Allister: Welcome to Battle Hardened. Kearston: Two important questions right off the bat. Allister: Who the heck are we and why should anyone listen to us? Kearston: Well, I'm Kearston. I write flash fiction, collect rejections like Pokemon, and somehow still have a handful of published stories. Allister: And I'm Allister. At least that's what I go by on the writing contest circuit. Those of you who read Dungeon Crawler Carl might recognize the moniker as the thirteenth author of the Dungeon Anarchist's cookbook. Kearston: I've been competing for over a year, recently long listed with Not Quite Write, and left my house, making it to the Sweet Sixteen for the last Tempest Owl writing battle for Cozy Mystery. Allister: I've been writing since August of 2025. And I have also made it out of the house once for, what it's worth, in my first battle with a story called Comfort. Kearston: I'm a rabid reader, usually with one on my Kindle, one on Audible, and a paperback in hand in a valiant effort to vanquish my never-ending TBR. I'm also working on two novels, which I avoid with remarkable consistency and creativity. Allister: I enjoy reading fantasy and comedy, and my favorite author is Michael J. Sullivan. Much like Kearston, I also have a couple novels I am kicking around, and which I avoid astutely. Kearston: My focus is really centered on creating engaging characters with compelling story arcs. What about you? Allister: One of my biggest focus areas has been on how to provide high quality feedback. Those efforts were rewarded in the Tempest Raven contest with a coveted Panda trophy, for which I am very grateful. On the Writing Battle website, I've read over 700 stories totaling about 650,000 words, and I've left feedback to the tune of 110,000 words on Debrief, give or take. Kearston: You've read an impressive number of stories from Writing Battle. Is that what gave you the idea for the podcast? Allister: Actually no. To be honest, I saw the forum posts warning us that Vote Count is not a measure of story quality, and my rational brain internalized that message. It thought, okay, perfect. Makes sense. Unfortunately, my emotional brain didn't get the message. Some of the results day reveals were totally devastating, and there's still this war going on between my logical and emotional reactions to judging results. Kearston: Yeah, it can really sting when you've put your heart into a story that just doesn't resonate with whether it's peer or professional judges. Allister: Well, this story certainly resonated with me. Kearston: So, tell me, what are we listening to today? Allister: This story is from the Fear contest which had a 1000 word limit. The genre assigned was Horror, character was Charmer, and object was Surfboard. Kearston: Please be advised, this story has been tagged with the following content warnings. Allister: Implied or described Sexual Assault, Violence, Gore, and Sexual Content. Kearston: Without further ado, sink into this story with us. Riptide, by Addison DeFrancisis. LMHO: The first time I saw him, the sea forgot to breathe. Now he rides the surface above me as though it belongs to him. No fear. No pleading. Not like the sailors before. Even the swells open themselves to him, sighing, as he glides between them like starlight on that pale shard of land that refuses to sink. His heartbeat echoes through the water and into my bones, a pulse that isn’t mine. I begin to rise before I understand why, drawn to the heat of him, to the way the salt clings to his seamless throat. I smell his sun-dyed skin through the dark sea between us, and I taste the sky, wanting it for the first time. I break the surface in silence. The air bites my scales, sharp as coral. I know I should sink back below, but my body won’t obey. He hasn’t yet seen me. He’s too busy chasing the dying light with a kind of joy I can’t understand. I drift closer, letting the current carry me like flotsam, my hair dark as ink spilling around me. His laughter wrests the very soul from me, and before I know it, I’m singing the ocean’s song for him. He stills, searching, the pull of me already in his blood. When his eyes find mine, surprise flashes across his scaleless face. There is wonder there, but no fear. He steadies himself on the ivory slab that keeps him from me, and I hate it for a heartbeat. Then he smiles, and the hatred melts to foam. My song hangs between us, soft and free in the blushing half-light of dusk. The sea quivers at the sound. He does not. He speaks, a word shaped like my name, though he cannot know it. His voice pierces through me, bright and warm and foreign. I need to taste it, to pull it closer, to make it mine. He calls to me again, and I echo without words, only melody. The sound folds the air between us, drawing us inward like an undertow, until we are only a wave apart. He leans down from his wooden island and offers me his hand. I shouldn’t take it. His warmth is a wound waiting to happen. But