NOTE! I did NOT draw this. I am merely entering the WRITING part of the Hidden Qualities contest. Please comment ONLY on the writing here.....to see/comment on this lovely image that ~axian created, go here--> [link] . I just had to choose this one for my writing entry--isn't it such a pretty picture? *hearts*

Actually, I really wanted to enter the Art part of the contest, but seeing as I have no access to a scanner or Photoshop at the moment, and the art deadline is today....I thought I might as well just enter the writing part. Hwargh. Read on to the actual entry itself~ ^^;

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"Watch It All Go By" art by axian
Writing submission by Marie Lu
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The stars came first.

They came before the flowers and the beasts and man, so naturally they should have the right to take it all away by being the first to go. Who am I to argue? I do not give life. I am a human, and humans can only simulate.

So I tried. I needed something to do, after all, to keep my eyes from staring at the light that now resided perpetually outside the windows of our ship. Light of the damned, for it had damned us—it had nurtured us for a million years and then destroyed us.

Today I painted the resemblance of a sunflower in defiance of the stars. Observe it from every angle and love it, I challenged, for I could revive its soul even as you dispelled its physical manifestation. You engulfed the earth beneath our feet and yet here we still are, protected within a steel fortress of our own creation. Bow to me, for you are not my God. I was born in the year of the panther and I shall not be hunted to extinction. I am still a man, and you were only a star.

And yet, even as I painted, your light distracted me. I stopped and ran a hand across the artificial petals. It was the soul of a sunflower . . . only a soul, and nothing more. Fleeting translucent invisible soul that I owned. You owned its life.

I never finished it.

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Now wasn't that awful? Sorry for mauling your beautiful art, axian. ;__;