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 Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 12:39 pm
Originally written between seven and five years ago, between ages 15 and 17, I've been completely rewriting the story of Silanis and the Box to be more grammatically correct, better planned, and better written. Anyone who'd like to see what it looked like when I originally wrote it can feel free to PM me for the crappy first draft.
It Began with a Box is [supposed to be] an epic tale about a young woman who discovers a strange, magic box while walking home from her friends place one night. It takes place in a world of my own creation, known as Erve, and involves a cast of colorful characters of many races. I take creative license with the different races, not in keeping with traditional fantasy stories, and take Silanis on an adventure all through her world, from her home town of Clover Hill in the Minovalle region of her home continent of Gandra to the wild snow-fields of Hundr Buma to the cities of the island country of Yhlameht and even the deserts and rich cultures of Nylia and Eg Segycr.
Through it all Silanis find that more and more of the evils she notices in the world are a direct result of the evil wizard Zacic, who has been ruling the world from the shadows for some four hundred years. Should she side with Cianira, a wild Elven woman with a penchant for firearms, and her motley crew of misfit rebels? Or make her way to see the ones who set the Box out into the world, and find out her secret destiny?
Please, those of you who feel confident doing so, feel free to give constructive criticism, and any thoughts or ideas for things you'd like to see or think would help the plot. I'm open to suggestions.
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Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 12:42 pm
Chapter 00 Silanis quietly and thoughtfully traversed the streets of her Minovallese hometown, Clover Hill. The young woman was coming from her friend Kaiana’s apartment in one of the ebendsahdc buildings - large, multi-level abodes, which housed many families. These were scattered through normal houses, with a few things like two schools, a marketplace, and city hall. Her house was in the Northeast end of town, and Kaiana’s building was just in the middle. She was in the marketplace, about ten minutes from her own house, which was right on the outskirts of the marketplace and had a storefront attached to it. The two girls had been working on a dress for Kaiana, a long gown for her to wear to her twentieth birthday dinner - an event to mark her full adulthood. She herself was only eighteen, still a few years off from such an event, though she longed for it. It was coming along nicely, but Silanis had to be home around sunset, and it was fast approaching. Shifting her bag from one shoulder to the other, her long brown hair getting caught under it, Silanis looked behind herself. Fixing her hair, she felt as though she was being followed, but there was no one else around that she could see. Just the same, she started to walk a little faster. The townspeople she trusted, she had known them all her life, but if there was someone from out of town around, she didn’t want to take a chance in them being trustworthy. As she rounded a corner, the toe of her boot struck a small metal object. To clear her vision, Silanis blinked as she knelt down to pick up the boxlike object to study it, her silver eyes catching the green of her gloves as she did so. It was small enough she could fit it in her pocket and covered in intricate engravings of vines and flowers, a seam running through the middle as though it could open. Her fingers became just a little sore as she tried, and eventually she gave up. There were three buttons on the top, and an inscription on the bottom, but she wasn’t about to try to figure out what for while she was still out on the street. Something fell behind her, and she turned to catch a glimpse of something lavender just out of sight. Rather than follow it, Silanis took this opportunity to run quickly in the direction of her own home, slipping the small, ornate box into her bag as she did so. Even in her rush, she was able to note the beauty of the town at sunset; There were purples, oranges, pinks, and blues all mingling in the azure sky above her, and setting a mood of intense elegance upon the façades of each and every building. Most especially among the quaint booths, tables, and small tents that made up the marketplace, and marked her being very close to home. Clover Hill itself was a fair-sized town, in Minovalle, on the Gandaran continent. It was roughly one day on horseback from the ocean in the North, and just around eight weeks from the sea in the South, through Gyhktus and D̀Airee. The sea in the West was about a week away, and the ocean in the East was roughly five weeks, through Sephirôt and Ytemo. This meant that Silanis was at the top of the continent. Though in the months of shorter days it never got quite cold enough to snow, sometimes Silanis wished it would; she’d heard stories that it had done so in the past, and longed to see the snow, rather than just hear stories of it. It seemed that Clover Hill had gotten quite warm over the centuries. Indeed; there was a sort of tropic in the ocean to the West, smaller than that of the Southeast, and everything was generally very warm on Gandara. Of course, Silanis had heard tales of snow falling in Clover Hill before in the South, but she had also heard that on the opposite side of the world the snow was heavy in the North. Silanis had heard fantastical stories of Queen Hegunini of the Royale Mega-City, near the ByTalna cliffs of Hundr Buma to the East, who ruled a kingdom of snow. It was said that only the very bottom of her continent, near the bridge that