Mother and Friends
Until yesterday, Jannah was content with her belief that the strange things happening to her were of protective nature. She did not dare to delve further into the matter because she was not a risk taker. But now that she knew she had her friends with her, her confidence rose higher. Because of that, she promised her friends she would keep them updated if more unusual events occurred.
She arrived home from school to find out her mother was not there. Of course Mother’s not here, she thought, parking the car at the garage. She’s working.
Jannah let out a small sigh, and went into the house. It was dark inside, and she let it to be that way, and went straight to her bedroom upstairs. After taking a bath, she decided to take a nap, feeling her eyelids heavy. Before she could drift to the dream world, however, she heard her phone rang on the table beside her. She lazily reached up to it to find out it was Rachelle. She rolled her eyes. If she did not take it, Rachelle would keep calling her.
‘What is it?’ asked Jannah.
‘Dafina wasn’t accusing you for no reason,’ said Rachelle. ‘Zafiq, her boyfriend, has his eyes on you these days.’
Jannah raised an eyebrow, though she knew Rachelle did not see it. The need to sleep was gone. Rachelle must be kidding. Why would Zafiq notice a girl like Jannah?
‘It’s true!’ said Rachelle. ‘I’ve been observing him. Sometimes, when Dafina was talking to him, he seemed to be distracted. And when I checked why, it was because he was looking at you.’
Jannah considered. Rachelle might love gossips, but she would not make one - especially an untrue one - for her own friends. Perhaps Rachelle was mistaken? But then again, if there was a person who could notice these small things, it was her. And I would be the oblivious one, Jannah thought idly. ‘Perhaps you’re mistaken?’ asked Jannah. She hoped that was the case. She could not handle it if someone boyfriend has been checking out on her.
‘Urgh, Jannah,’ said Rachelle. Her sigh was audible. ‘Sometimes you have to realize some guys are easily distracted by some girls. Zafiq’s one of those.’
Jannah considered this. ‘Well, if it’s true, what should I do? I don’t think there’s nothing I could do to stop him from doing that.’ Plus, if Dafina saw her being close with Zafiq, she would be furious. Jannah would do anything to avoid unnecessary drama.
‘I’ll talk to him for you. That guy’s a creep. I just think you should know this.’
Jannah did not think she should. It only added to her problems. Regardless, she appreciated Rachelle’s concern. ‘Thanks, Rachelle.’
‘No prob.’
*
Jannah woke up to realize the clock had struck seven in the evening. She had been sleeping for four hours, longer than she intended. She quickly washed her face at the sink in her bedroom’s toilet, rushed down the stairs, and unlocked the door with the key hung at the nearby wall. She switched on the light to let the living room come to view. Cracking the door open, she could see Mother’s silver MyVi car. Since Jannah had parked her Gen 2 hatchback at the open area behind the gate, Mother had to park hers outside beside the road.
‘Assalamualaikum,’ said Mother as she entered the house.
Jannah closed the door and turned to her. ‘Waalaikumussalam.’
Mother switched on the fan and rested on the couch at the middle of the room. She unwrapped her scarf and looked at Jannah. Her eyes seemed to get duller and duller these days. Jannah pitied her, but she was also impressed. Since Father died three years ago, Mother had been doing her best to support the family, and she succeeded. Jannah did not know how she did that, but if it was Jannah, she would be grieving for months. Father meant a lot to her.
‘How was work today?’ asked Jannah, sitting beside Mother.
‘It was tiring.’ Mother smiled. ‘How was school?’
‘Same old, same old.’ A thought came to Jannah’s mind. ‘I’m planning to go for a shopping this weekend. Do you want to come?’
Mother frowned. For a woman who had nineteen-years-old girl as a daughter, she sure looked young with the smooth face of her, freed from aging lines. ‘I’d love to, but I’ve work. There’s a lot of things I need to finish off.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry, Jannah. You can ask your friends, Michelle and Tanusha to come with you.’
