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THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT Kiano, a Scion (immortal) sorcerer with a severed soul and stolen memory, must fight against the dark entity that ravaged his identity; an enemy determined to destroy the Scions’ creator and the world they live in. While Kiano reveals the secrets of his fellow Scion and fights against them as an assassin for the regime, his stolen memories begin to break free, fragmented bits and pieces of his earlier life that have him questioning his role with the regime. Kiano must regain his memory to fight for his world and himself. THE ANTAGONIST PLOTS THE POINT Juels, a soulless entity known as the Darkness, has taken human form and conquered most of Jymon. She learns the prisoner her assassins brought to her is the severed soul of the Scion who entered her world and revealed to her its captivity. Juels tortures Kiano steals his memories and commands his identity to learn Scion secrets. She has branded him to steal the souls of those he kills to feed the Darkness of her world. She has turned Kiano against his own people to obtain her goals and destroy the Light to again rule the Darkness. CONJURING YOUR BREAKOUT TITLE Jymon (working title) That On Which She Fed Dark Souls DECIDING YOUR GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES Dark Fantasy/Horror 1984 by George Orwell – Similar worlds based on control, fear and watchful eyes. The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb – A young man is forced to be an assassin CORE WOUND AND THE PRIMARY CONFLICT An immortal sorcerer attempts to reclaim his memory and his soul from the dark entity that stole them to save his people from annihilation. OTHER MATTERS OF CONFLICT: TWO MORE LEVEL Inner Conflict: Kiano’s false memory is that he was captured and tortured by the Resistance before he was found and taken to Juels to be healed. Kiano believes he is an assassin but begins having internal conflicts. First, he spends time with a prostitute that looks similar to his eternal mate, Kale. Soon after, he meets a young boy (children are known as rats) who he learns is neglected and abused, which pulls at his heart. Kiano was guardian of the mortal children on Jymon. And after raiding the village of his former home, he encounters the child he raised as his own and attempts to kill her. After this scenario, he has dreams that have him questioning his loyalties. Secondary Conflict: Kiano defects to the Scion, taking the boy and two women with him as refuge from the Regime. He eventually collaborates with the Scion and the Resistance against the Regime, knowing there is a price for his capture. And if the assassins he worked with find him, he knows that he will suffer the same brutality as he made others suffer when he worked as an assassin. THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF SETTING The world of Jymon exists in the universe of Anavryn, comprised of seven worlds known as the worlds of Light where mortals and immortals called Scion – live together. A dead world, the Darkness, is centered within this universe. Only the Darkness is not dead. It has manifested itself into a human named Juels, now the dictator of Jymon. Jymon: Jymon is similar to Earth is its environment, only on a smaller scale, consisting of mountains, small towns, cities, water fronts, farmlands, etc. Grada: Grada is the only territory on Jymon that the Regime has not conquered. Throughout Grada are small villages. Most of Grada is a forested, mountainous territory. The Scion and many mortals live in Grada, the mortals unaware of the immortal nature of the Scion. As many of the villages house the Resistance, while isolated, they do keep contact with each other through travel by horseback and carry supplies to each other with horse and cart (there are no cars/trucks on this world). The military is aware of the villages in Grada, and occasionally raid them, but because the lowest ranks of the military are assigned this task, most of the villages remain untouched. The Caves of Noble’s Mountain: In Grada’s center is Noble’s Mountain, where the first of the Scion lived. The caves inside the mountain were created by Being (known as Noble, the Scion creator) and given over to the magic of the Scion to create it into a livable housing unit with tunnels running throughout the cave, apartments within the cave, common rooms for gathering and cooking, etc. The cave is supplied with hot springs and the Scion has created touch rocks and smokeless fire to light and heat the caves. The cave is furnished and livable. The Regime is unaware of the Scion holdout until Kiano, after he was given his false memory tells them. The Regime tried to find the cave, as well as the village beyond the cave where Kiano lived, but the Scion used magic to hide the cave and the several openings into the cave. No mortal can enter the cave without the help of a Scion. If a mortal does find their way into the cave, the spirits of the cave frighten them away. Jymon believes in the spiritual world, believing in helping and harming spirits. Kiano, as an assassin, believes he is human and is