The Heart of Life

Hey guys! This is my entry for On Fire, so tell me what you think!

The Heart of Life

She floats over the horizon, warming the lands and basking the meandering trails with floods of light. Her rays spill upon nature, and reward those who dance beneath them with an untouchable fate; life. The children sing of her incandescence as she rises and steals the land from an illusive darkness. Her splendour burns the lengthy gloom; none can escape her wrath as she pokes through holes, hunting for more fuel. Those who bathe in evil are set to rest for the day; for none can escape the slender rays that she coils.

Beneath her, she springs children. She gives them a name. Fire. They live through day and through night, preserving their mother’s richness upon her absence. They must find fuel, engulf it and beg for more, and the mother will oblige. She will spiral together nature; her green leaves and wooden brood, for the fire to live.

The embers crackle upon the wood like water on rock, and men sing of its majesty. Fire can be honoured, cherished and embraced, yet still people fear its strength. People love what they see, but desire no more. Strength for one is weakness for another.

By night, they crackle in serenity singing of their life that nobody will hear.

My life – it whistles by so quickly. I begin as a minor spark, freshly kindled and yearning to roar. But I can’t; I am not ready. In a way, I like to see myself as friendly, and embracing. I am the latter, certainly, but I am feared still. I give so much life, and provide light in dark places. I am the eternal, I sprout life and roar with ember. I inspire and I give, for no return. Why? Because that is who I am; I am Fire.

The mother hovers in the distance, preparing to launch upon the darkness. She is the eternal; she will feast upon the cold and the dark, giving life to plants for her children to devour.

She sings from the heavens, moving into dawn and streaming across the sky. The daily ritual commences, and she rewards all that is good with a roar of her wonder. A serene bliss awakens across the sky, and once again birds chirp and men sing their song.

At midday she rises high, and looks beyond the earth. What she sees is hidden into her, for she croons with no one, but loves all. Caring not for the troubles of the world, she flies by, but her words well spent with Mother Nature murmur throughout the night. Men clash wood with wood, and once again her children reawaken. The men are rewarded with a fiery burden, and only too soon they embrace the heat with a loving feel, for their hunger is satisfied.

Late is the time, and all is silent in the harmony of twilight. The lands are warm, but the skies’ ember is lost for the night and songs and stayed.

Who is she? She is the light, the warmth and the heart of the world. She is one, and her aroma kindles more than fire, for her beauty trails before in the eternal dreams of land, sky and sea; Earth. She is the eternal mother of life.

Who is she? She is the Sun.

Hi Mark. This was a beautiful piece; very poetic. I loved the last two lines. I also found very little at fault with this piece.

and rewards those who dance beneath it with an untouchable fate; life.

Scrap the 's' on the end of 'rewards'.

She gives them a name; fire.

A semi-colon is fine and it works. But, if you are looking for affect than you might be better off with a full stop and thus turning it into two sentences.

Strength for one is weakness for another.

Lovely.

I am the eternal, and I spring life and roar with flame.

Get rid of the 'and' after 'eternal'. It just flows better.

Who is she? She is the Sun

Good ending.

I think you could maybe put in a bit more description of colour - you only really touched on it. Your personification worked very well. I think some more description of twilight or perhaps sunset would also be good.

All the best in the contest.

Keep it up,
Alainna
xxx

Wow. Aedomir, you are a fantastic writer. Your words are so brilliant and descriptive that I don't feel I can give a proper critique. I loved the whole story. It was really... deep. Very well thought out and written.

Congrats.

:Sythe:

Nice piece of work! I don't know how many times I've read about a personified sun, and yet you still manage to write in such a way that you held my attention. I love the emotion you brought to her firey children. Kudos!

She rages over the horizon, warming the lands and basking the meandering trails.

I would suggest a prepositional phrase for basking, such as

She rages over the horizon, warming the lands and basking the meandering trails in her light.

They live through day through night

This has to be changed to either

They live through day and night

or

They live through day and through night

They live through day through night, preserving their mother’s richness when she is unable.

I understand what you're saying here, but when the sun is out shining, she's not trying to preserve(hoard) her richness, is she? No, she's trying to spread it around everywhere (the big bully!). ;) So I would change 'when she is unable' to 'in her absence' because she herself is never 'preserving' anything.

Her rays spill beauty, and rewards those who dance beneath it with an untouchable fate; life.

Rays are plural, so 'it' should be 'them.'

Her splendour burns the lengthy gloom; none can escape her wrath as it pokes through holes, searching for more fuel.

You've given the sun a gender, so 'it' should be 'she.'

Her rays spill beauty, and rewards those who dance beneath it with an untouchable fate; life.

As a previous poster suggested, change 'rewards' to 'reward' or even '[s]and[/s] rewarding.'

They sing of her incandescence as she rises and steals the land from an illusive darkness.

Who sings of her incandescence? Those who dance beneath her, or her rays?

She will spring together nature; her green leaves and wooden brood, for the fire to live.

Semi-colon should be a comma. I also suggest changing 'spring together' with 'propagate' or some other synonym, as the words nature and spring are too similar for comfort.

Everyday, they crackle through the night singing of their life that nobody will hear.

Who is 'they?' The fire? You don't necessarily need to spell out your subject each time, but it shouldn't have to be guessed. Instead of 'fire,' try something like 'the children of the sun'/'the sun's children.'