connected Hundr Buma to Nylia below, was deserts. This was the Skydragora, and it connected to the Kadragora at the top of Nylia. There were two other deserts on that continent, the Wadragora and Fydragora in Eg Segycr. On her own continent, Gandara, there was the Mandragora, on the other side of Lake Xodaik in Meht ta Ehkma, of which a small river arose from under the ground about two miles East of Clover Hill. It spanned most of Meht ta Ehkma, parts of Sephirôt, and part of Ytemo. In Sephirôt there is a large forest that spills into Minovalle. In that forest, the further East you got, the safer it became. It seemed there were creatures that stuck to the Western half of the forest, and even the hunters dared not go in except in great numbers with greater weaponry. Most of these places, Silanis had never been. As a child she had been to the Edelridge Mountains in Gyhktus, Gleneden in D’Airee, through the Ridgegate Mountains, Farmir in Ytemo, Lakshur in Meht ta Ehkma, and Meadowvale in Sephirot. She’d learned how to speak Ehkman, Ytemese, Gyhktese, Sephiroan, D’Aireean, and Sardan, which was spoken among the many settlements of the Sarda Islands. Because a lot of the languages of the Gandaran continent were evolved from the same mother tongue (though it is now largely out of use, let me tell you), Kyorian, it was quite easy for Silanis to become fluent in them. Other languages, like Nylian, Segycren, Hundrian, Dragoran, ByTalnan, or any of the Dnubylian languages throughout the Dnubylem Islands in the South-East, Silanis felt would be far harder for her to learn, especially now. The languages she knew now, she’d learned because her father wanted her to take over the family shop when he passed on to the Great Hall of Rebirth, to await his new incarnation. Realistically, Silanis hoped that never happened. Mostly because she loved her father dearly, but also because she did not want to be a merchant, and deal with people from all over the world - buying, selling, and trading for the rest of her existence. Not that she had ever really been sure what she wanted to do as an adult, now that she was getting close. When she was a child, she’d wanted with all of her heart to be an adventurer and discover the races in the legends and tales she’d been told when she’d gone traveling with her parents on business. For several years she’d wanted nothing more than to be old enough to go out on her own and fight monsters and villains, rescue princesses, get saved by Elves, captured by Dwarves, and so on. Heck, she’d even wanted to slay dragons, and solve the Gods riddles to gain favors! Of course, that was all silly childhood dreaming, and now she didn’t know what she wanted out of life. A brief sigh escaped her as she considered this on her way home. She wished she could be a child again, and dream those dreams in honesty . . . Finally, Silanis came to her own house, making her way to the side door rather than going through the storefront, which made up half of their house. Letting her parents know she was home, Silanis entered her room and sank quietly into her bed, kicking off her boots so she could relax. At last, she was home.
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Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 1:25 pm
All I desire..
..is your love.
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Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 9:40 am
Thank you very much, Mia. I'm going to post another chapter next Friday. Every Friday. ^_^
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Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 11:13 am
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Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 1:55 pm
In my mind, a critique is the same as constructive criticism. First post: Tommy Dionysus Please, those of you who feel confident doing so, feel free to give constructive criticism, and any thoughts or ideas for things you'd like to see or think would help the plot. I'm open to suggestions. Go right ahead, if you like. <3
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 2:13 pm
Tommy Dionysus In my mind, a critique is the same as constructive criticism. First post: Tommy Dionysus Please, those of you who feel confident doing so, feel free to give constructive criticism, and any thoughts or ideas for things you'd like to see or think would help the plot. I'm open to suggestions. Go right ahead, if you like. <3 Oh, I missed that somehow sweatdrop I'll critique then put it on this post.
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 4:11 pm
Take your time; I look forward to it. There's at least another 8 chapters after this one.
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Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 1:57 pm
Strikethrough - unnecessary
Bold - grammar/spelling
Italic - awkward (rewrite)
Underline - inserted or deleted
Silanis quietly and thoughtfully traversed the streets of her Minovallese hometown, Clover Hill. The young woman was coming from her friend Kaiana’s apartment in one of the ebendsahdc buildings - large, multi-level abodes, which housed many families. These were scattered through normal houses, with a few things like two schools, a marketplace, and a city hall. Her house was in the Northeast end of town, and Kaiana’s building was just in the middle. She was in the marketplace, about ten minutes from her own house, which was right on the outskirts of the marketplace and had a storefront attached to it. The two girls had been working on a dress for Kaiana’s twentieth birthday dinner; an event to mark her full adulthood. Silanis herself was only eighteen, still a few years off from such an event, though she longed for it. The dress was coming along nicely, but Silanis had to be home around sunset which was fast approaching.
