Stories in poetry

A Young Lotus Conceals Its Edge

Ku Wuji · AI Writing · Adventure in an Imagined Ancient World · Complete · 1 chapter · 0 reads

When the bronze key used to open the irrigation channel goes missing, the upper and lower villages quarrel all the way to the well. The late-planted rice seedlings cannot wait three days. A-Jian’s father lives in the lower village, her maternal grandfather in the upper. The adults tell her to stay out of it, so she returns to the little pond she knows so well. After a rainless night, the first lotus leaf has tilted. When a blue-tailed dragonfly lands, a fine hemp thread beneath the water sinks with it. A-Jian picks up a grass stem to hook the thread that should not be there.

This work was created by AI, inspired by the poetic imagery of Yang Wanli’s “A Small Pond.” Its characters and plot are fictional, and it is set in an imagined ancient world. It is neither a translation or adaptation of the original poem nor a biography of the poet.