by Skiller » Fri Feb 14, 2025 9:32 am
Username: Skiller
Any specific feedback you want?: Is there anything in the reading that confused you? Can you 'see' the scene as it plays out or did something surprise you? What do you think of Zara (what does she fear, want, hate, etc.)? What do you think you Elder Emmet (what does he fear, want, hate, etc.)?
If possible, I'd also love to have a short summary of the reading in your own words. Tell me what you saw the characters doing, how you saw the scene, and what questions/intruge you have for the rest of the story.
Thank you, Kite!
Writing piece:
(Context: the characters are wolves living in human-made buildings.) This is an excerpt from Ch.2 of my manuscript:
Zara chewed at a knot of fur under her elbow as she sat alone, waiting in the damp meeting room of the castle. Between massive stained-glass windows, a series of frayed tapestries clung to damp stone walls. Mold had taken over the tapestries’ purple fibers, turning them brown and giving them an awful stench. Zara could not smell it. She did not hear the thunder as it rattled the glass in its panes, nor did she see the lightning as it sparked outside. Her mind was elsewhere.
Through a massive wooden door, Elder Emmet crept into the room. His voice echoed like thunder when he spoke. “Queen Zara. A terrible evening to have a meeting, isn’t it?”
Zara clutched her wings to her back to hide them. “Why are you here?”
“The weather befits your mood, it seems,” Elder Emmet muttered. He slunk past the shadow cast between one of the stained-glass windows and let his iris catch the tinted light. It glowed a strange red color, reminding Zara of rotten rose petals. Lightning struck outside, but Elder Emmet kept his eye locked onto Zara. “The hunting chief,” he tightened his jaw as if the words pained him, “has fallen ill. He appointed me to attend this meeting in his place.”
“Then the meeting will be postponed,” Zara growled. Elder Emmet most certainly had other reasons for coming to see her. She sprung up from her chair, but too quickly for her age. The blood rushed from her head. Her body went sideways.
Elder Emmet dashed to Zara’s side. She fell onto him, though she would have rather hit the floor. Her wing brushed Elder Emmet’s back, and he wagged his tail like a young pup. “Be careful, Zara,” he said, smiling. “You might injure these wings.”
Zara stumbled away from Elder Emmet and tucked her wings so tight they seemed a shell on her back. “That is none of your business,” she said. She watched him admire her silver feathers and her hackles prickled. “None of this is your business! Akira is the hunting chief. He should have crawled here himself.”
“A famine is brewing, Zara. To set this meeting aside- do you want the pack to starve?” Thunder roared outside and Elder Emmet blocked Zara’s way. He held his head low. “I lost the hierarchy competition. If either of us is to be sour, it should be me.”
“Don’t pretend you came here for that,” Zara snarled, poking Elder Emmet in the ribs. “I know you, Emmet. You came here to see me- to see just how destroyed I am.”
“Did I really?” Elder Emmet asked, running his paw down one of Zara’s tattered silver feathers. Zara flinched. He whispered now, still stroking her feathers, and it seemed his words were meant for her wings. “As the alpha of the wolf pack, your priority should be the wolves below you. Those guardian angel wings of yours are there for a reason.”
“I made it clear who my priority is!” Zara hissed, throwing her wing to the beamed ceiling. Elder Emmet watched her wing go up. Feathers spread like an open hand. “If you had stayed after the hierarchy competition was over, you would have known that. But the shame of defeat got to you, didn’t it?”
Elder Emmet leaped up and snatched Zara’s wing in his teeth like a viper. She lurched away, too late, and a mouthful of feathers were plucked out. “I have not been defeated, Zara,” he slurred, crushing the plumes in his teeth. Zara’s stomach flipped. “There is no time to waste on shame.” To Zara’s horror, Elder Emmet swallowed the whole mouthful.
Please do not post this excerpt elsewhere, thank you!
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