There is a forest

fernshirehobbit

fernshirehobbit

Fresh Bread?
Staff member
Knight of the Noble Order
There is a Forest Between the Worlds

this is kind of based on the idea of the Wood Between the Worlds from the Chronicles of Narnia...


Some have wondered what lies deep in the heart of space. Where do time, hydrogen, carbon, and the more obscure elements such as love end? If only youth knew the beauty of their own imaginations; the gift of childhood that lies within their minds and merely waits to be awakened.​
Yet, somewhere, deep in the scope of a child’s imagination lays a forest populated by the greenest of trees and the purest of brooks. It is a place altogether wonderful and yet strangely foreboding. Within this forest is force enough to bring empires into disarray and kindle life within the long lost and dead individuals who have ceased to breath by their own accord.​
Despite its splendor, this wood is often forgotten; forgotten and dissuaded from ever again becoming the joy and life-breath of a child.​
Still, this wood calls to each child by name, though they do not recognize its voice. Remember the feeling of the breeze brushing up against your cheek on a warm summer’s afternoon? That was the voice of the wood. Calling…calling…and whispering.​

A young girl, just newly eight years of age, sat on a park bench in a small suburban park. Off in the distance, a man threw a Frisbee to his great golden dog. She had always wanted a dog but her father had terrible allergies and had requested that she give up on the idea of ever owning one. When she was not glancing up to watch the golden dog and his master, she busied her hands with her psp and hummed to the tune that escaped from her earbuds.​
The yellow dog appeared to be laughing as he flew through the air to catch the Frisbee. He was most probably a mutt that had at least a little bit of retriever in his bloodlines. His master threw the Frisbee again and the dog leapt up to grab it out of the air. Just before his teeth brushed against the plastic edge, he returned his paws to the ground and then ran to where the little girl sat on the bench.​
The dog’s owner called after him but to no avail. With a huff, he followed after the dog and immediately gave an apology. “I am quite sorry; Leo seems to be forgetting his manners.”​
The little girl giggled and the scratched Leo beneath the chin; the dog responded with a profuse thumping of its rear leg. “He is such a beautiful dog!” She exclaimed while removing her earbuds and neatly putting it and her psp into a pile on the bench. “How old is he?”​
“Leo?” the man replied, “oh he is about a year and a half now.” And with that, he returned the dog’s leash to its clip on the collar. “He seems to like you but it is now time for him to go home.”​
“Thank you for letting me pet him.” Said the girl as the man and Leo walked away. She replaced the earbuds to her ears and then started off towards home.​
 
Last edited:
Fernie, after enjoying a small skirmish with you on the A-F thread, I'm sure you will be a good sport about a little entirely constructive criticism.

Perhaps you remember past mentions, in "Marketplace of Technique," of the writing principle "Show, don't tell"? The things you TOLD at the very start of this story, about the forest, look very promising; but could you not try letting the reader discover these things THROUGH the eyes of your viewpoint character?
 
*is excited and honored to be recieving criticism from such a highly respected author:D* Yes, i do remember reading that section of the thread. haha. yes, it was quite a revealing little essay at the begining, no? sorry. its more that i felt like doing just that, write an essay but then turned it into a story. i will try to be less obvious (though i must admit, the next portion isnt to discreet about where it is leading). but, never-the-less, i will remember that for future portions.
_humbly yours,
fernie


