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Young Writers Society



Fur Feathers Scales and Stars - 2.3

by ExOmelas


   Margo wasn’t sure if Chip was trying to placate the Bug Division. She hoped not. Not that she wasn’t worried about their discontent, but she didn’t like the thought of Chip being aware of just how organised it had become, and the need to do something about it. What had she walked in on in that office…? It did seem as if Chip was trying to build bridges though. He’d chosen Kernik, Ochon’s brother, as part of the landing party, a role far above Kernik’s position as assistant engineer.

Kernik was barely even looking at Chip, glowering at him only to make sure he put at least a metre between the two of them. Margo slotted into place between them to make the gap less obvious. They were then joined by Treego Dart “leaping” into place beside Kernik, and Gerry McCaw waddling up next to Chip.

The five of them standing there ought to have looked impressive, Margo thought. They were dressed in dark grey uniforms, made up of a thick woollen jacket, a long-sleeved undershirt and some loose trousers. Even Kernik was clad in a miniaturised version of the outfit. Their fists were clenched and their feet were steady. They were members of the Jungle Corps Space Team standing proud in front of their vessel, which had been ordered not to attempt take-off under these risky conditions – landing had been dicey enough. They did look bloody impressive.

Unfortunately, about fifty metres away from them loomed the sweeping, sprawling, four-floored Beneos Palace.

“Pretty, eh?” Chip murmured. Margo wondered if he was disappointed with being outshone as well, but she doubted he was in much a mood to care about the majesty of their team.

The palace was littered with windows like the top of Kernik’s head seemed to be littered with eyes. Margo wondered who was currently sitting at one of them, watching their progress along the smooth marble drive. The palace’s width was immediately obvious, but as they got closer Margo began to understand properly why McCaw was so excited about the ceilings. Not only did the building seem to grow by about three feet with every step they took, but she realised that what appeared to be four floors was in fact only two. Each floor was lined with two rows of windows, instead of just one. That meant that the first floor stretched up to half the height of the monumental domed roof, which glinted in the sunlight. No, McCaw was not going to be banging his head on the ceiling today.

They were greeted by a short dumpy figure who shoved the enormous arched door open, while barely even reaching the doorknob. This wasn’t any great indication concerning the figure, however, as there were at least two metres between the doorknob and the ground. As the figure started shuffling towards them, Margo realised it was doing so in a series of short hops. Even Treego Dart had to be forced to admit this highly resembled the movement of a frog.

“Jungle Force?” The being’s voice was the high whine of a human child’s, and its height, it turned out, was not much taller than that of a child.

“Yes … yes, we are,” Chip said. He seemed to be searching for something, presumably a name or a title with which to address this being. It had no legs, its arms were long and its fingers looked dextrous. It seemed to waver slightly in the breeze, but also didn’t seem at all put off by this fact. In fact, there was a fluid sway to how it held itself that suggested it revelled in the air’s movement.

“Come,” the servant said, turning around and leading them, bump by bump, into the palace. It still offered no name for itself, just added, “The Archess is waiting.”

Dart’s hops seemed longer than normal as they were led through hall after hall of oil paintings and marble sculptures. Maybe he was trying to compensate. Margo would have recognised the surroundings of the halls from countless movies the humans had uploaded to the Jungle Corps servers, had all the statues not been tied down with rope the width of her leg and all the pictures not been duct-taped to the walls. Margo figured that made sense; with the gravity fluctuations the statues would be liable to fly up and smash into the ceilings.

Their progress was slow, but thankfully their guide soon brought them to a stop.

“This is the sitting room,” he explained, “Normally my mistress would take company upfloor in the Great Hall, but as you may have guessed, anything ‘up’ is out of the question at the moment.”

He tugged at a bright red waistcoat hugging the upper half of his form, then raised a hand to knock on the door. Pausing, he turned to Chip. “You do know how to address the ruler of Beneos, right?”

Margo frowned as Chip nodded and stared straight ahead. He said, “I’ve been informed.”

