Thank you. I really appreciate your review. I am glad that you pointed it out the word “thin” used twice. I will be posting a new version of this chapter and another chapter soon.
Romance / In My Pastlife/Prologue (Analysis)
Prologue: The Shades of Night
The wind is cold and harsh against her frail body. The only light that shines on her snow path is that of the moon. Her bare feet, which are now cut and pale, stagger over the rugged terrain. Her ghostly pale face bears no expression and hides the thoughts of her mind. Thin arms shiver under a thin white shawl. Her ripped tan dress drapes over her body loosely. Her concentration was on the half hearted necklace she wore around her neck. The necklace is nothing, she chants over and over to herself. The dangling necklace holds all the secrets to her past and future. The winds carry the whisper of her name over the England plains. Aleesaha, it whispers. She had to get away and that was all that mattered at that point in time.
The last time she stopped she was in Sussex but she didn’t know how many miles she had left on her journey. All she knew was that she had to get away from him. She had to get away before she suffered more. She can only imagine now how he was reacting to all of this. He was probably bragging to his friends now about how she foolishly fell in to his trap of lies. They were probably toasting to her embarrassment and feasting on her shame, knowing that she had fled far away. “What a fool I was to believe him!” she scolded herself. The soft crunch of snow behind her hints someone’s presence, but she dare not look. His heavy panting confirms her suspicions. The winds get stronger know. Aleesha, Aleesha, the wind cries out violently. She is shivering like crazy.
She can still remember him yelling out to her. “Get back here”. She sees him in her nightmares at night and in her thoughts all the time. In her last nightmare she saw him sitting upon a black horse wearing the smeared blood of her love. “I will find you”, he says “And when I do you shall marry me and be mine”. She always tries to run but she falls down and is unable to get up. I pray that God stops the storm and leads me safe on my journey, she thought. There was a sense of yearning that reached deep within her heart. Not the warm heat of a fireplace or a meal and not clean clothes or the comfort of a warm cozy bed. She wanted her love that left her years ago.
“Aleesha please stop!” a man’s voice cries.
She couldn’t stop to look behind her. She couldn’t even recognize the man just by his voice. So she walked without saying or thinking of her feelings. She was tried of negotiations, tired of crying, tired of bruises, tired of the hurting inside and out. If only the man knew what she went through for two years?
“Aleesha!” he yells fading away behind the winds.
“Leave me alone!” she screams with her horse shaken voice.
Turning to make eye contact with the pleading man, she finds that her imagination has gotten the best of her. No one is behind her and only the voice heard is her name carried along with the now whipping blizzard winds. Aleesha, Aleesha. But she was sure that he was there begging for her. The temperature has dropped to lower and the snow storm has gotten worse. Her fingers and toes turned to faint purple, her legs stiffen with every step, and the weight of her body was hard to bear. Her destination now is only miles away. Her two options were to walk through the storm or die under the new falling snow.
“Aleesha where are you?!” the resurrected voice yelled.
“Oh, great not you again.” she said in a horse voice, “What do you want with me? Did you and your friends want to have another go at me? Is that it?”
“No, I’ve come to take you home.” he answered quickly.
She swerved around to look him in the eyes. Unlike the last time the water blue eyes of her love gazed back at her. Sadly this was not a game her mind was playing because her love was there, flesh and all. She didn’t want to go back to that man, if anything she wanted to go back to her true home. He followed her into the freezing cold just to take her home? She was on a mission that neither he, nor anyone else could stop.
“Home?” she screamed indignantly, “My home is in the countryside. Not that wicked man’s fortress of hell!”
“Your parents are worried and so is your fiancé. Aleesha please,” he said running up behind her, “be reasonable. I am only here to help you. I….I love you and I want you to be happy. Tell them you refuse to marry him because of what he did to you. We can run away together if they won’t let me marry you.” She paused after he said this because the phrase “I love you” still chimed throughout the halls of her mind. She can’t remember the last time she had heard the words. Her wicked fiancé never said it and her parents had stone cold hearts. She tried to hold in the warm tears from flowing rapidly.
“Trent, I love you more than ever. But you know they will not approve. When you left they pressured me even more and now I am to marry the worst man in Britain.” she cried.
As Aleesha turned to walk away she tripped over a rock. Her body plunged onto the hard ice ground. Her legs had finally given out and her world quickly went black. Running towards her, he began to worry more than ever. Though he called he name repeatedly she gave no answer or any sign of hearing him. He knelt down and began to cradle her in his arms like a baby.
Another husky voice yelled from the distance saying, “Have you found her?”
“Yes, I have her right here” Trent replied.
“Bring her to my carriage. We will ride in to town and rest for the night.” The other man commanded.
He knew that taking her to carriage would be the ultimate betrayal to the woman he loved. She clearly stated the she didn’t want to be with the man, but he had no choice. It was the duty of a rich young woman to marry whom ever her parents choose for her and everyone knew that. He took the unconscious young woman in his arms and made his way to the carriage. A man with dark hair, medium build, and medium height, held the door of the carriage open. Trent did as he was told and laid Aleesha on the seat in the carriage.
“You don’t deserve her and you know it.” Trent snapped at the man.
“And you do?” the man snapped back.
“She is not like one of your whores. She is a person who is capable of love, unlike a heartless bastard like you.”
“You left her and the proposal was set before me. I can treat her any way I see fit since her family wants her to have my money and not yours.”
“Then we are at an impasse.” Trent concluded.
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Zinkyre reviewed Version 1 -
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carolinahermit reviewed Version 1 -
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Smeezer reviewed Version 1 -
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You dont give me enough back story to understand what is going on. The little you do give reveals a little information about the protagonist, but not enough to make me care about her. You’re very descriptive, the scenes seem real, but you could be more succinct in your descriptions, I think.
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BambiPurrs reviewed Version 1 -
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The beginning threw me off a bit…I read too many ‘her’s …try finding other ways to express that maybe. Also, using ‘thin’ twice in one sentence to describe two different things was redundant. I know it sounds picky, but for a beginning of a chapter, it just threw me off.
Otherwise, once I got the rhythm, I enjoyed it. What happens!!??
cognitivefusion reviewed Version 1 -
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this is an entertaining piece, although it almost reads like a parody of a traditional romance -- which I am not sure if that is what you were going for or not -- but it seemed very contrived, but deliberately so. not quite sure what to make of it really.
grammatically, it needs to be reread, and reread and again. In the first couple of pages it kind of jumps from past tense to present tense, which I think present tense works better for the intensity of the first fiery scene.
The dialogue is a little ubelievable as well, since, I assume this is supposed to be in a different, past era, and it doesn’t seem consistent with literature of that time period, which, if the exposition is not worded as such, the dialogue at least needs to be. On that note, I like the Hemingway-esque reportorial and direct way you describe the scene and set everything up. . .kinda tells the audience everything that is going on without a lot of fluff, which is refreshing for a “romance”. I hope this review helps a little.
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