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Entry #13

Discussion in 'Q3 Flash Competition' started by Xiph0, Jul 29, 2021.

  1. Xiph0

    Xiph0 Yoda Admin

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    The smell was familiar, wet, and old, yet fresh. As his feet stirred the underbrush, fir needles and creepers moved underfoot, the rich dark soil underneath teeming with life, yet the forest was still, aside from the occasion drip, which was evermore in the forest, even in summer.

    Memories stirred, its why he had come, although they had been crashing about for days. Their weight had increased over time until he thought he may stumble with them.

    So, he came here, a place he had visited only a few times, yet increasingly recently, searching for something he hoped not to find.

    A slight rise in the ground caused his foot to leave an orange/red smear in the clay underneath. He stared down at the ground, a vivid slash of colour in the muted greens and browns of the forest. His mind raced, a boy commanding a chess set, a fierce voice cracking with puberty demanding to be killed first, a familiar presence behind him as he searched for his godfather, hot hands pulling him from a freezing pond, a smiling figure standing with him at his wedding, watching their children play in their grandparents yard in a summer sun, softly thumping an old mans shoulder one last time just the other day.

    He ran his foot over the spot again widening it, showing the red clay underfoot and smiling before continuing. He laughed, the sound breaking the silence of the forest, a thousand jokes and japes rushed through his thoughts, a lifetime of laughing, more than a lifetimes. He grinned, his hand reaching into this pocket and pulling out a chocolate frog someone had handed him this morning. He held it in his hand letting it leap away before snatching it quickly out of the air, the legs feebly kicking before becoming still. He bit the head off, glancing at the card within before slipping it into his pocket.

    Other memories came, and old man sitting across from him at grand desk, a peculiarly well-behaved cat delighting his children, taking an old balding man to a muggle department store to look at bath toys with his daughter. He had visited the forest several times, and each time he lingered longer, tracing familiar paths, his feet moving heavily through the undergrowth.

    He feared nothing in the forest as he had as a child, age had given him a surety that can only come with facing a darkness that appeared in his world. He himself had taken steps on a path no others had taken and returned; he came back while they didn’t. The place where he could have passed on lay only a moments’ walk away, but he didn’t care to explore it again. He knew what he looked for wasn’t there.

    A piece of a broken potion bottle disturbed by his meandering caught his eye, the flash of glass so much like a broken mirror he kept safe all these years. He left it where it lay, he was sure he had seen it years before as well, he hoped he wouldn’t have the chance to discover it again.

    He sat on an old tree, it had come down the year his eldest graduated Hogwarts and they said goodbye to the man that had kicked a door down to pull him into this world. The warnings about the forest had taken a more serious note after he was gone, the wild things encroaching more than previously. He knew his children had all ventured in at some points, but never deeply, never chased by a werewolf or haunted by a ruined man sharing himself with a fractured soul.

    He and his friends carried scars, seen and unseen, the price they had paid to give their children a safer world. He remembered hearing his eldest son tell his little sister how he snuck into the forest to find bowtruckles, not walk towards death with the shades of those who had died to protect him.

    His children now had children, strong and happy and free of the burdens that he had carried. His friends were leaving him one at a time, and he waited, waited for what felt like an old friend who he had meet so long ago. He wasn’t looking for him, but neither was he hiding, ready for the next journey when it came.

    Getting up and walking into an old clearing filled with knee high grass and weeds he didn’t notice a dark stone with scratches on it uncovered by his passing. He disappeared with a crack as the clear sky began to turn, a storm was approaching, to wash away the signs of his visit.
     
  2. haphnepls

    haphnepls Seventh Year

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    I have to go with meh.

    I see what you're going for, but there are better ways to accomplish it. Purpleish prose and lack of consistent, smooth thoughts made this block of words that much heavier on my poor eyes. I don't want to say it's bad, because it's not, but it just doesn't work for me. There are at least 500 words missing, and a punch to send it through my heart in order to make it work. Good effort.
     
  3. BTT

    BTT Viol̀e͜n̛t͝ D̶e͡li͡g҉h̛t҉s̀ ~ Prestige ~

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    So my first read was oh, Harry is wallowing in his memories while his identity feels oddly unclear. He must be dead!

    Except that doesn't seem to be quite the case, hard as it is to make out through the purple prose. It seems like Harry is old and dying and for some reason walking through the Forbidden Forest and accidentally stumbles across the Resurrection Stone? I think? He disappears with a crack so I presume he has found some sort of resolve and leaves the Forest to go do something but I'm unsure what it is or why I should care.

    There might be a good story underneath all of that purple carpeting you've laid down, but I'm not sticking around to find it. 1/5.
     
  4. Atri

    Atri Groundskeeper

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    Is the premise here that Harry marches to his death again, years after canon? Off to his new adventure? And then he dies or becomes master of death once more? Jedi-like death? I'm not sure. Quite frankly, the first time I saw this, I thought: wall of text. There's no dialogue and this story suffers for it. Writing and grammar are fine. There's emotion here, in a muted kind of way. So...3/5
     
  5. Microwave

    Microwave Professor

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    Okay, so there’s this short story about a man with a terminal illness who tries to commit suicide by freezing himself to death in the woods, but changes a mind after saving a boy’s life on the way. I don’t remember what it was called, but the point that I’m trying to make is that your story feels a lot like an attempt to do that without really understanding the effect of it.