unaware of the magic of the cave. He is only aware of the rumors surrounding the stories of the cave. He is unaware that upon his defection, he is able to find the cave and enter as the spirits recognize him having a Scion soul. The Between: The Between is where dead souls go before taking on new life, either back to Earth or one of the three worlds that allow mortals. It is also a place where the Scion travels from one world to the next. Scion souls can act in the Between; mortal souls cannot. Mortal souls are simple energy in the Between and are drawn to the energy streams that connect the worlds. Scion souls also travel via the energy streams, but Scion souls can act in the Between. They can be as animated as they are in their own worlds. Form does not happen in the Between for a mortal soul. The soul appears as a light mist, constant movement, swaying. The soul in the Between feels like it’s meandering, floating in a dream. The best way to describe the Between is from Juel’s POV when she first entered it: A swirling flow of radiant blue light fused with misted shades of violet and white throughout its atmosphere. The air was warm, almost embracing, and she shuddered in the warmth that surrounded her. She drifted about these colors, the silence overwhelming compared to the constant groans and rumbles and crashes of her existence. She followed shadowy mists that interrupted the swirling air, only to find them blink away as if only imagined. She studied the raging, black flames at the edges of this light and realized, to her horror, that her Darkness, hardened beneath the flames, stood entombed in this Light. The City: The city is a mix of every past and present culture of Earth with its construction, its people, its businesses, its government. It’s a busy city that’s watched by the Regime through the military broken into high ranking Gray Guards, Secret Police, and the various military ranks. While part of the military but not subjected to the military’s discipline or structure is Dofya. Dofya outranks military personnel and can order them as deemed necessary. Dofya are Juels’ bodyguards and her personal assassins. They are the most frightening and cruelest of the Regime. Dangerous chatter would find the speaker left to rot in the towers north of the city if overheard by any in the military. To the dungeons, then the Darkness if overheard by Dofya. The Resistance has its own spy ring of mortals and Scion. These spies have thriving businesses in the city, have connections to the military, have friendships with Dofya, and live in the palace that the Regime claimed from the Scion with the war. The Darkness: The Darkness is Chaos, the time before time. It is a conscious energy. It creates and destroys. Creation and destruction are an innate concept of the Darkness. It has all knowledge to create, but what it creates does not have name or meaning. The Darkness creates and destroys without purpose. The Darkness wakes and sleeps. It is extremely active while awake, sluggish, but still active when dormant. When the Darkness sleeps, it doesn’t create or destroy. But what lives in the Darkness does destroy. It feeds upon itself. While dormant, the population of the Darkness dwindles. It sleeps to regenerate itself. When it wakes, it creates again. There is no specific cycle of activity or dormancy. It comes and goes randomly. There is no set time period. It can be active or dormant for days, weeks, or centuries. Being (creator of the Light) built a fire around the Darkness during a dormant stage and entombed the Darkness. The Darkness is a mountain form in the center of the Between. Over time, as Being’s fire died and entombed the Darkness, a small crack formed on the surface of the mountain rock. This crack works like a black hole. Anything that gets near it can be pulled in. But because it does not lie near the streams, nothing has entered until Kiano, who free-floating between worlds, got too close. Kiano woke the Darkness. Kiano was a foreign existence within the Darkness. The Darkness itself personified into a boda (a physical creature of the Darkness) and attacked Kiano. The boda tore a piece of Kiano’s soul, dropped it into the bowels of the Darkness where the Darkness, as an unknown, unseen entity terrorized and tortured it. The Darkness keeps itself alive with the creatures it creates. She keeps her corporeal form alive in the Light with the souls she feeds it. And as she is the Darkness personified, the souls she feeds the Darkness give her power. As soon as Juels became aware of the opening in the Darkness where Kiano entered, she instilled it with magic so that it could not be closed again. The Scion are not aware of the opening in the Darkness and Juels ensures that only she can close it. It is unknown how a Scion will fare in the Darkness or even if a Scion can be contained in the Darkness. Though Juels has trapped Kiano’s soul. Juels’s body can die in any world, but the Darkness will never die. Upon the loss of the Juels’s corporeal body, the energy that is the Darkness will be drawn back to its home. The Darkness can exist on any plane without form. It can take any form it chooses.

