Loksfjoer — Roleplayer Guild

Welcome to the Voting and Feedback round for MPC#1!

Voting and Feedback guidelines
Please take your time to read through all the entries before voting for your favourite work. The reasons you base your vote on are up to you, as long the vote isn’t based on whether or not you like the author. 
It would be nice if you could share why you voted for a specific work.
Giving feedback is optional but highly encouraged. When giving feedback you should be respectful and constructive. It’s good to point out any flaws, the things you feel could be improved or why you didn't like something, but don’t be mean. 
Make sure to point out what you liked or what appreciated in the entry too.
Contestant may and are encouraged to vote for and give feedback about the other entries, but don’t vote for your own entry. If contestants wish to withhold a vote and only give feedback, that is good too.
The entries are anonymous unless the writer asked for having their name added. That being said, writers may claim their work at any time during or after the voting period.
The entry with the most votes will win, but in case of a tie a Contest Mod will cast the tie-breaker vote.
You can vote for entries and post your feedback in this thread, but if you rather have your vote and/or feedback be anonymous you can PM it to @Calle as well.
The voting period deadline is July 31th, 9:00 CET, which is 7:00 game time (both times are in a.m.).

The Entries

The Egg upside down,
  Beneath the green bamboo leaf,
    Pearl of the forest.

	The old Mother dies below,
	 Her colorful robes fading.

	  The Nymph emerges,
	A naked and writhing worm, 
	   Gorging itself fat.

	 The coffin made for a bed,
	In sleep it dreams of beauty.

    Jewel of the forest,
  Now outstretch your rainbow wings,
Flutter Butterfly.

The Lepidopterist

Lepidopterology is the study of butterflies and moths to the exclusion of all other insects. A strange lepidopterist lives in a termite-infested house on the edge of town, neighbor to nothing and no-one.  If he had room in his heart for beetles and spiders and other forms of creeping, crawling life, he would be an entomologist and not half as strange, but his consuming obsession does not extend to anything else.

Only butterflies and moths.

Coyotes used to prowl through the tall yellow grass behind the house, but the lepidopterist is long in the tooth and knew just how to scare them away so that they wouldn’t come back. The ravens and the crows were next, then the speckled eggs in the cradle of the nest: all still and flightless when his work was done. He is no ornithologist, either. Removing them made room for his favourite things to breathe and fly free, and by the might of the same blunt tools, a butterfly garden was soon erected in the backyard.

Inside the house, there are dozens of wooden cases with glass fronts, designed for displaying preserved butterflies and moths. Most lie as bare as his kitchen cabinets, which makes him a strange lepidopterist: he hasn’t the stomach to keep any. Those that remain are ragged monarchs chewed up and spat out by whatever creature tasted their bright, bitter wings and thought the better of it.
	
He stores his blunt tools next to a bell jar on his workbench. The glass contains decomposing leaf litter and wilting flowers, and has imprisoned within it a single specimen of the genus Dryas. This one he has nicknamed Julia, because her species is the D. iulia; a bad joke inherited from the entomologist who lived in the house before him. Difficult to swallow without smiling.

Now, the lepidopterist lifts the bell jar like the lid of a serving dish and extracts her with feather-light expertise. Several of her brothers and sisters have made their home beneath the poplars in the butterfly garden, as common as mud. He often watches them from the kitchen window whenever the southern sun grows hot enough to dry him out, but one day Julia came in to keep him company, clinging to his green-checkered shirt rather than the greenery outside. A kindred spirit, she too chose the safety and security of a short life indoors over the nasty, brutish freedom God intended.

Julia trusts his gnarled finger is a twig to rest on, sprinkling the ridges and wrinkles with her sweet pixie dust. Her passionfruit wings are long and tucked in protectively against her abdomen. Some would describe them as gossamer, but they are far more delicate than that. Like rice paper. He has heard that edible confetti is made out of it these days so that when it’s thrown at weddings it doesn’t harm the local wildlife. It just dissolves away to nothing in the rain. 

Melts in the mouth.

He swallows the butterfly whole and fluttering.