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​
“Home” consisted of a large, white two-story house situated in a cul-de-sac. It had a matching white fence that hemmed in the perimeter of the house and yard. It was a very clean yard with neatly shaped hedges, flower-filled beds, and a well groomed lawn. The only thing in the yard was her brother’s bike which she promptly put into the garage.​
The interior of the house was also well groomed. Her mom was fond of the white chic look and had dominated the living room with it. Above the entry way was a candelabra with that white, hairy boa-stuff draped on it. On the floor was a sea of white carpet- a “no shoe zone”. The girl removed her shoes before stepping into the house and stuck them in a basket in the broom closet next to the entranceway.​
Up the stairs and to the left was the girl’s room. On the door was a sign that read “Marci” in a pink, sort of block-letter font. The walls were painted pink and had a border along the top that was full of music notes and, over the paint, hung many posters of popular bands. In one of the room’s corners was Marci’s brand new keyboard.​
Marci plopped herself onto her bed, disorienting the music books that she had placed on it previously. One of them, Disney’s The Lion King, slid of the bed and onto the floor. She gingerly picked it up and stuffed it onto one of her shelves.​
Next to where she stuck the songbook lay her cell phone, blinking franticly in hopes that she would respond to her latest text message. Marci glanced at the screen and, after noticing that it was just Bonnie, chose to ignore it.​
Returning to her bed, she picked up her diary and then sat down on her very pink and fluffy pillow. Next to yesterday’s entry about Marcus, she detailed her experiences with the yellow dog, Leo.​
 
Last edited:
The following morning, Marci awoke to a headache. Wondering if it was some sort of allergies, she went and looked in the mirror. Her eyes were indeed a bit puffy. After changing, she went downstairs to where her family was eating breakfast. Steam wafted up from the stack of waffles that had been placed in the middle of the table. Her place had already been set and, on her plate, a waffle waited patiently to be consumed.​
She quickly sat down and joined in the eating of waffles. Marci noticed that her mom was almost done with her waffles and already in the mode to head off to work. Seizing the moment before her mother had time to rise from her chair; Marci asked her opinion on her suddenly red eyes. Her mother affirmed her conclusion that it was merely seasonal allergies and then headed off for work.​
 
Last edited:
ok, my dear sister, this is how i think i will end up using the jewelry we discussed...


Marci finished breakfast and then headed back up to her room to rest her darkening eyes. After a short nap, she decided to read a book. She picked one of her favorites off the shelf, the Wizard of Oz, and thumbed to where she had left off.​
As she read, her mind kept straying to the golden dog she had seen the day before. He sure was a beauty. Some day she would own a dog just like him.​
After a few pages and daydreaming about the golden dog, Marci lost her appetite for reading. She put the book down and decided to venture outside.​
Some of the neighborhood kids were riding bikes on the sidewalk. Her bike was in the garage. If only she weren’t so introverted; she would love to join them. Alas, making friends had never been easy for Marci. She was shy and often the girl who stood on the outside of the circle. She could make friends; it just took time and often those friends would grow past her and she would again be left searching for a friend.​
She walked past the kids on bikes and walked back to the park where she had seen the golden dog. To her surprise, the golden dog was there, as was its owner. The dog saw her and wagged his tail. She took that to be a “hello”. She smiled and then waived in response. If she didn’t know better, Marci would have thought that the retriever-mix had a mischievous smirk playing upon its jowls.​
In one corner of the park were some old elm trees and a public-use drinking fountain. Near the base of the fountain, Marci saw something twinkling in the morning sunlight. As she moved closer to it, she noticed that it was a locket. Thinking that perhaps an elderly woman had dropped it she picked it up in hopes of returning it. She would show it to her mother when she came home from work and ask her how best to return it. She hoped that whoever had lost it would be offering a reward for its return.​
Walking home, Marci took some time to examine the locket that she had found near the drinking fountain. It smelled heavily of smoke and the front was ornately etched with the head of a lion. The hinges were a little rusted by screeched open when she pulled on the locket’s clasp that held the door shut. The inside of the locket, on one side, had a Victorian picture of a girl and a bird, and on the other, a sheet of glass, behind which was a sort of yellow and green jell. She gently shook the locket and watched as the jell bubbled and swished behind the glass. No matter how much she shook it, the green and the yellow never intermixed. They were as polar opposite oils suspended behind the glass.​
For being an old locket, Marci found it to be rather entertaining. She figured that whoever had lost it must be of some importance to own such a piece of jewelry.​
Though she knew she shouldn’t, Marci quickly undid the small clasp on the chain and refastened it upon her neck. She then reopened the locket to finish her perusal of its insides. Just as soon as she did, a barely audible music began to hum from deep within the locket’s interior.​
 
Ferny, I'm glad you picked this up again. Or to put it in "affectionate fighting" terms---

