When school time was over, we headed to the forbidden area, which was the back of the block, once played as place for Imran to get bullied - he once told me about it. The reason it was forbidden for students was because here they wouldn’t be supervised. Black tar road covered the ground. Orange-and-brown painted school wall guarded us, and looking around, we truly felt there was only two of us here.
“What did you say about this place?” Sarah asked me, resting her bag against the wall of the school block. Wooden chairs and tables piled near her. She wiped the cement floor of the block and sat on it.
“It was where they bullied Imran,” I said, sitting besides her. “You know how he was back then - skinny, had spectacles with huge rims, always looking down. It was no wonder he got that... but it didn’t mean it was okay. Those bullies, they were cowards.”
Sarah stared upward to the cloudless ocean sky, allowing hot rays of sunlight invading every space that came into contact with them. A breeze greeted her, and she tucked strands of her hair behind her ear. “I’m glad he’s overcame it.”
Not by himself alone was what I wanted to tell her, but that was a story for another time. Right now, we were waiting for that Damon guy, grave silence accompanying us. Beyond the wall we saw line of brick houses with similar basic structures and tall trees accompanying them. It was a nice ordinary view - one that I didn’t normally appreciate. Maybe I needed to be more conscious of the surrounding.
My sharpened consciousness could hear footsteps, and when I turned to my right, I saw the firm Damon walking with certainty to here. His eyes stuck stubbornly on mine to the point where I looked away. Man, that guy had an intense glare, one that was creepy when fixed that long. I looked at Sarah, and she tilted her head at Damon’s direction, acknowledging his presence.
He didn’t say anything to us when he arrived. He just stood in front of us. Then, his chest shone like Stark the Ironman, except the light that brightened it wasn’t blue but a shade of purple - mauvine. I searched it up on the Internet. The light went fully out of him, floating there like good spherical shining orb.
“Wow, nice,” Sarah said and made a silent clap. “For a rejected prefect, that is.”
Damon’s face turned red and his body went rigid. Well, Sarah could sting sometimes - it was part of the reason I liked her. She had asked around with the connection she had about Damon, and it seemed he was an interesting student and ex-prefect.
“That doesn’t matter,” he said, the low growl he tried to conceal in his voice indicating how hard he was trying to calm down. “It’s better than being a princess.”
This time, Sarah’s eyes turned stormy. Apparently, this guy had done research on her. I wondered when did it started that we needed to find information about strangers before we met them for real. Well, wait. They were strangers - it was the logical thing to do. Except that right now, it was only used to ignite the flame. I could see already Sarah and Damon wouldn’t get along well with each other.
“Okay, let’s set the potential drama aside,” I said. I tapped on the space besides me. “Why don’t you sit here Damon and tell us how you meet... Mauvine.”
“Do not speak as if I am not here,” Mauvine the Light said, with a whispery voice, fixing himself a spot in front of Damon as Damon sat besides me. “If it is not because of the lights’ and humans’ sake, I would not come to this filthy world.”
Whoa. He won for being the most negative light in an instant.
Damon opened his mouth to speak, but shut it. He looked at me with that creepy intense glare, and his jaws were clenched tight. “I’ll tell you later,” he finally said, giving me an unsatisfying answer.
Now he just made me wonder how he met Mauvine. Huh. Oh well. Another story for another time. “Well,” I said, “let’s meet at Sarah’s house this evening at five. You know her house, don’t you? You did some research on her after all.”
He raised his eyebrow. “Yeah, I know. I guess you want to act fast right now because of the death. You should tell the boy with Flaxen about this.”
Flaxen. The yellow light. Uh-uh. I shook my head. “I can’t. He ran away the moment he saw me. I don’t know why, but he just did.”
“It is primarily due to your light,” Mauvine said, interrupting us. “He’s a deep shade of red, coming from the Scarlet siblings. Flaxen siblings despise them.”
