Mina didn’t share Falyn’s need for silence. “What are you so upset about anyway? Every since we’ve got here you’ve—" she stopped suddenly, as if rethinking her words. Silence fell over the room. The next time she spoke, her voice was much softer. “Someone told you, didn’t they? I swear these people have no idea how to deal with this. If everyone had just been upfront with you from the beginning, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
The last thing Falyn wanted was to discuss her imminent death, but Mina knowing had sparked her curiosity. She flopped onto her other side to face her sister. “They told you about it? Why the hell didn’t you tell me then?”
Mina lowered her gaze. She spoke to the ground when she said, “I couldn’t find the right time to tell you. Phillip called us all into a meeting while you and Akia were unconscious. I meant to tell you the second you woke up, but we got thrown into yet another meeting. Then Akia led us to our parents. Everything happened so fast today that I didn’t have a spare second to talk to you alone.”
“You sure found time to talk to Layna.”
Mina met her gaze. “I had to talk to someone. She was the only one who would listen. You’re not the only one who has complaints though. I’ve seen how close you and Zeke have become. Don’t you dare deny it.”
Just hearing his name made Falyn miss him. Where had he gone? She hadn’t seen him since that morning when he promised to train her. He had yet to teach her anything or even talk to her. He had kept his distance during the meetings, which she had appreciated, but she figured that he would’ve at least made an attempt to see her after that. Maybe she had misjudged him.
The one thing she really wanted to know was what his role in this plan was. Akia and Sam had left Lightport at age fourteen; Zeke would’ve been fifteen. Surely he had been a part of the plan at that time. Akia had mentioned that she found Zeke in Agathi. Why was he there? What business did he have in her home world? Phillip must’ve given him a job too. But all Zeke did was poke fun at Akia and put her on edge. He hurt them more than he helped.
Yet he had protected them. He was the one that fought off the Force, healed Sam, saved her and Akia from Rhys. Everything he had done had been for them. No matter how much trouble his mouth had gotten him into, they couldn’t deny that they wouldn’t had made it without him.
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.
Mina threw her hands up in frustration. “I don’t know. When I agreed to come with you—"
“You sort of demanded to come,” Falyn mumbled.
If Mina heard her, she ignored it. “I thought you would need my help. I went through much more than I wanted to and you don’t even appreciate it. You found everyone else to be a friend with and cast me aside. Now all you care about is all the petty problems in your life because you know that your new friends will support you.”
Falyn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Petty? You mean the fact that I’m going to die soon is petty?” Her question was answered with silence. And she was glad for it. Her temper was only rising and she couldn’t imagine what Mina could say that would make it all okay. If there were any time that she needed support, this was it. And all Mina wanted to do was talk about how bad her life was.
“I’m not talking about dying,” Mina told the tiled floor. “You keep whining about people keeping secrets and using you. When really, you’re the one keeping secrets.”
Falyn pressed her lips together. “I have no secrets. None worth telling at least.” Even as she the words came out of her mouth, she knew exactly what Mina was referring to. Or rather, who she was referring to.
Falyn suddenly didn’t feel like talking. When Aidan suggested taking her home, she was nervous. These were the people that gave her up, then didn’t make the effort to find her again. To be fair, there probably wasn’t anything that they could’ve done. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t upset about it. If Akia could make it into Agathi, her parents would’ve been able to too.
Now she was stuck in a room with Mina. It looked like it was designed to be their room from the beginning, with pink walls and carpeted floor, two beds and a large chest in the corner. Now Falyn was stuck until the morning. If she went out into the hallway, she’d run into her mother again, maybe even her father. They both knew the truth and she really didn’t want to face them. In the morning they would start their fight against Rhys, if Aidan was right, and she didn’t want to be distracted by anything. Besides, George could’ve been confused about what he saw.
Her eyelids began to droop and she had to fight to keep them open. The last time she had slept she hadn’t meant to. The pellets had knocked her out, keeping her asleep for two days. She didn’t expect to sleep for that long now, but she had thought she’d have enough rest. She didn’t feel like sleeping. Yet she mumbled something to Mina about being too tired to talk and closed her eyes.
She awoke a few hours later, or what felt like it. There wasn’t a clock in the room and she wasn’t good at judging time by the sky. It was still dark outside the window above her bed, so she at least knew it wasn’t morning yet. Her body wanted her to sleep, but her eyes refused to close. There would be no more sleep for her tonight.
