Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language, violence, and mature content.
I brought my white veil and rushed towards the toilet to get an ablution. After that, I strode to the living room. Before I passed the wall separating it with the dining room, I heard Father’s loud voice.
“I told you to bring her here!” he said, his coarse voice thick with anger. “Where’s she? She knows it’s praying time. Does she think praying as something to be taken playfully?”
Imran didn’t reply back, of course. If you were around Father, it was better to shut up. Keep defending yourself and he would say you were talking back. Imran should talk back right now though, because - I passed the wall and saw the cloth mats laid down on the floor - I was only late for about a minute. They were put side by side and faced the same direction - a bit to the left - which was Qibla for the Muslims, a direction to which they faced when praying.
Allowing silence to take reign, Father didn’t look at me even once.
The living room had its walls painted light brown with the tiles carpeted the floor. I assumed my position beside Mother who was ready with her veil. Father was in front as the imam, the leader of the prayer, while Imran was at the back followed by me and Mother as we were the congregation. Asr prayer consisted of four rakats, each one of them consisted of several steps.
After we finished, we shook hands - well, it was more like we took hands, and kissed the hands of those who were older than us, which was part of a tradition here. I took Mother’s hand and kissed it. I looked at her, and everything I saw resembled serenity - kind black eyes, fair skin - as most her people had - a little bit wrinkles, and chubby cheeks. I kissed her cheek, and she smiled.
I turned my attention to Father, and looking at him made my heart beat nervously. Father frowned most of the time, and you would think he was usually angry. Being a manager of a company that specialized on renovating stuffs, he had a dark skin with few wrinkles, and his black eyes could go big when he was angry. I took his hand which he didn’t refuse, and brought my face to it to kiss it -
He pulled it away. I kissed my own hand due to that, and my eyes were close to tears. I hated myself for being so sensitive. I turned to Imran and took his hand before kissing it. He squeezed my hands slightly, which made me look at him, and I knew he saw me with Father. He just smiled as to reassure me, and it made my chest less heavy. I gave him a weak smile in return.
Imran and I tidied the place. We folded the clothing mats and put them on a chair. Then, I grabbed his arm and gave him a look. He looked back at me and gave a small nod. We went into my room.
It was a big room according to my standard. I had a single-sized bed in front of me located against the wall. The room had pink walls - they were obviously painted like that when I was small - and opposite to my bed was a wooden wardrobe. Next to it was a table which had a curvaceous mirror standing on it. I looked around to find Scarlet.
It appeared from the toilet door, which was located between my bed and wardrobe. “Welcome back,” it said, its light brightening and dimming, moving a bit to the left and to the right. “You have a neat and clean room.”
“Thank you,” I said dryly, and looked at Imran. “If I’m to - I dunno, save humankind - I would need someone’s help. Right now, I can only turn to you for help, and you’re the best choice I have since you’ve experience with this light thingy.” I jumped onto the bed.
Imran sat beside me. “I don’t know how to deal with this humankind threat... The gray light - Silver, it didn’t say anything about it. It was there to help me - to guide me. After it’s gone, I was, and still am, able to overcome the problem I have with bullies as I’ve told you.” He looked at Scarlet, which had rested itself in front of me. “It has the ability to translate my imagination into an illusion but it can only affected a fixed amount of people. What does your light do?”
My light? I looked at Scarlet and realized it was my light. I didn’t know how I should feel about this but it seemed surreal. “My light isn’t good at following instructions,” I blurted out. “It has telekinesis ability.”
“But only to a certain low degree,” Scarlet interrupted, brightening at once. “If I’m one hundred percent in sync with a human, my ability is heightened. It’s what happened with your brother and Silver. I think they managed to get about fifty percent in sync.”
Imran nodded and smiled. “I’m pretty sure both of you can be in sync much better than we did. You guys have similar personality,” he said and winked.
I was a bit shocked. “What do you mean we have similar personality?” I asked. I pointed at Scarlet. “This light is impulsive and impatient as well as stubborn.”
I realized Imran’s smile became wider, and so, I widened my eyes. I couldn’t be impulsive, impatient and stubborn all at once... could I? I messed with my hair. This attempted reflection of myself was bothering me. I had to stop and think about something else. I looked at Scarlet which was dimming its light a bit. I leaned forward to it. “We can’t save humankind with just the two of us... how about others like you?”
Scarlet brightened. Maybe its brightening and dimming was his way of expressing itself - I should learn about this later. “Others like me are here, scattered. The portal didn’t work as efficient as we had thought. But it’s better this way. We have a wider area to cover. Finding those teenagers would take a longer time if we’re in a group.”
“Would they be able to see you?” Imran asked, pulling his mouth a bit to the left like he was in a deep thought. “The first time Silver showed itself to me, it said no one couldn’t see it but me.”
