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Young Writers Society


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The Moon Needs Her Night Chapter 13

by inktopus


Warning: This work has been rated 16+.

The ground felt hard and bumpy under her back, but her head lay raised on something soft. A cool hand caressed her face, and Asha because acutely aware of the pain and pressure on her throbbing head. She groaned, eyes still closed.

“Asha?” a familiar voice asked. It felt distant, almost as if it were under water. “Asha,” the voice said again, clearer and more insistent. “Asha, are you awake?”

Asha groaned again, opening her eyes. “Yuni?” she asked blearily, attempting to prop herself up on an elbow.

Yuni’s gentle hand on her chest held her down. “Lie down Asha. Your head is bleeding.”

“What?” Asha asked, her loud voice hurting her own ears; her head ached like the beating of a drum. Beginning to notice her surroundings, she asked more quietly, “Where are we?”

The bumpy ground beneath her back was splintering wooden planks, the view outside was obscured by iron bars. “They captured us,” Yuni said, her voice nearly a whisper. “When they put you and Durra out of commission, they overpowered us. We- I- was not strong enough. I am sorry.” Yuni turned away from Asha.

“It’s not your fault, Yuni. It’s not anyone’s fault but the council’s. Those sorry excuses for mages were the ones who did this, not you.”

“But-”

“There’s no buts, Yuni. You’re just caught up in this. Repeat after me: it is not my fault.”

“No,” Yuni said, her voice wavering. “If I had been a little stronger. If I had been able to rescue you-”

“Say it,” Asha commanded.

Asha watched Yuni bite her lips; several moments passed. “It is not my fault.”

Asha nodded. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault but the people who did this.”

Yuni nodded earnestly, coffee bean eyes glossed over with tears. Abruptly, the cadence of the moving wagon stopped.

“What’s happening?” Asha asked, straining her neck to look outside.

Yuni shushed her and placed her fingers on her forehead, pushing gently. “Lay down, and stay quiet. I suspect that they are setting up camp.”

Nodding absently, and wincing when it jostled her head, she said, “We have to get out of here.”

“Later,” Yuni whispered. “They will most likely eat and then sleep in a few hours. The sun is only now going down. Now rest, you need to if we are going to escape.”

“Wait,” Asha muttered. “Where are the rest?”

“The rest of the prisoners?”

“Yes,” Asha breathed.

“In other wagons. There were a lot more that were hidden. I think that the plan all along was to ambush. I do not know why we are apart from the rest.”

“Okay,”’ Asha murmured, eyes begging to slip closed.

“Sleep,” Yuni commanded. “I will too.”

Carefully, Yuni lay down and maneuvered herself so that Asha’s head rested on her chest. Asha had no control over her eyelids as they slipped shut into sleep.

Asha opened her eyes to the same black that played on the insides of her eyelids. Her head throbbed dully, and she let out a low groan.

“Asha?” Yuni whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” Asha mumbled. She blinked hard several times, trying to make her eyes focus and adjust to the darkness. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she propped herself up on an elbow.

“Wait,” Yuni hissed. “Allow me to check your wound.”

Asha nodded, humming. She sighed as Yuni’s cold fingers carded through her hair. As Yuni pressed gently on the gash, she let out a deflated groan. Hushing her, Yuni smoothed a gentle hand over Asha’s head. “It has clotted, for the most part, but stay still. I am going to tie this around your head.”

Asha braced herself as a strip of cloth, presumably the one that had been used to staunch the bleeding before, was wrapped around her head, placing pressure on the cut. Breathing out, she winced at the low whine in her voice. She took another breath, sighing. “Done?” she asked.

“Yes,” Yuni whispered, seemingly only an inch away from her ear. Asha felt the phantom touch of her warm breath on the shell of her ear.

“What’s the plan?” Asha asked.

“What do you mean by plan? All you have to do is use magic to get us free and away from here.”

“You mean to say that you didn’t think of a plan while I was lying unconscious on the floor?” Asha hissed, a growl entering her voice. How could Yuni have been that stupid?

“I-”

“Magic doesn’t fix every problem, Yuni,” she said, voice low in an attempt to smooth out her rough tone she spoke with before. “I’m weak right now, and I’m not sure that magic is going to be easy for me. This cut is really messing with my head.”

“I am sorry,” Yuni said thickly. Her voice trembled and cracked, and Asha could almost see her eyes well up with tears, even though there seemed to be a velvety black wall between them.

“No, no; it’s fine. I’m just a bit out of it.”

“Are you going to be able to use magic?” Yuni asked, her voice strained and trembling, like a rope that’s been broken down to the last strand and is about to snap.

“I’ll try. We need to get the others out first. Then, I’ll worry about us.”

“Okay,” Yuni whispered.

Asha really didn’t need to close her eyes, but she did anyway; old habits were hard to break. She envisioned the layout of the camp in her mind. Taking a deep, measured breath, she sapped the energy from the few dying plants around her. The slavers must have chosen this place on purpose. With her head aching, she could only focus on one thing at a time, even trying to find one thing in her mind’s eye was exhausting. She inhaled shakily, breathing out slowly as she pushed a tiny amount of the energy from her core to one of the locks keeping a wagon shut. Her hands trembled at her side as she focused on twisting and then sliding the locks open. One by one, she unlocked all of the wagons, her energy stores becoming dangerously low.

