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Oliver Pockets
04-21-2010, 01:24 PM
The stone house was old. Smelling like the woods after a thunderstorm. On the grey, stone hewn walls hung deep red tapestries on which were depicted battles of old. Battles in which men and beast stood together, in union, against the tongues of the wild. Before the age of the road and the union of the clans of men. This was an ancient time long forgotten by all except for those that maintained the grounds of the house on Idlewood Street in Darbenham Greens. Children no longer learned about the battles against the tongues of the wild, schools dismissed such old and mystical histories as fairytales and children’s rhymes. But in the house on the Greens such antiquities were told and retold to the ears who would hear.

In a dimly lit study on the first floor of the house was a desk on which many stacks of papers stood. An old man sat reading a burgundy leather bound book, the pages lit by the light of a gold lamp, words shaped in unfamiliar form imprisoned in columns upon the page. The thin finger of the old man traced the lines of symbols and shapes, quivering slightly in the shadows. The mans eyes shone brightly beneath twin imitations of a unruly forest. Searching the pages for reason and meaning to end his queries of the age gone by.

The room in which the man sat was noteworthy for two different reasons. The first being that every possible nook and cranny, shelf and table top had books and various artifacts stacked and piled in a tidy but slightly unorderly fashion, this was a uniform characteristic of the entire room. The walls were covered in dark brown mahogany bookshelves, every space filled with either a row of very ancient looking bound books or assorted keepsakes, a suit of armor, a collection of small red and brown bottles filled with dark liquids, a set of mounted horns, a small mirror set in a rooted woody handle. Anywhere on the wall that wasn’t filled with bookshelves was used to display a large collection of maps. The maps depicted everything from the ocean floor, to the layout of cities both ancient and modern, to mountain peaks and passes. All of the maps were extremely detailed in their depictions. The second and possibly most curious attribute of the room was the ceiling. The night sky had been painstakingly projected onto the plaster ceiling of the study. The ceiling stood black against the light of the golden lamp, painted stars glinting metallic and bright in the glancing light. Deep space could be looked upon from the comfort of the chair in which the man sat.

Through the door of the study, footsteps creaking against the wooden floor could be heard approaching. Glass rattled against a metal tray as tea and oatmeal were brought through the door by a small squarish white haired woman wearing a forest green dress with a red flannel cardigan that obviously belonged to the old man.
The old man looked up over the edge of his book and let out a powerful fit of coughing. The woman nodded her head at the man and said “I’ll be in the kitchen preparing breakfast”. “Breakfast?” said the man “I didn’t realize that the moon had already set”. “You’ve been up all night haven’t you?” asked the woman. The man grunted an affirmative, the woman set the tray down and put her hand on the shoulder of the man. “Abraham, you need to rest, your going to want your strength for the coming weeks”. The man picked up the clay mug, sipped the dark liquid and smiled at the woman, “the closer I get to finding the truth of what has happened to the world the less tired I feel”. “Knowledge is freeing, it drives the darkness from the corners of the mind and frees the space for dreaming”. The woman shook her head as she shuffled out of the study. “Good morning” called the man to the woman, “I love you” returned the woman.

The man ate his oats and sipped from his cup… his eyes gleaming with excitement as he turned the page of the book. Thick black letters leaned across the page saying: Beginnings of Paths into Wilds… below the words was a map, carefully etched onto the paper with red ink, the mountains stood high in the north, the desert flowing up from the sea, and red darkness pushing in from the east and the west, out of the darkness crawled Henturi, their long limbs scraping away the light of day. This was how it all began, or rather this is how it first began to end, before the world was immersed in the darkness and the dust.

let me know whats wrong/good/horrible.

hillwalker
04-21-2010, 02:52 PM
OP - You do a wonderful job of creating a murky atmosphere and setting the scene for a tale of mystery.

It just needs a little red pen work here and there - a few grammatical errors that are not a problem.

BUT - to keep the momentum of the piece going and pull in the reader deeper you need to avoid diversions that are likely to distract him/her.
Most of these diversions are repetitious phrases that would make the reader wince :

a] "The room in which the man sat was noteworthy."

b] "lit by the light of a gold lamp"

c] "the woman nodded her head."

The words in bold type are better left out - either because they unnecessarily repeat something already referred to in the previous sentence (as in [a]) or because they are superfluous ( and [c]).

And why "a red flannel cardigan [B]obviously belonged to the old man" ?? - unless we know why it belonged to him we are left wandering down a blind alley when you should really be drawing us closer into the heart of the story. Is the ownership of the cardigan relevant to the story anyway? Probably not.

I'm not trying to pour cold water over your efforts - there are some very fine touches and most readers by the end of your piece would want to read on - but you need to be ruthless and cut out anything that drags the story down or sends it off in the wrong direction.

Do keep going.....

Oliver Pockets
04-21-2010, 03:22 PM
thanks! those remarks are very much appreciated.

Steven Hunley
04-24-2010, 10:02 AM
This is definitely a good start. It's a bit wordy, and could use the help already mentioned. Eliminate what's not needed. But the words are well matched to the mood they create, the setting is set, and for you it's time to be off off and away with it. The tarmac is solid, now let it get off the ground.