Akia
Her eyes felt like they were glued shut. She struggled to lift her eyelids, but nothing more than a sliver of light claimed her vision. The amount energy it was taking to attempt to lift her eyelids was unbelievable. How could a movement so normal hurt so much?
Breathing wasn’t any easier. Every time she took a breath, there was a sharp pain coming from the right side of her body. The pain was coming from around her rib section. She was sure a few of them were broken. Someone must have placed a spell over her though, because her breathing was still steady and consistent, despite the pain
Akia wanted to cry out every time she moved anything, but no sound would come. Her mouth was dry and her throat felt empty, rid of any sound that could possibly be made. It was less than comfortable.
How could she be lying here like this? She had worked so hard to make sure everything went smoothly. She had found Sam in Agathi and, together, they found Falyn and convinced her to go with them. They had been able to fight off the guards no matter how many were against them. It took a lot longer to reach Sumner River than she had hoped, but once they reached it, they knew how they would get across. But then Falyn messed up the entire plan.
It took every ounce of energy Akia had left, which wasn’t much, to keep herself from hating Falyn. In reality, she should’ve been thankful for Falyn. If she had just crossed the barrier when she was supposed to, the guards would’ve overpowered Akia easily and taken her back to the Othir. She wasn’t sure that she would’ve been able to survive that.
She took a deep breath to try and calm herself, but instead it sent a sharp pain throughout her entire body. Before she knew it, the tiny sliver of light that had peeked through her cracked eyelids disappeared and was replaced by darkness, and memories.
“Honey, come get your breakfast!”
Akia was in no mood to get up and eat breakfast, but she knew that her mother wouldn’t let her go anywhere without getting some food into her stomach. Her mother was always so concerned with everything in Akia’s life. It was a blessing and a curse. At the moment, it was a curse.
She stumbled out of bed, threw on a sweater, as it had gotten quite cold during the night, and plodded down the hall towards the kitchen. The smell of fresh meat and sweet fruit welcomed her as she stepped into the room.
It always reminded her of a forest since both the walls and the ceiling were a shade of green. The ceiling was a darker color of green which made it seem like a canopy of trees above their heads.
Her father was sitting at the table, reading a book with strange lettering on the front while her mother was standing in front of the stove smiling at her, the pink floral apron she always wore hanging loosely from her waist. Akia never saw her mother wear a different apron, or anything else while she was cooking; it was her favorite article of clothing.
“Feeling better?” her mother asked her, handing over a plate full of bacon and mixed fruits. Akia was already subconsciously picking apart the fruits she wasn’t all that fond of, the watermelon being the main perpetrator.
She shrugged in response to her mother’s question. “A bit. I’m still really sore.” Walking to the table, she slammed the plate onto the surface and sat in the place across from her father. She looked up, hoping that he would’ve dropped the book to look at her, but he was still reading. The knot in her stomach only grew as time went on. She had to ask him and it had to be now. If she waited any longer, her confidence would be lost. She really wasn’t looking forward to hearing what her father would say once she told him she wanted to quite training. It was all he could talk about: how proud he was of her.
Just as she opened her mouth to speak, she heard her mother squeal. “Aidan!”
Akia turned to see a young man walk into the kitchen. There was a large smile plastered onto his face as he dropped the green bag he was carrying and wrapping his mother in a hug.
“Son!” Kit said, lowering the book to beam up at his son. Before she knew it, Akia’s father had crossed the room and clapped his son on the shoulder. Her parents had lost interest in her, their prized child who was training to become a royal guard at the young age of ten. Their real prized child had returned.
“Frida and I missed you every second that you were gone,” Kit said. “We couldn’t wait until you were back safe with us.”
Akia rolled her eyes. Why did her parents feel the need to call themselves by their real names around Aidan? Sure he was technically an adult, twenty-three years of age, but he was still their son. He should still have been treated like he was.
Although she’d never admit it out loud, she had enjoyed the time that Aidan was away from the family, serving in the royal guard. It wasn’t like she didn’t miss him though; on the contrary, she missed him every second of every day, worrying for his safety. But she had had the undivided attention of her parents while he was gone. For three years it had just been her, her father and her mother. She received all of the attention during those years and she had gotten used to it. Now Aidan was back and all of that would go down the drain.
“Akia, come welcome back your brother!” Frida said, the words dripping with happiness.