Rolling onto her back, she stared at the ceiling listening to Mina’s steady breathing. It should’ve been easier for Falyn to fall back asleep, but worries consumed her mind. What if she couldn’t fight? Her magic wasn’t as strong as everyone else’s. Phillip had promised to train her, but there hadn’t been talk of it since. Did they really expect her to fight alongside them? All it would do was prove that she was the weakest of the group. And she really wanted to know how to protect herself. They didn’t teach that kind of magic until extra schooling back in Agathi.
There was a sudden rapping on the window, making her start. Heart pounding, she looked up to see a familiar face staring at her. She immediately relaxed at the grin on Zeke’s face. When she wasn’t paying attention, the sun had risen a bit. The soft light lit up his face. He motioned for her to come outside. With a quick glance at Mina to check she was asleep, Falyn looked back at him and nodded. He smiled at her and disappeared from view.
Despite knowing that her sister was asleep, Falyn took care to be as quiet as possible. If she woke anyone up, there would be more questions and more conversations that she didn’t want to have. Everyone in this house was her family, but she was starting to feel less like she belonged.
Slowly, she snuck out of the room and down the hall. She froze when she was just a few feet away from the front door. To her right, light was pouring out of the kitchen. Someone was awake. Peeking around the corner, she saw Cylene sitting at the island, hunched over. Falyn watched as she took a sip from a mug and then got up to pour it out. Taking advantage of the distraction, Falyn raced to the front door and snuck out, hoping she didn’t make enough noise to alert her mother.
Zeke was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. A smile broke across her face and she ran the rest of the way to him. When she reached him, she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. She felt him stiffen, but he soon relaxed and returned the hug.
“Where have you been?” she whispered into his shirt.
“Phillip had a job for me,” he responded. “But that’s all done now. And here we are.” He pulled away first, but rested his hands on her arms just below her shoulders. “I promised Phillip I’d teach you some magic. Are you ready?”
Her face fell. “Oh. Well, yeah, I guess so. Are we going to do this now?”
He mistook her expression for nerves. “Hey, don’t worry. It’ll be easy. Just a few tricks and you can learn how to use magic better than Akia.” Falyn didn’t respond. She wasn’t worried about learning the magic. She didn’t care about Akia. All she wanted in this moment was to spend time with Zeke. Now he was talking about sharing their free time with magic. Couldn’t they just relax for a while?
“Come on,” Zeke said. “I know exactly where to go.” He dropped his hands from her arms as Falyn diverted her gaze. But as they started forward, he slid his hand into hers. She tried to hide her smile, but it was impossible. Their fingers intertwined as they walked away from the house.
-------------------------
For the LMS contest. Word count: 1,597
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
129,434 Literary Works • 671,505 Reviews
I is here
This chapter is good - not quite as amazing as the previous chapter, but still quite fun to read. The conversation with Mina is one we've been needing to hear for a long while. I know it's been a long time since I read the chapters far back, but I remember them not talking much and having a hard time communicating? I don't remember why, though. >> Whatever their reason was, this seems to have cleared it up and brought them back together. And I'm happy you did, because sisters need to talk. :3 And with Falyn in such an awful situation, maybe Mina could help her? Although so far, it doesn't seem to be the case. xd
One question: Mina is basically a kid with no magical experience, grew up without knowing her parentage, likes to talk a lot... and they trusted her with this secret? o.o It doesn't make sense to me why they'd tell her about such a secret.
The next three paragraphs after this sentence need to find another home. They're slapped right into the middle of an intense conversation between the two girls, and this messes it up and ruins the moment. It's like you threw an odd instrument into a playing orchestra. It broke the flow, broke the dynamic. Find a way to insert it into the piece and spread it out.
... This doesn't seem like Mina. Truly. I'm reading through this and wondering who the whiny brat is who's complaining to Falyn. Mina knows what's going to happen to Falyn, she's been watching her have difficulty with her new role, and yet still she tries to complain about how awful she has it? I don't remember Mina as this kind of person - more like the type that would go out of their way to do something for others, and I don' remember this level of complaining. Certainly not when others had so much more at stake.
It just seemed a bit out of character? That's all.
My only other complaint about their conversation is I noticed there's no closure - not even from Mina's side. They were in deep talk, going over all of their problems... and then they just stopped? Or more like Falyn just stopped. The conversation ended like electricity goes out, and I think you need a better closure. At least make it where Mina says something to her, even along the lines of "goodnight, Falyn" or something. Anything to close it would be ahmazing to me.
Ah, there it is - the closure. Make it more. They've just been in an intense conversation, and this is nowhere near enough to close it for me.
I don't see anything else I can say that'd help. You already have so many amazing reviewers here, I'm left with nothing to say. This chapter wasn't as amazing as your previous chapter, but it was still good. And that ending was so cute. <3 Zeke and Falyn are going to be a couple! Yes, they are. If they aren't, I will burnnnnnn this.