1) Story statement Enzo and Maddie must battle Mars’s next evolution to save their mothers. 2) Antagonist Augustus Sardeth is Maddie’s uncle, the president of the United States, and much more importantly, the mastermind behind the Mars Colony. He has left his vice president to govern and is using the purse of the US government to fund his bio-engineering experiments on Mars as he seeks to create a race that can thrive on the red planet. Earth is the past, Mars is the future, and the future may not be human. Most people think too small; Sardeth sees everything bigger. Now his niece is on Mars, and he’s ready for her to play her pivotal role in launching the Martian New Race to their next evolution. 3) Breakout Title Against the Red Sky: Colony Exposed This is book 2, and the first book is called Against the Red Sky: Mission X. 4) Genre and comps Genre: YA Sci-Fi action adventure Comps- Legend Series by Marie Lu, Warcross Marie Lu 5) Logline: As Mars becomes the testing ground for a terrifying new race, a boy haunted by everything he couldn’t save and a girl desperate not to lose her mother are drawn into a deadly game with a scientist determined to engineer Mars’s next evolution. 6) Levels of conflict a) Primary conflict- Fight bad guys, stop Sardeth b) Secondary conflict- love story and mom troubles – how do we save her and oops, one is a cyborg c) Inner conflict- Enzo- I’m not good enough. Maddie- If I can’t save her, I’m alone (fears abandonment). Enzo turmoil- Why would I ever be good enough for Maddie? I wouldn’t, I’m not. Maddie turmoil- I’ll have no family if I lose her. I’ll be truly abandoned, alone.

Opening scene: Introduces protagonist, hints at emotional wounds to be revealed later, begins to lay groundwork for the fantastical world the story inhabits, provides inciting incident and hints at core conflict to emerge. --------------------------------------------------------------- New Jersey can sometimes be hell but I didn’t expect it to be so literal. If I had known what was in store for me when I went to work, I would have called out sick that day, and every day for the next seventeen years. Unfortunately for me, precognition was not one of my magical abilities. Blissfully unaware of the horrors that lie ahead, I elbowed my way into Integritas Services, tucked in a tiny strip mall by the Jersey Shore, careful not to spill the coffee I precariously balanced on a wobbly cardboard tray, the low morning sun shining over my shoulder. Just past the small waiting area was the front desk, the Integritas logo blazing across it. Underneath the logo, in smaller letters: "Private investigations, bar spotting, police consulting, and more!" Along the top of the desk were pamphlets that went into our services and offerings in greater detail -- think your husband's cheating on you and trying to hide his cash? Here, have a brochure for our private eye and forensic accountant services. Own a bar and want to make sure your employees aren't lousy, good-for-nothing grifters? Hire one of our spotters. Franchise a chain of retail stores? We’ve got mystery shoppers for you. I even had a brochure all to myself, as the resident employee with magical abilities. Need a Mesmer to track down someone? Monitor your business? Maybe indulge in a bit of corporate espionage? Here's the guy for you, Oliver Parker. Premium pricing only, of course. Yeah, if a magical operation in Jersey surprises you, clearly you haven’t been to Seaside Heights after dark. The office was small, a former nursery transformed into a mostly open room with desks scattered under fluorescent lights. Along the back wall was the office that belonged to the owner, a storage closet, and a pair of meeting rooms. "Hey Gertie," I said as I approached the front desk. She was an older lady, already riffling through the paperwork for the day. She's been here longer than most of us. Longer than the current owner, even. I took out one of the coffee cups. "Extra cream and sugar for my favorite queen." "Bless you," she said, taking the cup and giving it a big sip. She closed her eyes and sighed. As I made my way deeper into the office, she asked, "We all set for this weekend?" I nodded. "I still have a copy of your key from the last time. Can't wait to spend some time with Buddy." She gave me a concerned look. "If you're not up for it..." I brought a finger to my necklace, touching my pet's tags, trying not to think too hard about my recently departed tabby cat. "Of course I'm up for it. I'm looking forward to spending time with him." "You just like watching him because he helps you meet cute gentlemen at the beach," she said. I flashed her a grin. "I can't help if he's such a good boy. He likes being the center of attention." "Don't spoil him too much. The vet says he needs to watch his diet," she added with a warning glare. "Your dog will be just fine, now stop worrying and start thinking about all the slots you’ll be playing at Vegas. You realize Atlantic City is closer and cheaper, right?" "Atlantic City doesn't have Rod Stewart, honey.” I had to concede that point. “Oh, Pete wants to see you. Watch out, Hurricane Jane is here.” She gave me a knowing look. Pete