Ziyu Beta Reading #3
Conversation
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| Pomri cursed the wind and turned away, looking at nothing in particular. | ||
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| Melna tried to persuade her, "Let's give our people some rest for a time. "They've been through a lot." |
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| My silence agreed. | ||
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| There was a certain guilt I carried onto the boat. The kind of guilt that fills your belly with vines, pretangled and on fire. A guilt that made me turn around and look back to the shoreline of Ulukoma as it sank under a patchwork of ice and waves that composed the horizon. I did not long for my nather in particular. Nor for anyone back there. But the waves and the salty air made me miss that home. |
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<3 I especially loved the first line " There was a certain guilt I carried onto the boat."
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| There was a certain guilt I carried onto the boat. The kind of guilt that fills your belly with vines, pretangled and on fire. A guilt that made me turn around and look back to the shoreline of Ulukoma as it sank under a patchwork of ice and waves that composed the horizon. I did not long for my nather in particular. Nor for anyone back there. But the waves and the salty air made me miss that home. | ||
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| Presently, Kipnu came to my mind, then Melna. I imagined them side by side in the water, their eyes open, unmoving. Their spirits reached out, draped in water. They played in our wake, climbed the hull, hung from our paddles. But the gaze turned something inside of me. Those vacant eyes, peering into the void from their pale faces, the water covering them just so. And at once I was among them in that viscous ether-ocean with the bubbles and froth tickling my skin, my body unmoving and my eyes locked in that same vacant stare. |
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wait so is Melna dead or alive?
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| I was annoyed but I didn't take it seriously. She meant well. | ||
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| My eyes wandered off toward the horizon to our right. There were faint signs of life in the distance, the ten thousand lantern boats of Rudjan calling to the north. And to the south, a towering shadow, darker than the dusk that hung everywhere else, hanging still in the twilight above where Heiko center should be. |
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| "When I heard the explosions... paddling my heart out in the thick fog... All I could think of... was Melna. Nothing else... Nothing else mattered to me in that moment." | ||
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| My mind recalled the moment she spoke of. I knew Melna had accomplished her goal. I knew that she wouldn't have had it any other way. But I thought of no one but Laen-Laen. |
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But I thought of no one but Laen-Laen.
awwwww 🐴
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| "Aye. I'm coming," I said. | ||
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| Before I could set foot on the ground, I heard movement: footsteps on pebbles echoing from every wall. I stopped in my tracks to listen. They weren't deliberate and quick like a bandit or an assassin – more uncontrolled, and barely hanging on. Pomri was equally startled and moved closer to hold me back. With a swift gesture, she held her hand out in front of my mouth mouth, a command to stay quiet. |
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They weren't deliberate and quick like a bandit or an assassin – more uncontrolled, and barely hanging on.
How often does Linyu come into contact with either a bandit or assassin?
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| Once she was close enough, Pomri spoke up, "We don't mean any-," but before she could finish, the person in the dark had found Pomri and held a long wooden pole to her chest. She took a step back and tried to force the pole away, but it had disappeared into the darkness as the shadow fled back toward the saffas. I ran after, evading Pomri's hands and protests not to go. _This isn't an enemy, It can't be._ | ||
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| The stranger passed between the saffas, and out of the cove where the remaining Ara-light shone against hae back. I was aghast at hae feeble figure, hydroderm swollen with cold and sunken with hunger. But before I could reach hae, one of the saffas had turned and picked hae up, while the other stood ground guarding their getaway. Through the growling and shuffling of feet, I heard a sound I'd not expected to hear: the ringing jingles of a binding pendant as it rocked this way and that around the saffa's neck. And then I saw him – the thick fur and the big ears and the myriad different mannerisms that were unmistakable for anyone else but my best friend. |
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hydroderm swollen with cold and sunken with hunger.
swollen and sunken are contradictory
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| The stranger passed between the saffas, and out of the cove where the remaining Ara-light shone against hae back. I was aghast at hae feeble figure, hydroderm swollen with cold and sunken with hunger. But before I could reach hae, one of the saffas had turned and picked hae up, while the other stood ground guarding their getaway. Through the growling and shuffling of feet, I heard a sound I'd not expected to hear: the ringing jingles of a binding pendant as it rocked this way and that around the saffa's neck. And then I saw him – the thick fur and the big ears and the myriad different mannerisms that were unmistakable for anyone else but my best friend. | ||
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| "Laen! You're alive!" |
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yaya!!!! this is the happiest moment of the whole book! Laen Laen is not smitterrens. 🐴👧
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| "You hungry?" | ||
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| He wasn't, but he took it gently out of respect and placed it on his left paw for later. |
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what? equesss creatures can't really hold things in the paws. what happens when they walk? do they just stomp on it?
