Young Writers Society

Last night I started writing the first scene to Empire of the Sky, the new story I'm working on, mainly just to play around with the characters and try to get a feel for them. I have what is either part of the first scene or the entire first scene, depending on whatever it ends up being by the time I go to work on it again.

I don't really want much for critique, since this is mainly playing around with the characters and there isn't much to critique anyway because of it being so short (outside of grammar-type-things that I don't want to deal with right now). What I would like to know is:

-Whether it would be better to have more Moon Children than Sky, or more Sky than Moon Children. The Moon Children are the ones that are from a dying race, and right now...I just have Cesarina, who is a full Moon Child and Kalevias, who is half-Moon child. The others are all Sky. Should I make another one of them Moon instead?

-How I did on whether there's too much or too little description/show, don't tell.

I think that's it.

[pre]Empire of the Sky

Chapter One:

Moonlight’s Embrace

The glow of the moon above brought warmth to her body in the embrace of the night sky. The moon wasn’t quite full, but enough of it was showing that the light blue colored glow surrounding her body was showing, revealing her Moon Child lineage.

Cesarina loved the moon’s warm embrace.

Her deep green eyes blinked and she looked over at the shadows of her companions. Two of them, Casden and Rais, shared the glow that she had, but they seemed more able to hide theirs. Kalevias, who was the twin brother of the only other female, shared a smaller glow since he was only half-Moon Child.

The Moon Children of the small group were the most vulnerable when there was a full moon in the sky. The blue glows surrounding their bodies were their life forces, which allowed any enemies to know where they were.

Cesarina sighed, leaning against a nearby tree in the clearing the companions had stopped to rest in. She folded her arms across her chest as she watched her friends, who seemed to be taking their time.

“We should hurry,” Cesarina spoke, trying to emphasize her words. “We’re too vulnerable with this full moon in the sky.”

“Where would you have us go, Cesarina?” asked Rais. “The glow of your life force certainly isn’t going to help us any.”

“So use your Sky magic. Make the moon not as full,” she retorted.

“You know we don’t have enough power for that,” he replied irritably. “Besides, you could just as easily use your Moon magic to take some of the moon’s light away.”

“Yes, and then Kalevias and I would be too weak to do a lot of traveling. It wouldn’t do us any good,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

“Will you two please stop your bickering?”

Cesarina looked to her left to where Kalevias was sitting on a log next to his sister. In his left hand he held a long walking stick, and over his eyes were several layers of cloth tied at the back of his head.

“Cesarina is right, Rais,” Kalevias continued. “We need to hurry. We could go back to the Valley and hide out there until we know what our plan is. We need shelter . . . and more food.”

“There would be no point in returning to the Valley, brother.” It was Kelesana speaking now, slowly shaking her head at her sibling's suggestion. “We’ve already come this far; why travel this distance just to turn back? Besides, we can’t be that far from Caelia now.”

As the others discussed their situation, Cesarina began to tune them out with her own thoughts. Her eyes drifted to the direction of the sky, watching the stars. She watched as the stars began moving slowly, creating the shape of an arrow going to Cesarina’s right. She nodded, and after a few more seconds the stars were back in their original spots.

“We need to head east,” Cesarina said.

Everyone looked at her. She looked away from the stars and at her companions. With a shrug she said, “The stars told me. We need to go east, and we’ll find Caelia.”

“Then we go east,” Rais said firmly. “We’ll leave in about half an hour’s time. Rest while you still can.”

[/pre]