SandScript 2023 [Digital Exclusive]

Discoveries
Mackenzie Dougherty
It had become clear to Brigid that Emberon Academy had certainly failed her when she started
going through her History of Emberon 7th Edition textbook to find any reasons as to why
she found a map of the world with more islands than the ones on every book or map anyone
had ever seen. It had occurred to her that it could have been someone drawing their own
fantastical world, but it was too official looking to be a creative endeavor, one that was left in a
textbook held in the largest library in all of Emberon, anyways. Immediately after the confusion
of seeing a different world map, Brigid felt her heart drop to the floor and she was determined
to find out why. Even as a child, she understood when to trust her gut.
It started at Belbroke Library, where twelve-year-old Brigid could be found debating whether
to get A Thousand Years of Torchwood by Dimitri Warren, one of the most famous historians
of Brigid’s time. It was the time of year her parents would start traveling, to sell their enchanted
goodies, and the girl wanted to give them all the information they could ever need on any of
the places they may end up. The only issue was that her father hadn’t finalized the path he
would take due to the at-home trading business being overwhelmingly busy. After a couple
of hours standing in the history section, stomach grumbling and lips dry, she decided to trust
her gut. Just days later, her father announced he would be going directly through Torchwood
halfway through the next journey he and his love were going to be taking. Her instincts had
proven accurate, and from then on, she had learned to trust it.
It had only been half an hour since she started reading her textbook but the tower of history
texts next to her desk seemed to be watching her because there was no way she would be
able to read everything and pay attention to what she was looking for at the same time. History
was the one class, other than potion-making, that she struggled to keep up with as the girl
never had a clue what events were important enough to note down, except for the one event
that everyone knew: The Disappearance. It had been nearly 155 years since all the Gods
vanished, no evidence of ever really existing at all; the only real change people noticed was
that the world seemed filtered in darkness. Struggles didn’t increase, death didn’t claim a
million victims, plants continued thriving, and the suns were still glowing. It really was as if the
worshiped Gods had never existed to begin with. How could a group of beings once thought
to be all powerful completely disappear with only negligible side effects?
Standing up from her emerald desk, trimmed in gold with foreign knick-knacks, Brigid grabbed
a duffle bag out of her closet, throwing the stack of books haunting her into the bag that never
ended. Her best friend, Rain Lewis, had gotten tired of helping carry books back home from
the library so she enchanted the bag to be bottomless, and even added a little weightless
spell to help prevent back problems. Once the last book went into her bag, Brigid stepped
out of her small cottage home and took a long, deep breath, the crisp autumn air tickling her
nose. The lavender glow of the small garden her mother tended was extra bright this time of
the year and it made her crave BurnBerries. Brigid looked over to the house next door, hoping
Rain and her brothers would be able to help her study. The triplets were known to sneak the
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