Scarlet floated a bit upward and downward. Maybe this was its way to nod? “Silver’s right but the limitation is set by ourselves. If we want others to see us, we could. This limitation doesn’t apply to others like us, though. They can see me even though I try to make myself invisible. I think this limitation that’s applied to humans are some of the effects of entering your world.”
It actually sounded clever with that kind of explanation. I held out my hand and tried to touch it. It felt warm but I didn’t feel anything solid. I could even put my hand went through its light body. “You are indeed matterless. Are you in this form in your world?”
It moved to the left and right. “Nope, our real form is brighter and bigger, plus you can actually see my invisible hands which are not supposed to be invisible.” He paused for a moment, probably moving his invisible arms. “That’s an irrelevant point, though. We need to find other lights.”
I leaned backward, resting my back to the wall. “You said about finding those teenagers, right? There’s one place where they are gathered massively. Tomorrow is Friday, the last day of school. I hope we can find them as many possible.”
“Teenagers with lights,” it added. “I don’t want to see others like you for nothing.” It produced a slight hum. I was a bit offended with its statement, so I thought that hum was its way to laugh.
I turned towards Imran. “You’re going to school too. Try finding teenagers who can do unusual feats. As for me, I would go with him.” I paused, realizing I referred it as him. I looked at Scarlet. Perhaps... “I’ll go with Scar. We’re going to find those lights as fast and many as possible and solve this shitty problem soon.”
A/N: I've changed this part - which was supposed to be Chapter 2 - to Chapter 1.2 since my friend said the chapter was short. Please click the Like button if you like it and review if you want! :D
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Hello! Long time no see :p This novel is my #1 priority right now and I intend to be all caught up by the end of the month. I skimmed over the first two chapters again just to remind myself of how this all began and I think I'm ready to go, so let's go!
One thing I really appreciated about this chapter was how you showed the culture. This was something I was going to mention in my next review when I talk a little more generally about things I would like to see or things I've noticed in this first chapter. This isn't a culture I'm used to (which is awesome) so I want to learn about it and I want to learn about it through your writing. I want to understand this world and feel like I'm part of this world. So I really liked that you showed the prayer and the customs surrounding that in this chapter. (Although I think I still want some more description.)
What's an ablution and why is it by the toilet?
I also really appreciated that you showed this dad's personality a bit. I remember you saying that he's not a very nice guy, but I'm glad we're seeing that and how rude and unreasonable he is. I also appreciated the short piece of information you included after that describes his personality a bit. You kept it short and sweet and gave us necessary information.
I also liked this showing of her voice and her opinion, almost defiance. (I like a little bit of defiance :p). It makes sense here and it shows her personality nicely.
The first "they" - what is "they" referring to? And then you say "the Muslims" and "they faced". But isn't this MC Muslim? Saying "the Muslims" and "they faced" implies that it's a group she's not a part of. Remember she's the one telling this story.
I think "over" would sound better than "reign".
And with father not looking at her - is this while she's taking her place or is this during the entire prayer? Is this normal behavior for him? What does she think of this? What is his face saying? How does she feel?
I really liked the way you explained this prayer, as I've already mentioned. I'm not Muslim but I think I understood it all. The only thing I would like added was how long it lasted and what exactly took place during the prayer. We went from getting ready for the prayer to after the prayer in five seconds.
Really like the way you described each parent and the juxtaposition between the two of them.
What's going through her mind right now? How is she feeling? She's a good describer, but I want to get a bit deeper into her thoughts and emotions.
Slow this down a bit with her thoughts and feelings. What's going through her mind? What does that look mean? What are they silently communicating with one another? What's the plan right now?
She seems to accept her fate pretty quickly. She just learned about these lights and the threat and all of this information but I'm still she has a ton of questions (I know I do!). But she's ready to jump on board and figure out what she needs to do to save humankind. That's a pretty big task and I would expect someone to think about it or worry about it or want to know more about the problem and what the solution will entail before signing on and looking for help.
How does she know her light isn't good at following directions? She just met it. And if this light is going to help her save the world and help her with her dad problem, wouldn't she want to be nice to it so the light will help her out? Saying the light isn't good at following directions isn't very nice...
Same here. How does she know this when she's only just met this light, and why would she want to say this to the light at this point?
This little glimpse into her thoughts is good. I want more of this!
Finding those teenagers? What teenagers?
What teenagers?
I'm confused by the light's comment. "I don't want to see others like you for nothing" - that didn't make sense to me. I also didn't understand why she was offended by the statement. That would be a good place to dip a bit deeper into her thoughts.
How will that help them?
Overall, I thought this was a nice effort and a bit stronger than the previous two sections. I'm liking the characterization that is developing here and I liked how you went a bit deeper with the culture and explaining different things about these lights without getting info-dumpy. But there is still room for expansion in some areas, which I have already mentioned.