Michelle and Tanusha? Mother still could not get her friends’ names right. Jannah felt an urge to storm away from her, but she suppressed it. Mother wanted to be with her, but she could not. Jannah should understand. And yet, she could not remember the last time they had spent time together doing some mother-daughter things. Not after the car accident that had stolen Father’s life. ‘I understand, Mother,’ said Jannah softly. ‘I’ll ask them. You should take a rest.’
Mother took Jannah’s hand and squeezed it. She did not utter any word. Then, she closed her eyes.
*
Jannah opened her laptop and checked her Skype. As expected, both Rachelle and Manisha were online. This was how they could converse with each other. Manisha had a phone, but she rarely used it. The cheap Nokia was only capable of making calls and messages, which cost money. She wanted a smart phone, and had been saving money for that. As of now, if she wanted to have a chat with her friends, she could only do it through her laptop, bought to assist her in school assignments.
Jannah had asked her why she did not just buy the cheap one until she could get enough money to buy her desire hand phone. Manisha said it was the error of her decision; when she refused at that time, her parents permanently withdrawn their offer. She thought she had hurt their feelings.
Jannah wondered how it was like to have parents like that. Mother always gave her what she wanted, albeit being absent most of the time. The room was dark; Jannah preferred it that way. She sat on her bed, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, sheltering her from the increasing coolness coming from the circulating ceiling fan. The window was kept open; she liked to feel connected with the outside world in some ways. A new message popped up.
kickassgirl: Wanna go somewhere this weekend?
Oh, right. She should have told them right now. In the group, kickassgirl and silentmoon - Rachelle and Manisha - agreed to accompany her to One Utama shopping complex, located near Taman Tun, the area she lived in. Manisha had something to do this Saturday, but she said she could postpone it. Rachelle was excited, saying it would be boring to spend weekend stuck at home. she would be driving the car to go there from Desa Parkcity, bringing with her Manisha. This was how they went to school too. Manisha’s parents had agreed to this; they were neighbors, after all.
kickassgirl: Have you told your mum about what happened to you?
Jannah did not expect that question. She told Rachelle she had not.
marypoppins: I’ve never thought about doing that. I don’t know. Should I?
silentmoon: She’s your mum, you should’ve told her.
marrypoppins: Would she believe me though? She didn’t see what I saw, what you guys saw.
kickassgirl: At least tell her. It might do good for both of you.
She bit her lip. She had tried to spend more time with Mother, but Mother always seemed to want everything she did to stop. It was like clapping with one hand - impossible to achieve if the other did not cooperate. ‘I got an A for Malay Language test.’ ‘That’s good, sweetheart.’ If Jannah did not prod it to continue, the conversation would end there. It was like talking to someone who you had not met for years except that this time, you felt frustration, not awkwardness.
marrypoppins: I will. When the time is right.
silentmoon: Don’t stop trying, Jannah. You’ll get there, sooner or later.
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140,681 Literary Works • 673,591 Reviews
Hello hello! Happy RevMo!
I am finally going to get caught up with The Last Light Companion! You probably thought the day would never come 
I know English is not your first language, so all those silly little English grammar rules and phrasing things are tough (because this language makes no sense :p), but that kind of stuff is easier to teach than how to craft a story and I think your craftsmanship skills are continuously improving!
I appreciated that you started to develop some subplots in this chapter with Zafiq maybe liking Jannah and Jannah's troubled relationship with her mother. You do a nice job introducing multiple conflicts and elements to a story (that was true for Bad Lights/Good Lights too). It just creates a richer reading experience
I also appreciated that you incorporated some action and description in with the dialogue. I know I've mentioned that in previous reviews and I think it makes a huge difference in the dialogue! It feels more authentic and like two people are actually talking.
Grammar and little wording things were the biggest issue in this chapter. I'll do my best to explain
I can't remember, has this thought been explained in the previous chapter? Why does she believe that the things that have happened to her are of protective nature? What evidence does she have for that.