Shifting her bag from one shoulder to the other, her long brown hair getting caught under it, Silanis looked behind herself. Fixing her hair, she felt as though she was being followed, but there was no one else around that she could see. Just the same, she started to walk a little faster. The townspeople she trusted, she had known them all her life, but if there was someone from out of town around, she didn’t want to take a chance in them being trustworthy. As she rounded a corner, the toe of her boot struck a small metal object. To clear her vision, Silanis blinked as she knelt down to pick up the boxlike object to study it, her silver eyes catching the green of her gloves as she did so.
It was small enough to she could fit it in her pocket and covered in intricate engravings of vines and flowers, a seam running through the middle as though it could open.Her fingers became just a little sore as she tried, and eventually she gave up. There were three buttons on the top, and an inscription on the bottom, but she wasn’t about to try to figure out what for while she was still out on the street. Something fell behind her, and as she turned she caught a glimpse of something lavender just out of sight. Rather than follow it, Silanis took this opportunity to run quickly in the direction of her own home, slipping the small, ornate box into her bag as she did so.
Even in her rush, she was able to note the beauty of the town at sunset; There were purples, oranges, pinks, and blues all mingling in the azure sky above her, and they all set a mood of intense elegance upon the façades of each and every building. Most especially among the quaint booths, tables, and small tents that made up the marketplace, and marked her being very close to home.
Clover Hill itself was a fair-sized town, in Minovalle, on the Gandaran continent. It was roughly one day on horseback from the ocean in the North, and just around eight weeks from the sea in the South, through Gyhktus and D̀Airee. The sea in the West was about a week away, and the ocean in the East was roughly five weeks, through Sephirôt and Ytemo. This meant that Silanis was at the top of the continent. Though in the months of shorter days it never got quite cold enough to snow, sometimes Silanis wished it would; she’d heard stories that it had done so in the past, and longed to see the snow, rather than just hear stories of it.
It seemed that Clover Hill had gotten quite warm over the centuries. Indeed; there was a sort of tropic in the ocean to the West, smaller than that of the Southeast, and everything was generally very warm on Gandara. Of course, Silanis had heard tales of snow falling in Clover Hill before in the South, but she had also heard that on the opposite side of the world the snow was heavy in the North.
Silanis had heard fantastical stories of Queen Hegunini of the Royale Mega-City, near the ByTalna cliffs of Hundr Buma to the East, who ruled a kingdom of snow. It was said that only the very bottom of her continent, near the bridge that connected Hundr Buma to Nylia below, was deserts. This was the Skydragora, and it connected to the Kadragora at the top of Nylia. There were two other deserts on that continent, the Wadragora and Fydragora in Eg Segycr. On her own continent, Gandara, there was the Mandragora, on the other side of Lake Xodaik in Meht ta Ehkma, of which a small river arose from under the ground about two miles East of Clover Hill. It spanned most of Meht ta Ehkma, parts of Sephirôt, and part of Ytemo. In Sephirôt there is a large forest that spilled into Minovalle. In that forest, the further East you got, the safer it became. It seemed there were creatures that stuck to the Western half of the forest, and even the hunters dared not go in except in great numbers with greater weaponry. ( This paragraph doesn't seem to flow with the rest of the story; I suggest you move it to a different part of the story where it fits better.)
Most of these places, Silanis had never been. As a child she had been to the Edelridge Mountains in Gyhktus, Gleneden in D’Airee, through the Ridgegate Mountains, Farmir in Ytemo, Lakshur in Meht ta Ehkma, and Meadowvale in Sephirot. She’d learned how to speak Ehkman, Ytemese, Gyhktese, Sephiroan, D’Aireean, and Sardan, which was spoken among the many settlements of the Sarda Islands. Because a lot of the languages of the Gandaran continent were evolved from the same mother tongue (though it is now largely out of use, let me tell you), Kyorian, it was quite easy for Silanis to become fluent in them. Other languages, like Nylian, Segycren, Hundrian, Dragoran, ByTalnan, or any of the Dnubylian languages throughout the Dnubylem Islands in the South-East, Silanis felt would be far harder for her to learn, especially now.
The languages she knew now, she’d learned because her father wanted her to take over the family shop when he passed on to the Great Hall of Rebirth, to await his new incarnation. Realistically, Silanis hoped that never happened. Mostly because she loved her father dearly, but also because she did not want to be a merchant, and deal with people from all over the world - buying, selling, and trading for the rest of her existence. Not that she had ever really been sure what she wanted to do as an adult, now that she was getting close. When she was a child, she’d wanted with all of her heart to be an adventurer and discover the races in the legends and tales she’d been told when she’d gone traveling with her parents on business.
