My head starts to spin. I hear someone calling out. Crying, really. When I open my eyes, the shadows around me are hazy, as if I view them through a curtain of water. When I manage to focus, I see a familiar face. I feel as if I'm small again; ten years younger and more innocent. My brother. It was my little brother.
"Liam?" My voice is as loud as I dare it, echoing down the tunnels of the labyrinth. The word feels foreign on my tongue; I haven't spoke it out loud in such a long time. He looks up at me, startled by my voice. Then his face melts into a smile, the tears in his big brown eyes drying quickly. He holds his arms out to me, still wanting to be held even at four years old. A few stitches on my heart are severed by the hopeful look my brother is giving me. "I'm so sorry Liam! It won't happen again, I promise..." I wrap him in a hug, telling him fervently that everything would be okay, but my arms go right through his frail form. I'm left all alone in the chilling darkness, hugging myself. My face is frozen in a look of shock, eyes wide, mouth open. He wasn't there. He never was.
A slender hand reaches out and lifts my chin. "Mother?" I whisper, confused. Her skin is fair, as it always had been, and her hair is golden brown. Her dress is simple, but on her, it looks finer than what a queen could ever own. Her face is soft and kind, with her pointed ears and small nose. I look over. Father, too? The blacksmith with tan skin and short black hair. He's wearing everyday clothes, with a dirty apron tied around his neck.
I stand up on shaky legs, feeling younger and the definition of carefree. They hold out their arms for their child to come, but I stand still. I look into my parents' eyes, my mother's warm and brown and my father's the color of the iron he shapes every day. All I see in their eyes is disappointment. Guilt and regret pummel me relentlessly. I'm so caught up in my thoughts that my mother's tears don't register. I don't feel the sadness emanating from them as they turn toward each other and embrace before they disappear entirely. With all that disappointment, I knew they wouldn't love me, even if I somehow found them again, and Liam would never forgive me either. Combined, their hate must be enough to kill me, and not even the strongest grace could redeem me—
Silence. I can't keep a single thought in my head. I pry my hands from my ears, where I'd placed them to try to get away from my own accusations. I open my eyes, and see someone else I know—or knew, I don't know anymore. I know it's a trick. It has to be. Everything else was. I try so hard to turn and walk away, but I stagger forward with my hand on the wall to steady myself. My heart is torn asunder, and I can't help but do something I haven't done in such a long time. I cry.
"Takumi..." I whisper. He has slumped hopelessly against the wall, his head bowed. I reach out hesitantly and put my hand on his shoulder. His head jerks up suddenly, and he takes a few seconds to focus on my face. He smiles and tries to speak, but all he manages is a rattling cough. Clearing his throat, he tries again, saying, "Fancy meeting you here, Suzume. Are you real? Or another dream?" He smiles wanly. It looked so different from his usual smirk, instead making his face look warm. I hug him if only just to hide my face so that he wouldn't see me cry.
"Who did this to you?" I ask quietly. His twin swords sit to the side, untouched. Did he not even put up a fight? He coughs again and I hand him my canteen. He drinks deeply before responding.
"I did. I did, with a little help from Allistair," he admits. I look at him quizzically. "When I heard about the magic amulet, I couldn't pass up the promise of so much money from getting one thing, so, of course, I set out to find it. I thought I was strong enough, but I'd left one part of me wide open. Lord Allistair doesn't treat people who want his amulet very kindly, so when I tried to get through this cave, I was attacked, not physically, but mentally. It was my thoughts that he twisted that ended my consciousness. After a while, I just figured nothing was real, but I still couldn't get out."
I draw back and look at him for a second. "How are you alive?" I ask. I'm sure he has a scar, but how did he not bleed to death?
"Let's just say I met an angel who thought she could make me good," he smirks. "Oh, yeah. I almost forgot to give you this," he said, reaching into his cloak and pulling out a slim blade.
My tenth dagger.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,038 Literary Works • 672,927 Reviews
Hello! I’m here to review this chapter! Before I start, I’d just like you to know that I have no read any other chapters and have no idea what this story is about so if I say something along the lines of “explain what this word/phrase means” and you’ve already written in one of the other chapters the definition is, please ignore that piece of criticism. That goes for any other thing that I point out that has already been explained (ex: a character seems 2D/flat/personality-less but it’s actually a result a previous trauma and you explained it in an earlier chapter/it has not yet been revealed.) With that out of the way, let’s begin!
