1. Wild Ride
Lauren St John

10. Setting Descriptions
The river Chust, from which the village took its name, forked in two by the imposing boulders and snaked through the desolate woods. With deep banks, the river had spent ten thousand years eating its way gently down into the thick soft dark forest soil. Its verges were moss laden blankets that dripped leaf mould into the slow brown water. Overhead, like murderous, harbingers of death, ravens circled, their calls echoing over the bleak morning, drawn ever nearer by the stench of death.

11. Setting Descriptions
It was quite a small room, with heavy black beams in the ceiling. By daylight, it was amazingly dirty. The stones of the floor were stained and greasy, ash was piled within the fender, and the cobwebs hung in dusty droops from the beams. There was a layer of dust on the skull. Sophie absently wiped it off as she went to peer into the sink beside the workbench. She shuddered at the pink and grey slime in it and the white ooze dripping from the pump above it. An acrid odour assaulted her nostrils and she fought down the urge to vomit.

12. Setting Descriptions
Far below where the golden sun smiled, on the surface, deeper than the rainbow coral, beyond the darkest of caverns stood the most glorious of all sights. Like golden shards from heaven, beams of light sliced through the darkness to reveal a myriad of colours. Plants, all neatly placed in organised rows waved at the passing traffic: shoals of silver fish; scuttling, red crab; lumbering purple squid and, of course, the daughters of Triton.

13. Setting Descriptions
As the multiple moons exchanged places with the sun in the now azure sky, a misty haze began to form under the canopy of dancing trees. Curling around thick spiralling branches were constricting vines, which braced and creaked – taking choking holds of the helpless trunks within. Dangling down from the layer of moss, vast, bold leaves flickered like flames in the growing bluster of wind. The most delightful sight was the strange, exotic, unfamiliar plants which glowed bright neon colours. Sapphire, ruby and emerald pierced the sometimes dull surroundings - filling it with a song of life and colour.

14. Setting Descriptions
The most delightful sight was the strange, exotic, unfamiliar plants which glowed bright neon colours. Sapphire, ruby and emerald pierced the dull surroundings - filling it with the song of life and colour. In addition, these supernatural forms danced and twisted as though keeping in time to some silent, environmental rhythm. This magical place was truly special, because even in the chaos of the natural surroundings, where vines choked vines and branches beat down branches.

15. Setting Descriptions
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. He could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window.