Four Worlds: A collaborative fiction

Artists' Statement

In the analysis part, we wrote highly descriptive “journey” narratives of two students from the same school. We explore the presence of authors within the characters they create. While Ivy composed her writing almost completely from her thoughts and feelings—much like how Hemingway projects himself into his character Nick in “Big Two-Hearted River”, Aurora mimicked Welty’s choice and wrote about a deeply closeted white teenage boy drowning in toxic masculinity—someone almost completely different from herself. Ivy experiments with the potential emotional resonance of her homesickness, Aurora tries to fully stretch the misery and pain of her character, attempting to draw pity from the reader. 

In the synthesis, the short story is written popcorn-style. Almost every sentence is written by the other in the pair. Across time and space, Rae and Cian meet each other while the narrative expands through both of their points of view. While trying to maintain our distinctive styles, we are also communicating our creative purpose—as authors of our stories—through the conversation between our characters. 

We chose these two articles, “A Worn Path” and “Big Two-Hearted River”  because they have similarities in the theme of "journey yet differences in the selection of materials and style. If Welty puts herself into her protagonist and writes a plain story, can she get the same attention that Hemingway had? What if we flip the situation around?

In this fictional world, we are not comparing pain, but exploring social phenomena within the profound and complex structure of gender roles. In real life, if a man is grappling with his sense of belonging, and a woman is struggling with sexual orientation and gender stereotypes, which of the two stories is more likely to be paid attention to by a patriarchal society? In our reflections, we find that throughout history, women are often forced to select more appealing, eye-catching, and even shocking themes and plots for stories to receive the same resonance from society as men do. For example, “The Yellow Wallpaper” uses horror plots to push people to reflect on gender oppression, while “A Worn Path” needs to contain a very pitiful and “politically correct” protagonist to attract readers' attention and discussion.

By setting up an inverted world, we have the opportunity to examine the impact of literary works that may appear in a different society and the problems they reflect. 

I

Another gust of wind blew away the fallen leaves, twisting them in the air and gradually disappearing. It is chilly outside. Rae put on her coat. She bought this coat from the school store; it’s gray and bloated. Winter in this place comes fast. It’s only been a few weeks, and she can barely see leaves on the giant yellow birch anymore on that everyday pass. Occasionally, there will be faint, rustling sounds from the woods.

Rae looked up at the sky. There, the moon still lay in the sky, across from the dawning sun. She was hoping to see a full moon, but it was curvy. The view was blurry with the white fog coming from the river downhill. She walked slowly along the road, and now and then she kicked a stone or a chestnut shell. Rae looked down at these chestnuts, the inside was empty, and the shell was split into three or four pieces. They piled up on one side of the road, and it is hard to tell their existence due to the misty air. Tiny drops of dew hang on exposed sides, shining and there’s no sign for it to slide away. Suddenly she saw a squirrel on the grass, hopping vigorously with a chestnut in its mouth. Her heart trembled every time its feet touched the ground. Back where she comes from, squirrels only live on trees beside the lake, and people only see them if they are lucky. But here, squirrels are everywhere, and they look bigger and more audacious. The next thing she knew, that squirrel had hopped away into the layers and layers of mist.

Rae walked slowly forward, it was a gentle descent and relatively narrow compared to other roads. This was a road that could be seen to the end. She knew several tall birch trees were standing on the far side of the road, but they were not visible yet. She could only see the green grass on both sides of the road and the crystal morning dew on the grass. She hasn't seen anyone since she left home. It was great. She walked slowly. It seemed that she was the only one left in the world. It was so comfortable. Some damp and cold air was gently applied to her face. Her hand holding the thermos felt a little cold. The water bottle slowly swayed with her footsteps, and sometimes hit the phone in her pocket. The sound of the collision was like the morning bell of the temple beside the west lake, echoing in the heavy fog. 

She knows that soon she will see the white birches. Rae is stepping on the only bits on the road that have not been blown away by the wind. It was good. The branches above her head stretched upwards, looming in the fog. There seemed to be a few birds singing in the sky. She didn't really like the birdsong. She remembered that she used to stay up until four in the morning, and the birdsong in the yard of her family’s house kept her awake. But these things seemed to have passed.