and Jane would be Pete Logan, the owner, and Jane Hall, his girlfriend. Pete took over Integritas a few years ago, inheriting the business from his mom. Jane didn’t work here, but she was very good at spending Pete’s money and being a general nuisance at the office. I looked at my watch. “What’s she doing up so early? She usually doesn’t get up til the crack of noon.” Gertie gave me a heck-if-I-know roll of her eyes and went back to her coffee and paperwork. I shrugged to myself, then dropped off everyone else’s coffee before going to Pete’s office. The door was open, so I peered in. Pete was in his mid-fifties, wearing boating shoes and khakis, a polo and a deep tan. His teeth were unnaturally white, and a key float hung out of his pocket in the shape of a buoy. He was talking to an old man, who was short and wrinkled, with liver spots all over his head. Next to him was Jane Hall, a young forty-something with big hair and bigger nails. She wore a ridiculous bright pink puffer vest, bright pink sweatpants, and a hideous yellow sweatshirt underneath. “Ollie, finally,” Pete said, rising from his desk, a grim look on his face. “We need your help.” This was unexpected. Most of the time, when Pete needed my help, it was usually because he had trouble watching some boat racing video on the internet — being in my mid-thirties apparently meant that I was the natural go-to for computer problems, despite all my protests that I couldn’t figure out technology to save my life. But he actually seemed serious for once. Like this was a real issue. “Uh,” I said eloquently. Pete gestured to the older man. “This is Sid Greene, he’s been a friend of my family since forever. Sid, this is Oliver Parker, the Mesmer I was telling you about. Ollie, Sid’s daughter Sandy’s gone missing.” I understood. Missing people wasn’t usually my thing; for that, people tended to go to the police or some other actual authority. But I was very good at finding lost objects, my bread and butter for Integritas. You wouldn’t believe how many people lose their wedding rings at the beach. “Where was she last seen?” I asked. “Her house,” Sid said, his voice papery thin. But there was a catch to his voice that made me lean forward, prompting him. He hesitated, then went on, “She has cameras at her house. Her neighbors, too. We watched the footage. She went in the house on Sunday, but she never left.” It was Friday. I frowned. “She’s not in there?” “I looked.” He gestured to Jane next to him. “We looked. Multiple times.” “So where the hell is she?” I demanded. At Pete and Jane’s look, I swallowed. Right. That’s what I’m here for. Trying to cover up my dumb question, I asked, “Do you have anything of hers?” “Pete said you’d need this,” Sid said, handing over a little baggy. I took the paper towel out from it. When I unfolded it, it revealed a gold necklace. “It was her mother’s. She wore it almost every day.” I wrapped my fingers over it and immediately felt a faint thrum. This would do. “I can perform a ritual spell to find her. Let’s go to the other room.” As I went to one of the conference rooms, Pete came up to my side and whispered, “I’ve known Sandy since we were kids. She’s the one who introduced me to Jane. You’ve got to find her.” The look on his face was one of raw desperation. I swallowed. “I’ll do what I can.” The four of us shuffled into a small conference room, which had a table large enough to seat half a dozen. Off to the side was a cheap low bookshelf that held a bunch of atlases, and above it on the wall, a world map. I bade the others to be seated while I went to work. I went to the bookshelf and pulled out a velvet cloth runner and a pair of candles, setting them atop the bookshelf. I lit the candles, then turned the dimmer to the room down, leaving the room in a gentle golden light, the small flames making the shadows flicker and dance. The cloth and candles didn’t actually do anything, but when it came to doing magic, people expected a show. They tend not to take me seriously unless I puff up the proceedings with some schlocky mumbo-jumbo. I spread the necklace on the cloth, the gold glittering in the candlelight, nestled against the dark velvet. When finding people or objects, I needed to handle something that had a close connection with whatever it was I’m looking for. In this case, a part of Sandy’s soul was imbued in this necklace. All I needed to do was find the strand that was Sandy within this necklace, and use it to trace her whereabouts. “This ritual will take a few steps,” I said, using what I called my hetero-register, a lower, more serious variation of my voice. Sid and Jane looked at me intently, sensing that I was about to conjure some powerful magics. Little did they know I could do this one-handed, scarfing down a bag of chips with the other. But they needed to see something reverential, almost holy, to believe me when it worked. “First I’ll locate her on this map.” I gestured to the wall behind me. “Once I know what region she’s in, I’ll pull up one of these atlases and narrow down her location.” They looked at the bookshelf crammed with cheap atlas books and maps of all places around the world. Once, when I was hired