“And can you…?” the servant trailed off and shrugged.

“If I can’t,” said Chip, “I hope my humility will be ample compensation.”

Margo and the three other Jungle Corps officers stared at Chip but he kept his eyes on the door as the creature swung it open.

There was a startled gasp from the other side of Chip, where McCaw was standing, with his eyes wide and pointed steadfastly upwards.

“Holy flightfeathers,” he whispered, “It’s just so high.”

Margo smiled, glad that he hadn’t been disappointed. Maybe he’d get the chance before he left to swoop and dive properly around the room without fear of plummeting to the hardwood floor or being smashed into the arched ebony cornices.

The ‘Archess’ was perched on the edge of a crudely constructed wooden chair. She wore a thin maroon dress, that reached down from her shoulders and seemed to have some sort of padding around the sides to support her arms. Her hair swooped around over her right shoulder in one thick layer of auburn and her features were not far from human. If not for her choice of chair, she’d have looked as regal as her admittedly rather vague title suggested she should.

Margo cringed as she looked at where the Archess sat. She could almost hear Dart scoffing at the chair. There were splinters fraying off the edges, all of which stuck out behind each other. It was as if each had been carved by a different carpenter, and each carpenter had been given a different specification of its dimensions. It was not altogether an overt display of wealth.

“Your eminence,” the servant who had led them there said. “The visitors have arrived.”

It folded into a deep bow that brought its nose almost to the floor. Margo thought that odd, given the state of the Archess’ throne.

Glancing around the room, however, Margo spotted several elegant pale blue chairs mounted to the walls at varying heights, as well as a couple hanging by the ceiling from metal chains. That suggested that the chair in which the Archess sat had been thrown together quickly so there was a seat available to her other than the floor. Even as she gazed at the elegant wingbacks, though, there were workers in harnesses taking them down. It would seem that anything likely to plummet to the ground with a sudden surge in gravity was too dangerous to remain in the Archess’ palace, no matter the danger the workers were currently in to remove them.

As long as it was the servant in the harness, Margo thought. She and the rest of the crew knew perfectly well how they’d like to address rulers of planets who were so careless with the safety of their servants. Something in the way Chip’s shoulders kept alternately tensing and shaking, however, told Margo today would not be the day they plucked up their courage and lived out that fantasy.

“Captain, I presume?” the Archess said.

Chip nodded and brought them all to a halt with the raising of his right paw. Margo fixed her eyes on him, barely blinking. What was going on? She watched as he took a deep breath, cracked his knuckles, then performed a remarkably crisp backflip.

He raised his eyes to the Archess’ and said, “I hope my greeting is sufficient to extend to the rest of my crew?”

The Archess nodded. “Yes, very good of you to perform your duties while groundbound. And thank you for coming so fast – and of course, for risking our pesky gravity fields with your ship. The people we spoke to at your Earth seemed most concerned about its safety. I hear it’s something of a valuable model.”

Kernik snorted but nobody acknowledged the noise. Margo sympathised. If you already had little faith in your mission control it probably didn’t help if mission control sent a message millions of lightyears away to an alien ruler to inquire after the welfare of a spacecraft, instead of you.

“Indeed, your Eminence,” Chip replied. He straightened and adjusted his jacket. “That does, however, mean that it comes equipped with state of the art scanners, electromagnets and even a couple of burrow-drills. How may we be of service?”

Chip smiled and held his arms wide, encompassing the crew members lined up on either side of him. His voice was warm and there was no suggestion of any warning to Kernik to co-operate. Two weeks ago, Chip had been renowned amongst Jungle Corps as fiercely proud of his crew, and Margo thought even Kernik would have to admit it was nice to be acknowledged.

The Archess was frowning. “Honestly, we’re not really sure where to start. Hodda!” – the servant who’d led them in bumped forward from behind them – “Where are the reports?”

“On the table beside you, my lady.” Hodda bowed as he finished speaking and stayed down for at least four seconds before straightening up.

