Flash Fiction Contest - Second Place

In the spring of 2025, Northern Quill Publishing hosted a flash fiction contest in partnership with NorthwordsNWT and UpHere Magazine. The theme of the contest was ‘Edges’ where we asked authors to submit their edgiest pieces. The first place winner was published in the September/October 2025 edition of UpHere Magazine: https://www.uphere.ca/issues/here-sepoct-2025

The second place winner was Hannah Ascough. Here is Hannah’s winning piece:

Pinework

By Hannah Ascough

After my mother’s cabin burnt down, we spent the day scraping splintered wood and charred pinecones into piles by the house. The house itself was fine: the sprinklers left it edged in green, the reaching limbs of dead trees behind it the only sign of the forest fire. But the embers caught my mother’s cabin, and split it into flames. 

Since they’d moved out to the trail, my mother made miniature clay houses in that cabin. She liked to litter them in the forest, nestled into the bosoms of pine trees. 

I asked her once why she made those houses. She told me it’s important to stay fit as you get older. She told me I should get a hobby. She didn’t invite me to make houses with her. 

The fires had brewed all summer. I spent my days stocking the aisles with throat lozenges and looking out the orange-tinted window, wondering which planetary boundary we’d tipped over.  

My mother came into my work a lot. She’d bring me healthy muffins. They’re good for watching your weight, she’d say. I ate four while she stood there. She, of course, ate none. She told me to visit the new house, said, it’s cooler out among the trees. 

My parents moved down the trail once my sister Liz and I left. I didn’t understand it. They’d never been off-grid people. I called Liz, asking, can they afford it? Liz rolled her eyes. Who knows? 

I tried to ask my father once, but he just said, your mother wanted to.

He spent that summer on the lake. He had never boated before but, when my mother claimed that cabin at the forest’s edge, he dragged a canoe into the water, and floated every day in the smoky haze. I never saw them speak. 

I tried to join my mother in her cabin a few times. Once, I sat in an old camping chair while she built three clay houses. I brought a bag of chips and ate the whole thing myself. 

Who are these houses for, I asked. She didn’t answer. She asked if I had found another job yet. I told her no. I asked if she had seen the pinecones surrounding her cabin. They’re the tree’s children, I said. They seed the next forest. 

She said, you could always go to school. You’re always going on about the climate. You could do something instead. 

Liz told me later to let it go. 

The smoke brought breathless people to the edge of the pharmacy desk that summer. I watched inhalers float off the shelves. My mother brought me more muffins and said my pores looked grimy.  

Liz asked me why she visited so much. I suspected that she didn’t have many friends left. She’d grown prickly in age. 

She invited me over for dinner with her new neighbour, Todd. He had helped set up the rooftop sprinklers. She asked me to bring a salad. I brought bread instead. She told me not to talk about climate change. It puts everyone on edge, she said. 

Todd asked me what I did. I said I worked at Shoppers. My mother told him I was a chubby, nerdy child. We always thought she’d be a doctor, she laughed. 

My father was silent. Todd smiled uncomfortably. He left quickly. 

I saw my mother one more time before the fire burned her cabin down. She was molding little houses with her hands, their edges rounded and sweet. Our apartment growing up had been cramped, lined with past tenants’ dirt. I wondered if these houses were for her.   

The smoke hung] low that day. I told my mother that there we’d pushed the planet to its edge. 

She sighed. You’re so frustrating, she said. Do something about it. Go to school. Get a real job. Stop wasting your life, stop talking about the climate. 

I stayed silent then, but screamed out the window as I drove home. That night, I ate two sleeves of cookies. 

The cabin burned down one week later. She and my father had left to visit Liz down south. While they were gone, the fires edged into the forests around town. 

I nearly screened my mother’s call. She told me to check the sprinklers. 

I’m worried about the cabin, she said. 

They’ve shut down the trail, I said. Everyone has come into the city. 

I sent her the article to prove it. She hung up on me. 

When they got back to town, the fires had already left their scars and moved on. My mother was already crying as I drove them home. She already knew. 

Todd helped us pry away the cabin’s scorched walls. Inside, there was nothing except the bones of tiny houses and acrid burnt clay. 

My mother streaked wet, grimy fingerprints down her face. She did not speak. 

Todd inspected the sprinkler. I don’t understand why it didn’t go off, he kept saying. The other one worked perfectly. Were you able to check on them, he asked me. 

The road was already closed, I said. 

He frowned. But I thought I saw your car as I drove out. 

I shrugged. 

My mother stayed silent. She eventually walked away into the blackened forest. 

Todd kept turning the sprinkler in his hands. It looks damaged, he kept saying as we splintered the boards into ash. It must have been hit by something.  

Maybe it was a pinecone, I finally snapped. There was smoke in my eyes and sweat in my pores. My mother was heading back towards us. 

The heat pushes them over the edge, I continued. The parent tree burns down, but the cones split open and spread their seeds. 

My mother said nothing. She stood at the edge of the burnt, smoking forest and, for the first time that day, she looked right at me. 

I stood at the edge of her ruined cabin, atop the clay and pinecones and tiny charred houses, and looked right back.

Author Bio: Raised in Katarokwi (Kingston, Ontario), and of Scottish and English heritage, Hannah Ascough (she/her) relocated to Sǫ̀mba K’è, Denendeh (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories) in 2023. A passionate climate advocate, she is completing her PhD on climate crisis communication strategies at Queen’s University. While her recent writing has largely been academic, she was inspired by the Northwords’ Writers’ Festival to revive her undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from Dalhousie University. She is grateful to live and write in Sǫ̀mba K’è, and see firsthand the important role of storytelling in fostering climate change resilience.