to serve someone papers, I had to chase them down all the way to Australia. All of them were meticulously labeled; the only one that wasn’t was a thin, leather-bound booklet that I got at the end of my training at Fort Dix a decade ago. “I’ll begin the ritual,” I announced solemnly, turning back to the bookshelf. “Do not disturb me.” I placed a finger on Sandy’s necklace, closed my eyes, and concentrated. Almost immediately, my blood began to sing, like it was charged with an electrical current. A whirling maelstrom of light and color flooded my mind's eye, until, there, shimmering and golden, a pinprick of light. I opened my eyes and looked at the world map, expecting it to settle on a particular location. Instead, the pinprick of light jumped this way and that, bouncing from country to country, ocean to desert, from the north to the south, Mali to Bali, Friesland, Flanders, Portugal, Poland, Uluru, Denali, Botswana and back. What the hell, I thought. This spell never did that. It always homed in on the whereabouts of the person or object I was looking for, none of this dancing around. I grit my teeth and focused, closing my eyes again. This time, the light dropped to the bottom of my mind’s eye, dragging my head down with it, until it finally steadied on a fixed position. When I opened my eyes, I expected to see it having alit on one of the atlases I kept there. It was on the leather-bound book. With a creeping sense of dread, I pulled it out and carefully set it atop the bookshelf. No sooner had I placed it there did the book noisily flip open on its own power, racing past a dozen pages until it landed on a hand-drawn map. That never happened to me before, either. I looked at the map. It was like no map that existed of this world. This was one of the realms that belonged to the Other Side. I stared in horror as the pinprick of light zoomed into a particular location, and began pulsing rapidly. I gulped. When finding people, I could reach out through my connection, chasing the strand of their soul and briefly speak to them in their mind, but I had never done so while crossing over to the Other Side. Hell, I’d never even been to the Other Side. I’d heard of it, sure, every magical person has, just like everybody’s heard of Broadway. But there’s a hell of a difference between singing in the shower versus belting out a tune in the footlights before a thousand people. The Other Side wasn’t just some alternate dimension; it was a place of unfathomable power and danger, where only the most skilled mages, witches, Scions, Soul Hunters dared tread. I may be many things, but “power” and “skill” were not words used to describe one Oliver Parker. Do I dare reach out to Sandy through the Other Side? If I was caught, then Amicus, the Warden of the Unseen Walls, a literal god made flesh, could find me and punish me. I wasn’t keen on discovering what that would be like. But then I remembered the desperation in Pete’s voice, the raw grief on Sid’s face. If I backed out now, how could I possibly explain that I had the chance to find Sandy but wasn’t brave enough to even try? I had no choice. Steeling my resolve, I followed that golden pinprick of light back to its source, my consciousness racing along the thread like some kind of spiritual telegram wire. Sandy? I probed with my mind. But suddenly, a sharp, stabbing pain lanced through my head. I cried out and grabbed my temples. My nose filled with the stench of rot and pus coming from the magic that penetrated me. It smelled like corpses. WHO DARES DEFILE MY PRESENCE a loud voice boomed in my head. YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE. Agony washed over me as I fell back and bumped into the conference table. Jane and Pete were screaming something but I didn’t know what, I couldn’t focus. My vision swam. I only barely managed to catch a glimpse of the candlelight now roaring three feet in the air, a jet of flame, all heat and light, scorching the map and ceiling. I WILL SACRIFICE YOU ON BEHALF OF MY MASTER, the voice went on, awful and relentless. An invisible hand grabbed me by the throat and threw me against the back wall of the office. My back and my head slammed against the sheetrock, stars swam in my vision. I couldn’t breathe, whatever this demon was doing to me was cutting off all air. My legs and arms flailed out uselessly as I thrashed on the wall. Pete tried to dislodge me, but he might as well have been pulling down a skyscraper for all the good it did. I was going to die, I was going to be killed by a demon from the Other Side. I had never even ventured beyond the Unseen Walls but something eldritch seized me and wasn’t letting me go. As my vision darkened, some blessed synapse in my brain made the right connection, fired the right thought. The Unseen Walls had a guardian, the lord of the crossing. Divine Amicus, I beseech you, I prayed, calling out into the world of magic as loudly as I could. THAT FOOL WON’T SAVE YOU, YOU WEAK BAG OF FLESH, the demon said, his voice sneering and dripping with sludge. But I didn’t need Amicus to save me. I needed this demon to think that Amicus would save me. Drawing into my reserves of magic, I conjured