(so this isn't exactly in line with the promt, but I wanted practice for a sort of narrative essay style because I'm working on my college essays and I don't really know what I'm doing.)

Time capsules are a unique form of preservation. Most forms, whether fossils, or pictures, or diaries, are focused. They capture one shape, or moment, or thought process. A time capsule, however, allows for many different moments, people, and ideas. It's a marble cake of narratives. It paints a picture with many different brushes and colors. And, most importantly, it is made of human collaboration. So it's safe to say I have an appreciation for time capsules. But while I love them very much, I have never actually created a time capsule. I have always wanted to, but the weight of the capsule has always made me nervous. When you make one, you are highlighting the most important things to you- the things you want someone who never knew you to know. So while I've never made one, I like to imagine what my perfect time capsule would look like. When making a time capsule, there are three important pieces: location, material, and contents. Each of the pieces has to have value, and each value usually compliments the other two. Not challenging at all, I know. So, first. Location. In house-hunting, location is the number one most valued part of a house. In a time capsule, I would say it is probably second. For my location, I would bury my time capsule deep under the twisted roots of my tree growing up. Although I grew up in many houses, this tree is at the center of many of my childhood fantasies. Playing under its branches, I was an explorer, or fairy, or pirate, or king. (that is, until my Mom called for dinner). So where else to put a collection of my memories than under the tree that nurtured many of them. Second, then, is material. This one is last in memory but first in durability. Place it where you want for importance. My material would probably be some kind of metal, engraved with the words "this time capsule contains the memories of one [my name], buried in 2023 C.E." and then the star chart in case C.E. is no longer the known time keeper. What can I say, I'm a pragmatist. Third, and finally, are the contents. I will pick five, but know that that number is subject to grow along with my age. My first content is a picture. It is a picture of a little me, grinning up at the camera with chocolate around my face after I ate too much in a fit of excitement. On the back, it lists the date and a bit about my family and childhood. My second is another picture. It is of me now, one of my senior photos taken recently. I look worlds away from the kid with chocalate smeared on her face. The back talks of that difference, and of my plans for the future. My third memory is a dictonary that I used growing up. It has colorful pictures and pages worn from flipping through it. A letter, pressed into the front pages, inscribes the dictonaries' importance to me. The games my mother taught me to play with it. My craving for knowledge, books, and words. How it taught me to communicate and lead with curiosity. The fourth is a stuffed animal that my best friend won for me at the local fair. Its letter describes her in detail: her smile, her laugh, her stubborn personality. It details the day we met, the night she won the felt plushie for me. It ends with the hope that future readers have someone to love as I love her. The fifth and final momento changes four or five times. It switches between an acceptance letter, an article on the pandemic that stuck in 2020, my favorite, furiosly annotated novel, my diary, and finally my sketchbook. The book has drawings, colored art, and paintings. each is dated and each is etched in love and care. A sticky note- neon green- adorns it. It says only that this sketchbook contains my throughts and emotions throughout the years, and begs the discoverer to look over it with care. Five-hundred years later, it will be found. Or maybe not. It might be found in five years, when developers tear up the tree seeking to turn my neighborhood into a bright new shopping center. Who knows. Whatever happens, whoever finds it, I hope it will be found and cherished. Because time capsules are not a solitary act- even when made alone. They are an ode to the past and a proclaimation for the future, all wrapped in one. They are not made to be buried- they are made to be found. And whoever finds mine will know a little more about the life I lived and the world they inherited. And maybe they'll stop and sit in reverance of that human connection. That is why I dream of my perfect time capsule.

When I was young, people always told me I would be a heartbreaker. It's a common thing, really, to say to a royal. That they'll break many hearts. That they're dashing, swoon-worthy, charming. That they'll surely have a perfect Ever After. So it was never something I registered as any importance. My teen years, my young adult years, found me wooing and flirting, yes. They found me known for my fortune in battle, for my leadership and bravery. For my cunning and my ruthlessness against our foes. But they never found me with a heart of my own, nor with the heart of another. Then you came along. You, with your focused and forward attitude. You with your heart on your sleeve, always bleeding for someone. You with your quick witted comebacks that rivaled my own. I had never met someone before who could handle my teasing and throw it back, twice as powerful. How could I not have fallen for you? I will say we met under less-than-perfect circumstances. I remember that day, how you stormed the throne room, screaming at me for the troops I lost. You called me callous, naive, self-centered. Heartless. You demanded answers and to help fix the wrongs I had done. How could I say no? (My advisors all urged me to.) So I let you. I let you take a seat on the court and talk back to me, pressure us all into your "moral path." God, I hated that descision at first. But you showed me how to have a heart. You showed me how to look past myself. And I showed you how to lead, how to relax, how to deal with the pain of blood on your hands. Your heart and my head, they said.
