Activity

@this-is-not-an-alien,

Okay, critiquing here we come!

So, what I got from this is it’s kind of a bit of a fairy tale (Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, something about a Beast, which I’m not quite sure if that’s the Wolf or Beauty & the Beast beast), but taken to a more… mature level. Red Riding Hood is kneeling by her grandmother’s grave (’cause the wolf ate her grandma in the story). She’s luring/calling to the wolf to get revenge on him, I think.

The climax where she is stepping backward with the “what big ___ you have” is really really good. I have this picture-perfect image of a teenage girl with a red cloak lifting a bow with a red-fletched arrow, aiming at the heart of a gigantic black shadowy wolf as it snows and rose petals blow around. A grave is between them. Very very cool.

Anyway, I think it’ll be easiest for me to critique if I just put your story in here and add my notes in. I went ahead and edited grammatically (although I’m not a grammar queen, so feel free to chuck those) without making notes about it. 🙂

“Wolf!” she called. “Wolf, why did you leave me?!” Her eyes glimmer paleness (is paleness a noun? Maybe palely?) under the lines of her red hood. “Wolf!”

The synthetic Forest is half-glazed with shadow, the trees transparent black and the snow locking summer-flowers in ghostly depth. But there’s red in the Forest, ice-crusted roses in the corners, each flower looking more enchanted than the last. The Beast took the wrong one and look where he is now. (<–What Beast? Is this your protagonist’s thought or an author’s thing? If it’s a thought, you might italicize it and reword it so that’s clear, but if it’s an author’s thought you’ll probably want a bit more detail about who the Beast is and what happened when he picked the wrong flower.) But not her, she must pick the right one and pluck no other.

“Because you’re a wolf doesn’t make you a monster.” (Love that!) The red cloak hides her steel-encrusted body, almost wholly concealing her although the brilliant color (of what?) bounces sharply off the snow-white (snow-white what?). “I believed you were misjudged. Wolf!”

Her hand comes against stone in the snow until she brushes out the rest-in-peace of her grandmother’s grave. A low, vibrating snarl rumbles between the trees. She tenses; her hand drops under her cloak. He looked bigger than she’d every seen him before, drawing the shadow-trees around his fur. Staring up at him she backs a step, beside Grandmother’s grave.

“What big eyes you have…” Red as crimson. Another step back, frozen like the ground. “What big ears you have, what big hands (hands or paws?) you have!” Rose petals red as blood whir in the shivering wind. Another step, her hand under her cloak.

“What big claws you have! What big…” Her breath hitches, her hand locked on the weapon under her cloak. The blood-red eyes of Wolf reflect like terror, like living fear. Thought (who thought?) he was misjudged, not a monster, only someone broken like her. I believed in you. “What big lies you have!”

She twists back the string of the bow, the arrow red as roses as it fires. “And I’m not consumed by them anymore.”

The shadows of the Wolf shake and burst before her. Red eyes are the last thing she sees of him.

“I chose” -she tugs the hood back releasing hair as black as the ebony pane tangled with rose-red locks- “I’m not the victim of the fairytale, I’m the Hunter now.”

The synthetic world faded around her into roses, turning to the next page of the maze. So she wakes up in front of the castle webbed in thorns, the rose still missing (what rose? The one the Beast plucked?). “I’m waking up now.”

 

Anyway, feel free to ignore those comments and stuff. Excellent story!!