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| "WoOoo," he said in a grateful tone. | ||
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| I found the spot on his back where he loved to be scratched and ran my fingers through his fur. His reflexes shook him with satisfaction. Then I stopped and laid my head and hands against him and he rested his head on the ground and tilted it to the side to better hear me. |
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His reflexes shook him with satisfaction.
No particular reason to be passive here. Make LL the subject. "He reflexively shook with satisfaction."
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| "Coming!" | ||
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| "I love you Laen," I said solemnly to him before I left. |
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| ## Chapter 25 | ||
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| The rubble was everywhere. I would never have believed that something so simple could haunt me as much as that path toward Ara. Everywhere we walked, our journey was punctuated with sharp edges and unstable footing. We could barely see our feet but for the faintly ambient glow of Ara bouncing through the neverending cloud of dust, and the small lantern that Pomri had to continuously wipe clean. I was glad of her foresight. |
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wait so did the blast the obscura?
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| ## Chapter 25 | ||
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| The rubble was everywhere. I would never have believed that something so simple could haunt me as much as that path toward Ara. Everywhere we walked, our journey was punctuated with sharp edges and unstable footing. We could barely see our feet but for the faintly ambient glow of Ara bouncing through the neverending cloud of dust, and the small lantern that Pomri had to continuously wipe clean. I was glad of her foresight. |
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So there was a film I saw ages ago, it feature the bombing of Nagasaki. I forgot what it's called, but I highly recommend you watch it. Don't eat before, you might lose some food.
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| Suddenly I saw Pomri in the light of danger. I tried to imagine her killing someone and failed. But somehow the way she said it was believable. In a subtle way, too subtle for me to be aware, my muscles began to tense. | ||
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| Pomri explained, "A merchant. Thi wasn't a criminal by the word of the law, but thi knew how to use peoples' consciousness against each other. Thi sowed seeds of hatred amongst the merchant guild to harvest them for her own personal gain, and quickly became the most wealthy trader in Rudjan by far. The government recognized what was happening, but refused to do anything about it. They were probably getting a cut too, petty cowards." |
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| Pomri explained, "A merchant. Thi wasn't a criminal by the word of the law, but thi knew how to use peoples' consciousness against each other. Thi sowed seeds of hatred amongst the merchant guild to harvest them for her own personal gain, and quickly became the most wealthy trader in Rudjan by far. The government recognized what was happening, but refused to do anything about it. They were probably getting a cut too, petty cowards." | |
| Pomri explained, "A merchant. Thi wasn't a criminal by the word of the law, but thi knew how to use peoples' consciousness against each other. Thi sowed seeds of hatred amongst the merchant guild to harvest them for hae own personal gain, and quickly became the most wealthy trader in Rudjan by far. The government recognized what was happening, but refused to do anything about it. They were probably getting a cut too, petty cowards." |
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| "Do you regret it?" | ||
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| "No. Thi was a menace to Rudjan. Our city would be reduced to a corporate puppet if we let hae continue." |
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Does this planet even have the concept of corporations?
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| "End? Wouldn't the road end in..." | ||
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| But the obvious answer came to me. I had imagined it as an explosion, a big fireball followed by a massive plume of smoke. But this was a giant chunk of metal, a spear the size of a ship, and it was falling – straight down, from far above the sky. I imagined its speed: faster than a train or a saffa, faster than I've ever seen anything move. I imagined it boring through the center of Palinan and coming out the other side. _It couldn't do that... right?_ |
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lol if that happened the entire planet is doomed.
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Oh there's this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMMKFpuOmwY
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| "We're here for confirmation. To pay our respects and provide closure for the people who left loved ones behind. Nothing more." | ||
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| I wanted to cry, but I had come to despise the wastefulness of tears. |
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oh yea, no need to get dehydrated for no reason
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| I wanted to cry, but I had come to despise the wastefulness of tears. | ||
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| We followed the crater edge toward the harbor, making a note of its size by tracking our paces from the long road to the Ulu road. The immensity of the crater was unsettling. If not for the dust, an absence the size of a city may have paralyzed me. But Pomri kept me going. And I wondered what kept her. |
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isn't ulu an island on the other side of the planet?