You should try and find another way to say “when” so it doesn’t seem repetitive. Same thing goes for any other words that you use for than once in less than three sentences.
As I said before, be careful with repetitive words. In this case, it’s the word “I”. I know that since this is written in first person-present tense you kind of have to use it, but you should still try your best not to if possible. I’m going to give you an example of what I mean using your sentence “When I manage to focus, I see a familiar face.” See the words “when” and “I”? Those are words I like to refer to as “problem words” because they have a tendency to be used way too much in writing. It’s okay though, accidently being repetitive is a very common mistake (even when I first started writing and even for a little while after, I used so many “I”’s that my works might as well have been just a long, never ending line of them.) Anyways you can eliminate those problem words in the sentence I previously mentioned by rephrasing it. “As my vision clears, I find a familiar face staring back at me.” See what I did there? It’s not the prettiest example, but it works. I hope this helps you avoid repeating words in the future.
‘It was my little brother.” I thought this was present tense? Why is “was” in there? I really like your choice for his name.
Stitches? On her heart? This doesn’t work metaphorically or literally, unless you can actually get stitches on your heart which I didn’t think was possible. I’m pretty sure that if she really had a cut in her heart she would be long dead or with an entirely new heart. If this is actually just supposed to be a metaphor, then maybe try and make that more obvious.
That part is sad, but I like how you wrote it.
“He wasn't there. He never was.” Those two phrases mean practically the same thing. I think you meant to put “He isn’t here. He never was.” but I’m not sure.
If she was carefree, she wouldn’t hesitate to go over to over to her parents. Try and find a different word to describe her mood.
Open arms usually mean they are welcoming, but if their eyes show disappointment why do they want her to come with them? If they are just death in her parent’s forms that are trying to get her to come with them to the other side (which I’m assuming is what’s happening) why would they show anything but happiness on their faces? Don’t they want her to come to the other side?
As I said before, if it’s death just taking the forms of people she knows to try and get her to come with him, why would they be sad? Why would he even take form of people who don’t love her in the first place? Unless he makes them say that they forgive her for whatever it is she did wrong, it just isn’t logical. (When I talk about death taking forms, think about it as the white light which apparently everyone sees before they die. People who have near death experiences describe it as warm and inviting and that the temptation to walk into it was almost too strong to say no to. That is death taking the form of something pleasant so people will willingly cross over to “the other side” with him.)
“I can't keep a single thought in my head.” That usually means she’s voicing her thoughts aloud, but if she is how would it be silent?
She recovered way too fast from that. She was practically dead just a few seconds ago, and now she’s walking? I know she’s stumbling and stuff but that’s still not realistic. The most she could do after going through the whole death thing is open her eyes and possibly groan.
I looked up the name Takumi just to make sure it’s a legit Japanese name and while it is, it’s the name of a main character in the video game called “Fire Emblem”. This isn’t a problem unless you plan on getting this published since I’m not sure if that name is copyrighted or not. If it is, change it before you get sued and if it isn’t then you can just leave it there.
Another Japanese name? Is this story based in Japan? If so you should look into the correct Japanese honorifics.
Alistair is spelled wrong according to google. It’s one L, not two.
That’s a lot of unnecessary exposition…
"Let's just say I met an angel who thought she could make me good," That’s a good piece of dialog!
This was an interesting read and with one or two more rounds of proof-reading I’m sure it could win a prize or something!
Happy writing!
Oh my, all this good feedback. I can't pretend that I'm good at first person, but I didn't even notice how much I used 'When' and 'I'. I wasn't actually trying to to make her parents seem like death, they went missing when she was a child. It's something you would have known if it were a book and not a single chapter (or partial chapter, for that matter). Also, the person I mention briefly, Alistair, sorry for the bad spelling, will ofter mess with people's heads. I didn't realize the name Takumi was in a video game, but hey, it's nice to know. I'm probably going to change their names at some point, but when I was thinking about how they weren't even in Japan, I couldn't think of any interesting names. Again, thanks so much!