[/quote]
She did not dare to delve further into the matter because she was not a risk taker. But now that she knew she had her friends with her, her confidence rose higher. Because of that, she promised her friends she would keep them updated if more unusual events occurred.[/quote]
I think you could take out the first line here because the next two lines sequentially follow what you talked about in the first sentence of the paragraph. She was content with her belief until yesterday which implies something happened to change her mind. The last two sentences of the paragraph talk about that idea, so put them sequentially together.
You could expand this thought a bit more too. Her confidence in what rose higher? Does the fact that her friends are on her side reinforce her belief that the strange things happened to protect her, or does she have another theory now. "Until yesterday" makes it seem like she has changed her mind.
"ring" instead of "rang".
I think you could make this more concise and cut out some of those short words. "She lazily reached up and saw it was Rachelle" or "She lazily reached up to see Rachelle's name on the screen." Or something like that.
Dialogue should have " " around it instead of ''.
Great thought process during the dialogue! Love it
I think the only thing I would add to the dialogue at this point (other than " " instead of ' ') is more information about how things are said. You don't have to get too creative with dialogue tags, said usually works best. But what does her voice sound like here? Does she sound excited? Concerned? Is she talking fast? High pitched? Reflect whatever emotion Rachelle has in this moment through how she is talking. Is this a horrible thing to her, or is she excited by the drama of the situation? What's she feeling?
Jannah considered what?
"Rachelle might love gossip, but she would not make something up about her own friends."
Making something up and something being untrue say the same thing. That's why I cut the "especially an untrue one" out of the sentence. If you want to include that part, take out the making something up part out.
Loooving the thought processes you're including within the dialogue!
The second sentence is a bit wordy to me. I think you could simplify it as much as "There has to be something I can do." or "I have to do something."
Thought instead of think because her idea to tell Jannah about this was in the past.
I think I would like a bit more transition before you cut the scene. She was about to go to sleep before Rachelle called and then Jannah was wide awake again. After the call what does she do? How does she feel? Is there any more processing she needs to do? Then cut the scene.
These words look big and scary to me because I have no idea what they mean
I appreciated the family information and that you kept it brief and to the important details. This part confused me a bit. "but if it was Jannah, she would be grieving for months" - are you saying that if Jannah was in this position she would have been grieving for months? I'm confused, if it was Jannah's dad, wouldn't Jannah have also grieved. And if the dad died three years ago, wouldn't the majority of the grieving process be finished?
And "Father meant a lot to her" - is "her" the mother or Jannah?
And what is this thought?
"I have work" or "I have to work" or "I've got to work". (English is the worst :p)
I found it a bit difficult to follow the online conversation. I think one thing that could help would be differentiating it from the text more (which tends to be easier to do on whatever platform you write on outside of YWS). You could put their online names in bold or tab the conversation a bit more or use a different font or something like that. I also thought it was a bit difficult to keep track of the different online names. I appreciated that you told us which name belonged to which girl, but I still got confused. Maybe their online names could appear more similar to their real names?
I'll leave things there for now and hopefully I'll be able to do the next two chapters tomorrow! I'm done making my way through the green room so I'm going to get all caught up on this now. (Hopefully I'll catch a few of your chapters in the green room in the process!). In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said was confusing!
I'm back
I'm not sure if it's just because you've forgotten to edit the first chapter (or maybe you're not editing on YWS), but I would suggest fixing that up and sticking with one name. Just because it did make me double take a bit when I read Jannah; my first assumption was that I'd been reading her name wrong the whole time, and had to check back to make sure. You don't really want all your readers doing that, so I'd suggest editing all of what you've posted on YWS to fix the name up so that it's consistent!
e.g. she's very apologetic about not being able to go shopping, she squeezes Jannah's hand at the end of their conversation. So that's a little confusing. You also noted how she does want to spend time with her daughter in the narrative. It just feels a little inconsistent at the moment, so I'd maybe go back and edit things here so that the impression you give of Jannah and her mother's relationship is as clear as possible.