an image of an avenging archangel descending from the heavens, golden spear in hand, trumpets blaring. I made the vision of Amicus an auric comet hurtling towards my invisible foe. Groping in the dark, I found the strand that the demon used to connect him to me. It was rotten, like flesh weeping with pus. I flooded the line with the image of Amicus ready to smite this demon. He growled with surprise and suddenly, I fell to the ground. The mysterious hand that grabbed my throat vanished. I found myself back in the conference room, softly suffused with dim candlelight, the roaring flame gone, my face pressed against the cheap, plasticky carpet on the ground. Gratefully, I gulped in heaving breaths of air. Pete and Jane were at my side, making noises I couldn’t quite make out. It took me a few seconds to realize they were calling my name and asking if I was okay. Eventually, I was able to nod and say, “I’m all right.” I slowly pushed myself to my feet. The two of them looked at me with concern — Pete’s hand was on my shoulder, Jane’s on my arm. Somehow, Jane’s joltingly pink vest brought me back more firmly to reality. It felt so out of place compared to what I just went through. “Really, I’m okay.” I took a few more steadying breaths, and looked over at the table. Sid was standing, staring at the wall map, his face ashen. I turned to see what he was looking at when my stomach clenched with anxiety. Dread filled me from head to toe. Written on the world map in blood, leaving dark red streaks as it dripped, were the words DADDY HELP ME.

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Assignment #1 STORY STATEMENT Through a series of events, twelve-year-old Kato is pulled into a quest to a hidden world that his mother, Zena, is connected to with the intention of preventing Barnafus, a trickster who has escaped prison, from destroying their secret community’s annual mission of supplying miracles to people all over the world. Assignment #2 ANTAGONIST Two hundred years ago, Barnafus, an uninspired pottery maker stumbles on his life’s mission after noticing the nearby toymaker leaving his successful business for holiday travels. He becomes persuaded that the toymaker journeys to a secret world. Determined to live until he knows, Barnafus sells his soul to various witches to extend his life. Retreating to a cave for solitude, he only leaves only to stalk the toymaker, his son and then his grandson. After a chance meeting of one of their relatives he sets out to win her affection. Marriage and two children later, he pressures her to take him to visit her family, although it was established that she’d go alone. Once integrated with them he becomes unnerved by her jolly do-gooder relatives and advocates to move into a position of power. When the family denies his request, he becomes outraged, rationalizing they owe him. His attempt to take over fails, so he kidnaps his sons. One year later, he is imprisoned for breaking and entering a toy company. With revenge consuming his being, Barnafus eventually breaks out and reaches out to an old frenemy to help him get back to steal Saint Nicholas’s reign over Mahalitheluji. Assignment #3 BREAKOUT TITLE Journey to The Land of Snow Welcome to Mahalitheluji: The Land of Snow Journey to Mahalitheluji: The Land of Snow Assignment #4 GENRE AND APPROACHING COMPARABLES Genre: Journey to the Land of Snow is a Holiday Urban Fantasy Adventure Comparable titles are*: Christmas Chronicles Merry Wish: A CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE by A.C. Salter Assignment #5 HOOKLINE (LOGLINE) A young boy, who doesn’t seem to fit in with the other boys, and his family that has recently expanded with new colorful relatives, learn about a hidden world that his mother, Zena, is connected to and that happens to be inhabited by the original Saint Nicholas and his peculiar Mahalians. A series of telling events pull them into a quest to prevent Barnafus, a trickster who has managed to live over 200 years and recently escaped prison, from destroying their secret community’s annual mission of supplying miracles to people all over the world. Assignment #6 Inner conflict - protagonist Kato, the main character, struggles with not knowing himself. It’s not that he doesn’t like himself. He does and he is confident and driven. The problem is he isn’t driven in any particular direction. When he thinks about what inspires him or what he’s drawn to, nothing comes to mind except playing casual football or playing occasional video games with his best friend. His mother and her sisters own candle boutiques. They love candles and have built their lives around the candles they make. His father, Jabari is an optometrist, who relishes in his work. Even his younger sister talks about one day having her own candle shop like their mother and she is like a walking encyclopedia of candle history, types and scents. He wishes he were passionate about any one thing like them. Assignment #7 Secondary Conflict involving the social environment Both Lulana and Kato’s mom, Zena, have married men outside of the greater family. As a result, both have been living in exile and unable to return to their home. The