Butterfly
You hover over me in the sky
Then settle on a petal you flew by
No strife in your life for you to cry
To claim the same, grow wings and fly
I'd be happy, a bit sappy but it's no lie

by @Dream Maker

Blue, brown and red, and yellow, and white
Up you go with your colourful wings
Together with others or alone
Travelling amongst colourful plants
Eternally free to go where you want
Rain and sunshine, a rainbow in the sky
Flying with the sun warming your wings
Lower you fly when you found what you need
Yellow are the flowers you eat from and rest on

caliginous sky
See! Colourful butterfly
a speck of hope flies

by @Salenea

полуденное солнце
/ poh • loo • dyen • no • ye / / colnts • ye /
THE MIDNIGHT SUN

светлый цветок
/ sv • yet • lē  / tsvye • tohk /
A GLOWING BLOSSOM

золотой и нежный
/ zoh • lo • to • ē /  / i /  / nye • zh'nē /
GOLD AND GENTLE

сон фантазия
/ sohn / fan • taz • ē • yah /
A SLEEP FANTASY

Summer passes by
As the butterflies circle
Carefree and alive

In her dreams she learned to fly.

Free from the drudge, rainbow wings bore her aloft.

But dawn always stole the memories.

And she lived a slow life on the ground until the night came again.

B U T T E R   F L I E S

Milk was taken from an udder,

Made into a bit of butter, 

It dreamed to fly, 

Across the sky,

To set its heart a flutter.

~

Many think butter can not dream,

Or swim across a raging stream.

But know the spell, 

Cast it well,

And butter can even scheme.

~

It was given to someone in trade,

A witch bestowed it to a maid,

“Wanna please your man? 

Try butter in a can!”

And then a deal was made.

~

The maid laid down that night to sleep,

The butter was left alone to weep,

“I must be free! 

So much to see!”

It left without a peep.

Her husband was a well known tinker,

In the past a renown thinker.

He was quite wise, 

Won many a prize,

Hard times made him a drinker.

~

The butter slipped into his humble study,

Sliding under the door like living puddy,

An odd contraption, 

The butter could captain,

It thought it was quite lucky.

~

Under the light of the moon,

The butter set up its boon,

A sturdy rocket, 

Could fit in your pocket,

The butter would fly very soon.

~

The maid woke up with a start,

“Honey, did you just fart?”

“No that’s my missile, 

That runs on thistle!

I hope it doesn’t blow apart!”

~

They quickly ran to the yard,

Where the butter sang like a bard,

“I’m going up! 

With this tin cup!”

By the fence the couple was barred.

~

“It’s a dangerous rocket it’s true!

It’s design to blow in two!

Don’t do it lad!”

“You’re not my dad!”

Into the sky he flew.

~

After the rocket was shot,

Butter laid down on a cot,

“I’m going places,

Seeing new faces!”

Unaware the rocket was hot.

~

The butter had begun to melt,

Something it had seen and felt,

“I’m getting soft,

But I’m still aloft!”

It tightened the proverbial belt.

~

There was little the butter could do,

As its body was turned into goo

It laughed and goaded,

As the ship exploded,

Its adventure appeared to be through,

~

But all that melted butter escaped the rocket as a spray,

Flying past the moon like reindeer pulling Santa and his sleigh,

It didn’t stop,

Not a single drop,

It joined the milky-way.

~

It’s a truth that many will bury,

About our world that’s rather merry,

Be at ease,

The moon is cheese,

Outer space is filled with dairy.

The Summer of 20

Fall, syrup rain, fall from thy stormy dune!
Spin, worm, spin and strand,
then crawl, crawl in thy cocoon.

Wherefore do talon’d angels cry their thunder-spelt tune
and crash, and burn, and smite against the sand—
crash to glass, crashing from their stormy dune?

O choked worm, ensnared by molasses June,
amid breathless air and spurred land,
cower and melt, melt in thy cocoon.

Swaddled in reincarnate womb,
transmogrify as per primordial demand
or drown, drown beneath the stormy dune.

Wait not for light upon the loom.
If thou fear to fly so grand,
grand against the stormy dune,
then die, die in thy cocoon.

