Chapter 2
As I hit the water the impact strikes my chest, forcing the air from my lungs, leaving me breathless.But I keep falling.
Farther,
and farther,
and farther,
down.
What is going on?
I hit the ground, sending a dizzying wave of pain climbing up my spine, a soundless scream escaping me. My hands clutch the ground beneath me, obtaining a handful of grass. That’s odd. Water shouldn’t feel like this. And shouldn’t I be floating around? I keep my eyes closed not wanting to see my dark fate around me. I take in a deep breath hoping to take in the end of my life and finish this quickly, but instead I take a deep breath of air.
Air?
I open my eyes quickly, only to find myself blinded by the sun.
Sun?
It should be pitch black.
As my eyes adjust I realize that I’m not in the vague, looming ocean, yearning to end this treacherous life. Instead I see towering trees and a brilliant, golden sun filtering through the trees casting enchanting shadows around me.
I must be hallucinating.
I look around me taking in the shining sun, melting through the trees and the brilliant blue sun. Shades of blue and purple flowers lavish on the ground around me. I hear the sound of rushing water nearby and the sounds of crickets and bees zooming by full of life. I look up to a compelling, black bird, much like a sparrow but an inky black instead. She sings a sorrowful melody and watches me with despairing eyes.
The song.
A song like no other song.This is the song my Father used to sing to me. The song coveys so many painful, forgotten memories, coming rushing back from the hidden, forbidden place they’ve been in for so long.
This song takes me back to the day my Father died.
The last day my “family” truly was a family. That day, so long ago now, I’m curled up by the window, my beloved favorite spot, at ten years old. My bright orange curls obscure my face and shadows me from the rest of the world. My long dark, lashes, casting shadows on my chubby cheeks, as my emerald green eyes devour the book in my plump hands. Father comes and kisses my forehead, smelling of pine needles ad aftershave. “I’m going on an adventure today, Amy.” he exclaims to me, his deep chestnut eyes glistening with curiosity and excitement. “What are you doing, Daddy?” my eyes widening with worry. “Something no one else has ever done before. Just remember something Amy, I will always love you wherever you are, or whatever happens.”He then takes my hand and puts something cold and surprisingly heavy in my hand and squeezes my hand, making me gasp. “Keep this with you, always.” His eyes hard with concern.Those were the last words he spoke to me before we found his coat by the cliff. The police searched for months but they always came back empty-handed. Their help ended up doing more harm then good. Mom became numb, not feeling anything. The only thing that made her seem slightly still alive at all was when I would come home to shattered bottles of whisky littering the floor, a stranger in my moms bed, and my mom curled onto the bathroom floor barely holding onto a strand of sanity. All the life had gone out of her. She only stayed here for me. Why am I here? I need to get home.
Home.
I don’t even know what that perplexing, disappointing word means anymore. Home to me is anywhere but home. All I see when I think of home is the condescending, exhausted eyes of my mother and an overambitious Father, who did more bad than good. Home is supposed to be impervious, protected, and safe. What is the definition of safe even? Ones own mind could consume them. No one is safe. Maybe it’s better for me down here. The song finally ends, the sorrowful tune fading softly, leaving me to believe that maybe I just imagined the whole thing. The breathless pain I feel in my chest is the only reminder I have, that it was real. I open my eyes to a pair of light blues eyes staring at me in confusion. He sits cross-legged in front of me, examining. His long lashes that girls would kill for, casted shadows across his face, highlighting his sharp jawline. He leaned back slightly allowing me a bit of personal space and dignity back. His eyes study me while I study him. His eyebrows knit together in puzzlement. That’s when I notice what he’s wearing.I’ve never seen a guy wear tights, and from this moment I’m glad I haven’t until now. He wears a dark blue shirt that comes to above his knees, black tights beneath that. I try to stifle a laugh and cover it up with a cough, looking away quickly. I look back at him to find him watching me with amusement, one eyebrow highly arched, a smirk on his face.
“Who are you?” I manage to finally get out.
He begins to stand, offering me his hand to help me up, “Your worst nightmare.” Wiggling his fingers like an awful impression of Dracula, “Ehhh I’m kidding that’s just in the job description that I say that. I’m Jasper, and you are madam?”
