Flightless - A story by Felix

[Felix]

In order to continue this narration, and to tell you of the things which came to pass while my mind was shut off, I must base my words upon a second-hand account of the events, which was later related to me. Keep in mind that if there are any discrepancies, I am not to be blamed.

<^>

After I lost consciousness, Casiel succeeded in releasing my final limb from the Wingeater. At that point there were only two functional poachers remaining in the room; one was trying to convince Morocco that, despite his claims, his ribs were not broken, and the other one was far too fond of consciousness to even consider approaching Casiel. Two men had apparently departed already with a kicking and screaming Emili, and all of the rest who had been involved in the previous fray were either out cold or pretending to be so.

Thus Casiel went unmolested as – with more effort than was reasonable, due to his manacled condition – he maneuvered my limp, bleeding body away from the Wingeater and onto his shoulder. The black-haired girl was mostly revived by then, though she was still a bit groggy from the lingering effects of the shock spear. She looked at Casiel, who now had my blood streaming over his bare chest, and then blinked her eyes rapidly as if trying to shake off a bad dream. Unfortunately, she was still in the middle of a bad dream, which she quickly realized as the room’s door was knocked open and at least thirty men, armed to the teeth, began to stream into the room.

“This way!” Casiel beckoned to the girl, and, as quickly as possible under his burden, crossed to the white door with the red cross. The girl followed instantly.

“Stop them!” Morocco jumped up and bellowed, forgetting all about his alleged rib injury.

“The button, quick!” Casiel urged. There was a green button beside the door and the girl punched it with her bound fists. The door slid sideways into the wall with gratifying speed, and Casiel and the girl dashed through it. There was an identical button on the other side which the girl hit hard, nearly breaking it in her haste. The door slid closed again and sealed just as the advancing poachers were mere inches away. There immediately followed the sound of fists pummeling the door from the other side.

“Find a way to lock it!” Black Hair exclaimed, but the door was already opening again, activated by the men on the other side. Below the green button on our side was a red button. Casiel shouldered it, and the door, less than a third of the way open, immediately stopped and re-closed.

“Phew, that was close,” Black Hair breathed.

We were in a small room containing some operating tables, some beds, and a row of cabinets, no doubt full of medical supplies. Four medics were in the room – the same four who had bandaged and retrieved their first two patients from the Wingeater earlier. They seemed to be oblivious to the upset that had just gone on in the adjacent room, for, upon our entry, they simply stared at Casiel with blank, confused faces. The older man and the brown-haired girl were both lying face-down on beds against the wall. Their wing stubs were wrapped with thick clean bandages, and at the moment they were both apparently under the influence of some kind of sedative.

Casiel walked forward and deposited me on the nearest table. I dropped flat against it like a hunk of meat, splattering red blood across the sterile, white room. “Fix him up,” Casiel instructed the medics.

The closest opened his mouth to protest, but before he could do so, Casiel swiped a surgical knife from a tray and brandished it menacingly at the white-clad man. “Do it.”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy, man.” Without another word, the medics set to work. They cleaned my wound thoroughly, stitched it, and wrapped the whole stub tightly with thick gauze. “He’s suffering blood loss,” one medic explained, “but since we staunched the flow, he should be coming around soon.”

“Excellent,” Casiel said gruffly. During the whole doctoring process, the incessant pounding on the door had continued, but it was only unlockable from our side, and so it remained securely closed.

“Tell me there’s another way out of here,” Casiel said as he once-more managed to get my limp body over his shoulder.

“Just the way you came in,” a medic hesitantly replied. “…unless of course you want to go into the maintenance corridors.” He gestured at a small door at the back of the room, and then tilted his head towards the main door. “What’s going on out there?”

“Where do the maintenance corridors lead?” Casiel demanded.

“Pretty much all throughout the ship, but why would you-“ the medic suddenly realized his slip and his face lightened a shade. “Uh-oh. The Captain will kill me.”

