Little Redbreast {1}

Witness the days of solitude nibble away at his mind. Reality walks out of his vision and hindsight is just the dark and the whispers of the corpses. He turns over his nightmares into birdsongs that no longer mean anything to him, other than recalling emptiness in his own voice. Robin watches his youth burn to an end in the early morning. It is spicy with saffron clouds. Gold trim forms along the horizon, a line of dust, a dancer spreading her arms across the forest canopies. Bright, beckoning. The plump trees blush. The slender bodies are modest and shy at the nearing winter, revealing a little too much as their leaves drop around them, like skirts, weaving down their wooden spines.
The land mumbles into life. The trees are shimmying with the stir of birds, the leaves with the song of their waking beaks begging at the trunks. Robin is tired. He will sleep. His nest will crunch under the wind, and the crawling dawn may pick at the sticks; but he will not enter it. Hugging his wings, he will dream, and the cold will freeze him and he will not wake up. His dream will last forever. It will buy his mind.
Robin shivers into death.
Memories are so fragile. Little balls of glass that mock you like crystal eyes, bluing at the temptation to remember them. Then the betrayal. They punch into your heart, they clutch onto your neck until your throat can no longer cry and you fall back with your arms flailing until the past has stolen you once again. The pain gathers at the precipice of you soul. You tip over the cliff. And it’s the end.
In the ball of battered feathers, Robin prays for the world to spin away. He sings for the dead. A morbid requiem of lost voices cries for him, humming beneath the stars. The last of them pass away in an arch of shimmering eyes. They can’t see him anymore. And so he is free.
He sees Redbreast in the shadow of his mind; the glint of auburn drops with the tiniest sparkle of light, disappearing into the dark. As he enters it to call for him, Robin knows he will not return. Nothing can check the agony that has burdened his chest. Nothing to judge.
The world is bleak behind his eyelids. The sounds of birds slurring around him in a great voice from silence is petrifying. If they find him, he will surely live. And so he curls up his tongue and prepares to die.
Dying with the crack on his beak and the mud on his head and the dark of the night all forgotten.
Redbreast, Redbreast, come to me.
My love, my lust, go to see.
The holes of the earth drowned by rain.
The split in my chest a world for pain.

****

--I'm taking a break from all my other writer-y commitments, and am going ahead with a novella or two. I need to improve my style and build up my confidence before I move into a novel again. This is short, but it introduces the story somewhat.
--In short, I'd be keen to hear 1) whether you like it, are interested and such, and 2) if you like the style, sentence structures etc.
Thanks, everyone. Any comments at all would be fantastic.

Hey Mark - first I'll give you some nit picks and whatnot and then I'll comment on the piece overall.

Witness the days of solitude nibble away at his mind.

Good, strong opening. It reminds me of a line from a play rather than a novella but it is still good. I like it.

Reality walks out of his vision and hindsight is just the dark and the whispers of the corpses.

This line, especially when read aloud, seems very clunky. In particular it's the arrangement of 'the dark' and then followed by 'the whispers of the corpses'. Perhaps try re-arranging it or just re-wording it?

Robin shivers into death.

Good use of a short sentence and I like it, however, I feel this should come later. It just seems a bit premature to be in the middle of the piece. It's a very final line.

gathers at the precipice of you soul.

Typo, should be 'your'.

Redbreast, Redbreast, come to me.
My love, my lust, go to see.
The holes of the earth drowned by rain.
The split in my chest a world for pain.

I like this and it adds an interesting touch, however I don't like the format of line, full stop, line full stop. Perhaps change the punctuation here a bit more so that it is slightly more poetic?

Now in answer to your questions: 1) I did like it and am interested however, I'm struggling (and also intrigued) to see how you would continue this into a story.
2) I found the tone quite cold but it worked very well and I liked the sentence structure and general format of the piece. Whether this would become tiresome after a while, though, is another story. I suppose I would just have to see =)


Overall, a gripping and well written piece that worked well. Try not to let it get too overly-structured and perhaps read it all out loud before putting it away - some of it can get a bit wordy.


All the best,

Alainna
xx

Hey, thanks, Alainna! This is really just the introduction; it becomes far less clunky later on, as the rest of it is just a story about the bird in a proper story format. =]

Thanks again!

Hey there Blink. Here to give my humble opinion.

Really, I just had a one particular nit pick and that was an issue of word choice.

The trees are shimmying with the stir of birds

Here, shimmying just pulls away from the tone of the story. A word like "shivering" or "trembling" are less likely to destroy the feel of the piece.

Also, I rather enjoyed the poem portion, though I have a limited knowledge of poetry so perhaps my opinion is unneeded. Still, I has a good sound and adds to the tone. The word choice is good and precise.

1) I did find this interesting and I always enjoy a story that begins at the end. It gives you something to look forward too: learning about the beginning.

2) As far as style and structure, I didn't see a single issue aside from the one I already mentioned. Therefore, Awesomeness.

'sup.


1) whether you like it, are interested and such,

Yup. Write moar.


2) if you like the style, sentence structures etc.

The dense, almost prose-poem style of writing I think works well here, as an introduction, but I probably couldn’t read an entire piece like this. I notice you ease up on it towards the end of the chapter though. Or, at least, it becomes easier to understand, because the opening paragraph in particular is rather obscure.

One thing that threw me off was the sudden use of the second person. It feels very out of place surrounded by the third person voice. Do you intend to make further use of the second person? If so, definitely keep it, otherwise maybe consider revising? I dunno, I guess I’ll leave it up to you.

I’d also just like to echo Alainna regarding the punctuation of the little poem-like thing at the end. It’d like to see it flow just a little better, and that could be done easily enough by replacing the full-stops with something else.


But yeah, really, I do like this very much. Think it’s one of the best things you’ve written, actually, and I really hope you carry on with it. =)

Thanks for that. =) I've been continuing with this but I've had loads of stuff to do so I haven't done much more. I'll be picking the pace up again very soon, and then I'll post some more. Thanks for the review once again!

And don't worry, the poetry-thingy-rambles definitely calm down a bit. A lot. I hope.