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| We followed the crater edge toward the harbor, making a note of its size by tracking our paces from the long road to the Ulu road. The immensity of the crater was unsettling. If not for the dust, an absence the size of a city may have paralyzed me. But Pomri kept me going. And I wondered what kept her. | ||
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| This place seemed so alien to me, even though I had been there just a day before. I struggled to understand even the minute parts of it: why were the rocks so jagged and the dust so incessant? were there others like Jathi, living only to die slowly? But I knew that if I asked she would say _"Oi, kaln. Now is not the time."_. So I did what my mother taught me to do once. I closed my eyes and saw myself through the dust from above, weaving perception together with inference to hold all of Heiko in my awareness. I saw it as I understood it – in the absence of sight, I could paint the image of my world on my mind. I saw a deep hole; as deep as the tallest tree is tall. A sword falling from the sky, turning the earth into dust, pushing it out in every direction. It was the concrete of their homes, the boulders upon which they built, cracked and heated and pulverized into trillions of rocks and pebbles and specks of dust. We were but a ship of the living making our way across an ocean of the dead. |
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ok so Linyu can't see, so many descriptions in the part said otherwise.
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| She made a turn toward the water, bounding down the outside of the crater as if to notice something specific. Her steps were deliberate and painfully blind. But with great patience, she navigated through the rubble of steel and rock and made it to the waterline. | ||
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| Into the frigid water she stepped and waded out until it covered her legs and wetted her waist. Ahead of her, the stub of a wooden column pointed toward the sky where the pier used to be, its proud top severed and washed away. Alone it stood as the last of its kind. She let her hands and head rest softly against its side, and spoke to an old friend she'd lost too soon. |
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this is well written, wouldn't say tear-inducing.
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| I knealt near Pomri a while with my hand on her back, imagining the kind of man he might have been, who he might have loved. I didn't know Jathi, but Pomri seemed to hold him in high regard. | ||
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| "There is no justice to deliver," she said under her breath. "No greater good that could ever make this right." |
| "And then he rises?" | ||
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| "And then he rises." | ||
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And then he rises.
Is a common phrase used in vampyric lore. I can't help laughing here, not sure if those words were intentional.
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| "Oil of Anomin. It's a thick oil from the bran of anomin grains. We use it to lubricate machines, and to do this..." | ||
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| With a firestarter just above the oil pool of her lantern, she lit the flame again and the area around her was instantly illuminated. Shadows of kanosin blue and a firey red were cast against the wood of the table and the floor, reflected on the water of her skin, swallowed by the deep black of the painted wall. |
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Shadows of kanosin blue and a firey red were cast against the wood of the table and the floor, reflected on the water of her skin, swallowed by the deep black of the painted wall.
I like the imagery this conjures up
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| I groaned in agony. She took a moment to glance at me, as if to hurry me without words. | ||
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| "Sorry, o supreme leader, but your nap will have to wait." |
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lols kylo ren. this chapter keeps on reminding me of a bunch of unrelated things.
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| -Jathi | ||
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| (No time to clean the lenses) |
| Two tova-na ago, I measured it again. The ultraviolet emission of Ara is increasing while infrared decreases, noting a shift in temperature toward a hotter star. The surface area of the obscura continues to grow linearly as well. I have no doubt that the two are linked. | ||
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| I took your advice and devised a projection of what would happen to Ara if the obscura is actually a sphere instead of the disc that the Holragi observers seem to report. Your hypothesis that the stellar wind pressure would rise exponentially was correct, but the time scale is staggering. It would take many ka'tova for the temperature to rise high enough. I am just an apprentice observer, and certainly am no engineer, but I believ that there is a point at which the obscura can no longer hold itself together and it will break. The exact timing of this depends on how the obscura is constructed, but once this happens, it will send the obscura hurtling away from Ara at an unimaginable speed. And without a doubt, this would send a flurry of radiation to Palinan. | ||
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The exact timing of this depends on how the obscura is constructed, but once this happens, it will send the obscura hurtling away from Ara at an unimaginable speed. And without a doubt, this would send a flurry of radiation to Palinan.
Our people are resilient, but we're talking a hundred lifetimes (give or take about twenty)... nothing could last that long without Ara.