I do. His lonely fingers, webless, close around mine, and I shudder at the dryness of them. The sea grips my waist, pulling, jealous. But his breath pulls me harder. My song tells him of wonders the sun would never let him see. His smile broadens, and I know he understands. I pull him gently from the board, and he follows, trusting, the way a wave follows the wind. The surface barely ripples around us. I feel his warmth against me. Our eyes stay locked, unblinking, as I guide him down. The water takes us like a lover long denied, hushing the noise of the sky and wrapping us in its cold embrace. I lead him through the blue twilight where the fading sun filters down in ribbons. I long to show him everything I love, the coral cathedrals, the gardens of glass. He clings to me, startled at first. I feel his soft, porous skin yield to my scales as I pull him closer, thin tendrils of warmth unraveling between us, crimson and cerulean. The sea hums its approval, curling around us. I taste the copper of him, and I can bear it no longer. I take his face in my hands and press my mouth to his. My fingers carefully open the skin behind his jaw, giving him the breath of the sea. Bubbles rise from his lips like laughter, and I laugh too, overjoyed that he’s learning so quickly. I feel his pulse quicken. I kiss him with a depth only the ocean could know. My sharp tongue explores the cavern of his pleading mouth. His body trembles. His trembles turn to throes, then to something deeper. My body writhes with his. Locked in a tidal pull, we plummet farther under, past the cathedrals and gardens that flit by unseen. I lose myself in the pleasure of it, wild and turbulent. We land, entangled in a bed of seagrass, as the boundaries of us unravel. He is salt, I am the current, and the sea takes the rest. His body seizes in ecstasy. The ocean inside him finally tears free, and I hold him through it, gentle as the hush between waves. A final gasp of pleasure, his eyes rolling white. At last, our tempest abates, and I feel his body calm beneath mine. The current rocks us for a time, slow, tender, unfeeling. I kiss him once more, but he doesn’t respond. The beat of his pulse eludes me. Like the sea around us, it has grown silent. The heat in him fades, leaking into the leagues of isolation that surround me. His hand drifts from mine, and his fingers, lifeless, brush the bone-speckled seabed. I wail and beg him to return. Only silence answers. I gave him everything. My love. My breath. My song. I gave him the ocean and still he abandoned me. I leave him there with the rest, the current bearing me upwards through the hollow of my grief. At the surface, the wood still drifts, white, patient, defiant. I rake my claws across its skin, carving my sorrow into its grain until it bleeds splinters. Still, it does not sink. The wounded board gleams in the vesper light, a monument to what I’ve lost. A gravestone to my love. I hate that it floats. I hate that it remembers. But I know the sea will take it soon enough, as it does all things, sanding away every trace of him. The waves will smooth its scars and whisper his name where I cannot. When they do, there will be nothing left to grieve. The sea begins to breathe once more. I sink back below, letting it close above me in a curtain of foam, alone. Allister: Thanks so much Addison for sharing that with us. Love that story. And thanks as well to LMHO for really bringing it to life. Addison: Oh man she did an awesome job with that narration. Kearston: Love it. Addison: So, when I wrote that, in my mind, I feel like I was trying to focus more on like a romantic feel with subtle undertones of that predator horror kind of thing. And that reading was like flipped with that where it felt like the horror in that alien monster nature was the forefront with the subtle undertones of the romance. And I think I like that more. That was awesome. I really like that. Kearston: Yeah same. Allister: One thing that caught my interest on rereading that I didn't realize beforehand was: I just pictured this narrator as unambiguously female. But looking closer there's no explicitly stated gender. Did you have an intention for the mermaid to be male or female or something in between? Addison: Typically when I write I tend to leave the gender of my characters ambiguous unless there's a specific reason for clarification. That said in my mind this was a female being a siren or mermaid or whatever you want to look at it as. But I think the story works either way if it's a male if the reader prefers that. Allister: I definitely picked up on the siren aspect and I particularly liked how you inverted it in a way because she is unable to resist her own temptations right she tries to turn away and and let the surfer live, but she can't. Did you do that inversion of the typical siren song intentionally or did that just evolve naturally as part of the story writing process? Addison: Originally I was going to write t
