2025 Write On the Sound Contest
This year, Does It Have Pockets partnered with the Edmonds, Washington-based literary conference Write on the Sound to sponsor their annual writing contest. Here, we proudly present the first place winners in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction on the theme of “Time.” These pieces were judged by an anonymous panel of judges organized by the conference. — Camille Griep, DIHP EIC
Fiction | First Prize - Tera Schreiber
Awake
He leaned in to kiss her pale lips. Almost translucent from a century of sleep in this dark cave of brambles, her flawless skin flushed as he pressed his warm, eager lips against her remarkably soft mouth. She didn’t move at first. Prince Tristan worried that the legends were wrong. After all, a hundred years had passed. Did he really whack his way through thick walls of brambles, tearing his sleeves and scratching his royal skin, only to find his princess and be unable to wake her?
Briar Rose lay on a moldy cushion atop a slab of rock. One hundred years of rain, wind, and mice had done its damage to her bedding, but she was preserved as if in a specimen jar. Long sandy blond hair splayed out beneath her head, serene expression, delicate hands with perfectly manicured nails folded across her chest. Her dress was as dated as the styles worn by his great, great grandmother, but its lace and velvet remained perfectly intact and spotless.
Prince Tristan marveled at the magic of the fairy’s spell. “Thank you,” he whispered in gratitude. The bad luck of princes one hundred years ago was Prince Tristan’s good luck, because the fairy’s spell allowed him to be the man to rescue this perfect princess.
Inspired, Prince Tristan leaned in again to kiss the pale lips of his beloved. He reached his hand behind her head to caress the nape of her elegant neck. His heart leapt when he felt Briar Rose stir.
As quickly as his heart leapt, her hand slapped him across his face.
“Stop!” She sat up with a start. “Guards! Help!”
“It’s okay!” Prince Tristan shouted at the princess so to be heard over her shrieking.
Wild-eyed, the princess’s face reflected utter confusion as she looked around the dilapidated castle ensconced in a massive canopy of brambles.
“I’m Prince Tristan. I’m here to rescue you!”
The princess looked unconvinced.
Tristan continued, “You fell under a fairy’s spell on your sixteenth birthday when you pricked your finger on a spindle. You were cursed to sleep for one hundred years, and you were to be rescued by the kiss of a prince. I am that prince, and we are to live happily ever after!” Prince Tristan swept his arms wide and bowed with a satisfied smile.
The princess stared at Tristan with wide-eyed horror.
“You’re probably in a state of shock. Let’s slow down. I’m Prince Tristan of Valadon. I’m pleased to meet you, Princess Briar Rose.”
“You know my name, I grant you that. But I am princess of Valadon.” She surveyed the decrepit castle, overgrown with brambles, rotting beams, spiderwebs, bird nests, and smelling of mildew. “This is my castle. We have no prince.” Briar Rose blanched. “Have I really been asleep for a hundred years?”
“Yes.” Tristan beamed.
“So, my parents are gone, my nurse, our cooks, even my horses…all gone?”
Tristan had not considered that she might feel anything less than ecstatic to be rescued from her curse. “Yes.” He felt impatient with this discussion as it was detracting from his victory. He got the girl! This was his time! The beginning of his happily ever after!
Briar Rose arose from her moth-eaten bed and began searching the castle. She inspected every corner of the grand hall, where she had been sleeping for a century. Birds chattered, excited by the people exploring their sanctum. She poked under the brambles with a large stick. Rats skittered out. Undeterred, she whacked her way through the castle. She flushed grouse from the bushes. She explored thusly from room to room.
Tristan followed her. “You are not dressed to bushwhack.”
Briar Rose ignored him.
“It’s not an activity fit for a princess.” Tristan used his sternest voice, practicing for the day when he would be her husband.
Briar Rose whirled around, her face contorted in fury, and poked her stick toward him, causing the prince to take two steps backward, tripping on a crumbling footstool, landing on his royal backside.
The princess scowled and said in a voice at least as stern, “I am not leaving here until I am sure that no one else remains.”