It was much harder to concentrate and conserve her energy as her head pounded like a war drum. She mustered up the rest of her energy to unlock the last wagon. Agonizingly slowly, taking every ounce of concentration she had to preserve the last embers of energy glowing in her core, she twisted the metal latch.

She was empty. The ember had been snuffed out. There was no more energy.

“Asha?” Yuni’s tentative question shattered the wavering silence.

“There’s no more,” Asha whispered. “I couldn’t free them all.”

“What?” Yuni asked. “What do you mean?”

“There’s no more energy. I have to take my own.”

“Asha,” Yuni breathed. “You cannot-”

But she did. She drew a string of energy from her heart and slid the latch open. They were all free. Everyone except Asha and Yuni.

“I am going to teleport.”

“Asha,” Yuni cried, no longer attempting to be quiet. “You could-”

Asha stopped listening. She clutched Yuni’s hand, and she breathed in.

She breathed out, expelling all of the energy she could manage. She did not hear the familiar crack. She did not feel the earth moving beneath her. She did not know where she was going. All she knew, was nothingness.


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Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:27 pm
Brigadier wrote a review...



It's been awhile since I reviewed your chapters and I realized that more after I had to reread some of my reviews. This is starting to slope into one of those typical plot points where the heroes get captured, make some escape and/or are presented to an important enemy. There's a few other predictions that can like that, but since it's so early on in the story, I'm 75% sure you're not going to kill them off. Maybe later.
I mostly bring this up because the characters do the typical "woe is me" and "of only I would have fought better" and "what does the future hold?" Like you're the heroes of the story, the answer to that last question is kinda predictable.

And more onto how the characters feel to me, since I've already started to unravel that thread.
I just don't like Yuni. Which makes it very weird to read this story, when I dislike one of the main characters. And my reasoning for such a thing, is just the basic answer of, she's annoying, which is really a wording I don't like to use. Me saying she's just annoying doesn't tell you about he little characteristics that make her annoying to me, and judging from the dialogue and her interactions with Asha, she was sort of meant to be annoying in some way. You're just laying it on a little thick. Everything aboyt this character seems too over the top and she just won't quit, which is good from the fighting standpoint. But in a conversation, it just starts back over again and the end doesn't look much different from the beginning.

The ending is dramatic, just like all of the other chapter ends have been. But this time it was rightly so and we come to one of those little climax points when everyone questions "how will this turn out?" I could make another judgement about how it will roll, that'll probably be somewhere near the bullseye but why be in that mood right now.

The chapters are getting a bit easier for me to get through, even if I'm not totally enjoying t it at the moment. It just took awhile to get the ball rolling but here's to the future.




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Thu Dec 21, 2017 10:31 pm
liehart wrote a review...



This is a great chapter, there's so much development! Not only in Asha and Yuni's relationship, which was expertly done. They've grown closer in the adversity but still haven't resolved anything, and I really like the balance between that. The plot of course has taken a turn, and it's clear now the story is taking off.

The end of the chapter is especially strong- I am struggling to write this and not go straight to the next chapter. The suspense is really well done here, and the plot and character are well interwoven.

All I would say is that it could do with more description- I never really got a sense of where the characters actually were. This is also moving quite fast, I think there could be more Asha and Yuni conversation before the escape attempt. Overall, I think this is one of my favourite chapters so far!




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Wed Sep 13, 2017 12:34 am
Holysocks wrote a review...



Hey! Care for a review? I haven't read previous chapters, so I'm just going off of what I see here- which is always fun and feels a little like flying blind, but I'm not going to comment on things I don't know about, for the most part.

First off I can tell the two characters Asha and Yuni are pretty close- or at least, that's how they came across to me. I just wanted to say that I think that's a pretty strong bond and really cool for your story! So right-on!

I guess I thought this chapter was a little confusing at parts, where they were sleeping and then both awake... it just seemed strange to me and I didn't feel like I had a good picture of where they were- in a jail cell, in a bedroom, on the moon? I'm sure you mentioned this in earlier chapters, and that's great- but even so we should have a bit more picture within individual chapters, I would think. What were they sleeping on?-- I just went back and reread, and realized that there was mention of Asha laying on the ground. But I still feel like I didn't really get a sense of what it felt like to be where they are, and I wasn't well aware of their surroundings. And I'm not saying to go crazy on descriptions, but it could maybe use a bit more images. Or maybe that's just me.

Asha had no control over her eyelids as they slipped shut into sleep.

Asha opened her eyes to the same black that played on the insides of her eyelids.


The only thing I wanted to mention here, is it's a little confusing that time is moving rather quickly between the two sentences. Something that people commonly will do to show that a big chunk of time has gone by, or that there's been a scene change is asterisks. Just like three of them or something. And this just lets people know that there's a break in the story. Otherwise it's a bit disorienting. Another way you could make it a little more clear, is by saying something like: She slept for only a few hours before waking again, but Asha wasn't sure how long or something along those lines, so we understand that time indeed went on without us.