What? that seems contradictory.
| (Godspeed, Liffa) | ||
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| "4.11.6. Ulukoma - Ulu Lao 2-ka" I said aloud as I wrote on my arm. "You are not forgotten, Liffa. I'm coming for you." |
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it will be so sad for Liffa to come home with Melna dead and Kipnu missing
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| "You... can't die?" | ||
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| "It is an illness, and I would rather be rid of it. I fear life, for life means another death is coming." |
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| "Full of fear," I replied. | ||
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| "And of love. You cared for Melna. And you care for Pomri. More than you care for yourself. But you are conflicted. You have his eyes. Cunning, determined. You see the flow of old and new, a vast continuum upon which life wanders. You will be a great leader someday, in a time long from now, where everything old has been lost, and make room for the new." |
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You see the flow of old and new, a vast continuum upon which life wanders. You will be a great leader someday, in a time long from now, where everything old has been lost, and make room for the new.
lols this sounds like a tarot reading
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| "The visions?" | ||
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| Thi nodded. As thi walked closer, I could see the faint speckles growing in magnitude and number. I understood then how thi came to never die. That kanosin seemed to be growing inside of hae somehow. I came to hae and gestured on hae skin toward the kelp bandage on hae wound. |
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Is this also what happened to Linyu too?
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| "Rudjan," thi said, "That's the only place we'll be able to find them." | ||
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| I imagined the impenetrable walls of Rudjan. How they filled out into the ocean to divide the throngia from the saffas and tilmarims; at least that's what Pomri had told me. |
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What are throngia and tilmarims? It's too late into the story to be introducing new things.
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I think part of the reason why I say it is because typically writers set a majority of their world-building by a little past midpoint. This will give the detective-readers all the tools to solve the problem. So the majority of the books will normally never introduce new things this late in the story. This is why users feel cheated with deus ex machina solutions because it added an extra player they didn't account for when they gather their tools to solve the problem.
This might not be relevant to what you are doing here with these new words. But it definitely raised alarm bells instinctually for me because we had been delivered stories to us that when it breaks those rules, it stands out. Most readers will just think it feels wrong, and they can't put their finger on why.
| Annu continued, "That name: Ginnu. It's what Ramne called me, but it's not who I am. My name is Annu." | ||
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| "Annu... I won't forget it," thi said solemnly. "Annu and Linyu. Mamen of the dark." | ||
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So the message of this entire story: the people who are nurturing are the best of 'em all!
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| "We did. It struck the fear in our bones, that another blast might be coming." Thi knealt to my level. "You know what it was?" | ||
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| "Liffa," I said, "The great space pioneer. And Melna's bundmaman." |
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| "That's the old Ulukoma. We don't do that anymore." | ||
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| "Yet still you benefit from their labor." |
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These few lines are hipster satire
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| "A palace, eh? And I presume that's the place Annu was talking about?" | ||
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| Annu and I both nodded, our minds synchronized to the mission. Thi thought some more, looking into hae mind with closed eyes and long definite breaths, much the same way my mother taught me to look into the future. Thi opened hae eyes after a tedious pause, bowed to us, and turned toward hae boat. |
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our minds synchronized to the mission. Thi thought some more, looking into hae mind with closed eyes and long definite breaths,
Wait can they do that? Who is the actor in this paragraph? Confused
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| "Like antikan." | ||
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| My face flushed at the memory of my mother. _This is what thi would have done_. |
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| My face flushed at the memory of my mother. _This is what thi would have done_. | |
| My face flushed at the memory of my mother. _This is what she would have done_. |
| I was furious, but I wouldn't him know that. Anger only made him happy. | ||
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| "After you, father." | ||
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overall reaction to this chapter was meh. it shouldn't be the emotion your penultimate chapter drives out from the reader.
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| I yelled to Annu, "It's time." | ||
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| Thi nodded and bellowed to the crowd "To Ulu! Run to Ulu!" |
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wait aren't they already in ulu?
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i think you need to do more of that thing you do really well. set the scene, so readers know where they are.
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| "No, no," thi sobbed deeply into my shoulder. "Everyone... I'm sending them all to die." | ||
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| I paused my speech to take in her meaning, still running toward the shore. It was something I knew but had never acknowledged. Annu's responsibility encompassed the future of our species. Every one of us would die here. This was an end. The people that inhabit our bodies in a hundred lifetimes may forget about everything they used to be. They would move along the path of time unaware of the memories we used to share, the places we used to dwell, the people we used to love. Or perhaps we _would_ remember, and continue our quarrels until we wiped each other out again. |
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The people that inhabit our bodies in a hundred lifetimes may forget about everything they used to be. They would move along the path of time unaware of the memories we used to share, the places we used to dwell, the people we used to love. Or perhaps we would remember, and continue our quarrels until we wiped each other out again.
<3
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