The Ink Well Highlights Magazine #3 (April 10, 2021)

[theinkwell]

_{Image modified using a picture by Becca Clark from Pixabay}

This weekly magazine serves to highlight short stories posted to The Ink Well community that stood out and were awarded a Curie vote.

We are showcasing authors who have not only contributed well-written and edited stories, but who also comply with all of the community rules posted on our home page, including reading and commenting on the work of other authors. These activities help our community thrive!

The stories shared in this post represent some of the best creative writing posted to Hive. Please do check out the highlighted authors and show your support.

For those new to Hive, @curie is one of the major curation guilds that works diligently behind the scenes to ensure exceptional content is rewarded. The Ink Well is part of curie's community support program, allowing us to reward well-crafted stories with higher post payouts. @curie rewards all categories of high quality content on hive, so if you want to check out the best of the best, they're a good place to start. Visit their homepage here.

All liquid rewards from The Ink Well highlights magazine and the weekly fiction prompt are used for community operational expenses.

The following are some of our top curated stories from April 1-9, 2021.

Featured Author: @ricardo993
Little Lightning

Image source: the author

They tried to wake her up, but she was anchored to her dreams, screaming in desperation. That night was called "The Night of Thunder" in the newspapers. Of these events, Maya hardly paid attention, except once her grandfather smiled at her. This was because he appeared and vanished within minutes of appearing. Without anyone calling or warning him. On that occasion, he stayed for two hours with the family celebrating. -@ricardo993

Inheritances come in all shapes and sizes! And some of them are genetic. This is quite an imaginative story, @ricardo993. It would certainly be interesting to see what Little Lightning decides to do with her super powers. Thank you for sharing your story in The Ink Well. -@theinkwell

Featured Author: @bruno-kema
Memories and Moments

Image source Unsplash

I tried to ignore the dreams and memories, but with time it became more and more impossible. I could be reading the day's paper, then find myself laughing at an old joke I never heard. Or I could be doing my laundry, then suddenly start crying over an old heartbreak. And almost every time, my nose is assaulted with the sickly sweet smell of freshly cooked bacon. -@bruno-kema

Marcel Proust wrote one of the masterpieces of world literature. It all began with the aroma of a madeleine. For your protagonist, the trigger is bacon. The response is equally powerful and life changing. I think this is so clever. Well, it must be, if it made me think of Proust. -@agmoore

Featured Author: @warpedpoetic
Deconstruction of my Mind: a piece of speculation

Image source: Pixabay

At first, you seek reaffirmation of your reality. You need to be sure that you cannot change your reality into something new. When you have satisfied your senses as to the regularity of every sweep of bird wings in the sky, the constant drama of crickets at night, the steady swing of trees in the wind, the heat the sun brings, the emptiness of your bed where missing bodies had once found shape, you go within. Your mind becomes the uncharted territory that you have to travel. In it, you hope to find something new—an animal, a god, a human being just trying to be. -@warpedpoetic

This piece took my breath away, @warpedpoetic. It explores a world of altered consciousness that one can understand only by going there. To those of us who can only imagine, it feels very raw and real and authentic. I believe one can hunger for something beyond this world and this life with all of its rhythms and problems, and then, upon finding it, feel an ever growing need to experience its most powerful moments. Even beyond knowing the reason one sought an elevated reality in the first place. Even at risk of death in the pursuit of it. -@jayna

Featured Author: @zanoz
The Perfect Dinner

Image source: Pixabay

I stared at the different dishes of assorted delicacies I had lined up and displayed for Felix. The effort seemed wasted. The fact that I had no one to share all the food with made me even more bitter.
Being with Felix for years had been a long life wish and dream come true but at the same time, it seemed like a furnished hell prepared for separate souls. -@zanoz

There is no simple way to interpret the motivation of Felix. The reader does worry, however, about Sara. She herself describes her behavior as obsessive. At best, the relationship between the two seems a little pathological. Her needs, his peculiar behavior. It does not appear to this reader that good things will come in the long term, or maybe even the short term.

You handle the dynamic between the characters with care. Your suggestions are subtle and leave the reader room for interpretation. That's a good thing in a writer. -@theinkwell

Thank you for reading our weekly magazine!

@jayna and @agmoore

p.s. You can see the past magazines here: #1, #2

We would like to invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna and @agmoore.

We also invite you to follow The Ink Well curation trail on the Hive blockchain, at https://hive.vote/. Simply navigate to the curation trail section and search for theinkwell (all one word with no @ symbol) and our trail will pop up as an option.

Similarly delegations are possible on Hive using the fantastic https://peakd.com/ Hive Blockchain front end. If you wish to delegate to @theinkwell, you can do this from the wallet section of https://peakd.com/

A big thank you to all of our delegators:
@jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @iamraincrystal, @generikat, @shanibeer, @marlyncabrera, @owasco, @preparedwombat, @marcybetancourt, @zeurich, @barge, @lacrucita, @adncabrera, @vision-of-esca, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @rypo01, @evagavilan2 and @bertrayo.

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