Raven daringly hopped lower on the bare limb to be near the humans. Waves of emotion thrummed through the frosty air as he felt their joy and excitement of new ideas. The humans paused, talked of the lecture just heard, the books read, and made plans to meet later at a cabin in the spruce forest. Raven reveled in their newly forged feelings of belonging as it flowed around him. He would bring his own gang of ravens, and they would listen outside the cabin window. He flicked his rump feathers at the pesky malamute and flew up to the lamppost.

In a contest sponsored by UAF Marketing and Communications, English majors at UAF took a stab at writing a 100-word story to illustrate this drawing by another UAF student, Elbot Carman. Wendy Uzzell wrote the winning entry.

Comment on this story

May 2, 2010 4:39 AM

I would like to say, as the artist behind this piece that I am very very pleased with the piece of fiction that were chosen to accompany it.  I just wish I could've read them all!

To provide a bit of background information for the authors of these pieces, since I no longer need to withhold it seeing how your stories are finished...

The characters in this piece were actually designed for an Alaska based comic that I've thrown in the backburner, so to speak.  All of them are transplants to the Fairbanks area, like myself.   Their names, going from right to left, are Rosso, Nero, and Bianca (all three of them are named (in Italian) after their hair colors).  The dog, who is an American Eskimo Dog, is named Indaco, which is Italian for indigo.

My pre-written facts aside, I'm very impressed with the way you folks interpreted the characters' identities.  Kudos.