two is company

A short writing exercise exploring indirect story telling.

24 June - Lost my journals today. A fire had started in the Rotunda while I was walking on the beach. Smelled the smoke soon enough to save most of the Library, but all of my personal accounts were lost. Picked up a fresh book and opened to page one. I know it will not matter much, as it is doubtful anyone will ever read this. But I write for myself, I think. It is like the experiments I run, in the office. To see if I might understand this place. The Island provides everything I need; food, water, clothes, materials. The Cornucopia refills daily, always at 23:35:07 exactly! I write here all these things I already know, as now, with the destruction of my journals, this page will be my first piece of work to look back on years from now. To archive what I know of the secrets of the Island. I want to continue to make such notes daily, though I truly doubt what I write will ever prove any true usefulness to me. Nevertheless, as long and the Cornucopia provides fresh ink and nubs every afternoon, I write.

I suppose it would do well to tell what I know of this place. Since as long as I can remember, I have lived here on this Island, in a place whose name remains a mystery to me. Although I know the language that I speak (and moreover, know that what i speak is, in fact, a language, and possess the inclination that on other islands, far away from mine, there may be tongues different from mine), I have absolutely no recollection as to how or when I learned the words which so effortlessly pour from my mouth. Not only this, but when finding new things which I previously have had no experience with, I know instantly what word fits it, despite never having conceived or exercised that word myself. An example of this was a few months ago, when I woke up on the beach one morning to discover that little droplets of sea spray were falling down and striking me. They were not salty, instead they tasted pure like the water which materializes in the glass pitcher of the Cornucopia. Myself, having never experienced this phenomena before (that I can remember), knew at once the word which encompassed the concept perfectly: “rain”. Additionally, I remember feeling that it was not dangerous like the needles that fall but that it was a wholesome thing. I enjoyed the rain. It has not come again since that time.

I remember from my early days in this place that I would comb the Island incessantly, first making simple maps showing the building, then maps drawn to scale, then maps detailing the topography and gradient. I have calculated that the island is 55 metres wide at its thinnest point and runs a length of 89 metres shore to shore. There are several buildings here whose origins, like everything else on the island, are a mystery. As mentioned earlier, there is a small torus-shaped building in the center of the island, its walls made from completely solid limestone. I call it the Rotunda. The building’s interior is perhaps the most puzzling thing on the island: rococo style, with many antique armchairs and sofas and woven rugs with intricate designs. The walls are painted a light egg blue and are adorned with exactly 144 elliptical mirrors with identical gold-plated frames, wrapping around the inner and outer walls of the Rotunda’s chambers. The ceilings show curling silver and yellow leaves forming oblong circles, adorned with lavish webs of goldenrod carvings. There are two doors: one that leads in from the outside, and one that leads into the courtyard.

In the courtyard, there grow a few small saplings with red, five-pointed leaves. A short lawn of blue-green grass fills the space between the tiled paths leading to the Fountain. It is a pool of marble construction, with a 5 metre tall figure in the middle, from whose mouth falls streams of water. The figure resembles me yet, then again, does not. It is like me, but different. I do not spend much of the daytime in the courtyard. I usually work in the Office.

The Office is connected with the Rotunda through a short hallway. A grand mahogany desk with a large oxblood armchair arranged behind it. To my immediate right, runs a long slate table on which are organized an array of chemistry equipment: a Bunsen burner, a couple flasks, beakers, troughs, and an assortment of various powders and fluids of many elements and compounds. Samples of the falling needles and the mark of the fountain's figure lie to the side. Many textbooks and formal papers on the natural and physical sciences are kept in neat stacks. Here is where I work.

In my time here, I have dedicated a large portion of my time to the solving of the unavoidable questions of my situation: what place is this? Where am I now? I have tried in vain to craft a boat or raft to escape into the sea or even swim a little distance beyond the shore. Though the water gently laps onto the beaches, once the sea reaches waist height, I find that beneath the surface are such terrible riptides that force me back every time I wade in the shallows. I have since come to realize that escape is an impossibility, and have thus set myself to the laboratory equipment to decipher the great enigma. Through a rigorous regime of testing I have discover many quaint and interesting facts about the nature of the Island, the ones of foremost importance being the following:

1) The peachy-pale soil found on the Island is made of layers upon layers of flat microscopic specks of a watery Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, and Oxygen composite.