Margo was glad to see that the Archess didn’t order the servant to place it in her hand, even if she didn’t quite have the humility to display any embarrassment about her mistake. Margo had dealt with hereditary rulers before, as ‘Eminence’ and ‘my lady’ seemed to suggest she was. This one clearly didn’t have the makings of a great leader, but Margo was hopeful she wouldn’t be constantly in their way as Daigos, the emperor of a large continent on the last planet they’d visited, had been.

The Archess scanned the front page of the file she’d picked up, then nodded and held it out for Chip. He covered the two steps between them quickly and took the file from her. He too offered it only a cursory glance, which Margo thought seemed a bit insensitive. The people’s lives were being turned literally upside down. Then Chip passed the file to McCaw, the only environmental science specialist among them, and Margo realised Chip just didn’t understand a word of it. McCaw took the file in his beak, then dropped it on the ground and opened it with his talons.

“If there’s something interfering with your gravitational field, we should be able to locate the source.” He nodded and kicked the file closed again.

At this, Chip’s head jerked around to face McCaw. His eyes were bulging, but McCaw only frowned and dropped his gaze to the floor. Margo was willing to bet he knew as little what Chip meant by that as she did. Chip wasn’t letting it go, though.

“Gerry,” he said, softly, though there was really no point. The room was silent; the Archess would hear them no matter how quietly he spoke. He must have realised this because he raised his voice and said, “Archess, is there somewhere Officer McCaw and I could discuss something?”

The Archess raised her eyebrows but only pointed him towards a small alcove in the far corner of the room. There was a folded up screen in perfect position to allow a private conversation if drawn over. Presumably, that was its explicit purpose.

For several long, long moments, the only noise in the entire room was the sound of McCaw’s talons on the floorboards as Chip led him over to it – Chip’s paws carried him soundlessly wherever he went. Then, without warning, a door burst open and two miniature versions of whatever species the Archess and Hodda belonged to zipped through the air and landed with wobbly skids behind the Archess’ chair.

The Archess sighed. “Allow me to introduce the Master and Mistress of the household. My daughter, Minia, and my son, Oran. Stop it, you two, unless you want to be thrown against the ceiling by the next gravity fluctuation!”

The two heads peeked out from behind the chair, and were then followed by the streamlined bodies of two beings who had been born to fly. Margo glanced down to her right and stepped a little closer to Kernik. She gulped and hoped she wouldn’t have to save him from becoming these royal children’s lunch before Chip was finished interrogating McCaw about … well, about God knew what. There was already a fair bit of indistinct grunting that could be heard floating across the room. Margo hoped it didn’t develop into anything … howlier…


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Sun May 28, 2017 6:51 pm
Rydia wrote a review...



Hi Again!

Specifics

1.

Margo wasn’t sure if Chip was trying to placate the Bug Division. She hoped not. Not that she wasn’t worried about their discontent, but she didn’t like the thought of Chip being aware of just how organised it had become, and the need to do something about it.
This seems really weird to me because surely you want your captain/ friend to be aware of the threat so they don't walk blindly into trouble. From everything we know of Margo she is smart and compassionate so this seems really off.

2.
They were then joined by Treego Dart “leaping” into place beside Kernik, and Gerry McCaw waddling up next to Chip.
Why is leaping in quotes? That seems odd since it's just a way of describing movement.

3.
Even Kernik was clad in a miniaturised version of the outfit.
Rather than this which doesn't tell us anything additional and seems obvious since we've just bee told all five are wearing the outfit, a better aside might be 'Kernik's miniaturised version of the outfit was more adorable than threatening but his glower made up for it.'

4.
Their progress was slow, but thankfully their guide soon brought them to a stop.
This seems to contradict itself.

5.
Kernik snorted but nobody acknowledged the noise. Margo sympathised. If you already had little faith in your mission control it probably didn’t help if mission control sent a message millions of lightyears away to an alien ruler to inquire after the welfare of a spacecraft, instead of you.
This is lovely - good world building, good humour and good character insight!

