No Sunlight

Elise always eventually comes back. She waltzes into the room and pilfers a knick-knack here, a trinket there while he pretends not to notice, swirls and twirls in a ballet of expensive dresses and concealed knives. Her grins come in bright flashes, and he catches them like an astrologist would chase falling stars; catches them then stores them carefully away, to be examined, considered, admired afterwards. He sighs with exasperation when she pulls yet another disappearing act and follows her exploits from afar, newspaper clippings accumulating under her picture. This he can always be sure of: Elise will come back.

Sometimes she almost doesn’t. She sneaks in through a window he will have conveniently left half-opened, dressed in cuts, bruises and men’s clothes, and her eyes shine darkly in the night. She scuffs her boots against the floorboards, trades quips with him and then disappears, silver and diamonds still shining in her open hands and tinkling out of her pockets. There are nights when he pulls her down to him and she laughs into his mouth even as she twists a hand into his hair and sneaks the other under his shirt. Stay, he tells her, and she does not.

He has never expected it to be easy. He wakes to find her standing at the window, wearing nothing but his shirt. In the moonlight she is beautiful in a way entirely different from how she looks under the sun; less real, maybe, or perhaps more abstract. The marks on her skin stand out like black constellations rising above a pale horizon, and he feels jealousy roil in his mind like a restless sea. Obscurely he thinks charting those stars is a task that should be his, and his only, and on her shoulder his hands land soft, and heavy.

So he lets her leave, and does not tell her the man she has just set her sights on is a brute, or an imbecile, or that he will hurt her. When he sees her again her arms are speckled in dark bruises, and in the shadows of his room the marks shift like a panther’s. He laps at them until he feels them warm under his tongue, until he has covered everything that isn’t himself and made it his. It is his name that rises, whispered and shivering, to her lips, and that is good, but not good enough.

And Elise gets in trouble, and still he says nothing, though he keeps the window open. He maps the varied patterns that the world paints on her body with his lips and his fingers, presses kisses to half-healed cuts and old scars. There are shadows creeping into her eyes, that were not there before, and those also he tracks, and catalogs them in stead of the smiles, which are rare, and becoming rarer still. Be careful, he tells her as she lies by his side, but she laughs into the crook of his jaw and falls asleep, careless and unwary.

It is a slow evolution, but she comes to him more and more often. Stolen rubies glitter in her hair, unless it is amber, spinning slow and mesmerizing at her throat, a matching set of handprints fading red and yellow at her hips. She is all smoke and mirrors, all grace and danger, dancing her mischievous circles around friends and foes alike. And when still she disappears in search of yet another adventure, yet another thrill he pulls some strings, adds a few misdirections of his own and waits for her to come back to him. She always does.

One day there will be more stars than there will be skies in her eyes and on her skin. I can protect you, he tells her as a storm rages outside, and she laughs to his face but curls closer against him. You could be safe, he lies, words rising easy and smooth, and she stretches between his arms, says she doesn’t care for safety. Stay, he asks, and the answer is no, no, never. He is patient, and does not mind. One day she will say yes, and the bruises she will wear then he will put there himself.

----
Another exercise in relationships, and how it's not always puppies and sunshine. Fun fact: every one of the paragraphs is exactly a hundred words long. Because I get bored like that. Not sure this deserves the 16+ rating, but better safe than sorry, right?

Wow, this is awesome!

I love the imagery throughout, and how you've managed to capture really interesting personalities in so little time!

The present tense works really well - it underlines what a pattern of behaviour they have, and the repitition of Elise going away and coming back. And I like how you kept the 'he' unnamed, for some strange reason. Maybe it's the mystery?

Anyways, I looove this, and I would give a better, proper review but I'm feeling very lazy, so suffice to say it ROCKS, and I will be stalking you for more stuffs in ze near future.

Hey

Somehow, before I read that they were all the same length, the exactness of the paragraphs had me memorised. Perhaps a little bit of intuition and not just boredom?

I like the astrologer metaphor a lot, and there seems to be a consistent feline image too, which also works. It applies to both the narrator and Elise, brings them together, and there's something hopeful about that.

I have to say, though, that I felt there was something amiss with Elise's character. She seemed at once powerful and weak: petty and glamorous: strong and gullible. My favourite description of her was “careless and unwary” and yet it seems her narcissism has a deeper desire underpinning it. (Is she narcissistic?) In a way, I like that she’s so ‘complicated’ – but there’s something about the narrator’s view of her which stinks to me of his own fantasy. Perhaps you could play on that?

