Yashwant Ayalasomayajula

A Flame and an Echo Yashwant Ayalasomayajula

A Flame And An Echo contains a number of high-quality short stories and poems written by an author between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, and then selecting the only the best of the stories written to be published in the collection. Within this includes... (1) Bleeding In The Rain: What does one do when awoken to only find themselves in a room full of darkness? The answer isn't exactly what one may expect. (2) The Black Rivers: Sometimes one must simply accept the reality that, you know, "real" men don't cry... or try their best to do so. (3) Reflection on Crystalline: With the ability to see another's future when looking into their eyes, one ought to imagine what our protagonist sees in the pupils of those around him. (4) Grindstone: All knives need to be sharpened at some point if you want to keep using it. No matter the intention (5) A Lawful Rebellion: A simple rebellion, one that in no way is treasonous, results in unintended consequences, as one would imagine. In this case, and full-blown war. (6) A Short Poem Ballad: As one would expect from the title of this piece, it serves as an anthology within an anthology, featuring Penship, Freeway, and Sleepcycle (7) The Ruby Bracelets: Would it truly be worth wearing wealth incarnate if one could never take them off? I don't know, I'm asking you. (8) Shattering: How many times can something shatter before you finally understand it's probably going to shatter again realistically in an hour... (9) An Untethered Angel: Angels are not meant to be trapped on the human-exclusive planet known as the Earth. It's quite the simple truth. (10) Your Average Residential Murder: It's just your average residential murder... nothing too fancy. (11) The Boulders: When the weight of the world crushes your back, is fighting back even an option? Probably not, realistically (12) A Flame And An Echo: Lastly comes the poem that the anthology is named after, the one in which the echoes that surround us all are put into question. All twelve (fourteen if A Short Poem Ballad is counted as three) of these stories invigorate a distinct set of feeling, such that when combined, a spectrum of emotion is formed, encompassing hope, grief, despair, betrayal, nostalgia, passion, conflict, regret, joy, surprise, freedom, vengeance, comfort, relief, sorrow, rage, tiredness, resilience, and confusion, all in one anthology, simply begging for an audience to experience it all, or rather, relate to it all.