posted
They found Domeka flayed and hung between sycamore trees, rotting beneath a musty blaze. Probio wept like a child, so that even his family was half ashamed. With one hand, he pressed the tattoo across his cheek, a bull-calf mewling defiance against a dragon breathing rage. With the other, he reached out, blindly. His cousins shied away. But one, who could not avoid his gaze. Trapped, Janci cut the ritual wound across his palm. Ashamed, Probio's cousins rushed to do the same. Wounds that would not close until healed by the death of their enemies. Domeka, they burned where he was; nobody except Probio would touch the body and he could not bury him alone. Later,
Posts: 30 | Registered: Feb 2011
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posted
I think you have a promising beginning but I found the prose confusing.
quote:They found Domeka flayed and hung between sycamore trees, rotting beneath a musty blaze.
Who or what is rotting? Domeka or the sycamore trees? Also, I found it difficult to picture a 'musty blaze' since 'musty' has to do with dampness, and 'blaze' an intense fire. I feel the description works against itself.
quote: With one hand, he pressed the tattoo across his cheek, a bull-calf mewling defiance against a dragon breathing rage. With the other, he reached out, blindly.
Interrupting Probio's action with what the bull-calf is doing seems like a non sequitur. To me it distracts from the action. Also, given the way it is presented, I can't tell if the 'dragon breathing rage' is figurative language for Probio's emotional state or if it is meant literally and the land has been ravaged by a fire breathing dragon.
quote:But one, who could not avoid his gaze.
I can't tell who the subject is from this sentence fragment.
I suggest the scene be refocused in order to get a better sense of the setting and situation.
[This message has been edited by redux (edited March 20, 2011).]
Who are 'They' in sentence one? Is Domeka a he or a she? - you answer this later (he), but the name sounds like a latin derivitive (-a names typically represent females, and -o names are usually males) What is 'a musty blaze' - a hot day? - he is 'beneath' it. Where on Domeka is the tatoo - and how rotting is he? Is Janci one of the cousins? - this is not clear due the wording of paragraph two. Was Domeka flayed or burnt or both? - Also I believe burnt flesh usually takes longer to rot due to killing off many of the microbes.
Comments:
Some of the sentences within the second and third paragraphs seem disjointed. - "But one, who..." does not have a clear subject and does not have any predicate - the "who" part is a clause. Since this starts a new paragraph - you may wish to identify Janci immediately as the subject and without using "But". - "Wounds that..." becomes confusing to me because the word "wounds" was not used in the previous sentence, but in the one prior to previous sentence. There is no predicate in this sentence either. - "Domeka, they burned..." is one sentence with a semicolon separating an independent clause and a compound sentence. However, none of these clauses seem related enough to be one sentence.
posted
Haven't checked this in a while. Thanks for the comments. To clarify. They, intially, find him flayed. Then they burn the body instead of burying him (hesitant to touch the corpse).
posted
Actually, I liked the opening sentence quite a lot. It wasn't confusing to me, it indicated hot and humid, with a certain putrefaction as well.
The "But one," is confusing, but could simply be replaced by "All but Janci," which would establish the importance of this character, and make him the subject of the second paragraph.
One thing you may consider changing is "half ashamed". To me it reduced the impact of the later shame of his cousins, by making it sound repetitive. Perhaps use embarrassed for the first, instead.
[This message has been edited by Brendan (edited April 12, 2011).]
posted
Thanks Brendan. I had actually already made exactly the changes you suggested! Except, I didn't notice that the family was ashamed, then they were ashamed a second time. Thanks for pointing it out!
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