I have something in...

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Not me. I didn't submit anything!

Lot of eyes, but... Griseus here enjoyed this little scene.

Woah. Good scene but really stretches the prompt.

What a jerk and what a... real scene?

This could really use a cleaner perspective. In the middle, the narrator takes on the woman's identity, yet at the beginning, and a little at the end, it backs off to more omniscient, telling things she couldn't know. It's usually not a good idea to let the perspective wander like that anyway, but especially in a minific, a tight focus is pretty important. What she says also sounds rather modern, as compared to this being a sailing ship, which would put it before the 1900s. Maybe a bit long in the beginning, where I'm getting a lot of description of the environment but wondering when the plot is going to kick in, plus that word count may have been better spent telling me why this woman is a stowaway, since that's what would get me to care about her situation. In general, the language use is good, and the description hits the right amount of detail.

I don't get the ending. It sounds like there's some goal he has every time this happens, but he never achieves it. What that goal is, i have no idea. The tense keeps switching between past and present, there's a significant lack of commas, and it keeps using repetitive sentence construction. The action is nice, it keeps interest up, and it's a vivid picture.

A few repetitive word choices, but overall, I liked this. It's more a slice of life scene than anything that comes to a conclusion. I also get no sense of how old the narrator is. His language use makes him sound like an adult, but the relationship he has with his mother suggests he may be a teenager or younger. It could have an effect on how sympathetic the reader is toward him.

My complaint with this otherwise competent bit of fantasy writing is that it seems to end on the character's dissatisfaction with doing a chore. I can tell that it is aiming for a sort of moral maximalism--that the tedious task, in fact, is crucially important to the maintenance of some kind of harmonious order--but, though we are given interesting descriptions of the speakers work (that I have to go back and re-read to put them together is not a drawback in this genre), I don't quite get a sense of his/her opposition. They seem calm, virtuosic, and self-assured in their defeat of evil.

I got the vibe that this might be taking place in a stylized techno-universe (e.g. steampunk) and might not be strict historical fiction. The woman's attitude, and her predicament, combined with detailed descriptions of a ship's parts, give the effect. I do agree on further reading that there is a mingling of points-of-view. Childbirth can be hard to describe convincingly, but you seem to do it well, here.

>>Griseus, >>Pascoite, >>Heavy_Mole

Welcomed Unseen

Thanks for the kind words and analysis. I've had this concept kicking around for a while, never quite fitting in anywhere, somewhat like the vagabonds it represents.

Water Hazard

This piece was done with white pencil and chalk on black paper. The side of the chalk is dragged across the paper, thus revealing the texture of the paper as the tree bark. A sheet of pulp is thus is made to echo the tree from whence it came.

Mugs and Bugs

This was done with the same medium and techniques as Water Hazard. I added an amber cast in Photoshop.

Once again I forgot to come back and check on feedback. I loose track of the days far too easily.

>>Griseus
I wrote this whole thing in one sitting and once I hit 700 words (which I thought was the cut off point, not 750) I found that I had started all but two of the paragraphs with first-person I so I rewrote things a bit to have them all start that way for consistency sake and not having two paragraphs just stick out for being different when they were not overly important. If this was expended out into a full story I'd avoid this sort of thing.

>>Pascoite
Not going to lie, the ending is a joke on "forest fire fighters" in that this guy is a "forest water fighter" and both jobs hate "bucket duty".
As for his "goal" he needs to fill the revivor under the stone he was fighting on with water, to a level where the stone would activate and "call" the rest of the water into it. The rain becomes what are basically water elementals that if not contained would go out and flood the world. Because the storm was so short he didn't get enough "kills" and now has to go out an hunt the escaped elementals and use lots of buckets to bring the water back to the ritual stone and get the rest because he can't hunt them all. (And yes they do have water set aside for cases like this but there are problems with that because magic.)

As for tense shifts, well, I like to say that my brain isn't moored in traditional linear time so I have trouble keeping my tenses straight. I've yet to find a good tool to help with that part of writing. On the upside I tend to understand temporal mechanics very well and the majority of time travel stories are very easy for me to understand.

>>Heavy_Mole
I'm not really sure how to respond here because I'm not sure what your problem is.

I don't quite get a sense of his/her opposition. They seem calm, virtuosic, and self-assured in their defeat of evil.

You talk about the opposition, which as I said above are water elementals formed by the rain, but then talk about the main character?

Also as I said above I thought the word count was 700 and not 750. I sort of forgot about the Write Off until six or seven hours before it closed while I was trying to go to sleep so I wasn't firing on all brain power at the time. Had I realized I had another fifty words I'd have padded out the end a bit more to give some more context on a "bucket hunt" but it was always supposed to end on the "joke" of being a "forest water fighter" as opposed to a "forest fire fighter".

This was also my prompt so I felt I had to make something for it but my original idea for the prompt felt like it needed to be longer form so I just ran through various "blot out lights" ides, hit upon "storm and rain" and went from there.

Neat little piece. Love the rain effects on the blades and the puddle on the ground.