For several years she’d wanted nothing more than to be old enough to go out on her own and fight monsters and villains, rescue princesses, get saved by Elves, captured by Dwarves, and so on. Heck, she’d even wanted to slay dragons, and solve the Gods riddles to gain favors! Of course, that was all silly childhood dreaming, and now she didn’t know what she wanted out of life. A brief sigh escaped her as she considered this on her way home. She wished she could be a child again, and dream those dreams in honesty . . .
Finally, Silanis came to her own house, making her way to the side door rather than going through the storefront, which made up half of their house. Letting her parents know she was home, Silanis entered her room and sank quietly into her bed, kicking off her boots so she could relax. At last, she was home.
In the last couple of paragraphs when she gets home it seems like she is walking, not running.
Sorry if this is slightly confusing. I'll try to come with a better way next time.
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Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 8:47 am
Chapter One Revised Silanis quietly traversed the streets of her Minovallese hometown, Clover Hill. The young woman was coming from her friend Kaiana’s apartment in one of the ebendsahdc buildings - large, multilevel abodes, which housed many families. These were scattered through normal houses, two schools, a marketplace, and a city hall. Her house was in the northeast end of town, and Kaiana’s building was in the middle. She was in the marketplace, about ten minutes from her own house, which was right on the outskirts of the marketplace and had a storefront attached to it. The two girls had been working on a dress for Kaiana’s twentieth birthday dinner; an event to mark her full adulthood. Silanis was only eighteen herself, still a few years off from such an event, though she longed for it. The dress was coming along nicely, but Silanis had to be home around sunset, which was fast approaching. Silanis' hair got caught under the shoulder strap of her bag as she turned to check the streets behind her. Fixing her hair, she felt as though she was being followed, but there was no one else around that she could see. Just the same, she started to walk a little faster. The townspeople she trusted, but if there was someone from out of town around, she didn’t want to take a chance in them being trustworthy. As she rounded a corner, the toe of her boot struck a small metal object. Silanis blinked as she knelt down to pick up the boxlike object, her silver eyes catching the green of her gloves as she did so. The little box was small enough to fit in her pocket. As she examined it, she saw it was covered in intricate little engravings of vines with flowers. There was a seam running like jagged teeth all along the middle. For a moment she thought it could open, but after a few moments of trying, she gave up because her fingers started to hurt. There were three buttons on the top, and an inscription on the bottom, but she wasn’t about to try to figure out what for while she was still out on the street. Something fell behind her, and as she turned she caught a glimpse of something lavender moving just out of her vision. Rather than follow it, Silanis took this opportunity to run quickly in the direction of her own home, slipping the small, ornate box into her bag as she did so. Even in her rush, she was able to note the beauty of the town at sunset; There were purples, oranges, pinks, and blues all mingling in the sky above her, and they all set a mood of intense elegance upon the façades of each and every building. This mood was most tangible among the quaint booths, tables, and small tents that made up the marketplace. The marketplace marked her being very close to home, and since whoever she saw had gone in the other direction and her home was now in sight (though still a ways off behind the booths and tables and such), Silanis slowed her pace a bit. Clover Hill itself was a fair-sized town, in Minovalle, on the Gandran continent. It was roughly one day on horseback from the ocean in the North, and just around eight weeks from the sea in the South, through Gyhktus and D̀Airee. The sea in the West was about a week away, and the ocean in the East was roughly five weeks, through Sephirôt and Ytemo. Though in the months of shorter days it never got quite cold enough to snow, sometimes Silanis wished it would; she’d heard stories that it had done so in the past, and longed to see the snow, rather than just hear stories of it. It seemed that Clover Hill had gotten quite warm over the centuries. Indeed; there was a sort of tropic in the ocean to the West, smaller than that of the Southeast, and everything was generally very warm on Gandra. Of course, Silanis had heard tales of snow falling in Clover Hill before in the South, but she had also heard that on the opposite side of the world the snow was heavy in the North. Silanis had heard fantastical stories of Queen Hegunini of the Royale Mega-City, near the ByTalna cliffs of Hundr Buma to the East, who ruled a kingdom of snow. It was said that only the very bottom of her continent, near the bridge that connected Hundr Buma to Nylia below, was deserts. This was the Skydragora, and it connected to the Kadragora at the top of Nylia. There were two other deserts on that continent, the Wadragora and Fydragora in Eg Segycr. On her own continent, Gandra, there was the Mandragora, on the other side of Lake Xodaik in Meht ta Ehkma, of which a small river arose from under the ground about two miles East of Clover Hill. It spanned most of Meht ta Ehkma, parts of Sephirôt, and part of Ytemo. In