Prince Tristan righted himself, dusted off his trousers, and sighed. The stories did not report such a fiery temperament. He had obsessed about the story of Briar Rose. He read every book, interviewed elders in the castle, and poured over genealogy charts. He had searched the forests of Valadon for the past year. He was an expert on the Sleeping Beauty, yet he had never heard of such defiance. A moment of doubt tickled his brain.
Used to ignoring self-doubt, the prince reminded himself that he was an expert, and a royal one at that. He certainly knew best. Wanting to hurry things along, Tristan helped Briar Rose search the castle. They found bats, birds, rats, spiders, rotting furniture, and a warren of rabbits under the pantry. But no signs of human life remained.
Briar Rose bled from bramble scratches across her face and arms from the strenuous work. Her hair was a ratty nest of tangles. Her face was sweaty. Her dress was torn and dirty. Her satin slippers were shreds. This is not how Tristan hoped to introduce her to his family. Still, he would overlook it this time. Surely the princess would settle once she had a bath and a meal.
“Come. I will take you to my castle.”
“Absolutely not,” she said.
Prince Tristan faltered. “Um…why not?”
“I don’t even know you. Why would I go anywhere with you?”
“Because you don’t have any other options.” He waved his arm, indicating the ruins. “There’s nothing here for you.”
Briar Rose’s face crumpled, and she cried for the first time in more than a hundred years.
The prince had not intended to be so harsh, but he was growing more and more impatient with the unexpected surliness of the princess. “Let me take you home.”
Briar Rose turned her red, puffy face toward him.
The prince recoiled slightly but quickly recovered. He reminded himself to be gentle with his future wife, because she was obviously struggling to adjust to her new situation.
No matter how ungrateful she was.
Sagging into a stupor of grief, Briar Rose followed him back through the tunnel he had hacked through the brambles.
They rode his gentle gelding on the long, hot trek toward the castle. The princess sat sidesaddle on the horse, tears streaming down her face, while Tristan sat behind her, holding the reins and chattering at her, telling her how clever he was to find her resting place, revealing his long obsession focused on rescuing her, proud of how he was at the right place at the right time.
After an hour, the prince dismounted and watered the horse at a bubbling stream. He tied the horse’s reins to a tree branch, approached the stream, and splashed water on his face to cool himself. He removed a leather canteen from the saddle bag and filled it with fresh, cold water. “Would you like some water?” He offered it to the princess.
Briar Rose accepted his canteen and drank for the first time in a century, finishing the entire container in one long, thirst-slaking drink. While the prince turned to refill the canteen, she astutely untied the horse’s reins from the branch, turned to straddle the horse, and jammed her feet into the stirrups. Before the prince had finished refilling the water, Briar Rose was off with Tristan’s beloved steed.
He heard the pounding of hoofbeats before he realized what was happening. He spun around, dropping his canteen in the stream, and saw the princess with her dated garments and sandy locks flowing in the wind, chunks of earth kicked up by the horse’s powerful hooves flying behind her.
“Stop! You’re going the wrong way!” He made a futile effort to run after the fleeing princess, failing to notice his canteen being carried away by the swift current—which was at least equally consequential considering the long distance to the next village.
While her muscles were weak from her hundred-year nap, the fairies gave Briar Rose the gifts of strength, courage, and cunning—all of which were far more valuable to her than a middling prince who had already served his purpose in her story. She did not look back.
~
Tera Schreiber is an out-of-practice lawyer, mom, and writer who creates stories across multiple genres for readers who seek transformative narratives. She hopes to inspire marginalized people to feel empowered to change narratives and thereby change the world. You can read some of her stories in Alternative Liberties, B Cubed Press, and in Your Body, My Rage (BDA Publishing). You can find her on Instagram and Threads @tera_s_writes and on Bluesky @terahs.bsky.social.
Creative Nonfiction | First Prize - Joy Archer
Roll Me Off the Boat Into the Sea
“What should I do if you die out here?” I said to my husband, Harry. It was easier than I thought it would be to say this.
