The university prized its proximity to Bosmouth's long beaches at open days and in advertising, yet the location was a mixed blessing at best. On clear days, when the sun loosed its beams of boundless warmth unopposed, students relocated their pastimes to the pale sands and dark rocky outcrops along the seafront. The sounds of the beach crowd flew away when the wind picked up, leaving nothing but the occasional crack and creak of the hollow campus buildings.

    A single leaf broke loose from its branch and fluttered to the ground ahead of Elise. By her side, Cadence shoved her car key into her pocket and whistled to herself. "Wow. This place is dead," she said, glancing around at the undisturbed doors and windows. "It seems like it's not just you who skips out on extra-curriculars around here. Still want to go to this book club thing, killer?"

    "It's not a book club. It's a writing workshop, and yes, I'm going." Checking the contents of her bag, Elise swallowed down the nausea that stirred at the sight of her short story extract. The story's rejection by the Orchard had kept her from looking at it with anything more than a fleeting glance, yet she was about to subject it to the close, sustained critique of her peers. "I told James that I would come, and it's the right thing to do for my writing. I know it is."

    "Just asking." Cadence rocked her head back and stared through an oak tree's branches at the spotless blue sky, her ears pricking up at the cheers and laughter from the nearby sands. "But what if nobody else shows up? Then can we go to the beach and get wasted on someone else's booze? Just a little bit?"

    Elise cracked a smile as she sized up her friend's sad puppy eyes and wringing hands. "You're such a pain."

    "I do my best."

    Inside the faculty building, a wave of stagnant heat washed over Elise's skin, a by-product of the sun's unfettered beams setting the granite floor alight. A subtle musk sprinkled with the scent of sea salt lingered through the corridors, and every short breath slowed her thoughts until they matched the gentle pace of the spiralling sunlit dust specks. No sound disturbed the old walls beyond the combined tapping of her and Cadence's shoes on the hard ground.

    As she approached the set of double doors that led to the classroom, Elise winced at the pit that yawned in her gut. Anxiety had torn the hole open long ago, and each step she took towards the workshop loaded the breach with a rotting, toxic mulch that inflamed her insecurity to bursting point. The Orchard's silent rejection hung over her story's pages, growing to encompass every other rejection Elise had faced until she could no longer stand to look at a single word. Her story was not good enough. She was not good enough.

    "Well, look at this," a man's voice said as Elise passed through the double doors. Down the hall ahead, James strode towards her with a tan leather satchel at his side. "Do my eyes deceive me, or is Elise Penrose finally attending one of my writing sessions?"

    "James!" Elise froze in the doorway, the surprise seizing her limbs in place. As if he anticipated her reaction, her seminar leader broadened the keen smile he sent her way to dispel the doubts that clouded her mind. "Yeah, I'm here for the workshop. I've been meaning to come for a while, and I had the time today, so...no time like the present, right?"

    Stopping in front of Elise, James nodded and tapped the side of his satchel. "I couldn't agree more. Glad you decided to join us," he said, the midday light leaping with joy from the square lenses of his glasses. His hand ventured up to his stubble as he turned to the girl at Elise's side. "And how about you, Cadence? There's always room for more budding wordsmiths in my class."

    The man's affable demeanour did not shed a single particle, yet Cadence inched forward to put herself between James and Elise, her arms folded. "No way, specs. I'm just the taxi," she answered, pinning her hard stare on James' face. On their way through the campus, Cadence's every move had swished and swayed with relaxed ease, yet now a wary hold gripped her spine and leashed the cheer that bounced through her words. "Flo never even bothered telling me she was a writer, let alone trying to get me into it. Good practice for all the stuff she forgets to tell me now, like when she has people over, I guess."

    James' raised eyebrows acknowledged the snipe in Cadence's response, and a soft sigh disguised his discomfort. "It must be tough living with someone suffering with dementia. Your mother is a good person at heart, though, and that's what makes it all so hard to take." Despite the heavy notes dragging down his words, James kept his smile up as he gestured towards Elise. "At least you've got a good friend to count on at a rough time like this."

    "Damn right. I'm Ellie's biggest fan, and not just for her writing," Cadence said as she nudged Elise's arm with her elbow. As the girl blushed, Cadence let her arm slip around Elise's shoulders and held her close. "She's too shy to say it, but she's a rockstar. I owe her big time."