Sephirôt there is a large forest that spilled into Minovalle. In that forest it always seemed to travelers that the further East you got, the safer the forest appeared to become. Hunters got less and less brave about Sephirôt Forest, and became less and less likely to even talk about it, let alone enter. Silanis, too, feared this forest, but there was always a mild fascination with stories like this, and a desire to explore and see for herself. Silanis guessed she was an adventurer at heart, but she would never get the chance to adventure with her parents pushing her to find a nice boy and settle down. Most of the places Silanis had heard such wonderful and sometimes frightening stories about, she had never been to. As a child she had been to the Edelridge Mountains in Gyhktus, Gleneden in D’Airee, through the Ridgegate Mountains, Farmir in Ytemo, Lakshur in Meht ta Ehkma, and Meadowvale in Sephirôt. She’d learned how to speak Ehkman, Ytemese, Gyhktese, Sephiroan, D’Aireean, and Sardan, which was spoken among the many settlements of the Sarda Islands. Because a lot of the languages of the Gandran continent were evolved from the same mother tongue (though it is now largely out of use, let me tell you), Kyorian, it was quite easy for Silanis to become fluent in them. Other languages, like Nylian, Segycren, Hundrian, Dragoran, ByTalnan, or any of the Dnubylian languages throughout the Dnubylem Islands in the southeast, Silanis felt would be far harder for her to learn, especially now. The languages she knew now, she’d learned because her father wanted her to take over the family shop when he passed on to the Great Hall of Rebirth, to await his new incarnation. Realistically, Silanis hoped that never happened. Mostly because she loved her father dearly, but also because she did not want to be a merchant - buying, selling, and trading for the rest of her existence. Not that she had ever really been sure what she wanted to do as an adult, now that she was getting close. When she was a child, she’d wanted with all of her heart to be an adventurer and discover the races in the legends and tales she’d been told when she’d gone traveling with her parents on business. For several years she’d wanted nothing more than to be old enough to go out on her own and fight monsters and villains, rescue princesses, get saved by Elves, captured by Dwarves, and so on. Heck, she’d even wanted to slay dragons, and solve the Gods' riddles in order to gain their favors! Of course, that was all silly childhood dreaming, and now she didn’t know what she wanted out of life. A brief sigh escaped her as she considered this on her way home. She wished she could be a child again, and dream those dreams in honesty... Finally, Silanis came to her own house, making her way to the side door rather than going through the storefront that made up half of their house. Letting her parents know she was home, Silanis entered her bedroom and sank quietly into her bed, kicking off her boots so she could relax. At last, she was home. fralazeneX99 In the last couple of paragraphs when she gets home it seems like she is walking, not running. Sorry if this is slightly confusing. I'll try to come with a better way next time. It's alright, I figured it out. Let me know what you think of the revised version. I fixed it so that it makes more sense for her to seem like she's walking instead of running.
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:49 pm
Chapter 01 After eating dinner with her parents, Silanis returned to her room, her ferret kicking up a little bit of a racket. Taking her food bowl and filling it, Silanis cooed to her ferret, Libra, and scratched beneath her chin. The ferret licked at her fingers, and then ravenously dug into her food. Silanis giggled softly before going into her bag to grab the small box she had found on her way home. Upon further inspection it looked mechanical, like some of the safes and jewelery boxes she had seen when she had visited the market at Lakshûr when she was younger. This meant that the three buttons on the top were probably some sort of code, which meant there were only so many combination's to try before she got the sequence correct. Turning it over, she took another peek at the inscription. It seemed inconsequential, trifling even. One son comes around; millions cannot stand to his power. Maybe it meant something, and maybe it didn’t. She thought on it quietly, trying to decide its usefulness in opening the box, but it made no sense. Turning the box over and over to study it, she considered what her options were. Then, while she was about to give up, she noted the buttons were colored and something in her mind clicked. One son… Son… Sun! Of course! Her mind raced as she made the connection, she scarce knew what she was doing before she pressed the yellow button. Hoping she was right, she held her breath and watched. Nothing happened, and her heart sank as she had felt for sure that she had figured it out. When she turned the box back over to look at the inscription again and ponder it, her eyes widened and her breath hitched in her throat. With a choked yelp she dropped it. The words had changed somehow, and as far as she knew, there was no technology for something like that. Sniffing the air, the ferret Libra looked up from her food lazily, and went back to her bowl with what seemed like a shrug. Tentatively, Silanis picked the box back up and looked at the inscription to be sure her eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on her. There it was, defiantly staring back at her as if it had every right to say something different. She couldn’t explain the feelings that evoked in her. There was no way, no conceivable