We didn't have heaps going on in this extract, but you gave us a glimpse into Jasnah's (Jannah?) home life, which was interesting. It' important to do that too because if you just jump right into the story without creating a connection between the reader and your characters (particularly your MC) beforehand, everything can feel very disjointed. So yus, I like that you've given us some insight into Jannah's home life, especially as there's some conflict there for her with her relationship with her mother. It'll be interesting to see if she does decide to tell her mother, and what kind of reaction that'll create. Intriguing stuff!
Something I want to quickly mention before I go on tot he critiques is Jasnah's new name
As for actual critiques, while I love the fact you gave us an insight into Jannah's home life and her relationship with her mother, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. You kept noting how she and her mother aren't close, and certainly hinted that her mother doesn't show much interest in her, but her mother's actual behaviour didn't really show that. If anything, the way in which Jannah's mother spoke to (and treated) Jannah in this, it seems like she cares a lot and feels rather guilty about having no time for her
Oh, also, surely if Jannah and her mother really aren't close, why would her friends suggest she tells her about her powers? Surely her friends know they're not close, and telling someone I'm not close to that I can do weird magic stuff sounds like hell to me. I know it's her mother, but if they're not close, revealing something so major seems like a very odd thing to do. I'm probably overthinking this a bit, but if Jannah does go ahead and reveal all to her mother, I'm not sure how believable and realistic it'll be.
But anywho, enough of me whining! Critiques aside, I'm enjoying this so far, and I love how the plot is still unpredictable. I still look forward to finding out what you'll decide to do with this, and shall be getting to the next extract very soon, with any luck!
Keep writing,
xoxo S(k)ins
Jasnah. Really, Lightsong, really? Now I can't get the image of Jasnah as a modern-day schoolgirl out of my head. >.<
Also, why is it Jannah now? Did you just decide to change her name?
Anyway, so far, so good. Just in the time I've been reading your work, you've made leaps and bounds as far as readability goes. There are still small things, but your dialogue especially is quite good. Nothing too exciting has happened yet, but I'm enjoying all the characters so far and I like how you use skype to have them talk.
I like that you're starting the introduction of the lights (presumably) with these little weird things happening that Jannah doesn't really understand. It's a good way to focus on the character conflicts while hinting at the overall plot.
I think the interaction with her mother was just a little bit too short to fully convince the readers that their relationship is genuinely broken and that her mother is genuinely never around/never willing to do stuff with her. Right now, a lot of it is simply told to the readers by Jannah, instead of being apparent in the mother's actions, and the problem with that is that some people could feel like Jannah's blowing the issue out of proportion because typical teenage drama.
Small things:
"Gossips" is never plural - it's always just "gossip."
You don't need this sentence because in the next line you show what she says.
I think you mean "She should tell them right now."
I think I know what you're saying here - Jannah wouldn't have been able to go out and work and take care of them after her father died. But the way it's worded is just confusing I think because of your tenses - it should be "she had done that" and "would have been grieving" or "would have grieved."
May just be a missed word, but you would either say "go shopping" or "go for a shopping trip."
That's all for this one!
Hello, hello.
Don't be mad with me please, it's just the way I work.
Desdemona here to write a review on Review Day Go! Woo!! Go Team Valor!
This is interesting. I really wonder what happened to her and stuff ouo.
However, I have a few bones to pick with this
I wish you'd been more descriptive with your prose. I can barely imagine what's going on, how Jannah feels or what the problem is. You could try longer paragraphs with more lines dedicated to describing settings and analyzing feelings. In that way, your readers will feel more immersed in your story and they will want to read even more because they identify with your characters.
For example, take this paragraph. Describe the house, how she feels when she sees various things etc... Also, she hears her phone RING, not rang.
For a woman who works so much, it is unusual that her face isn't lined and exhausted. Is there a reason for this?
Well that is all. Your plot is interesting and I like the relationships you portray between your various characters. All you have to do is work on describing more and small spelling erors and you'll do perfectly!
~Love, and keep writing!
~Mona