At 07:29 PM 7/8/99 -0500, Ken Wolfe wrote:

KWW> My comments are prefixed thusly. I am subscribed to FFML in vacation
mode, any comments to me should be sent by private emial

Right-o.  Some stuff (grammar/phrashing corrections I had no significant
reply to) snipped.

    Night breeze blows through long grass.  Patterns slowly
form; lines that follow the passage of the winds, circles that
dot the fields, tiny bends in the blades that form complex
figures invisible to the human eye.  The breeze changes.  The
patterns are erased.

    A girl lay dreaming, in a small room in a small cottage.
Moonlight spilled in the window, and coloured the rough,
unpainted oak of the plain bed and plainer dresser in cold hues.

KWW> Change in tense

Deliberate.  I'll see if it works better in the same tense throughout.

    She woke with a single, sharp scream.  Footsteps hurried
anxiously down the hallway beyond the closed door; not running,
merely moving quickly.

    The door cracked, then opened.  A man with a candle was
framed in it.  His face is worried, but not afraid; this is
something that happens too often to be frightening any longer.

KWW> Change in tense again

Not deliberate.  Will fix.

    Despite this, Nanami was bored.

KWW> Is it Nanami whi is speculating that 'Few among them knew just how
close they had themselves come to being destroyed...'? If so, it should be
made clearer. Maybe as simple as *starting* the scene with something like
'Nanami was bored'.

The first paragraph is from an omniscient perspective, which abruptly
transfers to Nanami's viewpoint.  Basically, I'm going for the writing
equivalent of an opening pan with the camera before I focus into a character.

    "Try some of this," Fujisawa-sensei slurred, pouring a
glistening alcoholic beverage the colour of a sunset into her
cup from a fluted glass bottle.  The beverage smelled like a not
entirely pleasant mix of plums and cherry blossoms, and Nanami
eyed it dubiously.

KWW> Maybe something like 'liquor' might sound more natural than 'alcoholic
beverage'

Probably would.  Will change.

    Fujisawa hiccuped, and grinned drunkenly at her.  "It's
de-licious.  I won't tell anyone you're under age."

KWW> Man, if he doesn't care then he must *really* be out of it ^_^

Eeyup.  ^_^

    "She isn't, here," Miz pronounced.  "We don't have
age-of-majority laws!"  Then, she proceeded to giggle as if it
were the funniest thing anyone had ever said.  While she hadn't
consumed _quite_ as much as Fujisawa--Nanami suspected that no
one at the celebrations had done that--she was still obviously
drunk and had been hanging off Fujisawa-sensei's arm all night.
He, for that matter, didn't seem to mind, and had even allowed
her to give him a kiss on the cheek at one point, after she'd
related her own interpretation of the incredibly heroic and vital
role he'd played in the battle against the Bugrom.

KWW> Every society has age-of-majority rules of some sort, even if they are
not codified. In Rostalia it would probably just be younger, maybe fourteen.
Remember, teenagers are an invention of the twentieth century ^_^

Well, I guess we just decided we needed an interval between childhood and
marriage.  ^_^

KWW> maybe 'version' or 'rendition' instead of 'interpretation'

Hmm... I'll look into that.

    Shayla raised her head, which had been up to that point
lying face down on the table.  "What's that supposed to mean?"

KWW> Maybe you should have her slurring her words...

I have a personal peeve against attempts to render accents/drunken
slurring, or otherwise, into phonetic speech... I'll make a mention of her
speaking in a slurred voice.

    Nanami unconsciously touched the golden chain of the small
medal she'd received in the ceremony.  Of the three of them, she
deserved it the least.  Fujisawa-sensei was brave even without
his super-strength, and Makoto had practically become their
leader by the end, but the only thing she'd done was be lucky
enough to be able to see through the Phantom Tribe's illusions.

KWW> Untrue, since she was nearly killed on top of the Eye of God. That she
would consider herself unworthy does say something about her, though.

Exactly.

    "Am too!" Shayla said, still making no effort to move.  The
arguing voices followed Nanami as she left the revelry of the
banquet hall.  She passed beneath a vine-twined archway, close to
the dais where a dozen musicians played unfamiliar stringed
instruments and oddly-shaped flutes.  The music was atonal, and
deeply, heart-rendingly sad.

KWW> Just wondering why they would be playing such moody music at a
celebration.

In mourning for the dead of the war, probably.  Also, depending on the
music they're playing, it could simply be a sad passage; Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony, for example, contains some slow and mournful sections but
ultimately ends on a triumphant note.

    The gardens of the palace were very different at night from
the day, as the diurnal flowers closed their bright petals and
slept to await the sunrise, and the night-blooming flowers opened
silkily in cool colours of black and purple and silver.  New
perfumes filled the tree-lined avenues between the beds and the
fountains, and the tiny blossoms of the vines that writhed around
the archways brushed against each other in the wind.  Nanami
could hear vague laughter and the sound of voices from the
balconies of the apartments that overlooked the garden.  In the
distance, over the city of Floristica itself, an occasional
firework would go off in a shower of colours.

KWW> Very nice description of the gardens at night.

Thanks.

