The Last Drops of Summer

Published August 22, 2020

Hi Everyone!

This is Leeya and Adalia writing. We have decided to make a magazine for some of our neighbors. We have been kind of bored in quarantine so we decided that this would be a fun project to do. We both enjoy writing and drawing so we thought this would be perfect. In this magazine, you can find short stories, articles, tech tips, comics, and much more! We would like to drop off these magazines every two weeks if possible. We hope you enjoy these homemade magazines!

-Leeya and Adalia

Lady Jewel’s Plunder

Short story by Adalia

The crystal-blue ocean shimmered as Lady Jewel watched it from the prow of her ship, the Golden Infinity. She sighed loudly, not finding what she was looking for and glanced backward at the sailors and pirates manning her vessels. Lieutenant Jason Randall walked over, “Incoming, your Grace…Must be the Duke of Grahamsbane!” “Finally, we will have something worthwhile, Randy!” Lady Jewel replied, pulling from her well-stocked belt a beautiful brass telescope, which she put to her eye to confirm what the Lieutenant had said. Two shotguns hung by her hips, both painted with golden dragons, breathing tongues of silver fire. These guns were what had brought Lady Jewel her pirate followers and made other sailors fear her. “Places men!” Lady Jewel ordered as she walked to starboard. Lady Jewel was the only woman on the ship, but was fiercer than 10 of the men put together, which made them look up to her. No one dared to disobey her and so the 20 cannons were quickly prepared and Golden Infinity’s flag was quickly raised. This plundering would be one of the most important of Lady Jewel’s career. And many of her crew had faced the consequences of “forgetting” about this already so they were ready to impress her. Lady Jewel and her Lieutenant climbed up to the crow’s nest to see what was going on. The Lady watched as the Duke’s ship sailed closer. Several loud shouts went up and the sailors began scurry even which way to turn the ship around as they spotted the Golden Infinity’s bright purple flag. The wind was too strong for them to move very fast but the Golden Infinity’s rowers began rowing faster and faster and the pirate ship was too close to the Duke’s ship for it to turn anywhere. Lady Jewel watched as they frantically tried to prepare the cannons but it was useless because the crew of Golden Infinity was already launching the bombs at the other ship. Lady leaped down the rigging and onto the Duke’s ship, Her Lady Isabella, though a beautiful ship was poorly equipped for any form of attack, especially an attack by the Pirate Lady Jewel. Lady caressed her shotguns lovingly and pulled them out slowly, showing the crew of Her Lady Isabella that they had everything to fear. The Lady’s bullets had never missed and held five per loading. The sailors backed away as Lady Jewel spoke, “This can be over nice and simple…Bring me the Duke and I will get over with things quickly. Don’t listen and your deaths will be quite slow and painful…” As she finished speaking another cannon shot rocked the boat, sent from the Golden Infinity. Several sailors scrambled below deck to get the Duke and the Lady and her Lieutenant remained above deck, glaring at the remaining sailors. Whenever a sailor dared speak or move, Lady Jewel would twitch her shotguns menacingly. The Duke of Grahamsbane arrived, bedraggled and annoyed. When he saw Lady Jewel, he glowered. “This can be simple, Cassius,” she told him, “What would people think of a man who kept a simple amulet instead of letting this crew live? What would people say? How would your reputation survive?” But Duke Cassius didn’t want to hear this because he promptly drew to sabers from his belt. Even in his half-awake state, he was ready, which was impressive, considering the lack of armor on Her Lady Isabella. Another round of cannons rocked the boat and everyone felt it sink a bit more. The Duke charged the lady, but she flung a round ball at him and the deck beneath his feet burst into flames. Duke Cassius barely managed to jump out of the way and when he turned back to strike her, she wasn’t there. She stood behind him, halfway up the mast. The prow of the ship burst to flames as more cannons hit it and the ship sank several more feet. At this rate, the ship would be gone in 10 more minutes. Cassius leapt onto the rigging climbing towards the crow’s nest, where Lady Jewel stood. And as he reached her, she threw the second of her fire bombs. Just before she leapt off the crow’s nest she called, “Give me what is mine, Cassius!” She landed amongst the fighting below and the Duke was forced to jump after her soon after. He landed painfully but Lady Jewel was nowhere to be seen. Two bullets struck him through the back and before he died, he muttered, “Unfair, Lady! What an evil way to fight!” Lady Jewel laughed as she grabbed the amulet around his neck and placed it over her own hand so it rested against her heart. The Pirate Lady Jewel was in a very good mood for the rest of the night. She had found what was hers and destroyed the Duke of Grahamsbane in one fell swoop. It had been wonderful plundering!