Upon that, Scarlet came out of my chest, followed by Sunglow from Sarah. The two lights floated to Mauvine. Apparently they wanted to have a conversation among themselves. Another wonder. Why did Flaxen despised Scarlet? Maybe it had something to do with the politic in their world. I wasn’t sure, so I kept looking at them.
“Scarlet is a warrior,” Sunglow said, the stress in her voice indicating her arguing. “And warriors serve the royalties. What he has done is all under our - their commands.”
“It does not help the fact that he did nothing against it,” Mauvine said, pointing it out. “As fair as the Flaxens are aware of, what he has done is completely voluntarily. The same goes to you, princess. You have done nothing to change your brethren’s decision.”
“I’ve no choice,” Scarlet said, his voice a whisper. “You know how royalties are like - they think they’re gods. There’s no way I can go against them.”
Mauvine snorted. “You are Scarlet the Third. Rebellion is supposed to be within your blood. After all, you did oppose to your creator.”
As the lights bickered with each other, I found the things they said interesting, especially about the royalties. They wanted to be seen as gods? Man, that was some serious stuff of narcissism. After a few minutes, I clapped, directing their attentions to me. They did - it seemed like the lights were weak against distractions.
“Okay, I understand you have issues among yourselves, but I think it’s better to keep them to yourself right now,” I said. “There’s a bigger issue ahead of us, and we should focus on that. About the boy with Flaxen - let him be. I know this sounds unproductive, but we don’t have time to do more persuading. It’s time for actions, and perhaps Flaxen likes to work alone. Regardless, we need to stick together.”
There was silence until Scarlet said, “Nice speech.”
At the end, all of us went home with our lights inside us, promising to be at Sarah’s house. I decided hers would be our rendezvous seeing Father would not be pleased to see a male friend inside of the house, especially inside of the room, ignoring the fact that I wouldn’t be alone with Damon, of course. Plus, Sarah’s parents were nice - I hoped they would serve us snacks and beverages as they always did there.
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125,004 Literary Works • 672,792 Reviews
Hi there!
One thing I want to mention is that it seems like the ending of each of these parts of a chapter is actually the ending of a chapter. Like this one. I know there are two more parts to this chapter, but it feels pretty much like the end of the chapter. I apologize if I've mentioned it before in a previous review, but this part of the chapter really stood out to me. Don't be afraid to have short chapters. There are plenty of books I've read where the chapters are short, sometimes only consisting of a single scene. The most recent I've read that comes to mind is "The 5th Wave". The chapters were short and to the point and it worked well. If you're going to connect these parts into one grand chapter I want to be able to smoothly transition from each part to the next. That hasn't happened with every part.
I'm a bit torn about this whole meeting each other in the back of this block thing. I understand that they needed somewhere to talk, but why not just somewhere at school? Being secretive is probably a huge importance, but that can happen inside as well. The entire thing just seems a bit strange, seeing as all they accomplish is agreeing to meet at Sarah's house. Because they're out in the open their lights start talking, but that's not a reason they met there in the first place. They could've easily made that decision somewhere insider the school during the day.
Dude's a bit creepy, knowing where Sarah lives and all that :3
One thing I'm stuck on is how Merah knew that Damon's light was named Mauvine. Sure it's the color of the light, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Also, how can she be sure that the color is 100% Mauvine? Unless you're an artist who's really, really good at their job it's hard to pick out the exact shade of a color. There are so many shades and hues under the category of a single color. I don't think she has that good of an eye. Maybe instead, Damon could introduce his light, or the light could introduce itself. It's something small, but for the continuity of things, it's not quite believable.
As Carlito mentioned, your writing is getting better. And not just your descriptions. Through each part I read, I see less grammar mistakes and I'm able to read through it smoothly. You've come a long way. I can't wait to see how you progress over the rest of our chapters and in the future. I also can't wait to see what happens when they try to get this other kid with the light. On to the next part!
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Hey there Lightsong!
I'm sorry for the long wait, but I'm here now, so let's get right down to it.