“Thank you for your help, you’ve been wonderful.” Casiel crossed the room and pressed the green button that opened the smaller door. He ducked through, followed by Black Hair, and entered into the airship’s maintenance corridors.

That must have been right about when the second airship attacked.

[Esoteric]

I hate changing stuff once I've written it, which is one of my biggest flaws in writing I think. I don't like going back and changing stuff and renovating the story, even if it improves it in the long run. It's just difficult, once I have an infrastructure already set up for the story, to go back and change things while keeping everything else intact and complete.

I know. I've had to toss out whole scenes--good scenes--because I couldn't make them fit within a new context or plot change. It's painful, but unfortunately necessary sometimes to destroy to 'good' to make way for 'better'.

Though there's a few minor things you might be confused on, because you're not particularly far in the story yet. Let's just say that not all Fliers live above the clouds. You'll find out more about the below-world society later, but I can tell you that Mark and Emili's colony is not a typical Flier colony. I can't really tell you much more than that without spoiling anything, but there are reasons for typical Fliers to speak english and to be somewhat humanized

. Fair enough. The story's just beginning and I'm asking some far-reaching questions. Will wait to see!

Okay, as to the feathers thing, you're absolutely right. It would make more sense for Morocco to just keep them and repeatedly pluck them. I had not even thought of that until after I had already written up through like chapter eight, and again, at that point I was too lazy to try to change things based on that revelation.

It makes more sense, given the current information, but all you need to do is invent a logical reason why he does it that way. For instance, if what he's doing is illegal (and I begin to suspect it is) Maybe, he used to keep and pluck them until his basecamp was discovered and raided. Now, forced to continually evade authorities on his airship, he doesn't have the space to store so many Flier cages, nor the time to wait for their feathers to grow again. So he heinously cuts wings off and dumps the Fliers out now, having become more ruthless and bitter. You can keep cutting wings off...you just have to provide a reason.

Phew, I feel overwhelmed thinking about trying to edit this without destroying the plot I've built so far, but I'll take my best crack at it!

If it's any consolation, I'm currently in the same boat with a novel I started a year ago. Speaking of which...I have a lot of writing to do.

[Felix]

I hear ya. It will be painful, but I'll attempt to do some pruning soon.

It makes more sense, given the current information, but all you need to do is invent a logical reason why he does it that way. For instance, if what he's doing is illegal (and I begin to suspect it is) Maybe, he used to keep and pluck them until his basecamp was discovered and raided. Now, forced to continually evade authorities on his airship, he doesn't have the space to store so many Flier cages, nor the time to wait for their feathers to grow again. So he heinously cuts wings off and dumps the Fliers out now, having become more ruthless and bitter. You can keep cutting wings off...you just have to provide a reason.

Okay goody. I like cutting off wings ^_^ I like your idea. I believe I'll be using something similar to that to work it out. Thanks!

Oh really? If your story posted on here? I'd like to take a gander at it some time.

[Esoteric]

Okay goody. I like cutting off wings ^_^

I'm trying not to take that statement the wrong way and start hiding birds from you.

Oh really? If your story posted on here? I'd like to take a gander at it some time.

No, it's not here. <.< >.> It's too public here for, my precious. Okay so I'm a little paranoid. I'll PM you.

[Maokun]

As much as I'm loving this story, at this point I need to ask you: are you making it up as you go? If that's the case, I encourage you to slow down and invest a lot of time in creating the universe. Most likely you have an idea where you want to take this story and are relentlessly pushing forward, but it's also time to make sure the story grows towards the sides too, so it's not only a thin stem trying to reach colossal heights, but rather a strong, thick, well-knotted trunk of a tree that branches fractally as it ascends.

In other words, flesh out the world where these events are happening. Develop the culture of the winged people. Ask yourself the question of why are there two humanoid races in this world. Research the physics and the nature of this alien world, such as the cause of a thick layer of cloud in the sky. Imagine how was the first encounter of a human and a bird-folk and the events that culminated in the bird-folk being prey of the humans, etc, etc. You get the point.