women struggle with the decisions they made to build their family which landed them away from their loved ones. Yet, their love for their families makes the conundrum more sensitive. Will their actions of trying to help their community allow them a second chance or will they get them pushed further away? Assignment #8 SETTING Setting 1: Kato, the main character’s home On the outside, a typical suburban home in New Jersey. With close neighboring houses and minivans in the driveways. Inside, Kato’s mom Zena makes over the top casseroles that are savory and include avocado, greens, okra, tomatoes, and beef or salmon or shrimp, casseroles that are sweet and filled with apple and honey, French toast and mixed berries or Egyptian bread pudding, and casseroles that are sweet and savory all at the same time like apples and sausage or spicy kale and sweet potato. During the holiday. From November until the end of May, a Christmas tree proudly stands in the living room with bright purple painted leaves and green, blue, red and gold decorations and lights adorning its every branch. Setting 2: Mahalitheluji/Mahali Square/Keep Giving Festival They move straight ahead towards Mahali Square, driving down a narrow road, filled with trees that have just enough room for one small tram to pass the other. The siblings want to sit back in the seats because they are so comfortable and inviting, with colorful blankets and toss pillows to snuggle with, however there is so much to see that they sit back and look at the winter wonderland that is before them. Snow is everywhere, yet the car feels warm and perfectly heated. The road feels like a hidden gem surrounded by majestic towering mountains that extend as far as the eye can see. The siblings gaze out at the small-town square. The best description that comes to Kenya’s mind is, “Magical.” She can’t help but vocalize it as she takes in a winterized African village smack dab in the middle of snowy mountains. In the distance an opulent building that looks like a palace with blue stain glass windows and the structure made of sand baked mortar with a red velvet carpet laid out in front of. Even closer is an oversized colorful tree. The branch seems to be one color, yet the leaves on each branch are a different color of blue, green, red, purple, pink. Kato couldn’t keep his eyes off it. There are people buzzing all around Mahalitheluji. A group hang a sign that reads, The Mahalitheluji Keep Giving Festival. Set up with long curved tables that make an enormous spiral, a group decorate them with plates and flowers and candles and silverware. The entire layout for the festival is beautiful and elaborate, including coordinating table and chair never-ending table runners. Festive music that sounds like a mixture of Christmas and Afro Dance can be heard throughout the grounds. Across the grounds a lady dressed in a colorful dress trimmed in gold. On her head an elaborate headwrap. Sitting in front of her are children on monoxyl chairs with short back. Each of the children are five years old and under and sitting in awe as the lady tells them a story. Upon close observation, there is no snow on the ground or the trees or the shrubs in the village. Setting 3: Le Morne Brabant Mountain, Mauritius The clear sky was unobstructed by clouds allowing the moon to shine bright on the back side of Le Morne Brabant Mountain. It is here high above this vital, yet exclusive location in Mauritius that we find the caravan of relatives of Kato that he doesn’t even know exist, in a sleigh drawn by grand flying Kudu. They soar through the night sky and know when to look below them to spot the mesmerizing underwater waterfall just off the coast. Zaila becomes giddy every time she experiences the illusion of water falling in the ocean, although she is aware that it was merely the sand falling down. They land in front of a clearing just in front of a what looks like a wall of rocks. Although the mountain is a busy tourist attraction by day, it remains unoccupied at night, which makes it the perfect location to hide their prized candles in a place that no one would think to look. The waves crash softly against the sandy beach below the mountain, and the lush palms in the distance. In the dark, solemn cave. Silence falls over them as they are immediately impacted by the energy still lingering from the Maroons who once inhabited the caves to escape being traded into slavery. Their history is a melancholy and tragic memory they face every time they enter the environment. When they were there, hiding out and living in the caves, the Mahalians brought them food and basic tools every year they held refuge there. They even offered to fly them to their land and allow them to live and work with them, however none were comfortable enough with the idea of flying, save one. Obadias’ grandfather, who incorporated his life with them and became a member of the Special Forces. In exchange they allowed the Mahalians to continue to hide their candles there and pledged to guard them with their lives. Unfortunately, the Maroons eventually took their own lives when they thought they were being ambushed and forced back into slavery.