The World Beyond the WallRunner-Up in The Fantasy Prologue
There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, wrote Shadow, his quill scratching across the parchment in the candlelight.
Lost Tom remembered those days before, when the sedges stretched high toward the sun. When he would tumble through them, laughing and singing with the other village children, the sheepdogs bounding in their wake. Those summer afternoons when the blueberries grew fat in the alpine meadows, and he would crush them with a potato-masher, adding sugar and spices brought by the traders. When he would preserve the mixture in labelled jars, and lick the earthy sweet juice from his fingers.