by Victoria Girkins, Age 17, USA
Artwork by Katie King
The March drama prompt was to write a blank scene with two characters talking about the weather without mentioning the weather.
ONE: Perhaps it will be today.
TWO: You still hope? Look up. You will find no good omen.
ONE: I look in expectation, not in despair. I wonder why you have lost your hope. Our crops live yet.
TWO: Our land is cracked. Our lips are cracked. Soon the crops will perish as well.
ONE: Yet our hope lies inside us.
TWO: There you are wrong. It has been drained from within us, drained by thirsty and flightless prayers.
ONE: Strange. I find my courage replenished by the very prayers which sap yours.
TWO: Look up, I say. Our only food shall be burned to death. This is no answer to hungry pleas.
ONE: Perhaps it is. It seems we keep our heads down to look upon the full plate, only turning upward when we find them empty.
TWO: Soon we will not have the strength even to lift our heads.
ONE: May we perish, then, looking with gratitude upon the earth which has, until now, been supplied from above with our daily bread.
TWO: So this is indeed our fate? To perish of hunger? You only just said yourself you still had hope.
ONE: I have more hope for our crops than for our hearts. Have we ever looked up except in great need? Have you ever turned away from a plentiful harvest, even for a moment of gratitude?
TWO: Ah. We will starve for lack of thankfulness. This is what you mean to say.
ONE: I claim no words from your mouth.
TWO: And yet you agree with them. I see it in your eyes.
ONE: Perhaps. Or perhaps we are being brought to the edge of this precipice only so we may see for ourselves the doom from which we have thus far been rescued.
TWO: And therein lays your hope?
ONE: Therein lays my hope. I see you find it unreasonable.
TWO: On the contrary, I begin to see the reason behind it. Our perceptions, maybe, cannot change our fate, but they are the light with which we view it. I find what you say shines a warm sort of light upon what we all now face.
ONE: Look up.
TWO: I see it, too.
ONE: There is only one, and it is small, but still, how dark it looks! Did you know it was coming? Did you see it?
TWO: I did not know. I only hoped. Though, you are right. It is rather small.
ONE: And yet perhaps…perhaps it will be today.
Victoria says, “I started seriously writing when I was around 13, and I am currently writing a historical fiction novel.”