way, that those words could have possibly changed when she pressed the button; she had never heard of anything like that. It was another useless sentence that seemed of little consequence. Silanis was now almost certain that this was some kind of riddling game, though none of them were actual questions. Considering this new sentence carefully, she remembered back to her childhood, visiting the fair in Grenview to the West - to the riddling competition that took place there. They took the game very seriously, and it was one of the most ancient. She remembered hearing somewhere that riddles had been used for everything from a test of wits to making a wager to save your life. What could this one mean, then? It said, quite uselessly; “S ee shells on the beach, and gulls in the sky?” The sheer irrelevance of the sentence was nigh infuriating. She was, in spite of the shock of it, rather displeased with how this box seemed to be working. Reason dictated that she shouldn’t hit a random button, for fear of what might happen were she to get the answer wrong. Yet she could not guess on her own just yet as to the correct answer. It only made sense that you would see shells on a beach and gulls in the sky. Yet the incontrovertible sentence seemed to manage a manner of ambiguity to it, which eluded her even still. Silanis moved to take a break, shuffling through an old book of riddles to see if there were any of these sorts. As she flipped through the pages, lounging back on her bed with the box next to her, she didn’t seem to find anything of importance. This line still befuddled her, and she was growing impatient with it fast. What did it mean? She was tempted to throw the box at her large pile of stuffed dolls in the corner, but held back, fearing her aim not so good. In a huff she opened a dresser drawer and aimlessly started to ruffle through her clothing. She came upon a bathing suit at the bottom, and remembered the times her mom had taken her to the port at the tip of the peninsula, Port Canchâs. She remembered how she had gone swimming at the beach. Then it clicked in, and it took her a moment to realize that she now had the answer. It was water that was what had been eluding her. She pushed the blue button and quickly turned it over to see what new riddle had taken its place in the inscription. The words that awaited her confused her even more than the previous. It said, “ The blade is not sharp, but can be very long.” This infuriated Silanis, because she knew nothing of weaponry; there was no way she could ever figure out the answer to this question. Regardless, she began to list off all the weapons she could remember in reference to the word blade. Her list was terribly short, and not long after she realized none of what she had come up with corresponded with a color anyway. In a huff she sat upon her bed with her arms around her knees. Why did the riddle have to be about weapons, she wondered, when that was one of the things she knew nothing of? She wanted desperately to see what would be on the inside at the end of it all, but of this she had no clue. What kind blade made sense with a color, and was not sharp? It couldn’t be blue again, but there was no silver or gray to push, and none of the colors would mix to make it. She closed here eyes, feeling very silly, and tried to clear her mind. Whom did she know that she could ask about such things? Unfortunately there was no one whom she was able to think of off the top of her head. But of course there had to be some simple answer to this, and she was just thinking much too hard on it. This couldn’t really be so impossible as it was making itself out to be. She would surely be able to think of an answer on her own in time. She heaved a sigh, getting up to change into her pajamas, and go through her own nightly ritual of bidding good-nights to the moon and stars. Perhaps she would be able to think more clearly in the morning after breaking her fast, followed by a quick run to wake herself up.
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 2:27 pm
Hey. Sorry it took me so long to post again. I momentarily fell out of love with Gaia, lol. I'm going to do a different way of critiquing this time; I'll comment about everything, but I won't do grammar. However, if you want that too just tell me and I will. Quote: Silanis giggled softly before going into her bag to grab the small box she had found on her way home. Upon The words "she had found on the way home" is unnecessary. "Upon" should be the start of a new paragraph. Quote: Then, while she was about to give up, When, not while. Quote: With a choked yelp she dropped it. Rewrite. Quote: visiting the fair in Grenview to the West - to the riddling competition that took place there. "-to the" sounds better as "the western town, Grenview, and the riddling" because she's remembering the competition, not the town. Quote: She heaved a sigh, getting up to change into her pajamas, and go through her own nightly ritual of bidding good-nights to the moon and stars. Subtract that comma. Quote: Perhaps she would be able to think more clearly in the morning after breaking her fast, followed by a quick run to wake herself up. Is saying "breaking my fast" the norm in your world's culture? It seems off, what with the rest of the language being regular and this being strange. I won't be able to tell until you have some dialogue later on. And you can subtract the comma.
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Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:49 am
Sorry I vanished, I momentarily fell out of love with Gaia too. I'll get to editing that chapter right after I post up the next one, so bear with me here.