Because you just asked me for this chapter to be reviewed and this one alone, I haven't read up on the rest of your novel, so excuse me if I make any comments or suggestions about things that have already been developed earlier on.
I quite enjoyed the chapter because there was nothing overly pretentious about it. You seem very relaxed writing this and quite sure of yourself - this is evident in the tone and the generally smooth flow of the narrative. Of course, this is a very good thing because it makes it fun and easy to read! Almost immediately, I felt that I would like to read more. So congratulations on that!
Nevertheless, we always have things we can perfect. @Carlito has really hit the nail on the head by mentioning a lot of areas for you to work on, such as grammar and the infamous show-don't-tell mantra.
Grammar
In terms of grammar, there are a lot of awkward sentences that are interrupting an otherwise would-be-smooth fluidity to your narrative. I picked out quite a few, but I don't want to nitpick every single one for you because that wouldn't be constructive. On the other hand, I'm going to use one as an example and then provide you with a few suggestions to be able to fix them or completely avoid this awkwardness in the first place.
"To here" is just so strange. You might want to try something a little nicer, like "towards us". But do you see what I mean? There are some sentences, or parts of sentences, that get a little funky in terms of vocabulary and wording and when you get funky with wording, vocabulary gets funky too. Here's another one:
"Invading" should actually be "to invade", because the subject ("hot rays of sunlight") is allowed to invade, not allowed invading.
Another thing is that there are some words that are orthographically incorrect. For example, "mauvine" is actually misspelled - it should be "mauveine". However, that change is slightly tricky as it appears to be a character. The use of "royalties" is also incorrect, as when talking about the people who have hereditary power, the word "royalty" implies multiple people. Therefore, you should be using "royalty".
Show, Don't Tell
I know this is horribly cliche but it's definitely something you should keep in mind if you have a tendency to just briefly gloss over details that might make your writing just a little more vivid and interesting.
I don't think it would hurt to describe what these so-called "similar basic structures" look like! Just a few more descriptive words, even.
You say this twice, if not more, in the chapter, but I would like to know what makes it creepy and intense. Are Damon's eyes dark and narrow? Is his mouth thin-lipped and taut? You only need to describe this once, at the beginning, and then later describe his gaze and creepy and intense, because now the readers know what to visualize in their minds.
Another thing I would like to mention is that there a few things that don't make a lot of sense or contradict things mentioned before.
I don't understand what a silent clap is. Could you be more specific?
Despite some of these minor setbacks, it seems that you have something quite unique and special on your hands so I strongly encourage you to continue forward with optimism and success. Let me know if you need anything else - like a review or answers in case I wasn't terribly clear.
Best,
Lav
Thanks for the review! Silent clap is like a slow clap; you make the gesture, but you don't produce the clapping sound.
Hello again!
You're doing a nice job developing the different personalities of each of your characters and making them feel like real people (or lights :p). You're also doing a nice job of keeping the plot moving forward and making sure there is a point to each scene you write. Your descriptions are getting better, too! Like this:
is really lovely!
There are a lot of grammar things going on in this scene and there is a lot of awkward wording. One thing that I think helps really well with catching those things yourself is first changing the size and font of the document you're working in. (This makes it look different on the page so you're more likely to catch things). Then read each scene out loud. I know that sounds time-consuming and weird, but trust me, it really helps catch things
A bigger thing you can work on is your transitions. Really, the biggest problem I had with that came at the end and in this paragraph:
This is a whole lot of telling and what feels like extraneous details. Show them leaving and leave it at that. You could show a short conversation about them deciding where to go if you really want to, but I think you could leave it concise with showing them leaving. After all, this is only the first part of the chapter. We don't need a telling re-cap in the middle
The other thing that confused me with this chapter was the "doing research" on one another. What kind of research is this exactly? When did they do it? How did they do it? Why did they do it?
I'll leave things there for now and see you in the next part! Please let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said was confusing!
Ooh, thanks for the review!