WHAT have we here? Are you committing BALDFACED AGGRESSION against boredom and mediocrity? What do you mean by this rough handling of the readers, CAPTURING their attention so forcibly? And waging psychological warfare, besides! Here you put us right in the scene with your WICKEDLY lifelike and gripping descriptions of a real-world setting made memorable by your sly use of narrative...and then, just when we've accepted the perception of a high-quality NON-fantasy story, what do you do but set off benign ALARMS in our minds with that booby-trapped phrase, "etched with the head OF A LION!" This onslaught of impressive literary potential is placing YOU in dreadful peril of being swamped with readers clamoring for more, and you'll have ONLY yourself to blame!
 
oh, so you have caught on to my intended references to certan animals? (i figured the one about the Wizard of Oz is a bit more obscure though. ;)
thank you again for all of your comments:D
 
ok, i was having much more difficulty writing this next addition so i would appreciate any comments and will not be afraid to edit this many times till it works and makes sense;)


The tune that was emitted from the locket had a familiar flavor upon the ears but was yet something all together new to her mind. The longer she listened, the shorter it seemed that she had been listening to it at all. Within moments, she found herself yawning and the wind beginning to blow slightly more so than it had been only seconds before. As she her mouth opened to permit another yawnful of oxygen to run into her lungs, something odd began to take place. Within seconds of the next moment, Marci was asleep, as she rapidly began to dissolve and fade out of our world…​
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​
The boy with the peacock feather in his hair kicked at the grass with the toe of his shoe. He was bored. He had done all there is to do in this place long ago and now spent his time dragging his heals around through the grass. No matter how long he looked, he was always alone. Well, not entirely alone, there was Mouse, his rodent. But Mouse wasn’t the same. He tried to hold conversations with Mouse from time to time but Mouse would only reply with disgruntled squeaking. He had found Mouse awhile ago (actually, he had no clue when he found Mouse). Mouse had been stuck in some old muddy puddle a couple of miles south of where he stood, at the moment, churning up the grass with his shoes.​
Mouse was a peculiar fellow (fella? The boy couldn’t tell) that enjoyed, very slowly, following his one other companion around (at least, the boy presumed he enjoyed it). Mouse, the rodent was two-toned. Half of his hair was an off-white color and the other half was a dark chocolate color. But, none of this mattered to Mires who was satisfied just eating whatever fruits fell off of the trees.​
Unlike Mouse, the boy was not satisfied to live such a simple life. And yet, nothing and no one seemed to cater to his satisfaction. He would run or walk or crawl for miles and never seem to be going anywhere. It exhausted his mind.​
After dusting his shoe off, he reached down to pick up Mouse. Mouse wasn’t there. What right did Mouse have to run off like that without even telling him?​
Mouse didn’t intend to leaved the boy behind; he just didn’t realize the boy wasn’t with him. Typically, the boy would just follow him around every which way, and, when he wasn’t following, would carry him around in the satchel on his back.​
In the grass, Mouse found a body, perhaps dead (Mouse didn’t care). Just as he began to sniff it, the body woke up, scaring Mouse half to death.​
Marci had a terrible headache. She rubbed her eyes and then was overcome with a sudden shock. Where was she? Definitely not the park! It was too beautiful and green here to be the park. She figured that whoever was the groundskeeper must not have been paying enough attention to leave the sprinklers on long enough to account for all the puddles that there were.​
She wondered what had happened to cause her to lose track of where she was going. Was she lost? Perhaps whatever illness that had befallen her earlier had affected her eyes as well as her brain.​
Marci then found the little animal that had been sniffing her just before she awoke. It was cute, though, not as cute as the golden dog had been.​
A couple of feet away, Marci saw a boy running towards her. He was yelling “Mouse” while nearly tripping in the puddles and over the tree roots. She thought it odd that he had a chicken feather in his hair.​
The boy threw himself to the ground beside Mouse. “There you are! You had me worried you stupid animal. Oh,” the boy noticed Marci, “where did you come from?”​
“The park,” Marci replied, “but I think I got lost.”​
“Have you been here long?”​
 