    Harry is marching to his death, but it doesn’t feel like it’s out of any strong feeling. In the short story I mentioned, the man walks to his death and ultimately chooses to live due to the same sense of selflessness. Harry is not this in the story, he’s just being, and I’m not quite sure what the point of that is.

    1/5
     
  6. Ched

    Ched Da Trek Moderator DLP Supporter ⭐⭐

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    777 words - lucky!
     
  7. Garden

    Garden Supreme Mugwump

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    Cute little story but the writing was quite confusing in the beginning. Not a huge of it stylistically until about midway through. Still, the theme of friends and kids moving on is an underexplored on in the HP-verse, so I appreciate this story. 3/5
     
  8. Ched

    Ched Da Trek Moderator DLP Supporter ⭐⭐

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    Great concept, good story, meh execution? Overall an enjoyable read, however.

    Sentences like this feel a little purple to me, which... while some people might like that kind of prose, it's not my thing. I'm also probably defining purple wrong.

    As his feet stirred the underbrush, fir needles and creepers moved underfoot, the rich dark soil underneath teeming with life, yet the forest was still, aside from the occasion drip, which was evermore in the forest, even in summer.

    It's just a bit... difficult to read, without pausing to digest and understand, I guess? Which is alright in some books, like the occasional paragraph in LotR, but for a fanfic where you're trying to get a quick sense of what's up in a series that used simple prose, it makes me want to skim a bit.

    That said, love the concept. We've got an old Harry who is at peace, more or less. It's refreshing and enjoyable to read about him in this manner, and wish we saw it more often.
     
  9. Shinysavage

    Shinysavage Madman With A Box ~ Prestige ~

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    Technically, there's a few clunky phrases and typos, and some unfortunately chosen grammar - a more significant issue, for me, is that it's a theoretically emotional piece that just doesn't hit home on that emotional level. It's a shame, as conceptually I quite like the idea of Harry reflecting on his life, although I do question why, precisely, he's wandering the Forest - possibly to look for the Resurrection Stone? But that's a bit of a leap based on what's actually in the text.
     
  10. Zel

    Zel High Inquisitor

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    Love the concept, but the story felt muted. Perhaps that's the intention behind the story; Harry seems to be feeling exactly that way, after all. But it's one thing to make the reader empathize with the character experiencing those emotions, and another to write a hollow story, devoid of the things that would make Harry's last few moments engaging and gut-wrenching. 2/5
     
  11. LucyInTheSkye

    LucyInTheSkye Seventh Year

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    You've got some nice turns of phrases, like the stumbling with the weight of memories thing and hot hands pulling him out of a freezing pond, those things really lift this story I think. If I understood this correctly he says in the beginning that he's hoping he won't find the resurrection stone, he looks around, doesn't find it and turns back, only to accidentally step on it and die. If this is it, why is he in the forest in the first place? Why not wait for death at home with his loved ones? Or have they all died before him?

    One thought I had is that this might work better as a prologue to a longer story. As a short-story in itself it doesn't have the required plot and resolution, I think, nor enough new things. The brief flashes of his past are nicely done but they are mostly familiar already to the reader and still form the bulk of this story.
     
  12. Dubious Destiny

    Dubious Destiny Seventh Year

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    The story's got some mistakes and grammatical errors. It's an introspective piece, which is fine, but you've gone overboard with the description. You've chosen to exclude a plot as well. There's not really much to comment on. I'll give it a 2/5.
     
  13. FitzDizzyspells

    FitzDizzyspells Seventh Year DLP Supporter ⭐⭐

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    In order for it to be a story, something has to happen, even in flash fiction.
     
  14. soczab

    soczab Professor

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    I think Ched hit it on the head this time.

    I kind of liked it, but it didn't connect to anything. Which I do get is the point, its a harry sort of... remembering, savoring life and contemplating his role in it... but you still need to connect that to some larger philosophical point (it doesnt have to be action base). alla, to use what Ched made me think of, say LOTR and how it deals with immortality.

    It was still a solid story and you nailed a certain nostalgic mood very well. But I think its missing something to be great.
     
  15. Erotic Adventures of S

    Erotic Adventures of S Denarii Host

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    [​IMG]

    Boom! Anyone familiar with my dyslexic rambling could probably guess this was me. Even after literally half a dozen rereads and reading it out loud I still missed shit loads of mistakes.

    Over all I am pleased with the feed back, it was actually really helpful.

    I wrote the story the day after a old friend had died, he was old and had a great life so it wasn’t a sad occasion, just remembering a great life.

    So this was a old Harry, coming to the place where he had once died, and knew the reserection stone had been dropped.

    The old man who had just died was Ron, after a long life, and Harry was thinking back to Minerva, Mr Weasley and Hagrid previously.

    He had come here after people close to him had died thinking he may stumble across the stone he had dropped. But knowing he shouldn’t really look for it he just wonders around remembering.

    I agree nothing happens, but it wasn’t really supposed to. So generally happy with it despite its flaws. But the feed back was certainly helpful thanks!
     
  16. Microwave

    Microwave Professor

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    I found it!

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/31/tenth-of-december
     
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