Overall

The plot is moving a bit slowly and we don't have much of a sense of what the main threat is or why these characters are wandering around space. I think you need to introduce the main goal really soon or at least a side objective. Like, we know Chip's sister is being used by an old enemy of his who's bound to show up again, but meanwhile the characters are just following orders to land in an incredibly dangerous gravitational field and held some people out. It has a slightly episodic feel. Also, I've not got a strong sense of whether Chip is frustrated by this detour ad that's because we're in Margo's head but maybe the two of them could have a conversation as they're heading toward the welcome party which would give us a sense of that?

I think the writing flows well but it's hard to feel really sucked in without knowing where the plot is going and I don't quite care enough about the characters yet for that to be the driving force.

See you at the next part!

~Heather




ExOmelas says...


Hm... it makes sense for this to feel episodic since that was originally the format xD

What I'm trying to do instead is make the jeopardy Chip still being a bit off. That's why Margo wasn't wanting to trouble him. Would it help to angle the whole thing towards Chip's mental state?



Rydia says...


I'm not sure. The thing is, he's the captain so we kind of expect him to need to be able to cope with these things so it seems wrong that he can't?



ExOmelas says...


Hm... The thing is that he's only captain because the humans put him there because he's similar to them (from his first conversation with Ochon). Like, he's not necessarily good at being a captain. Do you think there's a way I can get that across better?



Rydia says...


The problem is even if he's meant to be a bad captain, it will be hard for your reader to accept because he's the main character and therefore should have some amount of competency?



ExOmelas says...


Interesting... I'm not really sure how that works. Like, critiquable main characters are a thing, wonder why that doesn't work here. It's worth reading part 3 before I change things though. If that works for you let me know how I could get from 1 to 3 :/



Rydia says...


Will do! And I think it's maybe that the reader's expectations are set in part 1 that Chip is a great guy and going to fix all the problems. I don't think it's impossible to have an incompetent main character but perhaps it has to be clear from the start and they also need redeemable factors.



ExOmelas says...


Ok, maybe that makes more sense. Will look into it :)



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Sat Apr 22, 2017 1:42 pm
MissGangamash wrote a review...



Back again! I couldn't get round to reviewing yesterday but I'm here now.

Nitpicks:

“You do know how to address the ruler of Beneos, right?” - the way this is said doesn't really feel right coming from a servant. Maybe,'You do know how to address the ruler of Beneos, don't you?' its just a little more formal.

'She wore a thin maroon dress, that reached down from her shoulders' - no need for the comma.

'...however, told Margo today would not be...' - 'told Margo that today would not be'

'Chip nodded and brought them all to a halt with the raising of his right paw' - monkeys are said to have hands and feet, not paws.

'sent a message millions of lightyears away to an alien ruler' - again, the light years needs to be changed.

'“On the table beside you, my lady.” Hodda bowed as he finished' - at first the servant was described as an 'it' and now, knowing the name has become a 'he' even though the name doesn't really specify gender. Maybe change it to he was a 'he' all along?

'Chip’s paws carried him soundlessly' - 'feet'

Okay, and finished. I think a problem with this story is that I don't see the purpose. Who are the Jungle Corps Space Team and what are they being assigned to do? I think we are far enough into the story now to need to know who and what they are, especially now that they are doing stuff. Is it their job to help other planets? And if so, why? Earth has never had the desire to help other species on other planets before, so why now? Right now, I just feel like things are happening without reason. I'm sure there is a reason, you just need to enlighten your readers what it is. Otherwise it just feels like I'm being led through this story without really knowing what I'm supposed to be doing here.




ExOmelas says...


Hrm... The explanation does come in quite gradually, but I'd say it doesn't start until part 3. Maybe I could put something in when Gerry McCaw tells Margo they have orders. Something like:

"Continuing on our quest of keeping order in the universe, we have orders!"

Will fix the lightyears.