2) Any attempts to dig into the soil deeper than 50 centrimetres yields a spurting, blackish-red water to fill up the hole and prevents furthur progress. After further analysis in the office, this water has shown to contain significant amounts of iron oxide, which I am led to believe is the cause of its colour.

3) The brown "grass" growing in a patch at one end of he Island is not grass at all. After investigation, I have found that its cells neither contain chlorophyll nor have the cellular structure of plants. The shoots prove most difficult to extract from the ground as they seem to run quite deep. Upon extraction, instead of roots, they have a pale bulb-like base. Recently, I have found a few of the stalks to have turned grey.

There I must hold. It is nearly time. 23:35:07 approaches! Wouldn't want to miss that. Shouldn't. Can't. Now I return to the garden. Such a lovely fountain. The figure looks different, its scaly blue hide turned an opaque green. Reaching out and pulling the tentacle feelers on its chest, the hidden door pops open at my feet. Down, down the stairs, the spiral illuminated with glowing orbs of ruby-red light. I reach the bottom; the Altar is before me. I stand before the Cornucopia, and await its quarry. I hear the stifled weeping. The fetus appears, bleeding from the eyes. I grasp it by the thick hair that runs from its skull down beyond its toes. I lay it on the Altar and tear open the chest with the tips of my fingernails, peeling away the skin and twig-sized ribs to get to the hearts. I grab the three of them: yellow, pulsating, speaking to me, begging me to let them remain inside, to grow into one such as me. But another voice speaks louder. Kr'vb'knih reminds me that I must complete his sacrifice or else lose the Island forever. I raise the hearts above my head and drop them into my mouth. A great trembling is heard above. The needles. They fall down, crashing into the island, sinking deep in the ground and making the red water come out. The ground rotates under me and forces me down. The Island keels over 90 degrees, my side inundated by the ocean, giving show to the face on the bottom, screaming and writhing in pain. Blood gushes out of the nostrils and mouth. I can barely hold on to the floor as I am in fear of losing my grip and falling down towards what was once the ceiling of the cavern. The gigantic face gives one last cry, then his eyes roll back and the Island comes down. I look over to the Cornucopia. Food, water, ink, soap, tools, and many other oddities tumble out. It is done. It is best that this thing is done quickly, for the Aelder God can barely tolerate my presence on the Island by my lonesome. To suffer an unborn half-breed summoned from the Dying Lands is too much to ask of her. Two is company.

Author's Note

Yes, I am acutely aware of the uncanny similarities the setting has with a location in a certain other work of fiction. This is just a writing exercise, no plans to expand on it or publish.

Reviews

[Sir_Lansonlot]

So first, the good stuff. Your voice is nice, you seem to have a strong command over the language. You did a fairly decent job of letting me get into the head of the protagonist even though he/she is still extremely underdeveloped. Your diction seems to correlate with the analytic/scientific mind of the protagonist. Makes me think that he/she was a scientist who found this island and then got amnesia or something and is now trying to pick up the pieces. The imagery was sound. I didn't have any problems with this work until the last paragraph...

Now for the bad.

I am just at a complete lost as to what actually happens in the final paragraph. Words are used with little to no context and I found myself re-reading the work because I thought "surely there must be a reference to these names/occurrences earlier in the piece," but I couldn't find anything. I'm going to go line by line with my questions as they came up while I was reading them.

"Tentacle feelers on it's chest" What? It's a statue, right? I mean I get that its a fountain and that it resembles the protagonist, but it has tentacle feelers? Is the protagonist not humanoid?

"The hidden door pops open at my feet" So the protagonist hasn't done this before? It's a surprise that this is happening? Why else would you describe the door as "hidden." How did the protagonist know to do this before hand?