“You should somehow push me overboard. You don’t want my body on board in the tropics.” He gazed out at the sea. A drum solo of coughs shook his body. “But first take pictures, or video, to prove I’m dead.” He looked over at me. “You’ll want that evidence.” I noticed how easily he’d responded. As if he’d been thinking it through.
We’d left the tiny tropical island nation of Tuvalu in the South Pacific Ocean two days earlier, bound for the Republic of Marshall Islands. Our 44’ sailboat had carried us south from Seattle to New Zealand over a period of 18 months. Now it was June 2023, and we were sailing north, homeward. After so many years of escaping infection in the United States, Mexico, French Polynesia, Fiji, New Zealand, and Tonga, Covid had come for Harry in Tuvalu. Tuvalu is one of the smallest countries in the world, and the last country in the world to get Covid.
We sprawled opposite each other in the cockpit as our sturdy vessel rode easily across the swell. The Covid home test kit sat on the cushion beside me, two lines announcing our plot twist. A light breeze moved a blonde curl off my forehead. We were making good time, and the boat movement was gentle. My heart, though, was seized with fear.
Harry’s symptoms had grown worse since we’d left Tuvalu. He had no appetite and was barely sipping water. A deep, phlegmy cough rattled the rigging. His skin glistened with sweat. We were a thousand miles—six or seven days of nonstop sailing—from the Marshall Islands and medical care. What if he got sicker?
All the news articles I’d read and videos I’d watched about Covid avalanched into my mind. The headlines blaring the likelihood of death for those over the age of 65—Harry was 68. The horrible ways people died from Covid, their lungs flooding, suffocation. Perfectly healthy people taken down in a matter of days.
I recognized we would have no options for saving Harry’s life if he grew sicker and required hospitalization. There is no hospital in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
I hadn’t thought of the need for photos or a video in the event of his death, and my mind clung to this idea. I spent several minutes imagining what I’d say in a video proving my husband was dead. What would my opening line be? Maybe “I’m here with my dead husband.” Or a softer start-up: “You’ll never guess what happened.” I’d probably begin with the camera on my own face. Then pan to Harry’s body? Or would I move so his body was behind me in the same frame, to prove we were there together? Would I even be able to speak? I’d never spoken in a world without Harry in it.
“If I’m down below and we think I’m going to die, you’d need to do everything possible to get me to climb up here to the cockpit.” Harry paused to cough again. “So it would be easier to get me off the boat.”
I stared at him. Again, not something I’d thought of.
“But if I was down below when it happened, you’d need to rig me up to the halyard, I think, and use the winch to haul me around,” Harry said. “Maybe try to put me into the climbing harness.”
I shrank at this visual, at me wrestling his leaden legs, his stiffening core. “It might be easiest to use the genoa halyard and bring me up through the forward hatch.”
“Ok.” Ok.
“You could roll me off the bow.” He adjusted the pillow behind his head.
I wanted him to stop talking about logistics. He was expecting too much of me. My mind was stuck on how I’d handle it emotionally if he died while we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. How would I manage staggering heartbreak in the minutes, hours, and days after it happened? Would I be able to keep my wits about me? Would I have the presence of mind to sail our vessel to the next port? Could I navigate a thousand miles across the open ocean without his help? The questions were gigantic.
“I don’t think I’m going to die,” Harry said. He gave me a weak smile. It was hard to take his words seriously since he’d just talked me through how to get rid of his body. “I feel awful, but I don’t feel like I’m going to die.”
I checked our position on the chart plotter, an electronic navigation system with GPS. Our tiny boat on the screen deviated slightly from the line showing our course. I tapped the autopilot and adjusted our track so we were back on the line. When we’d bought this boat several years earlier in Los Angeles, we’d agreed I’d be at the helm whenever we docked the boat or did any maneuvering in close quarters, like a marina. Our boat is roughly four times longer than a car, it weighs as much as seven or eight elephants, and it operates on a moving surface heavily influenced by current and wind. Harry, a United States Coast Guard licensed captain, had talked me through the scenario on the dock in Los Angeles: “This boat is really heavy, so the safest thing is for me to be taking the lines and getting on the dock, while you’re at the helm.” He had more physical strength to control the boat with the lines, while I could control the boat using the engine.
