is great, a perfect mixture of childlike and mystical; it's a complete story, which is hard to do in a minific round; and the topic is sad, which always gets me going some. Bonus points for a downer ending when it's done right, which you have done.

But it's... just a rock. And I'm not Maud Pie.

Truly, my favourite paragraph of this was when the star listed the different wishes people had, how they contradicted each other, and how it had no chance of helping any decent fraction of the people. Because... I care about people. I wish there were more of them in the story.

But you know what, forget what I said about all this being the idea's fault, that's horseshit. There must be some way to make this tale more relatable and memorable. I unfortunately can't find out how, but I hope everything I've said may give some clues.

Or I could be batshit crazy and the upcoming comments will be nothing but praise.

Either way, I'm glad I got the chance to read this entry, it gave me something to think about. Thanks for writing and best of luck to you!
#2 · 2
· · >>No_Raisin >>No_Raisin
This concept alone gets the story high on my slate. The xenofictional perspective of a meteor? Great! Their function involves granting wishes? Great! They risk death doing this and immediately lose all existential purpose even if they survive and succeed? Er... depressing as hell, but... Great!

I don't know if it was intentional (I suspect not), but the prose seems a little breathless and redundant. What I mean is that the fic's more than happy to restate or emphasize points (such as the ABSOLUTE CRUCIALNESS of granting that wish), and I could see some people get exasperated by that. For me, it works fine. It hints at a slight panic in the narrator's voice, as if it's trying to remind itself over and over of just how important this is, which fits the details of the tense story like a glove.

There's also a nice touch with the commentary on human wishes, though it feels a little odd at times. For example, the first bit about there being no other wish-making creatures within millions of miles emphasizes, indirectly perhaps, how unique our species is to the meteor. But then there's the bit about how meteors have nothing but "endless, formless blackness" without human wishes. I guess this is to show how bleak life is in space, but it comes across as trying to justify a depressing state of existence, and doing that - rather than describing this tragically sad existence as simply a matter of fact - in turn comes across as a little awkward and jarring. I mean, if your best purpose in life involves suicide-godmothering, just do it and get it over with. Don't imply you're actually thankful for this pathetic state of affairs. It's like a weird form of Stockholm Syndrome. I think you could remove this detail, or repurpose it as a "but what choice do we have?" point about desperation.

On the other hand, I really like the indecisiveness of the meteor when faced with the sheer multitude of human thoughts. It adds stress to the character - good for drama - but also makes sense within the world built up here. Why wouldn't it tap into millions of human minds coming into range, after all? Plus, it avoids the problem of picking a wish and immediately making the experience narrow down; we're talking about a sentient meteor here, so we should focus on a general overview of the world of our protagonist.

Lastly, I quite liked the way the meteor's atmospheric entry was described. Good development of the scene and the emotional intensity there. No complaints!

My biggest complaint, really, is an inevitable consequence of this set-up; because the star's so monomaniacally, even desperately, focused on the mechanics of fulfilling this one depressing purpose against the odds, the fic feels... if I'm being nice, "streamlined", but if I'm being critical, "thin". It's a good fit for the minific format because the concept is inherently not designed for a larger number of words, but it also makes it feel very... isolated as an experience. I mean, it's xenofiction; of course I don't know what it's like to be a meteor hitting the exosphere. I don't think it's because this is a rock's experience, a la >>Miller Minus, but I do think it's because the meteor's personality is entirely subservient to fulfilling this one narrow role. No deviations, no complications, no relationships (the brief bit about the mother doesn't count; it's barely explored and it's used mainly as an exposition vehicle), not even anything particularly penetrating or self-conscious. So you live or die on the concept, author, and I predict that'll make the fic a bit more controversial as a result.

I don't know if I'm explaining myself very well, but great an experience as this is, it's also clearly something you don't come back to more than once. If you see what I'm saying...?

Anyway, I think this'll place high based on the concepts and writing. Only this is a limited set-up by design, so I'd be hard-pressed to call it a favourite, per se. It's definitely one I admire, though.
#3 · 2
· · >>No_Raisin
>>Miller Minus
I would concur with Miller here. The concept of a sapient meteor seems a bit weird to me. I have no really qualms about thinking forms of life, even simple cells, but inanimate objects speaking is a bit of a stretch to me.