Last edited:
i really love the story so far sis! you really have to finish this one.(unlike all the other fantastic stories you never finished):rolleyes:
 
So far, so good. A few spelling errors, like "rubber" where you meant to say "rubbed." Note that, for a change of place and time, a little visible page-break, like this--

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

--helps the reader to understand that there HAS been a scene change.
 
here is some more:


“No,” Marci looked perplexed, “at least I don’t think so.”​
“Good. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t been here very long without my taking notice. If anyone had been here for very long, Mouse and I would have noticed.”​
Marci looked around to see if anyone else was nearby. “Is this ‘Mouse’ a friend of yours?”​
“That’s Mouse!” said the boy as he pointed to Mouse for emphasis.​
“Oh! You mean the guinea pig? That’s a funny name for a guinea pig. Well, my name is Marci.”​
“I don’t know nothing about ‘guinea pigs, but yes, that is Mouse. My name is Beck.”​
Marci couldn’t help but think of the girls’ name ‘Rebecca’ when the boy mentioned his name. She kept this thought it better to keep this thought to herself.​
Beck was slightly disappointed that Marci was a girl. A guy would be far more entertaining. Girls were boring and like to look at themselves in reflective surfaces far too much. At any rate, it was nice to have someone else around.​
“So,” Marci began, “how far away from the park are we?”​
“Park? I have no idea what you are talking about. There is no park for miles around- of that I am certain. All that is nearby is these trees, that ‘guinea pig’, and I, Beck.”​
Wonder and fear suddenly gripped Marci by the shoulder. It was like waking up in a dream to find that you are still dreaming. She pinched herself to see if she was awake. Her arm hurt. Then she realized that her shoes, which had been in a puddle when she woke, were dry. She could see that they were wet, but only on the surface were there water droplets.​
“That’s funny, my shoes have been laying in that puddle for who-knows-how-long and they are barely wet.” Marci mused.​
“That’s not funny at all” was Beck’s response. “Those puddles never soak you.”​
Marci dipped her hand into the puddle. The boy was right. Inside the puddle, her hand was surrounded with water and felt wet. When she drew it from the puddle it was if it dried out immediately and only a few drops remained to prove that she had ever had her hand in the puddle.​
Yet, this was not the only puddle. There were puddles in every direction with scarcely a couple of feet between them. They were not uniform in shape or size but they were all noticeably puddles; there were no rivers or lakes to be seen.​
“So, do you live near here, Beck?”​
“Live near here? I live everywhere near here. I do not have a house; I sleep in whatever dry spot I please.” The look on Beck’s face appeared disinterested in the conversational topic that Marci had addressed.​
“You live here by yourself?” Marci couldn’t believe it. He sounded too much like a story book character and that feather in his hair almost gave him the appearance of one. Now that she thought about it, his whole outfit gave him the appearance of a story book character. He had on a brown tunic and pants the color of rocks when they are wet. He didn’t wear any shoes but that could be because he had taken them off and left them somewhere. He kept his clothes relatively clean and his hair neatly combed.​
 
wow this looks really exciting, keep it up.





(I just hate the fanfics which get you 5 chapters in, and very intrested and then never come back.)
 
Copperfox said:
I had WONDERED if "Mouse" was really one of Uncle Andrew's guinea pigs!
Click to expand...
yup yup. i figured that one would still be there since it doesnt have a green ring lol:p
Telcontargirl said:
wow this looks really exciting, keep it up.





(I just hate the fanfics which get you 5 chapters in, and very intrested and then never come back.)
Click to expand...

thank you!:D:D i will try not to leave after chapter 5 (though, i havent really used chapters to begin with lol)
 
VANESSA!!!!!!! i am unworthy to have you in my thread. though i am glad too:D *hugs*

you dont have too but i would feel honored if you did lol
(continue your story!!!! *commands you*)
 
I watch you closely my dear friend. It's not fair to have you spying and spamming on my thread and I would leave your threads alone?! :p Nah nah young lady...............from now on you will find me on your path........:D
 
yeah. life is less lonely when you know your friends are near:D
and fish, i posted much sooner then i said i would in your pm:p
 
Back
Top