So, because of that ill-fated day, our kingdom has prospered. And now, looking back at the life I had led up until you arrived, I see where my mistake was. See, the thing is, I grew up being told a heart was all in the lilt of a voice, or in the saunter of the hips. But you've shown me what the heart truly is. It is in the people of the kingdom when they prosper and celebrate. It is in the friends found in court, and the loyalty they carry in their souls. It is in the chest of the enemy as they ride against us, because they too have someone to fight for. And as I look back, I realise I had spent my life focused on being the greatest ruler, on being powerful, and I lost sight of the hearts around me. Each step towards my imagined greatness grinded another heart to dust under my heel. Of family members who saw me lose touch with myself. Of friends who saw me shut them out and stab them in the back. Of subjects who suffered from my actions. Broken hearts litter the path behind me. I have tried my best to make up for it. I have worked with you to build this kingdom back, to build a life together. I wake up every day and I chose to love you. I chose to love my friends, my family, my subjects. But those hearts are still lying there behind me. Turning my back on them won't stitch the pieces back together. And I don't know what to do about that. People always told me I would be a heartbreaker. I don't think this is what they meant.

I've been drawing the same face since I was a child. A raven-haired woman too tall to guess. She often crowds the paper, bent over like she didn't quite anticipate her inability to fit. And she's always crying. Never the same way. crying, sobbing, weeping, wimpering. Some sad, some angry, some filled with relief. But she's always crying. She changed as I did. When I broke my arm falling off the swings, she showed up bruised and bloodied. When I got into the arts program of my dreams, she clutched a diploma to her chest. As the drawings progressed, she began to shrink. She had started with features too elongated, jagged edges that faded into the blank page left behind her. But as I aged, as my art solidified, she began to whither and become more fragile. She began to sit more than stand. By my second year of college, she used a wheelchair. I accepted this gradient into my art. In college, after long days of rigorous lessons on the proper forms, drawing her became my solace. I still knew nothing about her. But I could draw her in my sleep. (And I did, several times, to the annoyance of the landlord who's wall I ruined.) I finished college and started a studio in the city. After much debate, my friend convinced me to name it "the Sobbing Woman" after the works that had gained me popularity. (thanks to a viral video she made of the drawing-on-the-wall incident.) So there I was. Fresh out of college. Ready to take on the art world and create a name for myself. But the question of the Sobbing Woman's identity still haunted me. I stayed up at night, drawing her face, trying to find recognition amongst the creases. I searched Google to no avail. The question would have to wait, I decided, as my life was swept into a world of exhibits and networking. Until one brisk November morning sitting in my studio. She wasn't crying, but I knew it was her. She had the same wheelchair I had drawn for years, and a knit blanket draped over her legs that I remembered sketching last winter. Her hair was tucked back into a loose braid, her hands worn by time and trial. She met my astonished gaze from across the studio. Forgotten watercolors crashed to the floor as I saw her over the top of my canvas. She smiled softly, like she had expected this. When she spoke, her voice reminded me of wind through the branches of my childhood tree. Scratching and quiet, but in a way that felt like home. I had thousands of questions swirling in my mind. "Who are you?" "Why do I always draw you?" "Are you real? Is this a dream?" "How did you find me?" But her voice silenced them all. "What are you painting?" So I showed her. I showed her the brook and the barn I had been working on all morning. I lamented how the light through the trees wasn't hitting the walls right, and how the water flowed unnaturally. It would never sell, I felt it in my heart. But as I explained this, she frowned. "Why do you paint this?" I opened my mouth and closed it. I started, "Well, rural landscapes are popular now, and if I want a piece to sell-" "No, why do you paint this?" She lifted a knarled finger to point at the cracks in the rocks, the light falling on the peeling paint, the broken wood of the barn. I stared at her. "I guess," I measured out slowly, "It's more beautiful if there are imperfections. It shows the emotion of the scene; that there were memories and a life lived there. That... so that the onlooker recognises something more than just the artist's skill." Tears pooled at the corner of her eyes as I explained, tracing crystiline paths down her sallow cheeks. I looked into her eyes, feeling empathy and connection for her. She nodded her head, as though my answer was all she needed to hear. Or maybe all I needed to hear. To remind myself why I started drawing all those years ago. At this thought, she patted my shoulder motherly, and turned to go. "Wait." I stole my courage. "Who are you? Why have I always drawn you?" She stoped, chair creaking as her weight shifted back. I searched the back of her head, hoping to find something. She breathed in. Out. A fresh flood of tears poured down her face. Emotion cascaded off her, waves of joy, sadness, fear, relief, anger. Each brings a memory. I am ten, I have skinned my knee falling off my bike. My father holds me close and combs his hadn through my hair. I am relieved. I am thirteen. My friends gather, jostling, around me as I blow my birthday candles out. I can't remember feeling more joyous than this. I am seventeen. My date has stood me up for prom. I watch him dance with another as I am overcome with anger and sadness. I am twenty four. My mother lies in the hospital bed, losing the battle for her life. We sit next to her, desperate and helpless, as monitors count down the days she has left. Her hand feels paper-thin in my palm. I grieve silently. I look at the lady, this Sobbing Woman, and finally understand. I understand all those drawings. All those faces and tears. My passion, my emotion. My "Why." Why I draw and paint. Why I love and I lose and I love again. Why I keep going.