Nice work.
Sophie

This is definetly something in which I have never read before it was very good keep up the good work. You make the readers want to read more and that is a thumbs up for you! Oh and I really liked the title.

Hey Jag, Stella here!

I. NITPICKS

Elise always eventually comes back.

I would have put the eventually at the end of the sentence, but alright.

and he catches them like an astrologist would chase falling stars;

The point of a catch is that you don't have to chase it anymore. The simile, though lovely, doesn't really work.

He has never expected it to be easy.

Why the "has"? Seems redundant.

and catalogs them in stead of the smiles, which are rare, and becoming rarer still.

instead.

One day she will say yes, and the bruises she will wear then he will put there himself.

Wait, what, he's planning on beating her?

II. OVERALL

I don't have much to say. You're a very beautiful writer, Jag, but I think you know that, and I think that you're focusing a little too much on your aesthetics and not enough on what readers need. I couldn't work out if she was a jewel thief or not, and your male lead is very thin as far as development goes. If it's an exercise on relationships, you have to have two even characters, not just a whirlwind girl and a dull man who nobody could care less about.

Hope I helped, drop me a note if you need anything!

-Stella x

It's interesting to talk about an abstraction in abstractions, which is sort of what you've done here. You write, "she is all smoke and mirrors," which is a way to describe her but also a fairly apt phrase sentence to describe this entire story. You have some absolutely gorgeous writing, and this works somewhat as a character exploration, but beyond that, the substance is thin. We have the unattainable enigma and the one left behind, and some half-sketches in prose of them together and apart, but I leave this piece feeling like I've read a very beautiful sentence, not a very beautiful story.

I don't know what your intentions were with this piece; it's filed under 'General Fiction Stories' so I'll talk about the story arc (or lack thereof) a bit, but it's very possible that you just meant this as a one-off character sketch (so I'll talk about that, too).

Before I do, though, two quick notes:

Elise always eventually comes back.

I just wanted to point this out because it sort of stuck out, not in a good way. It's the word "eventually". Read the sentence aloud; it trips on the tongue, and I think it would flow better if you stuck the "eventually" at the end of the sentence or, better yet, cut out the word altogether. It already feels a bit superfluous.

Her grins come in bright flashes, and he catches them like an astrologist would chase falling stars

I think you mean 'astronomer' here, but neither astrologist / astronomer quite fits the bill here, since they both generally deal with celestial bodies. (Also, as someone else mentions, the image doesn't quite work because catching and chasing aren't very good analogies.)

Okay. Back to story-related things. One of the most fundamental reasons this doesn't feel like it has any substance because it lacks an arc. The characters don't change, the story doesn't change -- nothing progresses. Even a slice-of-life tale has forward movement of sorts. Again, it feels more like a beautiful piece of poetry than an actual narrative. At this point, it may be crucial to take a look at the story and decide what you want it to do and how you want the readers to feel about the characters and about things in general when they emerge from the end. That in itself is very telling. Do you want them to feel the crushing inevitability of their relationship cycle? Do you want them to feel sorry for the man, or the woman, or both, or neither? In other words -- what are you trying to convey?

From there you can develop how you want the story to arc. I'm speaking in fairly broad strokes but that's because it's a fairly broad concept to explain. I would say that looking back at the piece is a pretty important first step, and going back and layering it with more specifics and pointed details rather than sweeping abstractions is your second or third step.

However, if this is meant to be a character piece (and even if it's not), I found these characters to be fairly standard, with little actual dimension to separate them from the usual slew of abused damsels in distress and their unrequited lovers. The tough-but-vulnerable-but-tough character has been examined to death, which is totally fine but there's little to separate your character from the chaff. Again, I'm left wanting real details about her, reasons he loves her, mannerisms and habits besides a broad depiction of their history. I find him a little more fascinating, because despite being the tender, somewhat-spurned lover that he is sort of implied to be, he is kind of also fairly control freak-y. His "Stay" and his possessiveness of her felt fairly revealing, and I wish there were more instances of that for him as well as for her.

If it turns out you did mean this as a character piece, I still have reservations about it. It's like posting a detailed visual profile of your character -- it may be excellent but it's sort of not very reader-friendly. That is to say, it probably helps you have a better idea of the character more than it helps your reader get a grasp on your story. It's another question of intentions: what's made you post this? What do you want readers to be taking from this overall?

Again, I know these are fairly broad concepts I've been talking about, and if any of this crit feels at all vague or requires elaboration for you, let me know and I'll do my best. I really want to like this piece, but I'm not sold yet.