Aidan turned to smile at his little sister. Akia’s heart leapt with joy, but she wasn’t about to show it. She was stronger than that.
Aidan looked the same as always, curly blond hair that clung messily to the top of his head and piercing green eyes, much like her own. It annoyed Akia that her parents had given both of them a name that began with the letter ‘A’. It was bad enough that she looked like Aidan’s twin.
“You miss me, Sis?” Aidan asked, that stupid smile still plastered onto his face. Anger washed over Akia and she shifted in her seat.
“I have a name you know,” she said, clenching her fists. “You don’t need to call me Sis all the time.”
“I’m sorry, Akia,” he said, reaching out his hand to her. Hesitantly, she took it and stood. “I’m just so happy to be back at home. I forgot. Did you miss me?”
Akia looked from her older brother to her parents and noticed all of their smiling faces. It made her sick. This was no time to be happy. She wanted no part of it.
She turned and hurried back to her room, ignoring the calls of her family to come back. She wasn’t about to talk to them anytime soon. The lock on her door clicked as she turned it. No one would be able to get in.
“Rough morning?”
She would recognize that voice anywhere. It belonged to one of her only friends. Turning to face her bed, she saw him sitting there, smirking up at her.
“You’ve gotta stop doing this,” she said, sighing. “My parents are gonna be pissed if they ever find you here, Rhys.”
It only made him laugh. “They haven’t found out yet, have they? Our friendship is a complete secret.”
Akia gasped, sending a shooting pain down the right side of her body. Why did that memory resurface? That was something she had worked so hard to bury deep within her subconscious. She was young and stupid back then; it tarnished her reputation.
She most definitely wasn’t happy to remember her friendship with Rhys. They were enemies; there was nothing more to their relationship. And she wasn’t all that happy to remember her brother either. The thought of him only dampened her mood. Those memories were gone forever, never to be touched again. Yet there they were, resurfacing and torturing her already tortured state.
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For the LMS contest. Word count: 1,399
End of chapter
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139,415 Literary Works • 672,559 Reviews
Hello, Noelle! KatyaElefant here for another review! Let's just take a minute and think about all the chapters that I reviewed thus far. That's a lot of chapters and A LOT of reviews! (23 reviews for you, my friend!) Anyways, let us see what we have right here...
How did Falyn mess up the entire plan? Did she jump in too quickly? Isn't the objective to get her over to the city more so than other people? I mean, Falyn is a pretty important person, I'm just saying... She is the moonstar and I think that might be something that is a tiny bit important.
Aww...I really feel bad for Akia now(when I say her name it sounds like IKEA XD). I didn't know that she had such a hard past. You really put the hardships that she went through into really beautiful words that make me want to cry in my heart. My heart weeps for her.
Oh my gosh. That flashback was just amazing. I seriously cannot find anything that bad about this chapter. You described everything perfectly well and the content is amazing. Why do you have to make my job as a reviewer so hard, Noelle? That last part of the flashback made me gasp a little bit. OH MY GOSH! Rhys and Akia had some sort of relationship? This is so scandalous! What was Rhys doing there? Were they dating or something? I actually could see them as a pair in the past! Oh my gosh Noelle! You always seem to amaze me with your writing.
Keep calm and keep writing
KatyaElefant
25. TWENTY FIVE. THAT'S NOT TWENTY THREE *huffs*
YOU KNOW WHAT?! EVERYBODY MAKES MISTAKES! and you are just jealous of all the reviews that I made
Timmy here
Of course, the idea that Akia and Rhy were once friends was something you engineered to shock us. At least, that sure seems the intent. And it creates more tension in the readers and between the characters. We are going to watch Akia a lot more now when we read the following chapters, and how she acts towards her old friend. I wonder how they grew apart, or became enemies. Just from the three little snippets of conversation you showed us, almost like a sampling of their life and friendship, I could tell they were good friends. Almost too good of friends, even. Some of the way they acted told me there might have been more, and the fact that Rhys was in Akia's room an she had no idea... mildly creepy if you didn't know the person. I wonder where you are going with this, but I know we will get to see more. That's the fun part of reading. learning about all these amazing characters, and what once was, and what will be.