“Oh madam? I think I might just like it here. It’s Amy. What is this place?” I brush the dirt from my leather jacket, and combat boots.
A dark look crosses his face before it resumes in its happy, obvious fake chirpy look. “I do believe you would rather the queen answer your questions.” He answers politely.
“You can cut the crap, I know an act when I see one. I just fell from a cliff trying to end this quickly only to find myself dropping another 30 feet, in a bloody sort of fairytale land. Would it kill you to answer one question?”
“Come, we must go to the kingdom.” Ignoring me he begins to walk not seeing if I would follow or not. We walk in an unbroken silence for half an hour, listening to the harmonious concord of the birds around us. I never saw the black bird again.
“The black bird you saw before is called a memory bird. She brings up the memories you’ve hidden the most to the light with the most recent song she has heard.”
The most recent song she’s heard? She’s heard my Fathers song? Which means my Father is alive. “You said the most recent song she’s heard? What if I recognized the song?”
He gave me a quizzical look, “That’s highly unlikely. It was probably something that sounded like something you had known. Fairy music is not like any other music. It takes you to another world.”
“I think I’ve had enough of that for one day.” I said. We begin to walk again through the forest. I bite the inside of my cheek, thinking of my Father and why the bird had heard my Fathers song. Tasting blood in my mouth I decide to distract myself, “Sooooo what’s up with the tights?” I ask amusingly, cracking a smile.
His eyes crinkle with a laugh, “It’s supposed to ward off unwelcomed travelers I guess.” He snickers. “If I had the choice I’d just walk around with a couple leaves on certain areas. You’d be surprised by how free one feels.”My eyes widen in bewilderment.“I’m kidding, Amy!” He chuckles.
I breathed a sigh of relief, glancing at him. He really wasn’t that bad looking. His pale skin, made his infinite amount of freckles more noticeable but it worked for him. He had a scar below his left eye. His eyes were an icy blue, but became darker around the edges. I watched his back as he walked, looking at how the muscles moved, tensing and relaxing, as he moves branches aside for me as we move further into the forest. He catches my eye, smirking. I quickly look away before he sees the blood rush to my cheeks.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
As we continue to walk I start to see the outline of what I believe to be the castle. The trees begin to become thicker and harder to move through, as I continuously trip over grasping vines and roots. On my third time to trip over yet another treacherous vine, warm hands caught me right before I hit the ground. I looked up to Jasper smirking at me, his piercing blue eyes crinkling.
“Quite the damsel in distress aren’t we today. You’re just falling all over me. Literally.” He said, winking.
“Yeah I guess, for a guy in tights.”
Dropping me, he began to walk away.
“Uh OW.” Scowling, I began to follow him, slowing my pace just to irritate him.
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139,535 Literary Works • 672,600 Reviews
OMGOSH....I hate but yet love it all at the same time.
Okay Im going to skip to the end. OMGOSH I love the end. She likes him so much and he likes her back. hehehe. Its so cute. I love romance within a story and your doing a very good job at it by the way.
I love the last line too. Teasing much
Okay so down to business. Which probably won't be that much coming from me because I was mostly paying attention to the words and the feel on the story that I wasn't really paying attention to the mistakes.
But I did catch one well I dont really know if it was a mistake or not but. When your describing the sun shinning and all. You also put something about a blue sun, but I think you meant sky because you had already said that the sun was golden.
That was all I really caught. It caught me off guard. Put I really do like the way you got this going. The feel to it and all. I was paying attention to that the most. I haven't really read a story who's romance is quite like that and Im just loving it right now.
Well thats all that I really have. Im so looking forward to the next one. Oh and this is so a good chapter by the way.
You have some interesting imagery here, and I like that you're trying to a put a unique spin on the story of a character trying to end their life. Here are my thoughts as I read:
- With your formatting here, you intended to be dramatic:
But I don't think that breaking the sentence into several lines was the right way to go about it; it just grammatically bothered me. Also, the bold and italicized 'down' came across as excessive.