    He rose, and walked away, holding the Power-Key in one hand,
occasionally touching the butt of it to the ground as though it
were a cane to bear his weight.  Nanami watched him go in
silence.  When she was finally sure that she would not meet him
again on the spiralling paths, she left the fountain.

KWW> This is a really nice exchange between Makoto and Nanami. It just seems
a bit rushed, though. Makoto was just a bit too quick to Nanami's concerns
about not having friends. And he left rather abruptly.

Well, the abrupt departure is intended.  I'll see if I think the scene
needs to be expanded/revised.

    Quite frankly, he couldn't remember agreeing to take a walk
with her.  There was a large blank spot between a cupful of
digestive liqueur vaguely flavoured with blueberries and his
current situation.  "Umm... Miz?"

KWW> digestive liqueur?

Bailey's Irish Cream would be a real-world example.  Drunk only in small
quantities, strong, sweet as hell.  Aids the digestion.  It's not good to
mix with other types of booze, really, but Fujisawa has an iron liver.

    She didn't even move.  Fujisawa drained the cup he'd poured
for her, drained the last of his, and stood up.  He put the wine
and the cups away, adjusted the pillows under Miz's head so that
she was more comfortable, and went to sleep in the hallway.

KWW> And probably thinking, with great relief, "Damn, that was close."

Undoubtedly.

    A rousing cheer came from the survivors of the Bugrom
Empire.  Had there been more than six of them in the isolated
pass deep within the Holy Mountains, it might have been more
rousing to Katsuhiko Jinnai.  Deva contributed a light clapping,
which helped a little.  With a frown, the Grand General of the
Bugrom sat down beside the Queen on her portable dais, and stared
into the light of the fire that Groucho had so thoughtfully
built.

KWW> Diva, I think

I prefer Deva myself; if I refer to her as Diva, I'll keep on thinking of
Maria Callas when I'm writing.  ^_^

    "Of course," he said to himself, in the dream.  "It's only
one continent in the whole world.  And a small one, at that.  I
should have realized my ambitions were too minor; that was why I
failed.  Only from great dreams are great victories won!"

KWW> This ties in nicely with the quote from Homer at the beginning... makes
us wonder just what to make of this dream.

And of Makoto's, as well.  Dreams are deeply ambiguous things.

    Ahead, away, a light.  Sensors wake, bring forth the life,
the sight, the self.  The end of the journey, so little time?
What then was this, no memory of Earth was this, thus so cold
and barren the world that she has come to?  But wait, no world is
this, a mere pocket carved out within the blackspace between the
worlds, an existence where ought there to be no existence?
Wrong, wrong!

KWW> Mixed tense

Deliberate.  Meant to convey the confusion and disjointed nature of the dream.

KWW> Is there supposed to be a scene break here? It makes it seems like the
above is Makoto's dream... that seems to be what you intended, but even so I
think a break is needed here.

Hmm... you're the second person to suggest this, so I'll consider it.

    Makoto pulled back with a stifled sob.  He could still feel
her, the memory of her contained in the staff, which was a part
of her, as much a part of her as an arm or a leg.  They were one
and the same; he should be able to reach her, had been able to
reach her and guide to her to the core of the Eye of God, show
her what she had to do to shut up down.  And the Eye of God was
to Ifurita what Ifurita was to that simple recording device;
further, even.  He didn't even know _how_ he had known what she
had to do to shut it down, he simply had, and he had felt her
scream as she was wrenched out of this world, had heard her go on
screaming until her voice finally faded from his mind.

KWW> 'shut it down'

Hmm, yes, that works better.

    The air droned with a whispering of many voices, and the
space around her and the altar was bathed in a coruscation of
black lightning that made every hair on her body stand straight
on end.  And from the grey stone of the staff, at the centre of
which a black pulse could now be seen beating like the slow
rhythms of a heart, the voice and visions of the god came unto
her.

KWW> This reminded me a lot of the awakening of Ifurita... for a moment I
had expected the altar to open up and reveal a Demon-God.

<nod>  The parallels between this scene and the awakening of Ifurita are
deliberate.  

Author's Notes:

Another step for me here; after two years of writing nothing but
Ranma fanfics, I'm finally branching off.  I've always liked
El-Hazard for the Arabian Nights flavour, the memorable
characters, and its ability to convey the feeling of an epic
storyline in a very short time.  I have not, however, had
sufficient ideas up until now with which to write a fanfic.

KWW> It's what drew me out of doing just Sailor Moon stories, so I guess it
worked for me too ^_^

"El-Hazard - It Worked For Me!  It Can Work For You!"

I also hesitated because I haven't seen anything beyond the first
OVAs.  Finally, however, I had a story idea that I liked a lot,
and I simply decided to go for it.

KWW> Ignoring the second OAV series and the second TV series is just fine,
as far as I'm concerned. They are little more than footnotes to the
original.

<nod>  So I've heard.

Expect the second chapter of this... sometime.  Once I finish
WUE, I will be dedicating more of my time to this project.

KWW>  I hope you continue this project. It's a great start. You've
introduced many interesting eleements, left lots of room for development.
I'll be looking forward to the rest.

I finish everything I start, barring major accidents.  :)

Thanks for the comments, Ken.  They're very appreciated.

Ciao,
-Alan Harnum