    "Sounds like you've got quite the loyal following already," James uttered through a laugh, pointing towards the open classroom door. "I'm sure you'll fit right in with the rest of the group. Shall we get to it, then?"

    The weight of James' attention threatened to buckle Elise's weakened shoulders. Suddenly, the soft touch of Cadence's fingertips against her back cut through the noise of her colliding thoughts. Elise gripped the strap of her bag and nodded. "Sure, let's go."

    With a quick wink, Cadence waved and turned on her heels. "Knock them dead, killer," she said, sending out a smile that made its way onto Elise's lips.

    An unfamiliar layout greeted Elise as she stepped into the room. No more than a few of the overhead lights shone down, and the shuttered blinds blocked out much of the midday light. This left the bulk of the lighting work to a quartet of solemn standing lamps, one posted in each corner. The orderly ring of desks set out for her usual classes had been broken up into pairs, a sizeable space left between each square island. In place of the stiff seminar seats, plush office chairs rose around the room, their wheels rattling as their passengers pushed them around. Quiet conversation danced through the air on a delicate wind of coffee and cinnamon.

    Finding a free seat at the far side of the room, Elise set her bag beneath her chair and sat down. An eclectic mix of students hung around the desks, some of whom she did not recognise from her classes. As she studied the cohort, her gaze landed on a girl with dark glasses sat by herself across the room, her wavy candy floss-pink hair bundled into a ponytail. The girl stared at her reflection in the nearest windowpane until she noticed Elise's attention, yet she hid behind the bulk of her bag before Elise could greet her. The moody lighting only partly obscured the shadowy circles around her deep blue eyes.

    "Alright, guys, let's settle down," James announced as he sat himself on the edge of the front desk. He cast his jacket onto the desk's seat, rolled up the sleeves of his powder-blue dress shirt, and cast a warm smile around the workshop group until they took their seats. "I appreciate you all for packing into a stuffy classroom on a beautiful day like today. Don't worry, I'd rather be driving down the coast with the roof down too, but here we are."

    The girl sat at the desk nearest Elise muttered something under her breath, earning her a playful rebuke from the boy beside her. From the longing stares on some of the faces around the room, more than a few of the students came to ogle James rather than listen to him. It was just like Cadence had said, and it stirred up the lingering sickness that swilled in Elise's gut.

    "I'd also like to apologise for missing classes over the last few days. I know it was sudden," James continued, withdrawing his phone from his pocket to drop it onto the desk. "Truth is, I'd hired an old hunting cottage on the cliffs at Redcarne Bay for a writing retreat. It was a nice break, at least until the rain started and buried the only road underneath a landslide."

    "No kidding. That whole place is a death trap," said one of the boys as he leaned back in his seat and folded his hands inside his bomber jacket. "I used to go running along those cliffs with some friends, then one of the footbridges fucking blew apart in the wind right in front of us. It scared the shit out of me!"

    "Easy with the language, Owain," James said, his warning laced with a teasing exasperation. "But you're right, it's a dangerous place. It's especially dicey when you're looking for a shovel in your cottage's shed and you stumble across not just a gun rack, but a bunch of bear traps surrounding it!"

    The room filled with a warm collective laugh, yet the pink-haired girl opposite Elise did not break her weary stare at her hands on the desk. As James resumed speaking, the girl hid her eyes behind her hands and muttered to herself. James flicked his gaze over to the girl once or twice, losing his words for a moment before recapturing his strand of thought. Whatever was going on with the girl, it was as much a surprise to him as to Elise.

    James clapped his hands. "There I go again, losing track of time. You guys didn't come here to listen to the overworked old teacher talk about himself," he said, fixing the skewed collar of his shirt. "How about we share what we wrote for last week's prompt? Find someone to pair up with and get chatting."

    On the neighbouring desk, the girl and boy from before dove straight into an energetic conversation, leaving Elise stranded. The same fate befell the pink-haired girl, and before her nerves overcame her, Elise took up her bag and made her way over to the other side of the room.

    The girl wiped her face as she noticed Elise's approach, doing her best to rid her eyes of the raw, red veins sprawling through them. Streaks of makeup leaked down her cheeks, though the tips of the wings around her eyes kept their fine edges against her persistent rubbing. "Hi," she uttered, her hoarse, choked voice little more than a whisper. "Sorry about...this. It's been a rough day so far."

    "That's okay. I've had a few days like that too lately," Elise said as she debated dropping her bag by the desk. "I'm Ellie. I'm on the literature course, though this is my first time at an actual writing workshop."