This wasn’t the first of Lady Jewel’s adventures on the Golden Infinity but it would certainly be one of her grandest.

The Last Drops of Summer

Poem by Leeya

Summer is like lemonade

You start out with a full glass of the refreshing, sweet liquid

The freedom so fun but the heat so wicked

The friends and memories you make along the way

But alas the last week of summer is here, all to my dismay

And I am sitting here, trying to suck up the last few drops of summer

Grades and coldness starting up, what a bummer 

It has been a good run, I would say

But unfortunately, it is time for summer to go away

Welcome to Dare Street

Poem by Adalia

Yellow grains warming my feet,

Bluewater as far as the eye can see,

Hundreds of homes lining the shores,

Salty sea air tickling my nose,

A soft, warm feeling of happiness,

This is the ocean!

A family rides by laughing, waving,

Colorful umbrellas by the water,

Running up Dare Street, canoeing down the canal,

Ice cream dribbling between my fingers,

At night, the sky glows as the sun goes to bed,

Welcome to Dare Street!

Have Humans Lost Their Sense Smell: Scientists Disagree

Research prompt by Adalia

As humans evolved, not only did our physical appearance change, we have started to rely less on our senses and instincts. Except, some scientists disagree with this. They believe that as we evolved our sense of smell got worse, while our vision evolved. The scientist, Charles Darwin, thought that smell was a useless feature to the human body. Human evolution specialist, Darren Curnoe, believes that our Neanderthal ancestors had better vision because of the volume of their eye socket. Scientists also believe that smell dominates our world and that it can detect emotional stress in others.

There are many different opinions on whether or not we are actually losing our senses. We have probably lost some of the sight we had as earlier species because we use our brains to figure things out rather than using it to use our senses. This would have an effect on how we use our senses and using our brain could affect our recollection or memory of those senses. Still, we are one of the best visionary mammals according to Professor Doron Lancet.

It was discovered that 54 percent of our genes are pseudogenes compared to the 28-36 percent in other primates. Pseudogenes are imperfect copies of the factual gene. These scientists think that the loss of the smell sense is odd. Others disagree with this entirely.

It seems as if we are forgetting our senses instead of losing them. In fact, studies have shown that humans are as sensitive to the chemical amyl acetate as dogs are! As we have evolved, we may have lost some of our senses and gained some senses, too, but we still are strong smellers. Another study showed that we are incredibly good at distinguishing smells even though we may not be able to smell the individual aromas as skillfully.

Since scientists have observed Neanderthal fossils, they have come to believe that we actually have a better sense of smell than they do. From the shape of the bridge of the nose you can see the size of the olfactory bulb. We may have a better sense of smell than many of us think. Scientists’ opinions have changed and will continue to change as we evolve and they gather more experience.

Many people who have excellent smell have poor eyesight, while people with excellent eyesight have no problem with their other senses. This is probably because our vision is the main sense that we use. When people lose certain senses entirely they tend to gain competence in other senses. It is like a trade off of one sense for a gain in another sense.

The estimate of smells we could detect was up to 1 trillion in 2014 and in 2015 it was cited that with our trichromatic vision we could see over 10 million different colors. The amount of colors and smells is likely to grow as we evolve because of our intelligent imagination. Each and every color could be mixed with another to create more colors and then more after that.

If we make an effort to teach new generations about our senses we could change how we perceive the world around us. We can show them that our senses are important to our life and we could learn much from them. If we evolve them more, we may even be able to use them to discover more things about the universe or even to observe other species of life that live on Earth. This may make big improvements in our life and change how we do things.    

In conclusion, we seem to have better senses of smell and sight than the majority of us think us to have. If we make an effort to experience and use our senses we may be able to grow our ability as we evolve. Instead of trading our recollection of our senses for our intellectual skills, we can use both skills to observe the world around us.

Wake Me Up by Avicii

This song has a fun chorus that is perfect to sing along too. The mellow strum of the guitar in the intro and the singer’s passionate voice makes the song all the better. Wake me up lyrics represent that being a dreamer isn’t a waste of time but an escape from the reality of life. There are parts of musical interlude, where the singer is not singing, and that is my favorite part. This is simply just a part to dance along too and makes the song more cheerful.

Artwork by Neel