'The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco'
A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.
Really beautiful and evocative, Barb.
The only nitpick I have is this:
"the happy sound of the gently cascading water almost disappearing beneath the equally happy sounds of conversation"
Something about "sound" "disappearing" seems to clash, maybe because sound is auditory and disappearing is a visual term?
Maybe it's just me.
Thanks Wolfram-- I wasn't nuts about "disappearing" either, but I couldn't, in that moment, come up with the right word. I'm hoping a better one comes to me as I polish and tweak.
I couldn't come up with a better word either, or I would have made the suggestion. Besides, I don't have a very large, uh, command-of-lots-of-word-thingie.
almost subsumed?
fading below?
running below?
Oooh... fading. I like that. Something like that at any rate.
Very evocative. Also, now I'm hungry.
What about "the happy sound of the gently cascading water a background to the equally happy sounds of conversation?"
Those winter scenes, filled with snow and bare-limbed trees and length shadows—to me, the only thing they had appeared to represent was death.
The word death bothers me here. That seems strong for a child's memory.
It's long rather than length shadows, but you would have caught that.
Actually, I think I might have meant lengthy
And she's remembering it through the veil of young adulthood as well, not just childhood-- maybe there's a way to make that clearer.
How about this?
Those winter scenes, filled with snow and bare-limbed trees and lengthy shadows—as a child, they'd felt so desolate and lonely. As I'd grown older and learned about the cycle of seasons, more and more, they seemed to represent death. A pretty cover for a world that had to rejuvenate, whereas the paradise where I lived was constantly renewing itself, never allowing itself to fall into such a state.
I like that. "Death" just kind of stopped me before, since the rest sounded like a childhood memory.
Fascinating watching the process of wrestling with something like this. Though you might not believe it from my verbose tendencies I was trained to be over-concise - the fewest words were best. Watching you polish by adding words to make it clearer, and improving the emotional tone as a result. So contrary to the "always cut, never add" that was pounded into my head. And a living demonstration of how wrong it was, at least the extreme version I was taught.