    "I'm Natalie, and sometimes I wish I'd picked literature instead of computer science. Coding melts my brain after too long." Tucking her hands into the sleeves of her black jumper dress, Natalie rocked in her seat as she pieced together her next sentence. "So, I'm guessing you're the Ellie that James says he's been trying to get to come for the past few weeks?"

    Glancing over at her seminar leader, Elise freed herself from her bag's strap and kneeled on the far side of the desk. "Did he say that to you? He's brought up the workshops with me now and then, but I just figured he did that with everybody in his classes."

    Natalie bit her thumbnail as she nodded. "You're not the only one he's mentioned, but your name comes up a lot. I guess you've caught his eye or something." After a pause, she sighed, deflating further into her jumper. "Sorry for being a mess. I'm not feeling great."

    "You don't have to apologise. We're probably all a mess in here," Elise said, smiling into the girl's tear-soaked eyes. "I think it's a creative thing."

    "Or an anybody thing. I know I don't feel much like a real creative right now."

    Pulling a chair up to the unoccupied side of the desk, James wore a look of grey concern. "Hey, Ellie. I see you met Natalie," he said, his tone low and soft as if speaking to a child. As he turned to face the girl opposite Elise, the lines in his brow sank deeper. "I noticed you looking a little upset while I was chatting away. Is there something you want to talk about?"

    With her gaze fixed on the desk, Natalie sniffled and released her trembling voice. "Well, I...I tried submitting my workshop story to a magazine like you suggested..." she said, bouncing her knee beneath the table. Another student's seat shifted over the floor behind Elise, and its chattering growl threatened to drown out the rest of Natalie's words. "But they rejected me."

    "Ah, right. Well, it's okay to be disappointed, Natalie, believe me. But remember, it's better to put yourself out there and lose out than to hide away." James tried to catch Natalie's eye with a smile, yet the girl did not respond. "It's nothing to be embarrassed about. Even I still get writing turned down sometimes."

    "It's not just that they rejected me," Natalie said as a pair of tears broke free from her eyes. "It's why. They said they rejected me because my story's already been published under someone else's name."

    James' lips parted in shock, drifting apart for a moment before he regained his composure. "That can't be right," he said under his breath. Shuffling forward in his seat, he stroked at his stubble and hummed to himself. "There must have been some sort of misunderstanding. Did they tell you who's claiming your work?"

    Gripping her arms with her hands, Natalie shook her head and shuddered as a sob escaped her lips. "They didn't tell me anything. I worked myself up to phoning them, but they just brushed me off," she cried, and her breathless speech drew a series of puzzled glances from around the room. "They said if I kept arguing with them, they'd blacklist me, and then I'd never get published. Then they put the phone down on me!"

    As the girl buried her face in her arms on the desk, Elise reached out to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Oh gosh, that's...awful. I can't imagine how crushing it must have been to sit through."

    "How could they say that? How could they think I stole my own story?" Natalie lifted her face from the desk and gasped for air, scorching Elise's mind with the image of her red, overflowing eyes. "I don't know what to do. I don't know if I have it in me to even try writing again..."

    "Take a breath, Natalie," James said, surfacing from his deep dive into thought. He checked the time on the wall and tapped the desk. "Can you hang around for a bit after the session's over? I'll have a look at what they've said to you and figure out what we can do from there. We'll get to the bottom of this, I promise."

    Pools of shadow washed over Natalie's face from the flickering floor lamp in the corner. "Sure, I guess. Thanks," she whispered as she stilled her lively leg. A broken sigh parted her lips, and her hand searched for her rucksack's strap by her chair. "I think I need some air. Sorry."

    The girl slid her seat back and paced out of the classroom, her head held low every step of the way. After a moment of quiet conversation, the slam of the corridor's double doors blew through the room. "I feel awful for her," Elise said as she stood up straight, flattening out the extra kinks in her skirt. "Being rejected hurts, and being accused of plagiarism on top of that is so rough."

    "She's got talent, definitely, but she's very sensitive too. I know just how much emotion she poured into that story during our sessions." James left the desk and moved to the front of the classroom, running his fingers through his short hair. "Unfortunately, a thick skin is pretty much essential if you're trying to get published. The literary world can be brutal, and not just for you up-and-coming writers. Florence and I know all about how harsh it is."