A laugh builds in my throat, rumbling out of me like a thunder. I bend over, laughing and clutching my stomach. Laughing at the discovery of my muse. Laughing at my art. Laughing at the world for all it's ineffability. She leaves- still sobbing, as I turn back to my painting- still laughing.

When aliens first came into contact with humans, it went much more civilly than any sci-fy writers or diplomats had expected. To be fair, their predictions were based purely on the human responce, and aliens are anything but. when they came to earth- or rather, when we first hailed them from the ISS voyager shuttle- they were in awe of us. We were so fragile to them, and they were suprised we were still here. Apparently most carbon-based creatures are made of much tougher material, and most oxygen breathing creatures were made of much less solid stuff. We were a statistical anomoly. We didn't eat how they ate, we didn't function like they did. Our repiratory system seemed to puzzle them, and our digestive system all but horrified them. ("Acid? In your Stomach? and you just Dissolve your food to absorb the nutrients? but your not a plasma form?") So, of course, having our new friends was truly insightful for us. Our scientists quickly joined forces with their scientists to chart similarities and differences- the latter much mor frequent- and to learn about environments and systems outside of the Milky Way. It was very early into their combined research- really only a few months- when the Aliens began to point out features of humankind that we ourselves did not ever notice. Apparently, only ever researching with humans creates a bit of a blind-effect. Not a good enough one for the writers, but a good enough one for the scientists. Because while humans were writing off vampires, shapeshifters, seelkies, and the like off as a work of the imagination, those traits existed right under our noses. The aliens showed up and immediatley began to point these traits out. Someone with a recessive trait for extended life, not much just a few decades past a normal expectancy, and with unusual speed and agility due to their blood quality and flow. Someone with a natural ability to shift into any role or impression, due to their heightened scenses and their genetically special voicebox. Someone who had an unlocked gene that allowed them to breathe fire, who coincidentally worked as a fire-eater at a local ren faire. But all of these traits were overshadowed by the showstopping discovery. The placebo effect, our dreams, the Mandela effect, Deja Vu, and many other "unexplainable" occurances were not just weird human quirks. They were a sixth sense. According to the scientists, human's weird anomolies and even weirder evolution meant that we developed an unsteady connection to the time and space continuum. We evolved so fast compared to other creatures, and we evolved on a planet of radiation and poisionous gases and the like. Our psycis couldn't handle it. Our bodies couldn't handle it. And all that access interaction and adaption manifested in a collective conciousness that allows us to interact and even alter the course of time and space. Theyre calling it the Probability Sense. Essentially, the new sense creates a rift in time and space-more of a bridge than a rift actually- and it puts millions of multiversal possibilities at our fingertips. What we do with it, however, isn't up to the scientists. Its up to the colllective 9 billion of us. I've seen spreaddit posts, political speeches, scientific papers, and warnings from other alien races much much farther away, all debating and arguing for different uses. War, peace. Progress, historical insight. Connection with other aliens, isolationism. Strict regulations, Unfettered exploration. Not one person seems to agree. So? Now we've met aliens. Now we all have superpowers. The Question is: What are you going to do about it?