It’s also difficult to figure out how those meteorites are born and pushed into the right orbit.

But anyway. My greatest gripe here is that the piece looks more like an idea than a true story. It’s like “eh, look, a thinking meteorite, this is clever”. But, except for the genuine and apropos remark about how human wishes counteract one another, there’s not really anything else here.

It’s a sweet little tale, and it definitely deserves finishing on the upper half of my slate. And I think I’ll make it to the finals easy peasy.
#4 · 2
·
Alternate Title: The Little Comet That Could

You might've noticed that I've been going out of order with my reviews, and that's because at this rate I probably won't be able to get them all done before prelims end.

I especially want to comment on entries that I feel I can say something about, and The Shooting Star is one of them.

Not gonna lie, this is some pretty weird shit. It's xenofiction as >>BlueChameleonVI said, but the alien in this case happens to be a sentient meteorite? But how? There is a lot of fridge logic at work here (How does it think if it doesn't have a brain? Why English? Do Meteors reproduce asexually?), and then it has fucking telepathic powers. None of this should make any sense; if anything it's a concept that requires some pretty big breaks from reality.

And yet... it makes sense, within the story's own logic anyway. In what seems like both an achievement and an inherent flaw in the narrative, the meteor's perspective, background, and motivation are just about fully realized. Apparently a meteor in this story's world is like an existential space genie. A lot of space, a lot of wish-granting, and a lot of existential angst. The meteor (who has a somewhat defined personality despite being both nameless and sexless) has a really simple goal, wanting to help humans and all that, even if it's because it's like the only thing it has going on in life.

Unfortunately, the meteor is such a single-minded protagonist as to border on being solipsistic. That would be a big flaw in most short stories, because you usually want a protagonist who's rounded and relatable, but it's more like a reservation here, if anything. Probably because the meteor's narrow personality aligns with what we know about it; there's not much else that can be done with it, or at least I think that's the case. It's a dilemma that both >>Miller Minus and I ran into.

It's a great and unique premise and a nicely self-contained story, but something's missing...

It might be that the passages with the humans are so short, which was what struck me as I was re-reading. Only a few sentences? After all we'd been through, the climax is pretty damn brief.

The ending hits pretty good, though. It's somewhat telegraphed, like the author was afraid it would seem to come out of nowhere if he/she didn't give the reader hints, but it ends on a sudden note that only gets more depressing as I think about it.

It's a shame this entry got no on-site attention for a long-ass time, but it looks like we're picking up the slack.
#5 · 2
·
Well, this is gonna be awkward.

Part of me thought this was going to be a Top 3 candidate for sure, and part of me was also low-key wrecked by the fact that it had gone three for four days without a comment. Something had to have gone wrong, right? But I guess placing 6th is pretty good, even if it's just a participation ribbon.

I pulled all my resources (what little I had) into revising The Shooting Star, as opposed to leaving it as it was and writing a second entry. In hindsight this was the right move, because originally it was even more redundantly written and had a bittersweet ending that didn't fit the overall tone whatsoever. Ultimately I wanted to write about a life that fails to fulfill its calling, or rather a life that proves to be utterly meaningless, since the shooting star failed at its sole purpose.

>>Miller Minus It is a rock. A pretty big one, though. I set out to make the shooting star distinctly non-human, and I might've gone too far in that regard. There's a reason why in SF literature the really "alien" aliens are often made supporting characters, and not protagonists that the reader has to follow around and relate to. It's an inherent flaw in the set-up, I think.

>>BlueChameleonVI The difference between being "thankful" for having only one goal in life and being desperate about it is kind of a blurry one. I wanted to go for a "This is how we live" kind of sentiment, but I might've made the protagonist seem too eager to kamikaze grant wishes and then die. That's something I'll have to think about if I expand this story, which I might.

>>Monokeras It's a pretty cut-and-dry story, structurally. It has a beginning, middle, and end. But I do agree that it's very thin, or narrow or whatever, as BCVI said. It works fine for a minific, but even then it's extremely unilateral.

Aw well. I did good, and that's the most I can ask for. I wrote an entry I don't regret writing, unlike the last round I was in.

Best of luck to everyone, assuming we'll all be participating in more of these.