Year 8 Student Finalist in Young Writers Competition

Year 8 student Ananya G. has been selected as a finalist for the Young Writers Competition

Well done to Year 8 student Ananya G., who has been selected as a finalist in the Cumberland City Council Young Writers Competition.

The competition invites young writers aged 8 to 18 who live in or attend school within the Cumberland City Council LGA and provides an opportunity for young writers to showcase their talents.

Ananya has beautifully written a short piece called ‘Between the Clouds’ which was inspired by a visual stimulus given to her of a girl sitting on a suitcase in the sky. We look forward to seeing where her writing journey takes her next.

Between The Clouds:

The photograph wasn’t much. Just a tattered piece of photo paper with soft, crinkled edges like my fading memory. Capturing the picture of the sky, where the shades of orange of the evening sun and the blue of the Nightfall collide. Streaks of white hues spread along the sky. Clouds.

This is the only thing I remember before my world had completely changed. Before the silence and the loss, before my parents were gone.

Back then, I used to lie on the cold grass every late afternoon and stare at the sky. Staring as the cool night engulfs the musky shades of the evening sky. It’s gone now. Not here anymore, and the memory leaves me with a heavy heart.

But holding this photo here again, it’s stirring something within me. Something I’m scared to let in, but it feels like a warm fire crackling on a cold night.

My finger ghosts over the sun, melting its musky, russet shades into the horizon like melted gold. I lean back, my head hitting the pillow as I hold it up, the faint glow of the light piercing through it. I lay the photo down, lost in thought. I shut my eyes, feeling myself there.

“Whenever you’re lost, just look at the sky, I’ll be there in between the clouds” My mother’s words replay in my mind.

Perched on that suitcase, with my legs dangling over the edge, with the sun’s reflection lighting up the land below. The breeze tangling in my hair, dancing to a silent rhythm as the sun dips down, casting an amber glow over the ocean below, penetrating the depths of the water like a gentle fire.

My lips curve into a smile as a tear rolls down my cheek, imagining this again, and something softens within me, evoking a feeling of comfort and warmth that I’ve yearned for, like something warm, like something inside me thawing, and my frozen dream, waking up.

I drifted my gaze to the suitcase I was sitting on; the creases on the leather were calloused, like the lines on my palm. To me, they're like a map of my dream.

The sky is stretching like an endless sea of sapphire and burnt orange.

The wind wraps around me like a cloak, caressing my skin as fresh, pristine air wafts into my lungs. And suddenly it clicks.

An epiphany.

Up here, it’s like a reflection on who I used to be; the sky doesn’t ask me to do anything, it just lets me exist as my own. Perhaps this dream was never lost; it was just waiting for me to return and continue dreaming.

Slowly, all the colours that are wrapped around me begin to fade. The cloud unravels. The gold and pink melt into black. Pitch black. But it doesn’t feel cold and empty. It feels like a spark of something warm and steady.

The dream is still with me, and I want it to be.

I want to keep dreaming about this.