Exercises from the Energheia Writing Course 2025

The following short story was created during Write or Wrong?, a two-day exploration of how human creativity and artificial intelligence can meaningfully collaborate in the writing process. Over the course of the workshop, students experimented with ChatGPT as a creative partner—using it to overcome writer’s block, generate ideas, refine style, and expand narrative possibilities.

This works reflect the spirit of the course: curiosity, play, and a willingness to treat AI not as a replacement for imagination but as a catalyst for it. What follows is a showcase of voices discovering new creative territory, one prompt at a time. 

Miguel Àngel Garrido (Teacher Energheia International Writing Course 2025)

Colored light spills across my nose. It tickles. I shouldn’t be able to feel it – yet my senses betray me. They blur, collapse into one another. My eyes hear the echo of this sacred hall. My ears trace the cold that seeps from the stone. My hands see the colors, drifting down from the stained glass like falling dust.

I never liked churches. Not once. And still – here, now – I feel sheltered. Enclosed by the weight of stone, washed in the light of the altar. The stillness carries me. And it unsettles me. My heart should be racing, my chest grasping for breath, sweat rising on my brow. But there is only silence. As if it were not mine but placed within me by someone else.

The walls are so thick that no sound from the outside can enter. No echo of chaos, no voices from beyond – only the wind, whispering through the hollow arches like a spirit searching for a name. The walls narrow toward the front, forming a rounded enclave, a small sanctuary carved out of stone and shadow. The air is cool and heavy with the scent of dust, of old incense burned long ago. To either side, narrow corridors lead into darkness, yet they are choked with fallen beams and broken stone. It feels as though people once lived here – people unafraid of these sacred walls. Perhaps they prayed, sang, built fires in the alcoves and left their voices linger in the cold air. But now, nothing moves. Nothing breathes. On one wall, faint traces of a mural remain: faces of saints, their eyes faded, their halos flaking away. A fragment of an altar lies split across the floor, its marble veined with moss and time.

Why here? Why this place? It was her idea. I agreed. I didn’t ask why.

Footsteps echo behind me. Not hers. I know it instantly. Her steps sound different -heavier, less certain, edged with danger. An old man passes without a glance, settles near the front, opens a Bible he has brought with him. That book, they say, holds the truth.

It’s unusual to encounter anyone here anymore. The ruins block the streets, and the massive front doors are almost impossible to open. I admire the old man – he doesn’t look like he could muster such strength. Maybe there’s another entrance. One I don’t know. I rarely come to this part of the wasteland. My territory is in the North. But this southern sector, despite its ruins, is safer. I suspect that’s why she chose it.

She’s never been brave enough to enter the North. Even as a child, fear shadowed her every step. That she would cross the inner city walls at all is almost remarkable. Yet I cannot let myself hope too soon. What if this is a trap? What if she never comes? What if the Peace Fleet shows up instead?

I quickly check my escape routes in my mind. The church windows are barricaded, rough boards nailed across centuries-old glass. Only a few slivers of light cut through, sharp as knives in the dust. I count the ways out: the front doors, sluggish as tombstones; a side door, its hinges unknown; perhaps a breach behind the sacristy. All possibilities. None certain.

A whispering sound creeps through the masonry, as if the building itself listens. I hold my breath. Was it the wind – or footsteps, muffled, hidden behind stone? I do not know whether I fear more that she will not come – or that she actually will.

The wind makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Ice-cold. Cold as always. Winter reigns all year, long – blue lips a sign of life. My hands tremble. Shiver. Perhaps the cold. Perhaps the fear.

She was never cold. Even when her knees sank deep into the snow to fetch firewood from the shed, her body remained still, rigid. Today, she no longer has to gather firewood. In her towers and greenhouses, they heat with geothermal energy, drawn from the deep veins of the earth. No one has to freeze anymore, they promised. All humans will live in prosperity, they said. What they did not say: not everyone belongs to humanity.

I bow my head, seeking the warmth of my chest. On the floor, I notice a plant that has fought its way through the stone slabs. It has broken free, reaching toward the few shafts of sunlight. It seems both unique and part of something larger. It stands for itself, follows its own path – and yet the walls shelter it, offering a home. It belongs to the church, and yet it does not.

The light that slips through the cracks makes the dust in the air visible. For a moment, it almost seems to glitter. It shifts with the wind, relentless and yet calm, moving through the church. She breathes. The crypts are her lungs, the altar, her heart – and I am a foreign body. Perhaps I should not be here. Far from the place where I feel safe. The place where I grew up. Where she grew up too.

Yet while I tend the frozen garden, struggle to keep the fire alive in the stove, and patch the leaking roof, she marches. In step, by command, under watchful eyes. Among all those people, and yet alone. I am alone too.

The wood of the pew behind me creaks. I turn. No one there. Panic coils in me as I scan my surroundings, cursing my carelessness. It could have cost me my life – or worse, my freedom. My head snaps back toward the altar, my ears sharpened like spears before battle. Nothing will escape them now.

The light above the altar flickers. Dust stirs, shaping lines that resemble a figure, so fleeting I have to blink. There is no one. There is someone.

I do not dare blink again.