I'll leave things here for now, but let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said was confusing! I'll see you soon with the next section!
Hey, thanks for the review. Totally agree with what you've said. :3
The teenagers they're finding are the ones who have lights with them. Merah is one of them since she has Scarlet. When Scarlet said about seeing others like Merah for nothing, it meant teenagers that had lights. He needed more light companions (teenagers with lights) to fight off the bad lights.
Hello Lightsong, here I am trying to continue with this reviewing. I am again surprised that only two people that reviewed this so far, but then again I know that reviewers are busy. I have, however read through the past two reviews, so I am all updated.
Anyways, let's begin, shall we?
So, I think that it was great how you kind of generally explained the Muslim traditions that Merah was performing, even though she obviously looks like she wasn't concentrating on it. I think that during the prayer it would be a good excuse/place to add thoughts about Scar sitting on her bed and cleaning her room, and these extraordinary thing should still probably be fresh on her mind.
I also really liked the facial/motion things that Scarlet did when he wanted to communicate with Merah and Imran. I just thought that was a really clever way to do characterization there.
-And, yay, the rest of my review didn't save so then it's looks like I have to rewrite the rest of it. 'Tis ok though cause I wasn't satisfied with the part anyways.
So I wasn't satisfied with the scene where Merah and her father pray, becuase this is the first time period where Merah actually meets her father, and her reaction was definitively unexpected and confusing, to me at least. She was so sensitive and depressed because her father didn't want her to kiss his hand? What?! By the way that you have described him in the previous chapters, he honestly looks like a cliche villian to me. And nere is the grand introduction, and he doesn't even seem half as bad as he is supposed to be.
In this article,which I am going to be reffering you to, Elinor states: "Just remember, great villains are everything. Sometimes they can become the most popular characters of the story. Remember to make it count." I totally agree with that, so please keep that in mind.
Also, I came across a great workshop that was done quite a while ago, in which Writersdomain says that: "You may have heard it said that characters are the single most powerful magnetic force that draws a reader in."
-This is a point that I agree with 100%!
Now, I wanted to talk about a couple of points that I think you should include and make more apparent about this villian dad. First of all, you never mention his motives, why he is so evil, what makes him act this way. Basically the why behind what he does. I think that if Imran and Merah put their heads together, then they could definitively get an inkling of his motives.
Next, the father's backstory. Perhaps he had a difficult life journey, or something in his past has contributed to him becoming the "monster" that he is. If you can do this, I think that it would be appropriate if you wrote a whole chapter about Merah diving down deep into his backstory.
The problem is, that I don't really perceive Merah in tis way or charcter form yet. I didn't get to know her well enough, after all, it seems like it's only Chapter 1 and so lists about her personality bore me. I want to see these things in action, not just hear about them from Imran. To be honest, so far I have strongly seem consistence and hatred with her interactions with Scarlet. You need to really bring those qualities out a little bit more, so that we can visibly see them in life, not just on paper.
This doesn't really seem like a logical or solid plan, because it just feels like most teenagers would be surprised/shocked and probably wouldn't believe this fantasy or care enough. I don't know why, but I feel like Merah being a bit too careless here.
I saw your author's note on the bottom, that you decided to divide this chapter into three parts, which is totally ok and valid, it's just that I feel like you didn't really end off at the right note. I wanted to see what Scar's reaction was to this new proposition, because it came so suddenly, that I don't feel like his character had enough time to voice his opinion in this section.
That's all that I have for this chapter, sorry if this review is a little bit shorther, but I still hope that it helped you improve this chapter, when you come back and edit it. If you have any questions, you know where to find me!
~P.S.
Hi Labrador! Thanks for pinging me up for this one! Sorry I took so long to get around to it.
Because, why again? Because she was late? Don't do the split to description before you finish that thought, it reads sloppily and breaks my suspension-of-disbelief.
I love this line. It just represents -to me at least- the bleak relationship between the protagonist and her father. This might just have to do with the prayer ceremony (I don't know much about those...) but a great part of all fiction is how we the reader get to interpret a work of art. And I like this line because, to be honest, I find it powerful.
Well, we reached my first paradox for a review from me. Everyone celebrate! What we've got
here is -again- a paradox of character. The way you've portrayed the father character it this both seems as the right thing, and the wrong thing for him to do.
You see, you've shown him to be angry and disdainful towards his family, however he also seems to be a very strict religious man. With that in mind, I can fully imagine him pulling his hand back. However I also have a bit of a what? moment with it. The reason being: if he was so strict religiously, wouldn't he just let her kiss his hand and be mean about it instead of pulling away?