Hodda's pronoun... Maybe "they"? I was picturing him with a deep voice though, so maybe just add that?

Thanks for the review :)



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Sun Jan 29, 2017 7:03 pm
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occymay wrote a review...



Hello!

So I haven't read any of your other works, though I did enjoy reading this. This review will be purely on characterisation in this chapter and your writing style.

Positives-
I felt that you had a good use of unique adjective and verbs, this is something that can really help the writing flow and make the reader want to continue.This helps with the description as well. I also thought this was really good, it really created an imagery in my head. Good description for the characters as well, just little things that remind the reader they aren't human but still make them relatable. I like the story too, it's different from anything I have read on here, and you don't make it feel childish and immature which I really like.

Improvements-
One of the things I noticed was there is a lot of description, not that is was bad, it can just be a bit too much. Maybe having more interaction with the characters at the being to give them a bit more personality. Also, were you changing POV between Chip and Marlow because it did confuse me a little? You could probably do with giving the reader a bit more warning when you are going to change POV. It just helps to keep the reader in the know. Also, you could do with just a tiny bit more build up at the end, maybe Chip tries to have a bit more of a conversation with McCaw. Though that's just an idea.

Overall, really great piece and I will probably go back and read the other chapters when I get the chance. Keep writing :)




ExOmelas says...


Hey, thanks for the review :) I hadn't noticed the POV issue so I'll go back and have a look for that. As for description, yeah it probably was a bit heavy. I'll see if I can weave it in more.



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Sat Dec 24, 2016 12:13 am
Dracula wrote a review...



Hey there!

The five of them standing there ought to have looked impressive, Margo thought. They were dressed in dark grey uniforms, made up of a thick woollen jacket, a long-sleeved undershirt and some loose trousers. Even Kernik was clad in a miniaturised version of the outfit. Their fists were clenched and their feet were steady. They were members of the Jungle Force Space Team standing proud in front of their vessel, which had been ordered not to attempt take-off under these risky conditions – landing had been dicey enough. They did look bloody impressive.
This paragraph is perfectly fine, I just wanted to point out what you did absolutely right! Your imagery is very vivid, I could imagine all of this. I loved the use of words such as 'even' and 'bloody' to add emphasis to the emotions. The main emotion coming across being how proud they all were. This whole scene reminded me of photographs teams usually take, standing in front of their craft.

had all the statues not been tied down with rope the width of her leg and all the pictures not been duct-taped to the walls.
This bit confused me a little. I'd like some more depth into why pictures were duct-taped rather than hung, and statues tied down with rope. Surely statues don't need to be tied down?

“Holy flightfeathers,” he whispered, “It’s just so high.”
All the little exclamations and habits of your characters are very unique to your world, it shows how much effort you've put into worldbuilding. :)

My daughter Minia and my son Oran.
I think the kids are really cute. Not sure if it's a grammar necessity, but I would put commas around the names. My daughter, Minia, and my son, Oran.

Though it is made perfectly obvious that this is written in Margo's point of view, I felt I got a good understanding of how the other characters felt and reacted. Or at least how Margo thought they felt and reacted. Good job!




ExOmelas says...


Hey Drac, thanks for this! Hm, I have a question about the statues one. When you sat you'd like some more depth, does that mean you intend to read on to find out why, or you think I should include it here? I don't intend this to be a leading question. If it's the latter, then I'll put in something like "Margo figured that made sense; with the gravity fluctuations the statues would be liable to fly up and smash into the ceilings."

Thanks again :)



Dracula says...


It just doesn't seem like a normal thing, but your chars didn't seem to act like anything was out of the ordinary. If it's an important detail that will be explained later on, maybe just say somewhere that they wonder why. If it's not gonna be explained later on, your could give a short (just one sentence) explanation.



Dracula says...


But yeah, that sentence you wrote above would be perfect.



ExOmelas says...


Cool, cool. I'll add that in :)




ask not what u can do for ur bones but of what ur bones can do for u
— Carina