Danilos strutted into the Council room and carefully looked around the room, making eye contact with each counselor, before throwing a rolled parchment on the table.
"What is this?" someone asked.
"Open it," Danilos growled.
A counselor gingerly reached for the parchment and unrolled it enough to see the scrawl and the blob of sealing wax at the bottom of the page. "This is it, then? Signed and sealed by the king?"
"Counselors." Danilos leaned both palms on the table. "We are going to war."
***

You sit, you walk

You dance, you sing

You laugh, you cry

You do many a thing

You brush brown hair

From your face

You brush blonde hair

Cautiously into place

You write with a whethered pen

You read a dog-eared book

You smile a crooked smile

You give a knowing look

You groan when things

Don't go your way

But you deal with it

And it goes away

You feel the breeze 

Of a summer windy

You dress in clothes

*Oh, dear. I didn't get a chance to finish this yesterday, so I'm afraid it's a day late. Guess I'll just finish what I started. Sorry about the belatedness.*

Today is Ben the Editor Day, and I find myself in the difficult position of not knowing what to say. But I feel obliged to do something, so here goes nothing.

  Thank you, Ben, for creating ApricotPie.

  Thank you for letting me join.

  Thank you for editing the stuff that I submit.

  Thank you for publishing my posts for the world to see.

  Thank you for being so willing to do so much stuff here even though your own life is pretty busy!

  Thank you, Ben, for everything!

  I started writing when I was seven and a half, with very silly little stories in a composition notebook. One, the Mystery of the Missing Beehive, had a picture on one page and The End on the next page!

I was first introduced (have you noticed that everyone says that they were 'introduced' to this site?) to ApricotPie when a friend of mine emailed me a link and said it was a cool site and I should look at it.  I ignored it.  It sat in my email box for months.

Eight years ago when I first started writing, I refused to show anything to anyone. It was never good enough, or finished enough, or I thought that someone would make fun of it...

Then my mom started making me write for school. I had to show her what I wrote. Let me tell you, in those days I hated her red pen. I hated seeing the mistakes and errors, because that meant my writing hadn't been good. I didn't like admitting that something as close to my heart as my writing wasn't well executed. 

 Dear Ben,

Thank you so very much for creating Apricotpie.com. I have grown into a new person through this site. I have made friends almost closer than the ones I’ve been close to my entire life in person, and matured in my writing more than through anything else. I have become a poet when I thought I was not and I have fallen in love with writing more than ever before.