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Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 3:04 am
Chapter 02 As Silanis slept - the box lying off to the side of her as though it were forgotten - what seemed like a small, lilac-haired child with many purple wings made her way into the room through the window. Looking about the bedroom, she wondered where she could hide for the morning, looking for somewhere that Silanis would not be able to see her. Wings aflutter in the darkness, her eyes fell on first the ferret in its cage, followed by the large accumulation of stuffed toys given to Silanis over the years. The faerie sighed, seeing no place else but beneath the bed, and so she slid underneath it. This girl would see through any of my spells, I think, thought the faerie, because my magic is not much stronger than that of the inscription. It was only a hope she had that she would not betray her own location in her excitement, come morning. ---------------------------------- When the young woman awoke in the morning, she blearily made her way to her closet. She chose from the pile of poorly folded clothing what was, for her, a normal outfit. It consisted of a knee-length white cotton skirt, a pair of blue-and-white striped stockings. She also had a dark green blouse with a light blue bodice over it, and a dark green jacket to top it all off. Stretching, she tried to better rouse herself, so that she could tackle the riddle that had defeated her once before. In the darkness under the bed the faerie lay asleep, having been unable to wait until morning to see Silanis awaken. The ferret scratched about in her cage, waiting impatiently for her breakfast. Silanis looked over with a smile. “Come now, little Libra.” Silanis said. “Give it a moment, and I’ll go get your food, aye?” The ferret Libra kicked up a bit of a fuss when she left the room, making no small amount of noise in the process. The faerie awoke while Silanis was getting the ferrets breakfast. She looked about from her shelter, forgetting for a moment where she was, and why. When she saw Silanis reenter the room, she remembered. This girl had found the little box, and Wolfe was here to see if it would be opened or not. Silanis walked back over to the bed after giving Libra more food, and picked the little metal contraption up off the bed, being careful not to hit the three buttons on top. Smiling to herself, she reread the riddle inscribed upon the bottom. “For a moment there,” The brunette mused aloud, “I thought I had been dreaming.” She paused at length, thinking over the sentence that presented her so much trouble. “The blade is not sharp, but can grow very long... Meh... Weapons.” The childlike creature under the bed left out a soft sigh, knowing that Silanis was thinking entirely the wrong thing for the answer - at this rate she would never get to the final test. Another lost cause, it seemed, who would never open the box and eventually lose it. The little faerie-girl felt a little sad; she had thought this time someone would open the box for sure. Silanis stood there with one hand on her hip, looking at the small box. What could the inscription be talking about this time? There were no blades that corresponded with the colors of the buttons, or any color that those ones would make: Red and yellow became orange, blue and yellow became green, and red and blue became purple. As far as she knew, there were no orange or purple blades, and the only ‘blades’ that were green were... ”Of course!” Silanis exclaimed, all but kicking her self and laughing. “Grass blades get long, but they won’t cut you.” Why she had not thought of that before was a mystery, but she had the answer now and that was what mattered. All she could do was hope that pushing two buttons at once would not reset the box. Carefully, she pushed the blue and yellow buttons in tandem, holding her breath while she waited to see what would happen. There was a moment of disappointment when nothing did happen, but she also felt a little grateful; for fear she may have had a heart attack if something had. ---------------------------------- Turning the box back over, she once more read the inscription. It went on like that for some time before she finally came to a little bit of a stumper. Vampire, Bat, Rat, Vermin. It wasn’t even in the form of a question, or an actual sentence, just a short list of nasty things. There was no color she could think of, at the moment, that would correspond with all four of those words. What on Erve could it be? In a huff, she slumped down to the floor, staring at her feet in disdain. It was then that she heard what sounded like the hushed breathing of an excited child, and tensed. “Who is there?” A stupid question, but it was all she could think of. “Who’s in my room?” Her head whipped in the direction of the bed and window, but she looked past the two indigo eyes beneath the low bed. So the faeries magic hid her well enough, it seemed. “I don’t think you could comprehend my existence,” said the faerie, plainly, “for you could barely comprehend the magic of the box.” The reply Wolfe gave only upset Silanis, and she kept scanning the room for the intruder. “What the hell are you talking about?” was the first thing to leave her lips, and it made the faerie want to laugh. “Who are you, what the hell are you doing in my room?” Then, as an afterthought, “where in the hell are you?” “I’m a faerie.” Said the small creature, not dancing around the answers. “Called Wolfe, by those who know me.” “Wolfe?” Silanis asked. “A faerie?” What was going on? What was she plunged into, with little warning, to be left dazed and confused by a small box and a voice that claimed to be a faerie? This insanity could not be real, there had to be some kind of joke to it all! It was here the faerie took the opportunity of Silanis’ eyes being closed to crawl from beneath