Well, maybe not. xd
~Darth Timmyjake
I feel like such a hormonal teenager right now. Zeke <3 I'm trying not to get attached... but it's hard. And yay! We get to have a lesson with Zeke on magic at last. :3
This is something you do quite often, and I just thought it might be worth pointing out. You tend to explains things a lot. I don't think we need to know her reasoning for everything all the time- personally. I mean once in awhile it's good, but you do it quite a lot. A simple way to fix this is by just leaving it at: She didn't want them to know she was awake Implying that she most likely didn't want to talk to anyone, and for reasons that we can pretty well guess. Or you could also switch up the way you explain her motives sometimes, like: She didn't want to wake anyone up because she was tired of depressing conversations. Every once in awhile a 'because' sentence instead of a 'there would' might help out. But that's just a thought.
Here it kind of felt like you were telling us that everyone in the house is related to her, rather then it just being her pondering her emotions- a bit like an info dump, but very stealthy. A way that I think it might come across a bit better is if you say it less of a direct everyone in here is my family and more of a not so direct by saying something like: these people were all suppose to be related to her... I'm not sure if that makes sense. xP
Anyway, I'm going to hop on over to the next part and see how Zeke and Falyn are doing. >.> XD Keep it up Noelle! ^_^
-Socks
Hi Noelle!
I'm still working at catching up with these chapters!
I was curious to see how this chapter would end but I wasn't expecting to end like that! I felt like the conversation was a little bit of a disappointment, but I will explain my reason for this later on. What I did like was that Zeke has come into play again. We all know her feelings for him, but it is good that you brought him up because I had forgotten about it! And we still don't quite know where his loyalties lie as well, which makes his appearance all the more interesting. I hope he isn't here to do anything harmful to Falyn for the sake of Rhys but is actually here to teach her magic. I am not sure though. I guess I have to keep reading to find out!
When Mina revealed that she knew about Falyn dying all along, you mention it sparking Falyn's curiosity. But she seems to be so angry at everyone who knew and didn't tell her, I doubt it would be any different for her sister as well. I think you should say that it sparked Falyn's anger instead. She has been mentioning throughout all of this that Mina is the only person she could whole-heartedly trust because she had known her since before all this craziness began. But look how she has betrayed that trust now! If I were Falyn I would be feeling most angry with Mina of all people.
I also find it shocking that Mina, who has just found her sister and has been her best friend for who knows how long is seemingly unaffected by knowing her friend is going to die. She didn't act affected at any stage before either, and I would've thought that she would've looked sad at some point, at the very least. Unless she is unbelievably more cruel than we could've ever imagined or not quite the friend we all believed her to be. I felt like this conversation they have should be strung high with emotions as the waters of their friendship are tested, but I couldn't feel that here even though I wanted to!
It was also hard to believe that she fell asleep in the middle of such a heated conversation. I am not saying that talking gives you an adrenaline rush, but when the emotions are running as high as they should be, it should be hard for Falyn to fall asleep at such a moment. The mention of her tiredness seemed very abrupt as well. I feel like you should give the conversation a sense of closure before you let her drift off.
Another thing about the argument (I'm sorry, I know I am going on a lot about this) I feel that when Mina is hurling all of her points at Falyn about her not needing her, then Falyn should mention that she believed Mina was avoiding her and didn't want her around. That's because it's the impression you gave us while it was all going on, and to make an argument actually an argument, there are always comebacks. If I was in this position I know I would've used that in my defense as well, because it's the truth above everything else.
Close repetition of the word 'stuck'. Even though there are some sentences between, it was enough for me to notice it. Maybe change that last sentence to read as 'Now there was nowhere Falyn could go until morning.'
I don't really have much else to say! I was a bit disappointed by this chapter, but the suspense of what Zeke may or may not do next is enough to keep me reading! I will be looking to that chapter soon
Deanie x
Heya!
Perhaps there should be a sentence before this which describes Falyn looking silently out of a window or sitting silently on the bed. It would be nice to have some setting and it feels a little strange to have a contradiction to something which we haven't had described yet.A few specific comments first and please ignore me if you think you've answered any of my questions in an earlier chapter.
1.
2. The dialogue between the two sisters is very nice and flows well.
3.
4. The conversation doesn't seem to have a real end to it. Or rather, there's no sense of finality before Falyn starts thinking about how she's stuck there. Maybe Mina could roll over on the other bed so her back is to her or something, just so we know the dialogue is over. Or maybe one more line of dialogue to interrupt Falyn's thoughts about sleep and then she mumbles to Mina that she's too tired to talk?