"and await its quarry." Quarry only has two definitions. One of them is a rocky outcrop usually used for mining and whatnot (probably not what you were going for). And the other is a hunting term used for prey. But the way you use it is that you say that the fetus is the Cornucopia's quarry, but that doesn't make any sense because its the protagonist who kills/hunts the fetus everyday. So it would be his/her quarry, not the Cornucopia's and even still the word doesn't really fit what is occurring here because he isn't hunting this entity like its a duck or something. He is merely sacrificing it.

"the fetus appears, bleeding from the eyes" LOL it just appears? It doesn't come out of somewhere? it just materializes out of thin air? Why is it bleeding? What in the world is going on here? I have so many questions.

"Kr'vb'knh reminds me" ...? It's generally a bad idea to throw in new characters/entities in the last paragraph with absolutely no context. As a reader, I just want to know what is going on and you've taken that away from me with this final paragraph.

"The ground rotates under me and forces me down." What are you trying to say here? From these words alone I can't visualize what is actually happening to the island and to the protagonist. Is the entire island turning upside down? If that was the case, wouldn't the protagonist fall from the floor to the ceiling?

"The island keels over 90 degrees." This information should have came before the sentence before it, yet I am still not entirely sure what is happening. Islands are connected to the shelve of the earth's crust. They don't just float on top the water. So you can't really turn an island without turning the entire world. I get that this is a fictional world where things don't have to make sense, but the island seems pretty normal besides a few strange anomalies.

"My side inundated by the ocean, giving show to the face on the bottom." Ok, first of all, if the protagonist had the weight of the ocean hit his side in the way you are describing it - he would have been crushed instantaneously by the pressure. Also, I am having an extremely hard time visualizing where the water is coming from. Wouldn't the entire hidden area be submerged underwater? Wouldn't the protagonist have drowned from this? Secondly, what exactly is this giving show to? What face? What are you talking about?

"Blood gushes out of the nostrils and mouth." The nostrils and mouth of WHO? The statue? The protagonist? The fetus thing? What?! And why? Why is blood gushing out of anything? Who got hurt?

After this point I am completely lost. I have no idea who this Aelder God is or where he is. I have no idea what the protagonist was trying to accomplish. I have no idea if he/she even succeeded. Everything else in the story seems to have nothing to do with what is happening in the last paragraph. Its ok for your reader to have questions and to be unsure about some things in the narrative, but I found myself completely and utterly confused.

Finally, I would just like to say that I couldn't really get a message out of this. What were you trying to say thematically with this piece? What was the symbolism pertinent to? Looking forward to more!

[Gwynplaine]

Sir_Lansonlot: Thank you so much for such a thorough review! While I posted this piece mainly to get something in my portfolio and wrote the last paragraph (admittedly) to end the piece so I could go to bed, you mentioned a lot of specific shortcomings that I wasn't aware of at the time of posting. I especially take your suggestions on both describing action ans diction to heart. I may make changes ending of the piece, or not, as it was more for exercise and I would like to spend what little writing time I have on projects that have a bit more potential. Let me know if you would ever like a piece reviewed; I would be happy to do the favor.

[Gwynplaine]

^please pardon my spelling

[Sir_Lansonlot]

The pleasure is all mine! I really enjoyed this work so I don't mind reviewing at all. I saw that this was just practice for you and I must say that for practice, this was very good! I would love to see some of your work where you spend as much time as possible! As for reviewing any of my stuff, unfortunately no one has reviewed a single piece of mine! If you would like to tear any of my stuff to pieces, feel free! I have no preference on which you choose - just be sure to tell me what you hated and that's all I want :) Cheers.

[Sir_Lansonlot]

Also, I just want to apologize if I came off as rude or full of myself. Trust me, I meant no ill-will in any of my comments - I just like to provide criticisms wherever possible since, after all, we are here to get better right? That being said, I may just be really stupid so you should take what I say with a grain of salt.

[Gwynplaine]

Oh, don't worry about that. The ending was a total cop-out, I know. I just wanted to stick in some ending on the piece so could get it out there. Also, I'll be sure to review some of your writing soon.