Foos Yer Doos? – by Amelia Warman
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLYFROM THE UTAS ‘LOVED STORIES’ PROJECT
2026’s UTAS third-year creative writing students were challenged not to ‘write what you know’ but to ‘write what you love’. What they produced were stories that range from the most personal memoirs to the most outlandish fantasies.. We’ve featured excerpts from five stories on Island Online - read all the excerpts from 2026 and 2025 here - and one full story will appear in Island 179
winter ✵ north
Morning traffic unfolded in low, rumbling pulses – the crunch of boots on grit and the wet slap of tyres through slush. The guttural tones of a dialect I’d later learn was Doric drifted around me, still strange and foreign to my ears. My breath, a thin white ghost, vanished into the cold. The sharp, mineral tang of the North Sea air rushed in to fill the space, carrying cigarette smoke, chimney soot, and the unmistakable stench of piss and shit. I wasn’t much used to city air, but I supposed it made sense, given the swarm of creatures around me: humans, dogs, pigeons, seagulls wheeling above, probably rats skulking somewhere below, too.
Being a big girl, stumpy and wide, usually meant I had the advantage when pushing through crowds. Here, however, my size was of no help. I felt swallowed by the shimmering granite walls, lost in the surging throng. An intruder in a city still recovering from a blizzard I had narrowly missed. Maybe that was why everyone else seemed so eager. The people on the streets and in cars alike had been trapped inside for days and were now finally bursting back into their lives. Part of me – a selfish part – ached for the snow to return. Back home in Tassie, snow was such a distant thing, something that stayed up on the mountain.
As I walked, I pulled out my wallet and slid my new student ID from its slot. I stared at the girl behind the plastic. She had long, dark hair and the straight-faced seriousness of someone who seemed to think the photo required passport-level rule-following, perhaps helped along by the fact that when she smiled, her cheeks took up half the frame. I rubbed my hand over my now-buzzed scalp, the stubble prickling against my palm. I looked nothing like that girl anymore. A last-minute decision. I was still deciding whether it was a good one or not.
I was looking at the photo when my boot caught a jagged cobblestone. I went down hard. You know how a child falls? They sit there in the dirt, stunned and silent, eyes wide as they wait to see if anyone is watching before they start to wail. That was me. On the freezing stone, I sat, waiting for a hand on my shoulder or a voice asking if I was okay. But the crowd just surged around me. Eyes flicked my way and then slid instantly back toward the horizon. They saw – then pretended not to. That was what made me cry. That, and the sight of my ankle twisted at a completely wrong angle. Shit.
Palms pressed against the stone, I tried – and failed – to lift myself up. Then something hobbled into view. A pigeon. Its small body bobbed slightly with every uneven step; feathers puffed against the cold. It stopped a few feet away, balancing on one leg, its tiny head tilting toward me as if trying to decide what I was – another discarded thing on the cobblestones. For a moment, we just stared at each other.
I wondered if it was mocking me with that single leg, the other tucked somewhere warm in its feathers, or if it really had only one. I remembered reading somewhere that city pigeons often end up with mangled feet because they become tangled in stray hairs or threads left behind by humans. I didn’t know if it was true, but in that moment, it gave me an almost absurd relief that my own hair was gone.
spring ✵ north
I rested against the thick, gnarled trunk of a tree, my spine straightened by the unyielding wood. My legs sprawled out before me, one foot locked stiff and sullen in its brace. I must have looked pathetic, like some abandoned marionette: strings cut, dumped back where it all started, wood pressed to wood.
Above, jagged buds unfurled to pale yellow, quivering in a breeze that smelled of wet earth and rot – rot, rot, rot. The sun slashed across a flat, pale-blue sky, scattering light in harsh, orbiting glints through my vision. I was grateful for the patchy shade of my tree, where cold frost-damp grass and tiny white flowers peeked shyly at my feet.
Pastry flakes clung to my coat, to the folds at my neck, to my fingers. I licked at the curry staining the corners of my mouth – orange and oily. My hands gripped the last piece of pie in the paper bag at my side; my eyes fixed on the courtyard ahead. Grey, rough-cut stone buildings rose in orderly rows, their pointed roofs over arched windows, circular towers anchoring their corners, ivy clinging to weathered stone. Students wrestled with their heavy wooden doors, iron hinges groaning. They slipped past each other; coats were shrugged off as they entered, scarves loosened, then rewrapped as they spilled back out toward the already overflowing café across the street, conversations drifting back and forth, overlapping, effortless.
A sudden thwump cut through it all. Wings. Seagulls. Not the slight Tassie ones I knew – these were thick-bodied, impossibly heavy and yet, somehow, they still flew. One tilted, and I tilted with it, tracking its motion. Then it saw me. Oh no. Curving in its flight, it landed with a thud, flattening the grass beneath it. Sunlight struck silver and charcoal feathers, the bird’s face startingly bright. I pressed harder against the tree, a thin jagged laugh escaping me. The gull tilted its head, one sharp eye fixed on the bag in my hand. Pie. Of course. That was what it wanted. Clever bastard.
It stepped toward me. And again. And again. I stared. It stared back, eyes bright and unwavering. I wondered if it had chosen me because of my inability to flee. Seemingly in response, it hopped right over my locked ankle with unnerving confidence. Jesus. Around me, strangers’ eyes flicked my way, amused. Not knowing what else to do, I shoved the rest of the pie into my mouth in one frantic bite, cheeks puffed, eyes watering, curry thick and burning all the way down my throat. The gull paused, cocking its head in mild confusion, offended. Good. I let the heat burn. My body throbbed, stomach roiling with warmth and spice. Then, apparently deciding I was of no further use, the gull lifted cleanly off into the air, the grass beneath it slowly rising back into place. ▼
Image: Ellie Burgin - Pexels
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