the bed - her wings once more aflutter so that she hovered above the ground with seemingly no effort at all. When the young brunette opened her eyes to dispute the existence of faeries, they were met with the most amazing sight she had ever imagined. There, in her room, not more than an arms-length away, was a real faerie! Everything that Silanis had known to be true as a child came back to her, in a rush that nearly knocked her over. She became momentarily dizzy as it all tried sort itself out as quickly as possible. “Are you all right?” Wolfe asked, all ten of her lilac wings collapsing neatly behind her as she allowed herself to drop to the floor. Resting a hand on Silanis’ shoulder, there was a genuine look of concern on her face. ”I… You . . . You’re real?” Not even a word on her own state, just the question could be articulated. “Y-you’re real. That can’t be.” It was hard for Silanis to take this lightly. All her life, since early childhood, she’d been told things like this were make-believe. Yet there was a faerie standing right there in her room! “I was told they were all silly stories. Was I lied to?” “Yes, but not deliberately.” A smile graced the faeries lips as she spoke. “We’re in hiding, no one is supposed to know we exist.” ”But then…” Silanis’ mind cleared a bit with each passing moment. “Elves, half-breeds, sylphs, Gods… They’re real, too?” It was stunning to think all those wonderful things from the stories of her childhood actually existed. ”Yes. Everything you heard tales of, within a certain amount of reason, are real.” There was a pause as Wolfe thought of the most simple way to explain. “Basically,” she said, “everything good you heard of is real, but so is everything bad. This is because it’s all just a matter of opinion on what good and bad really is in my world, the world of the preternatural, the supernatural, and the inhuman . . . What your people call 'fantasy creatures.'” “If no one is supposed to know you’re real, why do stories about you exist at all?” It was a truly valid question, she felt, and gave herself a mental pat on the back for it. “And why are you here?” she added. The faerie must have felt it was a valid question as well, for she paused at great length to think it over. For a moment, Silanis didn’t think she would get an answer. Then; “Because you have found something of great importance to me.” Wolfe leaned over to pick the box out of her hand, and looked at it curiously. “It’s been many years since I have seen this.” ”I’m sorry... ” Silanis said, not really understanding. “You can have it back, if it’s yours…” She felt a little bad now, for taking something that hadn’t been hers to take. “Oh, but.! ” Wolfe looked at her, puzzled, and shrugged her shoulders in question. “I don’t want the box, no. It’s yours to keep, if you can open it.” ”Then, that means… It was you I saw darting out of sight last night... Wasn’t it?” Wolfe looked at Silanis for a moment, then nodded. “I didn’t think you would be able to see me.” With another shrug she took a seat on the bed. “Your own magic is stronger than I’d anticipated. You should try to train it, it may be useful.” “I don’t have magic.” The brunette said, hastily. “I’m only human. I have no magic.” “Silanis, Silanis,” Wolfe said, looking around the room, “listen, everyone has magic. It’s a matter of figuring out how to use it. In the old days, all humans knew magic, and everything was fun and happy... Humans loved us, we could roam freely…” The faerie trailed off. “What happened, then? What changed?” Wolfe’s tone of voice changed then, becoming low and dark. “ Zaçic.” The name Silanis knew, and had been taught to love. Zaçic was the man whom everyone believed was the Son of the One True God; supposedly he had spread love, and peace throughout the lands more than three hundred years before she was born. It was the one story that the people generally agreed wasn’t fantasy . . . What the hell was going on? “Surely you cannot possibly mean the Zaçic?” “Ah, but I do.” Motioning for Silanis to sit next to her, Wolfe got ready to give her the explanation. The girl deserved the truth. “He showed up claiming divinity, and over the course of a few decades, associating with fae-folk and Elves became, against their 'religion,' and you would end up in 'Hell' for using magic. “The old Gods were shunned, pushed aside, cast as demons. Maenads were arrested, labeled witches, and burned at the stake. Dryads were cut down for fear they were forest witches. Elves were shot on sight, simply because their ears were marked as a sign of witches mating with “the Devil.” “Halflings were about the only ones not completely destroyed, because they were basically smaller humans. They were simply labeled little people. This was only because some human women had given birth to human children, who’s bodies never really grew up. “Dwarves had it easy too, only forced to stay in the mines they loved anyway, because they were too rowdy for the surface. “Zaçic is a powerful wizard.” Wolfe paused and rested her head on her left hand for a moment, remembering the things that man had done over the years. “He’s been in control of politics for centuries, behind the scenes, in the shadows. Always just out of arms reach. He holds a powerful spell over the world, even to this day, weaving webs of deceit and power through the decades. Sometimes more involved, other times hiding and working his glamor. He doesn’t die, but he can be killed. I’m not even sure he’s human, to be honest. I think he’s a demon.” Silanis gaped at the faerie. Everything she’d been taught from childhood was just smashed to pieces, and she wasn’t sure if she believed it or not. In the end, she knew in her heart that everything she had believed in her childhood was the truth; not what her parents had told her about such things, about Zaçic...
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