Ooh, I'm thrilled that my first contest entry came in second place! Thanks to everyone who voted, and congratulations to the other winners! There were several lovely stories and I really enjoyed reading everyone's take on the theme. :-)

By the way, if participating in future contests (as I hope I will, now that I got around to trying it!), should I post the story only to the LJ community? These days DW is my primary site and I do and check things there first, so I posted my story there first and then the LJ community, since I didn't notice anything in the rules about this. But I noticed the LJ post was then duplicated on the DW community, so my story was there twice, which of course I didn't mean to do. Sorry about that! If only posting on LJ the more pragmatic way to do it, I'll make sure to do that in the future. Even if DW is where I have most of my pretty icons. ;-)

Congratulations! Thanks for joining us.

You can post either here or DW. I usually import to DW (so not your fault there), but if you are okay with LJ, I'd suggest post here as this is the main community, and then we don't get duplicates when I import. However, I know some folks are anti-LJ so if they feel better at DW, they don't have to post here. I'd still count them in the voting either here or at DW when they cast their vote. I hope that makes sense. ^^;

Ohhh, congrats everyone!!! Well earned!

Ohhh, thank you for the third place! *dances* And congratulations to our gorgeous winners, such amazing stories! I'll pop back to leave comments on those and the other entries at some point, life is hectic blah blah blah :)