Asha felt the phantom touch of her warm breath on the shell of her ear.


Why 'phantom'? Why 'shell'? I feel like these words were a tad awkward in this sentence. I get that the intention was probably to make the description more colourful- which is awesome, because description in general can be super boring, so it was a good idea to do that. But I still think the word choice was a bit off, and also add-on words can make description actually duller than plain out-right stating what you see. So how do we make description interesting and different without this? I'm not really sure myself, but something that's helped me out, is writing poetry. Imagery is a big part of poetry, and it can really help out our prose- and there's tons of other stuff poetry can help us with, as well. So my advice to you is study some poetry! Write some poetry! Read some poetry! Look at some poetry articles! Perhaps you already write poetry? Than keep with it! c: Perhaps you hate poetry? I used to hate it myself, but I've come to have an appreciation for it. And it really does help. Something to consider.

Here's some articles that you might find helpful/interesting:
Imagery
How to Write Good Poetry
And where to find more: Poetry Tutorials

...Okay we got a bit off-track there.

All she knew, was nothingness.


I feel like we can do better than 'nothingness'! I was really excited; Oh! Oh! What does she know? And then, it was just 'nothingness'. :/ You could totally put something there like a huge plot twist let-out or something, and we'd all be like "HOLY BANANAS!!" and it would be really cool and we'd be super eager to read more. But 'nothingness' feels a little over done to me. I also feel like it fizzles the ending. Like it's anti-climatic. And I think, personally, that it would work a little better if you took out that last line, and left "She did not know where she was going." as the ending. That way it leaves a bit of suspense and intrigue in our minds.

Anyway, those were just my thoughts. Hopefully this was somewhat helpful to you! Keep it up!

-Socks




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Mon Sep 11, 2017 8:40 pm
ExOmelas wrote a review...



*Yawns because she had 3 and a half hours sleep last night and it's starting to catch up to her* It'll be fiiiine...

Nit-picks and nice moments:

The ground felt hard and bumpy under her back, but her head lay raised on something soft. A cool hand caressed her face, and Asha because acutely aware of the pain and pressure on her throbbing head. She groaned, eyes still closed.

This is just an idea but I was thinking maybe not use Asha's name at all in this paragraph. For the first two sentences I don't know for certain you're talking about Asha (I guess it could be Yuni), which creates an interesting sense of disorientation. The next paragraph could be where we get confirmation which would mean we only got confirmation when Asha heard her name, which would make it feel rrrreally disorientated. I understand if you think that's too cheesy though.

“It’s not your fault, Yuni. It’s not anyone’s fault but the council’s. Those sorry excuses for mages were the ones who did this, not you.”

I'm not totally set on this suggestion either (told you I was distracted), but I think it would make sense for Asha just to have a moment of hesitation here. Not because she thinks for even a moment that it's Yuni's fault, but just a moment to process the situation.

She sighed as Yuni’s cold fingers carded through her hair.

"carded"?

Asha felt the phantom touch of her warm breath on the shell of her ear.

That's some really nice sensory work.

“You mean to say that you didn’t think of a plan while I was lying unconscious on the floor?” Asha hissed, a growl entering her voice. How could Yuni have been that stupid?

I would have thought it would be more like that she hadn't even tried. It's probably quite hard to just figure out a plan, so it would be fair enough if Yuni hadn't managed it. Less so that she hadn't tried in this instance.

All she knew, was nothingness.

I don't think you need that comma.

Overall:

Holy crap are you getting good at cliffhangers!

I think you're doing this stage of the Asha/Yuni stuff really well. It's been obvious to me for a while, but that's probably because I already knew. I think you're now crossing into the stage where people who don't know anything about this story are going to realise that the chemistry there is very powerful. There's subtle stuff (like her head on Yuni's chest) and more powerful stuff (like the sensory stuff I mentioned) and I think you're handling moving from one to the other well.

I think what this chapter could have done with more of is just sort of... more. It was very fast paced, which is good, but suspense works best when you're held in it for a long time. They're in possibly the worst situation I've seen them in thus far. I think I'd like some more time when I just don't know if they're going to make it out. Or rather, I haven't the slightest clue how they're going to get out. Maybe you could have a reason she couldn't use magic but then something changes and she can. Just some sort of roadblock that halts plot progress and makes me go AAAGHHHH WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPENNNN???

But once again you have very much made me eager for the next chapter, so the suspense is definitely working in that regard.

Hope this helps,
Biscuits :)

p.s. I think you might have this in the wrong folder xD




inktopus says...


*chuckles evilly* You'll find out as soon as I get a second review on this chapter. Also, the thing about Yuni wasn't me, the author, dragging her, those were Asha's thoughts. Asha's a bit short tempered, but I think that if you were kind of surprised at this bit, I might have to bring that out a little more in the second draft.




A Prince of Darkness Is a Gentleman
— William Shakespeare