    "Really?" Elise focused on the lines of James' face, each one a trail of spilled ink in the moody lighting. "But you two have had a bunch of successful books. I'd have thought publishers would be tripping over themselves to sign you."

    "If only it were so easy." Though he laughed, James' grave expression refused to soften, and no sparks of levity glowed behind his glasses. His joy trailed to a quiet end, and he picked up his satchel with a heavy sigh. "And it doesn't end if you get signed, either. Sometimes, the book deals themselves are the biggest headache of all. Publishers can be...frustrating. Not everybody appreciates how much work goes into our art."

    Whether it was the trenches deepening across his brow or the bones straining against the skin of his hands as he clenched his satchel, it was clear James was no longer speaking as just a teacher. Elise approached the front desk, swallowing the nerves that stepping beyond her usual respectful distance inspired in her core. "Are you okay, James?"

    James snapped to attention, shrugging off Elise's question with a warm smile. "It's very noble of you to be so concerned for others, Ellie. Just don't forget to keep some of that concern for yourself now and then, alright?" he asked as he opened up his bag. A bundle of papers emerged from inside, and he sorted them into a tidy pile before handing them to Elise. The cone of electric light bounced off the brilliant white sheets to dazzle Elise's unprepared eyes.

    A quick glimpse around the room showed that no other students received a similar stack of photocopied sheets. "What's this?" Elise asked as she scanned through the paragraphs of text that adorned each page.

    "It's a short extract from a past student – one of my first workshop writers, in fact," James answered with a keen smile. A rush of wind rattled the classroom's door in its frame, and his eyes snapped to the entrance in expectation before returning to their conversation. "I was planning on using it as a group close reading exercise, but since you don't have a partner right now, you can get a bit of a head-start until you can join in again."

    "Actually, I'd be okay sitting with another pair." The desk creaked under the weight of Elise's bag, and the corners of her story's pages slid against each other with a harsh screech as they left the interior. "I know it's not based on the prompt, but I brought some of my writing. I could totally pick one scene, or just one moment, and treat it like a piece of flash fiction."

    "Is that an entire story there?" Suddenly alight with young sparks, James examined the size of Elise's draft work and murmured to himself. "Nobody can say you're lacking the perseverance you need to be a hit writer. I'm impressed, Ellie."

    Weightlessness floated from Elise's core to her outermost extremities, leaving her balance at the mercy of the slightest puff of breeze. "I don't know about that," she said, keeping the papers close to her chest. "It's just a passion project I wrote up over the summer. It's nothing that special."

    James folded his arms and shook his head with an exaggerated sigh. "Don't sell yourself short, Ellie. Passion is exactly what makes your work leap off the page and catch a reader's eye, and not everybody can turn it into words like you've done." The room's conversations buzzed louder, and he held his next thought and motioned to the pages in Elise's hand. "Now, I won't pressure you into anything, but if you're looking for a bit of guidance, I'd love the chance to look over some of your draft."

    Time seemed to grind to a halt around Elise. To be rejected by the faceless editing staff of the Orchard was painful, yet the possibility of shattering the generous faith of someone she knew was nothing short of gut-wrenching. The exhausting work of writing was a little easier while she had Cadence, Robin, and James in her corner, and as long as she still had potential, they could still believe in her. One look at her weak descriptive abilities and middling characterisation, however, and not even James' best intentions could sustain his support for her. She was just one body in a sea of countless aspiring writers.

    Then Elise remembered she was not just another body. To one bold, brash, beautiful woman that she had the pleasure of calling her best friend, Elise was a rockstar. She had never seen herself in such a light, yet with Cadence's proud cheerleading ringing melodies in her mind, she could believe it was true for a sliver of slow time. "Sure, James. I'd appreciate your thoughts a lot, actually," she said, staggered that she was willingly tossing her draft on the desk. "I hope it's worth your time."

    "I'm sure you've got nothing to worry about, Ellie. Between this and marking assignments, I'd bet on your story keeping my attention for longer." With a keen smile, James glanced at the time on his watch and tucked the draft into his satchel. "I should check on the other students. Will you be alright reading through that sample I gave you for a few minutes?"

    Elise looked over the sheets in her other hand and stared at the columns of elegant type, each of the inscribed words slipping out of her stunned mind's reach. "Yeah, I'll be..." she began as she stepped back to her seat, her eyes fixed on the draft she no longer hid inside her chest. "I'll be fine."