I say this not because I'm disatisfied with the story. All the opposite: I say it because I believe it has great potential and probably deserves more than being a tale you spin in an internet board. As you develop your world, you'll get new ideas and find the underlying logic that dictates the actions of your characters and the way all the different parts interact and correlate, so you won't end up suddenly trying to make a reason why Morocco bothers with procedures that seem against his bad nature and so on.

In a more specific matter, the paragraph that precedes the relation of the events that Mark knows only from hearsay suffers once again from the problem I commented on before, on the closing of one of the chapters where you break the narration style and we realize we are just listening to a relation of events that happened to the narrator some time in the past. You have two ways out of it:

One, to keep the narrative style you have going, by having Mark wake up when you chose to and listen to the account of the events in "real time" as we do. This one may be problematic if you plan to have Mark K.O. for a good while.

The second would be to give in and change your narration device, so it is clear that we are hearing the tale from an old Marcus. Sometimes that kind of device lends itself for very interesting twists at the end of the story (or at the middle, think Forrest Gump). Moreover, whatever you choose keep it consistent and don't be afraid (or lazy ) about changing what you have already done. Do not think of each chapter finished like satisfactory cast-in-iron parts of your story that you can now let be while you focus in the next. Your whole story is in a continuous state of flux and nothing should be sacred or "finished" until you are done with the whole thing.

[Felix]

Excellent input Maokun! Thank you for that. It gives me a lot to think about, and in fact I had already begun to lean in that direction before I even read this. I have slowed down my forward progress and am going back and doing some editing. I'm also putting a lot of thought into fleshing out the universe and creating reasons for things, and so far I think it's coming along pretty well. Once I work it out, I'll go back and change things so it fits together with the universe a little better, and when I do that, I'll post my updated version in a word format or something, so you all can see that version.

As to the narrative style, I suppose I am sort of going for a retrospective style. Have you ever read Stephen Lawhead's Song of Albion trilogy? He uses a sort of retrospective first person perspective, and I had just finished those books before I started writing this, so I think some of that style bled out into what I was writing. I will try to unify the style so it is all coherent.

Thanks again for your input ^^

[Felix]

Okay. I have done some editing. It isn't perfect, but hopefully it will serve it's purposes for now. I almost totally redid about half of chapters five and six, as well as changed and tweaked some things in other chapters to make it all as cohesive as I could. I'm sure I still missed something or other, but I'm sick of editing and ready to move on, so oh well. I can hopefully fix the other minor things later when I do a major edit after the whole story is done.

Anyway, I can't go back and edit my posts here on CAA so I'm just going to attach a word file that has the updated version of everything I've done so far on the story. This is all of part one of the story (chapters 1-12). I am planning three parts, but there could possibly be four. No matter. Anyway, here's part one, and a list of the major edits I did.

- changed the conversation between Mark and Amyrio to better explain why they have to cut the wings off instead of just plucking them.
- changed Morocco's comment to say that people HAVE tried to escape before
- changed the cage scene to make it to where there's far fewer fliers being held captive in the cages, and the only reason they haven't been dumped overboard yet is because they're being taken to the desert first (more elaboration on that will occur in part two)
- instead of already being there when Mark is brought in, I changed it to where the sick guy and Casiel are actually captured after Mark. I noticed while editing that nobody new gets caught while Mark is aboard the ship, and that's a bit unrealistic when Morocco is running a business here, so I changed that.
-Changed the part where Mark first hears a human speak so that it highlights a sort of speech difference in the humans.
-Oh, big edit that I almost forgot about. I changed 'humans' to 'Arconians' which are basically humans, but that's the official name of them in this story. That will make much more sense later on in the story, so bear with me.

I think that's all the major changes I made. Hope you all enjoy it! And now I'm gonna start work on part two.

[insanewitapen]

*bounces in* Glad you're posting your story here too Dan! There's, obviously, more people here willing to give solid critique. *huggles* Keep it up! I'll try to throw in two cents over at DA once in a while~