A magazine has asked for contributions for their creative writing section.

Either

Write a description of a very hot place as suggested by this picture:

[A picture showing a vast, dry, cracked-earth landscape under a hazy, orange sky. A bright, white sun hangs in the sky, and distant, hazy mountains are visible on the horizon. The foreground is detailed, showing the texture of the parched ground.]

or

Write a story about a disagreement.

(Model answer for the description task) The air doesn't move. It hangs, thick and heavy like a woollen blanket, saturated with a heat that shimmers above the cracked earth. The ground itself is a mosaic of drought, a jigsaw puzzle of baked mud, the pieces curling at the edges as if begging for a drop of water. To walk on it is to hear a thousand tiny fractures, a brittle crunching underfoot that sounds like the breaking of old bones. The sun is not a friendly, golden orb; it is a malevolent white eye, glaring from a bleached, hazy sky. Its light is merciless, stripping all colour from the landscape, leaving only shades of ochre, beige, and dust. Shadows are small, sharp things, cowering at the base of the few skeletal shrubs that have somehow survived. They offer no refuge, no hint of coolness. Silence reigns here, but it is not a peaceful silence. It is a waiting silence, punctuated by the faint, high-pitched hum of insects and the whisper of a hot breeze that feels like the breath from an oven. In the distance, the mountains tremble in the haze, their outlines blurred and uncertain, like a half-forgotten memory. There is no life here, only endurance. It is a world paused at the peak of a fever, waiting for a storm that will never break.