Chapter 1
The Forest of Rivers
Neutral Territory
“So you’re a vampire?”
“We prefer Blood Eater.”
“But I thought that you drank blood.”
“I didn’t come up with the name.”
“Do you drink Sleeper blood?”
“What else would I drink?”
“Do you have fangs?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see them?”
“No.”
“What do you eat?”
“Catboys who ask too many questions.”
Well that shut June up. Honestly, why did I have to get stuck with a rambling catboy as a travel companion? Don’t people every take this stuff into consideration when the assign you quests?
I get to enjoy the silence for almost fifteen minutes before June flops onto the ground.
“What is it?” I roll my eyes.
“This stupid forest is so big. We’ve been walking for hours!”
“We’ve been walking for forty-five minutes, and we’ve only traveled two miles! So quit complaining and get up. Is this really the worst that you’ve been through?”
June stays on the ground. “It’s the most boring thing I’ve been through. Where are the Dragons and beasts and monsters? I thought that quests would be more fun.”
I sigh. I’m never going to get anywhere with June dragging me down. Should I just leave her here? It would save me a lot of time.
But no, for whatever reason, Mika told me to stick with my travel companion. And I have to obey her, because I can’t fail this mission. So I have to find some way to get June off the floor.
“You see this?” I roll up my pant leg, showing her my metal leg. “My leg was crushed by a boulder. They had to cut it off, and replace it with this. And this eye? It’s fake. It got gouged out by a demented Night Walker Dragon. All of this happened under Mika’s command, because I have to obey her. And I’m not going to let you stop me now. If I can go through all of that and survive, I think that you can endure a few hours of walking.”
June sits up. “Okay, okay, jeez. You didn’t have to tell me your whole life story. I’ll keep going.” She gets up and keeps walking. “Am I allowed to talk?”
“Yes, but don’t expect me to answer any of your questions.”
“I’ll take it.” June smiles. “I guess you’ve probably never met a Catboy before. We don’t let Night Walkers into our cities. Just letting you know, we’re nothing like the stories that people tell about us. For one, we don’t eat weird food. We just eat normal food. Like fish and plants. We don’t eat any meat besides fish. So I guess that we kind of do eat not-so-normal food. Anyway, we aren’t failed science experiments or mutations of anything. We’re just Catboys, descended from cats. Natural selection gave us features like walking and talking, and because of the warmer climate we live in, we lost our fur.” June pauses and glances at me.
“I have a question.” I say after a few seconds of silence. “You use she/her, right?” June nods. “So why isn’t it Catgirl?”
“Well, a lot of people ask me that. But the thing is, to Catboys, the word ‘boy’ is actually a gender-neutral term. A lot of outsiders don’t really get it, because they’re so used to their meaning of the word boy, but ours is just a little different.”
“Huh.” I never knew that. “So wha—”
“Wait.” For once, June looks deadly serious. Her ears are twitching. “Are we coming up on the end of the forest?”
“No, we have another ten miles to go.” I start to pull out my map, but June grabs my arm and yanks me behind a tree.
I immediately shut up, because it’s obvious that June hears something, and I’ve been on enough missions to know that when someone hears something, it’s not good. But we’re sitting behind the tree for so long that I begin to think it’s a prank. I’m about to ask what’s going on when I hear footsteps. A lot of them. Probably a group of people. June slinks out from behind the tree, gesturing for me to stay put. There’s absolute silence for about two minutes, then, June reemerges.
“Nothing big. Just an Angel squadrant, probably on the way to Blood Eater territory.”
I gape. “And you took care of all of them?”
June shrugs. “Wasn’t that hard. So you said we had ten miles to go?”
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
Hi SageOctober,
Mailice here with a short review!
I didn't know what I was getting into now when I started reading the story. I actually liked the plot a lot. You were thrown right into the story and the characters talk about various topics where you, as a reader, can't understand anything yet. It's well done that you don't have to have a big introduction where everything is explained if you can integrate it well in later chapters.
Let's call it your first section which contains the dialogue. It's well written and flows very smoothly, but you don't really know who's speaking until the end. I think that's a bit bad for the introduction, because you're thrown back to reading the beginning to understand who said what after you learn the names. You might want to add who spoke for some of the statements, and if you don't want to reveal what the person's name is at that point, add some attribute or part of their appearance to tie in that description.
I think it's good that you try to describe cat people here. I always wondered why this trend came up in the first place. I mean a lot of people like cats and people like people, so why not a combination of those?
What I think could be improved is to make the characters a bit more distinct when they talk. Up to a certain point I had the impression that the group was too two. You could add some specific characteristics that everyone has, so that you can distinguish them better like certain comments, an accent, the rolling of a certain letter etc....
What I miss a bit in the story are descriptions. I think the dialogues in general are well written and flow smoothly, but I miss more information about what the forest looks like. Apart from the beginning, where the name is mentioned, there's not much there.
What I like is that the story doesn't start at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle, which shortens the whole introduction. This can be inserted later, if it is at all necessary to understand how June, Mika and the narrator know each other.
The story already has something interesting about it and I hope you still have a lot of fun writing it!
Mailice.
Hey SageOctober!
My name is Elinor, and I thought I would drop by to give a quick review on the your first chapter. This was really interesting, and I liked the dynamic that you established between the narrator and June. I'm definitely curious to find out what happens next! At first, I was unclear about how this was going to be different from other vampire stories, but by the end of the chapter you seem like you're establishing something unique.
While I like that you started in the middle of the conversation, you're not writing a script, and I would consider adding some description to bring the audience right into the time and place. The other that I would mention is that June and the narrator have very similar speech patterns, so it was hard for me at times to keep track of who was who, so I would consider thinking of ways you could further delineate them.
That's all I have for now. Like I said, I think the premise you've set up is interesting. Hope this helps! Please keep writing, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Best,
Elinor
Thank you so much for the review! Also, Chapter 2 is out now.