Internally I resisted. Driving the boat sounded terrifying. I’d never done that before. I didn’t know how.
“I’ll walk you through it,” Harry had said, watching my face. “You can do this.”
Over time Harry guided me, and I sharpened my skills until I could dock the boat even while all the dudes in the marina came out to scream “Watch out! There’s a woman at the helm!”
Sliding up and over the ocean swell with my ill husband, I was relieved by this history. Every time I’d been at the helm over the last several years was a deposit in the bank, ready for my withdrawal at a time like this.
For the next few days I watched every move Harry made, my mind a finely tuned, highly- calibrated analysis machine. He didn’t appear to get worse, but he also didn’t get better. An ocean passage is rough even without sickness on board. The lack of sleep, and the bewildering exhaustion of the sun and the wind, is tough on a body. Some of Harry’s symptoms could have been normal ocean-passage symptoms.
Then one morning I woke for my night watch with razor blades in my throat. We glided across the equator on the day I tested positive for Covid. Covid Lite, it turned out, a dramatic contrast with Harry’s Covid Heavy. A few days later we sailed through the pass at Majuro Atoll, the capital of the Marshall Islands.
We’d both arrived alive, if not well. Harry recovered from Covid and so did I.
After we left the Marshall Islands and sailed 35 days across the North Pacific Ocean to Sitka, Alaska, after we made our way south through the Inland Passage of Southeast Alaska, stopping to anchor in quiet, peaceful bays in British Columbia, after we arrived at our home port on Bainbridge Island, Washington to the ring of cow bells, the blast of a cannon and the joyful tears of our family and friends, after I’d fallen haphazardly into land life, a thought bloomed in me.
Harry had prepared me physically to handle our enormous vessel, coaching and guiding me for years until my self-confidence took root. The physical doing had led to my emotional grasp of the situation. Maybe he’d been repeating this process when he walked me through what to do with his body if he died in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Maybe, if that had happened, the physical acceptance of his death—rolling him off the bow into the sea—would have eased my emotional acceptance. Was this how he kept me safe? By teaching me how to survive without him?
Those days in the middle of the ocean shifted something in me. They showed me the truth that’s in my future. It sounds terrifying. I’ve never done it before. I don’t know how. The only thing to do—the only thing I’ll be able to do—is keep taking the wheel and navigating across the ocean.
~
Joy Archer, is a fan of the ocean. This story is an excerpt from her yet-to-be-published memoir, working title I Want to be Your Safest Place: A Memoir of Trust on the Ocean. She writes at the intersection of salt water, adventure, and growth on her Substack, Oh Joy! When she’s not swimming or sailing in the Salish Sea, she’s writing customer stories for Microsoft, hanging with her grown daughters, cooking with her husband or telling her cat what a good girl she is.
Poetry | First Prize - Nancy Knowles
Conclave at Nelscott Beach
Low tide reveals a basalt plateau
the conclave of cormorants gathered there
wings folded into sleek black cassocks
needle bills in profile against steely clouds
no arrowing flock, no furious flapping
they appear without warning, a shy omen
sudden inky smudges, some tableau conspiracy
then the sea smacks their ledge
froth leaping like a magician’s handkerchief the rock is bare, ensemble gone.
~
Nancy Knowles writes mostly literary/media analysis, grant proposals, and poetry. Her poetry has appeared in War, Literature, & the Arts; Willawaw Journal; Grand Little Things; Amethyst Review; Wild Roof Journal; Cirque; and Cathexis, among others. She earned first place for her Shakespearean sonnet “Diamond Craters” in 2022 from the Oregon Poetry Association. In October 2024, She published her first creative nonfiction “Super Blue Moon Yoga” on the Oregon Humanities website. She teaches English and Writing at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande.