Also, I wouldn't use 'everyday' and 'night' in the same sentence. Although 'everyday' encompasses day and night, you later refer to the night only. I would try

Every night, the children of the sun crackle through the darkness, singing of their lives that nobody will hear.

note: Multiple fires, multiple lives.

or

At the end of each day, the children of the sun crackle through the night, singing of their lives that nobody will hear.

As well, I would end off the sentence with a semi-colon, since the next paragraph is from the fire's point of view, and a semi-colon would set it up more clearly than a period.

There's a couple other little points (some repetition of ideas [plant-growing] throughout the piece) but they're more nitpicks of personal preference than actual errors. I'll lay off unless you want more. ;)

Keep this up, and hope this helped!

Very well done. Creative and thought-provoking. I hope you do well in the contest.

Wow thank you everyone! Thanks very much and great advice. I must edit this .

Thanks!
-Mark

Hey Aedomir,

First thing first. The semi-colon in your title is incorrectly used. Not to mention I don't think you can really used a semi-colon in a title anyhaps, since a title is a fragment. But! You should probably rephrase it something nicer like "The Heart of Life and Beauty", something lovely and grammatical.

She rages over the horizon, warming the lands and basking the meandering trails with floods of light.

Is rages really the verb you want to be using here? It seems the tone you've gone for in this piece (which is suggested at in the title) is that the sun is a beautiful thing. The verb "rages" thus defenestrates this idea right away, and for the reader, evokes this odd paradoxical feeling. The title made me thing this was going to be all warm and fuzzy, and suddenly she is raging. Maybe a change?

There are other issues in this first sentence -- the description of the trails as meandering. Well, that's okay, but in the second sentence you provide no elucidation of this and I'm kind of thinking -- oookay, what's with the meandering? And why is the sun only basking the trails? Why is she warming the lands but specifically basking the trails that-are-for-some-reason-meandering? It's an odd choice, when you look at it.

Plus: floods of light is kind of a sucky way of describing light. You can do better!

Sorry about that -- I just put a lot of weight on a good first sentence.

So, L2:

Her rays spill beauty, and reward those who dance beneath them with an untouchable fate; life.

Spill is sooo not the verb you want here. At first apparently she is "raging" but then decided to warm and bask the land, and now she's spilling? It's an odd consortium of phrases, and I was slightly befuddled by this point. In fact my current psychological analysis of the sun puts her somewhere in the schizophrenic bracket. So yeah, "spilling beauty" is also a bit lame, and I want something better than that.

The purple prose that follows is also a bit icky -- I quite like the "dancing beneath them" thought, actually, but this was ruined by the second murdering of a semi-colon at the business end of the sentence. What you need is a variety of other punctuations here, rather than a semi-colon, for example:

1. Her rays spill beauty, and reward those who dance beneath them with an untouchable fate: life. (THE COLON)
2. Her rays spill beauty, and reward those who dance beneath them with an untouchable fate -- life. (THE DASH)
3. Her rays spill beauty, and reward those who dance beneath them with an untouchable fate, life. (THE COMMA -- although I wouldn't suggest this, it perturbs me in some invisible manner)
4. Her rays spill beauty, and reward those who dance beneath them with an untouchable fate. Life. (THE DRAMATIC NEW SENTENCE)

So let's look at the rest of the Very Important first paragraph:

The children sing of her incandescence as she rises and steals the land from an illusive darkness. Her splendour burns the lengthy gloom; none can escape her wrath as she pokes through holes, hunting for more fuel. Those who bathe in evil are set to rest for the day; for none can escape the slender rays that she coils.

All I can say is you are falling prey to what some people call adjectivitis. It's when you feel an irrational need to stick adjectives and adverbs to every noun or whatnot in the hope that it makes your description seem cooler. Often, it can, but most adjectives can be tiresome and sometimes the nouns just want to be alone. You know how it is. So, for example, "rays" probably doesn't need "slender" (I mean, when you think about it, how are rays slender? Rays are in fact all-encompassing, because light gets pretty much everywhere. I would argue they were positively un-slender). I'd also like to bring up the whole raging/wrath. vs. beauty/love thing again. Unless (and after reading the rest of the story, I'm doubtful) you are writing the story to show the extreme dichotomy of the sun's motives, a white and dark mix between creation and destruction, then you might want to remove the whole "i are sun, i kills you!" thing going on.

I think the piece improved as it moved away from the first paragraph. I like how you personify fire and ask the reader the identify with its life.

Now, I'm not going to go through every sentence, but I will say you like some crazy verbs. Cool verbs are, well, cool every so often, but too much of them and it gets a bit mad. There are times to use funky verbs and times not to use them, and finding the right place is an important skill. A verb can tell us a lot about what you're trying to say, so if you use the wrong one it looks out of place and can ruin the tone of your story.

I also have to say I'm not a fan of the story as a whole: no characters, no plot, etc. Simply a personification of the sun, and her children, the fires. I can see you're made it specifically for the competition, but I think you could have been more creative with the idea and pushed it in other directions, rather than a simple descriptive piece.

However, saying all that, I hope my critique helps, and thanks for sharing. Good luck in the competition.

Thanks Jack. I was unsure about the whole descriptive piece, maybe I should have gone for more plot...

Thanks once again,

-Mark

This is great! Everything that i could see that should be fixed had already been pointed by others. Great job on this. I've read many personifications on the sun, but none have been as good as this.

Thanks very much Flame!