But this is also -quite oddly- a positive. You've developed character through this line. You've shown that his anger is brash and quick to flare. And to be honest, you've done so ingeniously. *claps*
I don't know why, but I've always loved a sibling relationship like this. At first they seem aggressive towards one another (as siblings often are) but when the other is hurt in some way they immediately jump to defend it. So, points for you.
There are two problems with this line.
A: Slight redundancy: I know that neat and clean aren't the same by a long shot, but -much like psychopath and sociopath- are still used interchangeably. Which makes this line kind of annoying.
B: Since when does anything talk like this? This just sounds like a Robo-mother from a bad sci-fi. Having Scarlett say something like Would sound better.
This feels a bit sloppy. We've just come out of a slightly dramatic moment and you immediately do something that feels like a tension breaker, but is done so awkwardly it doesn't do it's job correctly. Placement in the scene beforehand would have worked better.
That would have -in theory- flowed better.
Again, these two scenes don't fit together tonally. They feel like two different stories and it's really distracting.
>Heavy and dramatic
> Lighthearted and kind of silly
You need a common point of gravity -if you will- in order to make me believe these things are the same. Perhaps only she can see Scarlett. That way Scarlett could zoom about freely in the room and make his witticisms. I'd like that.
And there's your obligatory PG-13 curse!
No, in all seriousness this is still one of the better pieces of writing on this site, and your prose is still fantastic. This is just dang fun to read.
Until next time!
Hi there! Noelle here to review as requested.
As I promised, I've read through all the previous chapters so I know what's going on here.
Warning: this review might be all over the place. I have a lot I want to mention and it's all just jumbled up in my brain right now. I have very little control over what order it all comes out in xD
My first comment will be about the prologue, because it really stuck out to me. What's the point of it? I mean, yes, it starts off the story and those scenes are really important, but it's just the beginning and leads right into the first chapter. Prologues are separate and tell us something that we wouldn't have normally read in the first chapter. My suggestion would be to just make it the first chapter. I like to think of prologues as foreshadowing, really. Most of them I've read show us something that we won't understand until halfway through the novel. The other half give us a story that happened way before this story and has information that we need to know in order to understand. It's just a precursor to the story. Think about it.
Can I just talk about this father for a second? He's just... perfect. I mean, I know I'm supposed to hate him and everything, especially since Merah wants to kill him (we're a little past teenage angst, aren't we? xDD) but he's just such a strong character. And you've only shown him once! We got through all this nonsense with Merah complaining about him and saying he's so terrible that an image of him grew in our mind. Then when we saw him "in action" it was exactly like we had imagined. Even the small action of pulling away his hand from the kiss makes him that much more ruthless and downright mean. Not only did you build up his character, but you showed it to us too. I like that.
First of all, let me just say that this whole light idea is pretty cool. I see just an orb floating around talking, and it's just a cool image. However, the brother seems a bit nonchalant about the whole thing. Here's why. Yes, there was once a light in his life. However, I feel like back then he was convinced that only he could see it and that he was the only one with one, right? So when he finds out that his sister is able to see one, wouldn't that at least spark his curiosity? I'm sure he'd be wondering why/how she can see them too. Also I feel like memories might resurface of his light, which would then in turn bring about emotions of either loss or sadness or happiness at the memories. What's he feeling? This is written in first person so you can't dive into his mind, but you can have Merah notice his reactions. Facial expressions and body language are both very telling. Use them to your advantage.
This is from the first part of the chapter, but I came across it while I was looking back and just wanted to point it out. I'm not so sure about this simile. How does someone smile at another when they wake up? I have a general idea, but it's just a guess. Not to mention, people smile differently. So when I think about what this looks like, it's different than what you think it looks like. My friend would think it looks like something different. My brother would think yet something else. The bottom line is it's too generalized to be a simile. Give us something more concrete, a specific emotion in her smile.
This reaction is a bit surprising to me. Why is it that this makes her so upset she wants to cry? We already know that she hates her father. He's mean to her -- probably worse than just mean -- and she doesn't even want him alive. I was expecting more of a frustration that he's up to his antics again, or maybe some relief that she doesn't have to kiss his hand. Sadness wasn't an emotion I expected to see at this moment.
I've seen other reviewers before me mention that this is moving too fast. I'm only going to partially agree. Personally, I'm a big fan of novels that don't beat around the bush and just jump right into the main plot. If there's any place I think you could slow down just a bit, it would be when the light is introduced. I don't know about you, but if I ever saw a floating orb in front of me and it started talking, I would get freaked out and probably run away screaming
Overall I think this is a very nice concept. There's a "creature" who needs Merah's help and she's willing to do it. However, she still has family drama she's wrapped in, so she'll have two separate issues to deal with. I'm sure at some point she's going to have to choose between the two and the choice she makes, whatever it may be, will be the wrong one.
Let me know when you post the next part! I'll be happy to read more
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Thanks for the review, I'm very happy! XD Sure, I'll keep you updated!