- This description seemed redundant in some places:
You describe the golden sun filtering through the towering trees, and then again you talk about the sun shining through the trees. Maybe focus on a different sense; describe what she's hearing or smelling instead. Also, what did you mean by 'the brilliant blue sun'? Are you saying that the sun itself is blue? Kind of threw me off.
- Nitpick: Father doesn't need to capitalized.
On the other hand, I was glad to finally get a glimpse into what may have lead your character to consider killing herself in the first place. And there are a few good and bad things about the paragraph that followed.
The good: More characterization, finally see into the characters head and what may be hurting her inside. Also there was a nice little hint of foreshadowing when you said, "Those were the last words he spoke to me before we found his coat by the cliff." I may be wrong, but it gave me the impression that he may not have died, and may be somewhere in the world Amy is in now.
Critiques: I felt like you were being over-dramatic with her description - with her eye lashes 'casting shadows' and her orange hair 'obscuring her from the rest of the world'. She's describing her memory, so does she really remember it like that, and would someone really describe themselves in that way? Just a thought.
Another thing, in dialogue, you usually start a new paragraph when a character speaks. I think that would help here; it would break down the massive paragraph and make things more readable.
Her mother came across as a very weak and pathetic character, having taken her husband's disappearance/death the way she did. I don't know, but going from a presumably normal mom to suddenly bedding other men and blacking out with bottles of whiskey made her seem like she had no self control. This kind of brings me to my next point - which is that there was a lot of information there (and in the next big paragraph) that could have been spread out over future chapters. The important thing for us to learn was that her dad died/disappeared and she took it hard, maybe we can learn more about her mother later?
- Just read her realization that her father is alive. CALLED it. Did that come too soon though?
- My last qualm about this is the complete change in mood compared to last chapter. One moment, Amy is brooding, tormented by untold difficulties in her life to the point that she attempts suicide. Then the next, she's nonchalantly strolling through a forest in a world that would utterly bewilder and possibly frighten me (if I was in her place), with a stranger who she suddenly finds herself falling for.
To conclude, I think the idea is very unique, and a creative way to change the typical suicide-story that we've all read (I confess, I've written one of them too :p). You describe some things very well, although you can be excessive in places. There are some minor grammatical errors, but you can easily pick them out yourself when you read over it.
And the most important thing to work on is how the emotions in these two chapters are connected. Something I would suggest for this -- don't let Amy change so suddenly. Let her continue being depressed and confused and unsure of herself and her future. This way, you can give Jasper (or whoever your male lead will be) a bigger role in the story. It can become more than just about her journey through an unknown world. It can become about her journey inward, and metaphorically 'what lies beneath the surface' of her fearful, impenetrable self, as her new friends and love interests empower her and give her new reasons to live.
</speech> Good luck with this!
~a2sd
Holy crap you totally just described parts of the ending I had in my head in your last paragraph. I won't give it away though. But yes I agree with you. It's all so jumbled and I don't like it either. I'm having trouble describing the character if I can't describe them the way I did with the long lashes "casting shadows" and other ways. What do you suggest? I thought of maybe going into a different viewpoint, possibly Jaspers and describing her further that way but readers usually like to know what the character looks like then and there so they know what to show in the "movie" in their head. Readers don't particularly like just a silhouette of some random girl whom they know nothing of what she looks like. Just wanting to know what you think?
Yeah, that's true, important to let us know. But maybe not all at once? Maybe just a few, more subtle, details. Like, her long lashes flickered gently as she read.
And then when it becomes relevant, a few more details. Say, if it was breezy in the area she landed in, she'll try to brush her orange hair out of her face. Maybe Jasper has never seen green eyes, or skin as creamy/pale as hers, and he makes a comment. Maybe he pokes fun at one of her features at first, to her irritation. And you can add a little more to it.
I dunno. Just some ideas? :p
Nice! I really like how the story is going so far.
One thing to remember though is your commas. In the last line, for example, you could've written, "Uh, OW!" Or something like that, instead of leaving out the comma.
Also, remember if you are writing in the past tense or the present tense. In one sentence, you write, "I breathed a sigh of relief...," but then at the end of the paragraph you start writing in the present tense. Example: "He catches my eyes, smirking."
Anyways, I really, REALLY like, no, LOVE this!! Can't wait for more! <3
- Wonder