Wolfenshire posted at 10:47AM Sun, 12 September 2021 - #4427202

All Renderosity members are eligible to enter except for staff. Therefore, this sampling is not eligible to be considered, yet I still offer it as I might an offering of burning incense to float on the wind and soon be gone. The oldest meaning of 'to render' is to render verse, and as a writer, I will offer both rendered verse and image as a tribute to this challenge.

To paper I have not set the ink of my quill for many a month and more, thus my mind is crowded with images of terrible sadness and words of such despair as to fill the sky as a newborn sun fills the heavens. But it is not a newborn sun that fills my thoughts, but a declining star, dying as the candle next to me is waning to its end. A world as none has seen in many lifetimes has descended upon our tranquil existence, and it is to such places the dark shadows gather. A new world to behold, and with it the guilty pleasures that are so jealously guarded by all measure of decency pushes against the boundaries of my mind – a sip of tea in the evening darkness, a scent of fresh bread on the morning breeze, a child’s laughter in the distance, a mother’s embrace, a father’s smile – these are things now stolen from us. Do I have the temper to sit under the candle's light and write of the flame, come life, come death, tempting me? Do I dare now dip that quill to ink, to set its flow to paper in a single thought, to give life to all that sleeps within the deepest of wells? Wake now, you demons and angels, wake and walk upon the Earth and wreck such havoc as to shake the heavens above. You are free to set alight the world with the sound of thunder, but you will know me when I sit beneath that flickering flame, and speak the spell to summon a world to life. Look not in fear, but hold high against that storm to the morning’s calm.

Wofenshire, written in the year of the plague.

I'm very, very impressed by your words, Wolfenshire. Thank you so much, also for the image. Love, Jacomina.