5. I like that Falyn feels like learning magic is going to get in the way of spending time with a friend. It's nice to see someone who isn't excited by the idea of magic because that's really rare in fantasy novels.
Overall
It's difficult to come into a story so far in and to give advice but I think this scene is pretty solid. I'd perhaps have liked a few more character descriptions but I'm sure you've described them all in previous scenes. Still, it wouldn't hurt to remind us what colour Mina's hair is or to describe how their mother's face looks when Falyn sees her in the kitchen. Does she look more exhausted or angry? Resigned? How does that make Falyn feel about sneaking out? A few extra descriptions could really help to build an atmosphere here and it may be nice to consider other senses as well - does the morning air feel cold and sharp. Do the sheets on her bed smell clean because nobody has slept in them before? Does the room smell of her sister? I used to share a room with my younger sister and after I moved away to uni she used to always comment on how the room smelled like me whenever I came home and she used to say she'd missed smelling my shampoo and body sprays. Just something to consider perhaps!
It's a little hard for me to follow some of this chapter because I don't know how or why Falyn is dying or if there's anything she can do to stop it but it's intriguing and makes me want to know more. I think my only concern is that I'm with Falyn when she asks how Mina can call her worries petty. True, she's maybe a little over dramatic in her accusations that Mina hasn't been there for her, but I don't think any sister would be quite so narrow sighted in the face of her own sister's death! I'd like to see more anger from Mina and more attempts to talk to her but perhaps that's because I'm a sister myself and couldn't imagine a conversation with any of my sisters going that way. I feel I perhaps don't know the characters well enough to comment.
Well best of luck with this!
~Heather
Hey, Noelle! Back again already ^^
Alright, so I'm reading Mina's first dialogue, and I'm trying to understand Mina's train of though, but once again here, it kind of seems like there tried to be a linear thought process, but she swaps from having no idea what Falyn's wining about to knowing exactly what's up? Huh? Perhaps show some kind of body language? Not even sure but it didn't make much sense. Think about it some.
Wait... what was Falyn mentioning when she talked about Mina and Layna talking? Once again, this has happened so long ago and it doesn't really stick out to me. So it was either really brushed over recently or it's been way too long and felt unimportant. When did this happen? I suggest looking more into this.
So, when Mina starts talking about Aiden and Fayln keeping secrets, I cant't help but think that it wouldn't be a fair point. She just found out about Aiden and hasn't even had a chance to tell anyone about it. How is it really a secret then? At this point it seems like Mina is just attacking Falyn because she is jealous one way or another (which isn't a bad thing, but interesting.) I just don't understand what else Mina could be talking about keeping secrets and how it's Falyn's fault because her reason to be upset is totally legitimate! She is being used. Yeah, I would be pretty pissed off if someone screwed up my happy life and kept from me that I would die and force me into a place where I couldn't back out!
Now, the end to their conversation is a little bit strange. Falyn just doesn't feel like talking. Alright. But Mina doesn't have anything to say about it? She's just going to not say something snarky back? Because she seems pretty hyped up to me and I'd feel like she'd say something like, "What? Too important to talk to me now?" It just drops off and it doesn't feel closed off like it should.
When Zeke comes back, I'm not really liking how Falyn reacts. There isn't much to it. She's relived, yes, but it doesn't really tell why. And because of that, I'm sort of wondering why Falyn isn't freaked out. Like, how does he know where she lives? Wouldn't the question at least cross her mind, or was she thinking about how happy she was to see that he did care some and she'd meet someone who wouldn't harass her? At this time, it feels flat and like its missing something.
A part of me is torn about how Falyn reacts to Zeke talking about practicing magic. Just moments before she was basically whining about how she was so weak and that she didn't know anything. You would've thought that she would've jumped at the chance to learn some more magic... but nope, she goes straight to just 'spending time with him'. It seems like an irrational jump.
So, overall, really work on that train of thought and how it stops at each moment in the story. We want to see the path that its taking and see how it lines up with all the rest of the narration. It's no fun when it doesn't make sense and we're all confused.
Now, AWWWWWWW~ The Zalyn is too cute <3 It's really subtle, yes, and I do like how you're starting to pull Zeke back into this, because I did mention before how he just vanished off the face of the earth. But now that he's back you better make up for his disappearance!
I don't have much else, other than everything I noticed while reading this (sorry, I didn't like it that much, but not bad!) it was a decent chapter and a good start. But, hey. We all get those bad days when he just write a ton of crap (that is how I feel a lot xD I can sympathize!) I am still excited for more! (AND WHAT IF ZEKE IS LIKE, LEADING HER TO RHYS. LE GASP).
Keep on Writing,
~Wolfare~