I think the flashback was written and engineered very well. Most writers, let's face it, cannot do a flashback without messing something up. Whether it be the transitions into the flashback, or what the flashback is about and what it teaches the reader. But I think you did a wonderful job with it here. Technically, you shouldn't need the italics - shouldn't even have them, although most people seem to have italics in flashbacks on YWS. Have you read the Percy Jackson second series? (Egh. I know it's technically not just about him that time, but yeah. first series way better) In that series, there are a lot of flashbacks. One might even go so far as to say there are too many of them. They're just everywhere, but you do learn about the characters more with them and blah, blah, blah. What's my point? Oh, yes. He does it without the italics, and it works just fine because the transition is perfectly smooth. So I think if you take the italics out and your piece doesn't read well because of the flashback and writing not creating as smooth a intro and exit to that, then you should try and patch up the writing, not slap some italics onto it. So I would say remove the italics, and then see how everything stands.
So this is something I nitpick with a lot of people, and so I am not sure if I have already mentioned it to you or not, but here it is. You use passive voice to do your actions in a lot of this piece. And while it's still technically correct, it gives the reader more of a detached feeling (or so I am told). There is that, and it just doesn't read as neat and tidy. So in the places below--
--you have the same issue. I just read through the first few paragraphs, before I came to the flashback, to get those to show you. Like I said, they aren't an enormous deal, but definitely worth looking into fixing as you write. "was coming" should have been "came" in both cases, I think.
Now this is strange. Where, oh where, has that period gone? Oh where, oh where can it be?
I don't think I have any more nitpicks to give you on this piece. It was written very well, and I just loved the entire flashback. To me, the focus of it was her brother, Aidan. He didn't seem like a bad fellow - kinda nice, actually - but I wonder how he plays out in the book, if at all, and if he and Akia are good friends or enemies or what. He actually didn't seem to bad. Not his fault that his parents are crazy over him. And he did actually call her by her name when she asked him to, so there is another point in his favor, I suppose. He was a royal guard, you said? It makes me wonder what kind of a government is set up in their country. Now I can only assume that it's a monarchy, and he went to protect their king or/and queen. But I don't know for certain, I guess. I hope I see him in the following chapters, because this seemed really like an introduction to his character and how Akia felt about him. Her parents seemed like good people to me. Perhaps they were a little bit too fond of Aidan, but he had just gone and made them super proud, so I think that its only natural to show a little more attention to the one who was gone and off serving than the one at home... for a short while. I would think everyone would show more attention to Aidan because he is missed, not because he is their favorite. And that seems to be what was going on there/.
Nothing more I can say, I think. It's always a not so nice thing to come in when all of the other reviewers have already been there, and there is nothing left to say because everything has been said, but I guess I just have to sort around more.
~Darth Timmyjake
Hey Noelle!
You certainly have a way of pulling the footing out from under us when it comes to your characters history. I think that's actually really good because I know there's a lot of times in life, it seems, where someone tells you something about themselves and another person... and you kind of go, what? A few times I can't believe what I'm even hearing! So that's very realistic, I think.
The very last paragraph brought to my attention that Akia's flash back wasn't really triggered by anything. Generally it just works better if there's a trigger, because it makes more sense. Anything, of course, can trigger a memory... smell, taste, touch, the shape of an object, the sound of a cricket chirping... maybe a song...
Without something that connects the two events, it seems like they have little to do with each other, and the flash back is completely random.
I really like the concept of Rhys and Akia being friends... I'm not sure why. It gives the feel that that's where Akia's dark side comes from- the hard kind of way she always is. I don't mean that she got that way just from hard times, I was trying to say that Rhys might have rubbed off on her a
bitlot for the worse before she realized that he was bad news... or before he became super bad news. I just thought that that was an interesting part of Akia's history.I also found it interesting that Akia's 'happy to see your brother back from hell' emotions never really kicked in... maybe that was also due to her bad company, though I think you did mention that Rhys became evil.
That was pretty good Noelle! I'll hopefully get over to the others shortly!
-Socks
Wow! Sorry this is late, but... school happened:/ I wish I could turn out chapters as quickly as you!:( Anyway, I really like the flashback in this chapter. So Akia and Rhys were friends? *insert minion's voice* Whaaaaattttt????!!!! That's kinda cool and kinda not... What happened to make them enemies? Hope I find out in the next part! Oh and Akia had a brother?? The tiny with her parents... When you mentioned it before, it seemed as if her mother was out of the picture... Am I just confused? Sorry this is a short review, but the others covered the nitpicks, and I can't find more... Like someone said though, use a bit more description and imagery... I mean, we can imagine the characters and such, but not the place. Great chapter, and I'm ready for more!