She saw another squirrel lying on the trunk of a tree. The tail of this squirrel seemed to be bigger than the previous one. The squirrel held an acorn in its two paws and nibbled on it. The shell rolled to the side of the tree. The squirrel quickly jumped down from the tree and dug into the ground with its paws. Rae held her breath and moved slowly and carefully towards the squirrel under the tree. The squirrel didn't seem to care about her and was minding his own business. Its tail is very fluffy, and the hair on its body is very smooth and has a slippery feel. Closer, and closer, as the distance between her and the squirrel became shorter and shorter, she could feel her heart beating faster. Five meters, three meters, two meters. So close, it turned out that the squirrel was bigger than she had imagined when she got closer, and its tail was bigger and fluffier than what she had seen from a distance. Her eyes were fixed on the squirrel, and her hands tightly grasped the strap of the water bottle to prevent it from hitting the phone in her pocket. When she was only half a meter away from the squirrel, the squirrel suddenly twisted its body and jumped back into the fog.

Well, I want to touch it. Rae thought. But she also knew that this was unlikely. Although the squirrels here are friendly, they will not be stupid enough to stay there and let another potentially dangerous human touch them. I am a little tired, she thought. The bag of the schoolbag weighed on her shoulders and felt a little heavy. She continued to move forward bit by bit. 

Over there were a few birch trees at the end of the road, towering in the mist. She liked those trees very much. They were so white that they almost blended into the mist. A few leaves were still stubbornly hanging on the branches. Rae shivered. "The weather is really getting colder," she murmured to herself, "This morning is really good. Good morning." The morning sun in the distance seemed to be higher, and she looked up, and the crescent moon seemed even more blurred than before. Maybe being a squirrel would be nice, she thought and pushed open the heavy door of the classroom.

“Good morning.”

II

It was March—a misty day in the early morning. Walking down the middle of the path was a sturdy youth, slightly greasy hair pushed back confidently, a large water bottle slung over his right shoulder. His name was Cian Halston. His eyes were set straight and steadily forward, barely looking down as his bare legs strode along the road. Pebbles and flicks of mud flew up behind his snickers; he carried with him the purpose and simple heaviness of an animated boulder.

He wore a gray hoodie over a sports t-shirt, and below that a pair of black shorts. They clung tightly to his muscles bulging and bursting with heat. He carried a black sac on his left, the thin strap sunken into the angle of his bent arm as his hand rested snugly in his large hoodie pocket. Inside the sac were a pair of boxing gloves, borrowed from Theo; an extra pair of pants; some gift given by a girl he had been seeing.

With his water and sac he marched down the road, past chunks of ugly snow. Up on the hill everything was yet on the brink of thawing. Leafless trees reached out with their barren branches, and the sky seemed to press into the ground, melting each other into the same grayish white. Cold air swam around him. “It’ll be over,”  Cian muttered to himself, in the gruff voice of a teenager who woke up too early. “Once I get to the gym. It’s warm there.” He dug his hand deeper into the pocket and picked up his pace.

“Hey.” Shiny red nails tapped on his shoulder.

“Oh. What’s up?” He turned to the girl that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

“So, are you coming or what?”

“To what?’

“The haunted house party, silly! Those tickets I gave you, remember?”

“Oh, I didn’t get a chance to take a look yet. Sorry.” They must have been crumpled by now. They never left the sac.

“But you’ll go, and you’ll protect me from those scary ghosts, right?” Her red nails poked his chest playfully.

“R...right. Of course. See you.” He turned and kept walking.

“Work those muscles up for me!” The girl sang after him.

The clouds drooped heavier and darker as he went on. At last his path was met by a larger road winding down an open field. He stopped to look around; the gym was right on the other side of the field. A single purple dot was moving along the road. It danced up and down against the shining white. He squinted his eyes and said, “I should catch up.” He broke from the path and trudged into the mud-tainted snow, heading straight for the dancing dot.