A Villanelle by @Spoopy Scary

Tonight would be long, that became clear during his lonely drive to the lab, a pretense to avoid another talk about how to tell their daughter, another night spent with the fading fluorescent lights and stacks of computer printouts instead of at home; finding refuge where he had solitude and something to avoid the idle moments where his mind retraced the same thoughts about the beginning and pending end of his marriage. He was calm even as he saw another run of weather simulations go off the rails, a few predictable values then a dramatic divergence, the same pattern they followed. He had total focus on this problem. While he waited at his terminal for the noise of the printer to cease the problem filled his mind.

It was hours past midnight when the fatigue came. His coffee sat on his desk, cold and forgotten; a page slipped out of his hand as his head fell down on the open book like it was a pillow in his bed. Memories of moments with his wife seeped into his dreams, bringing with them unanswered questions. Was he drunk or sober at the department mixer when he saw her for the first time and laughed at her jokes? Was she sympathetic or hysteric when he fumbled with the dimmer switch and drove into a lamppost in that parking lot three months ago? He awoke in a haze of indecision; a feeling akin to Zhuangzhi’s tale of a man whose dreams of being a butterfly left him uncertain if his waking life was merely a butterfly’s dream.

After his sleep he was no longer looking for a way to make sense of his results, instead searching for why he had made so little progress. Another look through the binders provided him with an uncomfortable answer. The records showed that even the smallest differences in initial inputs were amplified ten millionfold by the final cycle; any promise of seeing the future demanded knowing every detail to an impossible precision. The force from a single butterfly could change it all. Looking backward posed the same problem, the present he knew relied on thousands of small interaction long forgotten. Now he saw a wall between the past and the future. One truth lay buried under the weight of billion possibilities; beyond the reach of any man or machine. From a divine or demonic realm it taunted Samuel; confined to his present and all too aware of how his memories and auguries were pale imitations of that one truth. 

His final run was like all of the others: it grew into something unforeseeable, unrecognizable, and the only way to avoid that metamorphosis was to end it early. On his way home he chuckled to himself. All the hopes and fears that his predictions had birthed were now melting away like ice. He could not know or delay what the future held, all he could control was his own reaction to it.

Something that should be commonplace in the world, but for the lone wolf it receives little from it's viewpoint as it wonders what it has done wrong to earn such a callous treatment from the others.
It is trying so hard to be accepted to the others but it hasn't worked or clicked in the lone wolf's mind and it ponders why it has to fight so hard in order to receive this simple thing that is common in the world around it, from the bugs all way to Mother Nature herself they all have it but not him.

There are many entries for this first round of microfiction and poetry, but because several are short poems and every entry is 500 words or less, 8 days of voting and reviewing should still be enough. 

If I missed any, let me know and I will edit it in. 

Picking one favourite from a diverse set of entries like this may be hard and since we have 12 entries, I will allow two votes if you have a hard time choosing. One for your absolute favourite and one for your runner-up.
Picking a runner-up is not mandatory; if you know without a doubt which one you like best you may just vote for the one.  

August 1st the next RPGC will begin.

Enjoy reading these entries. I know I did when I made this post :)

The Miltank rolled to Bear again. "Low Kick!" Andy instructed and the Primeape did, but as they collided he got thrown back again. He growled softly, glaring at the rolling ball. He was able to dodge the next roll just barely.
"Lower, Bear. Low Kick near the ground."
The Primeape dove to the rolling Miltank and Low Kicked her where she touched the ground. The Miltank flew through the sky. 
"Now jump and Low Kick again."
With the Miltank still in the air, Bear jumped up and Low Kicked the Miltank up. She slammed into the ceiling and dropped to the ground.

The Miltank unrolled and stayed down. That prompted a victory dance from Bear and Andy applauded his Pokémon. 



On the day of StarFall was Michael already up and in the common area of the Pokémon Center, he sat on the couch with a cup of coffee on the small table in front of him and newspaper open. He guessed Niccia was still asleep; it still was early after all. And he knew for a fact his uncle was still asleep; he never woke up early. Mindy was likewise not an early bird.

Lytse lay on the floor and Benny flew around. Unlike his trainer was the Butterfree up with the first light of the sun and he was glad to have some company.
It was Lytse who noticed Frosiien first and he walked to the door to greet her.

Loksfjoer Contest Mod

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