Hi Noelle!
This is an almost perfect chapter on its own.
How comes it always seems like there is another chapter waiting for me? Either I am reviewing super slowly or you're posting pretty fast... hm xD Either way, keep it up because I love reading this novel! And it only seems to get better and better. We still have no clue where Akia is, or what is happening to her other than the pain. But a little bit more of her past is being unlocked. Who knew (apart from you, of course) that she had a brother? It makes me wonder what happened to her brother, and what was the change that revealed Rhys to be her enemy instead of friend. Was he playing her all along? So many questions I can't wait to find out. I think you captured young Akia perfectly. Her actions and tone were a lot more immature, and yet it is still believable that she grew into the character we now see before us. I wonder where this is all going!
As for comments, I don't have many
You mention 'lift her eyelids' twice. I know I might be boring you with always mentioning repetition, but it is something I notice almost instantly. So, how about making the second sentence something like: Her attempts were taking an unbelievable amount of energy, or something?
Smallest nitpick in the world, but you need a full stop at the end of that sentence. Also, although she is still feeling pain, at the beginning of this paragraph you mention that breathing is hard. But then now you say it is supposedly easy because she has a spell helping her. So maybe don't mention the difficulty of breathing at the beginning, but more so focus on the pain.
I think you mean wrapped instead of wrapping.
One thing that would've been nice was a bit more description of the house. Sure, I know the colours of the ceiling and floor, but is all the furniture inside also brown like the trees? I feel like we're in the room, and all the characters are there, but when I try to envision it in my mind, I find it hard to. Don't be afraid to put quite a bit of imagery in there. Using actions to break up the description always helps and makes it very effective.
I apologise for this being such a short review. But when things are too perfect, there just isn't too much to say. The chapters are just getting better and better the further along into the journey we get. I'm going to keep reading!
Deanie x
Hello, Noelle. Wolf here for a review.
How is this still in the Green Room? So sad. (I will not proceed to loosely relate this to the review xD) Speaking of sad, it's quite disappointing that Akia will die here- what? Well, we all know its coming, and Akia's struggling and torture will just lead to more pain and eventually her demise. Totally an optimistic view point, but it's my prediction.
This one chapter is packed with information and I really like it. Much improvement from the last one, awesome! There is so much that we learn, but also so many more questions that arise. Such as, why did Akia ever become friends with Rhys? Just the fact that they were friends is interesting to me, but to be honest doesn't shock me that much. With that said, was Rhys ever good? She says that if her parents found out the two were friends, they wouldn't be happy. If so, why? So many things to know, but not enough chapters to provide. Write more/post more soon :3
Alright, so the memory seemed a little strange to me. Not sure why, but from what I can remember (yes I read this a while ago and never reviewing it, but now I am too lazy to reread xD), that portion didn't really pop out to me. The reveal of Rhys and Akia's relationship (friendship, what ever) was just kind of there. It was still good an well done, but it seemed a little scattered, if that's the word. Just moved around a lot, from Akia wanting to talk to her talk, then her brother coming home, then seeing Rhys in her room. They didn't seems to flow that well in my opinion.
With that said, I still quite enjoyed this and I am waiting anxiously for that next part. Three parts for one chapter? I bet this is your longest chapter yet! Poor Akia, her mind torturing her while pain tortures her body. Anyways, Keep on Writing,
~Wolfare
Knight r4 here to review this chapter part, Noelle. I certainly hope that this will help you!
At the moment all I can say is if this is a cliff hanger I WILL kill you sooner or later!!!
:O. I can't believe you Noelle! You just made a typo?! Hahaha! Just kidding. This is one of the first ones I have ever found.I just thought that I would point out that this is the first time you have used Akia's name. Try to rely a little bit less on pronouns and a little bit more on people's names. Hearing he and she also leaves the question, who is speaking?, which kind of annoys me even when I know the answer.
Minor nitpick here. You need to have a comma after guards.
Wot, wot! How, my dearest, [ignore that] could anyone hate watermelon! Do you?!!!
ANOTHER TYPO!
Alright. This chapter was alright. But I would kind of like for the flashback to be continued.
Overall though I thought that this chapter was cool! Flashbacks are kind of cool! However don't loose sight of the main story.
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