His snickers plunged into the freezing slop. The coldness soaked through his soles and climbed up his legs, but he kept moving. The sun came out, and all of a sudden the ground started to thaw. Brown water flowed down the field as Cian started to run, leaving a trail of soggy footprints behind. He kicked and fought against the oozing, whispering slush as it swept across his ankles. Still, he kept running. His well-trained legs harnessed energy with every step he took; his shoulders were drawn back, swift cuts in the air; his back was bent and tense, every inch of his flesh pulsing to endure.

Finally, he cut through the field—the purple was right before his eyes. But his strong legs gave away like noodles tangled up on a plate. He took a few wobbly steps forward, his eyes drifting in a million directions, and then reached out as if his arm was a rickety-old piece of wood. He seemed like an eighty-year-old infant. He tapped.

“Hey Cian! How’s it going? You came out of nowhere!”

“Theo—dude, you weren’t paying attention. I came running across the field!”

He wiped his sweaty hand on his shorts before they slapped palms. Underneath those thin layers of hoodie and shorts, all the skin on his body had begun sweating. They trudged down the path shoulder-to-shoulder. The road was wet and slippery, and patches of soil were breaking through the melting snow. He hardened his steps, trying not to fall. The sun shone brightly onto Theo’s jacket.

“Nice jacket, by the way.”

“Thanks! I love the color. As soon as I saw it, I was like ‘I need a purple like that…’ Hey, you would look sick in purple as well. Or maybe something pink or green or yellow or blue—”

“Nah, I don’t like all these colors. Only black and gray suits me good.”

“Bullshit. You’ve never tried them. How would you ever know if you don’t try? I bet you’ll look good.”

He stared at Theo’s puffy jacket a bit more. He shivered.

“Don’t you feel cold in that sad hoodie? It’s freezing out here…You should be wearing a jacket, like me.”

“N…no. I never wear jackets, not even in winter. Hoodies are warm enough.”

“Alright—”

His socks squished with water as he walked, so he tried to mute them with softer steps. He ruffled his hair; a few strands fell into his vision; he pushed them back.

“Uh, those boxing gloves you lent me last week…”

“Oh right! I forgot about it. Do you have them with you?”

“Yeah—I was wondering if I could keep them a bit longer? I just need to use them a couple more times…I’ll clean them up and give them back after that. I promise.”

“No problem! Hey, you’re going to the haunted house thing, right?”

“Probably.”

“I think I might go, too.”

“Really? That’s good. We need more guys around to calm things down if it gets scary—” He tried to make his voice sound gruff. “Right?”

He looked at Theo. Sunshine came from behind Theo, casting his face into the shadows. 

“You know what, Cian? I gotta be honest, I think I might be spooked out as well. But what’s fun if you’re not scared at all?”

And that was when Cian slipped. Down he went straight onto the ground, like a boulder hitting the road with a painful thud. He laid there limp next to the thawing snow; the soil was so close to bursting out.

The rest of the walk he was stiff and silent as a rock. He needed only to get to the gym, and was ready to collapse as he entered the heated room. Yet when he saw boxers lunging at each other, as he had a million times, he froze down the spine.

How utterly cold it was!

III

Out the back door, he sprang, and came upon, curiously, a running stream. 

She walked further down the hill. Surprisingly, the river was frozen.

A crescent moon hangs still on the opposite bank, the sky is a misty black. He lowered his gaze and saw a shadow.

On the other side, a black figure was standing there, quietly and still. 

It was a girl, he took a few more steps to get a better view.

The figure was standing in white, white ground, white branches, white everything, as she adjusted to the brightness, she realized that it was snow. A boy, or a young adult was standing in the snow——with bare legs.

A gust of warm breeze blew across the stream as he grew less stiff. A hesitant call came from the other side.

Hi——

Who are you?

Who are you?

Do you care?

…

Rae remained silent, she could feel the cold air coming from the other side of the river, so she wrapped her coat a bit tighter.

Orange leaves flew across the stream and rested on his shoulders. As soon as they landed, Cian understood.

Why were you wandering? 

Why?

You did it all for almost nothing.

Some people will know what I’m talking about.  

Right. Of course, they’ll know. They always do.

Then what about you? Aren’t you wandering about, too?

…

Why are your pains so open and so…perfect?

Can’t you see? Only when my wounds are open and bleeding—

can our stories be seen.