Shade (working title) - Chapter 2

Spoiler

It's long overdue for me to post chapter 2 of Shade... So here ya go. Warning: It's extremely short... P.S. Chapter 2 contains pages 7 and 8. I've been thinking about merging chapter 2 and 3, but we'll see...

Chapter 2

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

After I stood up, miraculously unhurt, I dusted myself off and whispered, “Oops.”

“You idiot, how can you just say, ‘Oops’? What am I supposed to do now?!” Sakura yelled from above.

I shrugged. “Go get help?”

“I-I guess so…” She turned to leave but spun around again quickly, kicking up dirt that proceeded to fly into my face. “Wait a second! Look over there towards that cluster of crystals. I think you may be able to climb up that thing and jump back to here.”

I stared blankly at what she was describing. At the far end of the cave, next to a large, very beautiful grouping of shimmering crystals, there was a rather flat, boulder-like rock resting against the wall. It appeared to be small enough for me to climb up onto. Above and in front of this rock was an odd, staircase-like series of three ledges that jutted out of the cave wall. The middle shelf was distanced quite a bit farther away from the other two.

After a few moments of preparing myself for what I was about to do, I jogged over to the boulder. Once there, I slowly managed to pull myself over the top of it. So far, so good, I guess…

I glanced up at the shelf in front of me. It didn’t appear to be difficult to reach. In fact, it looked way too easy! All I had to do was step up what would’ve been two steps on a staircase.

Now I had reached the middle ledge that was quite far away from the one I was standing on. I cautiously reached a leg out to get a better sense of the distance. I discovered that this would not be an easy task. “Well, this looks like fun,” I said to myself sarcastically.

“Oh, just hurry up. It’s just a measly shelf thing,” Sakura said.

“You want to try it?” I suggested, slightly pissed off.

Sakura was silent while she watched me struggle to reach the middle step. I was too short to touch it. My only option left was to try to jump up to it, grab it, and pull myself up.

I decided to try it after backing up a bit. Suddenly I was hanging; I had made it, but just barely. One hand was on the edge, the other a little halfway across the shelf inside a small hole. I kicked the wall with my dangling feet and somehow managed to push myself up.

“Hurry! You’re really close.”

“I’m working on it,” I grumbled unhappily. “Why do you have to rush me?” I was still sore from the fall, although I was lucky not to have broken anything.

This was it. If I could just get up this one last step then I could easily step over the tiny gap between it and the alcove ledge… And you know what? This was the easiest part of the climb. I simply had to step over onto the thin, slanted shelf. So I did. Nothing to it, right?

Right! Especially when the rock decided to detach itself from the wall. Again.

Spoiler

Edit: I ended up pretty much rewriting this chapter...

Hi Moonlight, I'm Hawk and I'm here to review.

I took a cursory look at your first chapter just to get an idea of the story so far, and since you had some reviews on it already, I decided to just comment on here.

Okay, so this was short, as you said, and therefore is a little hard to review. I don't get much of an idea about the characters through this brief piece, which isn't a bad thing, but isn't too terribly intriguing, either.

I think the main issue I had with this is just confusion; I had a hard time picturing the interior, or where he was supposed to be jumping. I think if you could take a breath, show the reader the setting, and then concisely explain just where each part or ledge or whatever is in relation to him, it'd help clear things up.

MoonlightAssassin wrote:I stared blankly at what she was describing: a small ledge I could crawl up onto, a ledge I could jump to, then jumping to another ledge that was quite pointy and sharp, then stepping over to the ledge she was on.

Wow. Look at all of the "ledges." Aside from being very repetitive, it's also confusing; I have nothing to really distinguish between the ledges and I don't have a clear idea of where he's jumping to, other than a vague sense of "upward."

Cautiously, I reached a leg out to see it better.

Because legs have eyes? I'd use "feel" or "sense" instead of "see."

Lucky for me, this ledge was long enough for me to somewhat run and jump. However, as I was pushing off with my feet, something horrible happened - my foot fell in the hole I had climbed up with. In what felt like slow motion, I started to fall towards the ground.

Um, again, I'm not really sure what happened. He was propelling himself forward and upward, right? And then he got his foot stuck in a hole and started falling the other way? I don't know, I just can't picture it.

And about the ending -- I'd agree that it's very similar to the first chapter's ending. If you don't want to end on a different scene, then maybe you could show that the character is thinking something like, "Oh no, here I go again." Just to kind of show that you're aware of the mirrored chapter endings and are giving it a little humorous outlook. It's just a suggestion, though.

All right, so that's all I've got to say! Please feel free to PM me if you've got any questions or whatnot. Cheers! (: