Lesson One: The Change of Seasons

A woman who lives alone creates a mechanical companion for herself. Be warned that this is a story with a same sex relationship and transgenderism.

What is your love made of? 

She would never have a child. And so she would never know that pure and unconditional love that comes from seeing eyes open miraculously on a precious new life. Love born naturally from pain, months of endurance, and hours of agony. That was something she would never know. But she understood it nevertheless. What I cannot create, I do not understand. Something someone famous once said, she couldn't remember who. A scientist of some kind, perhaps? But at any rate, without knowing anything else, she felt she knew at least what he meant.  

Months of working tirelessly, hours in which she existed without rest, without food, and even it seemed without time. At the end of which Herculean labour, she had finally created a miracle. And with that genesis she understood how miraculous it really was.  You were a revelation, were the words she wanted to say but didn't have the voice for, a marvel and a wonder and a spectacular surprise even now. Gears, cogs, wires, and screws. That's what her love was made of. Because that's what I made you out of, she knew she could never say, because then you'll leave me and take the sun, the light, the air, and all that helps me breathe with you, never understanding that my love is as strong as the metal you're made out of precisely because that's what you and it are formed from. Even worse, I have no way of making you understand.  

Love born from artifice. But the love had always been real. And in the loving even the artifice had become real. Even when the desired object shifts and changes, devotion itself is never marred or stained by impurity. In the beginning, when daylight and night alike were mired in the sketches and schematics of dreams, she had been infatuated with the act and process of creation, racing relentlessly on towards the actualisation of the perfect and radiant vision she held always before her mind's eye. But eventually, the choosing of each limb with careful consideration became the falling in love with each part and the fantasies of the success and fanfare that would attend the moment of accomplishment were transfigured into sweet reveries of time passed pleasantly away in the company of flawless beauty and artistry; utopian interludes of eternity without loneliness, without longing, without livid lamentations, nothing but the contentment of having someone always by her side with whom she could share every moment of joy and sorrow.   

The moment when those eyes opened for the first time, pink lids blooming open like pale tulip buds, and she stared into eyes like frozen mint, it was everything she had hoped for and more. Ecstasy, in its purest form, ripped through her and left her skin tingling and burning as if her body were being ravished and ravaged by the most powerful and addictive of drugs. She gazed in awe and wonder at the culmination of all her efforts and dreams and those incredible eyes gazed back, incredible because of their capacity to gaze and the depth of intelligence and sensitivity that breathed and lurked within like a ponderous whale moving beneath and inside endless fathoms of mysterious ocean.  

They were also breath-taking, just like the rest of her. Her cheeks were as full and round as apples with the same red glow suffusing the tops of them, hers was the pretty and rosy marble pallor of dolls, and just like a doll, her plush lips were the perfect bow shape that seemed made for pouting, her nose was a cute, button one, her eyelashes impossibly thick and long, hanging like shadows over eyes that were the foggy and translucent green of the shallows of a sea merging with the deep; the kind of pastel shade that the mint ice cream she loved so much as a child and that her mother would bring home for her would come in, with some hints of pistachio thrown in, unlike a doll, however, her proportions were statuesque and softened by voluptuous curves like those seen only in Greek sculptures of the Classical period, the dress that she had chosen for her was a simple summer one, white with a climbing and winding pattern of purple and pink flowers, and her hair was a burnished bronze colour that blazed and flashed as bright as a flame when caught in the sun, styled in the edgy, mullet-like haircut with the hair in fluffy, hanging tufts at the top and falling softly to the shoulders in the back just like her childhood hero and rock legend Joan Jett sported, the love and reverence for whom her parents had shared with one another and then taught to her.  

She stared into the sentient eyes and felt a giddy laugh of jubilation burble up her throat. I did this. I'm the one who made you and gave you life. And now you're alive. And mine.  

She watched as the head tilted to one side. Slower and smoother than the way a human would typically move but with none of the halting, stilted quality that expectations retained from images of sci-fi movie machines and robots. The pale green eyes fixed on her face inquisitively. 

She smiled, ecstasy widening it a little bit too much for it to be reassuring like she had intended. "Hello, my name is Viola. And you are..." 

She stopped, realised she hadn't planned this far ahead (not counting on success), and looked around for inspiration. Her wandering gaze latched onto the windows that overlooked the back garden and caught on the shedding trees, on the falling fall colours,  vivid drifts of yellow, brown, red, and orange leaves that swirled softly through the air, as if floating through the steps to a ghostly dance, to come skidding gently onto the gold and bronze carpet and mounds that had already piled up on the emerald green grass. Back into the room, her roaming eyes came full circle and became tangled in the same outside colours "soil bound green frozen cold by winter and airborne green warmed into burning flames- that she had just turned away from.  

"Autumn!" She exclaimed suddenly, beaming at her greatest achievement and masterpiece. "You're Autumn." 

A steady stare. Then a slow blink. She understood. She was Autumn.  

 

Lesson One: The Change of Seasons  

In a nondescript, two-storey terraced house where the terracotta colour of the bricks were crumbling into fading ruin and its clones marched in mundane formation down a residential street in a suburb in the Greater London area, the entity called Autumn sat perched in her usual place on the bed in the bedroom overlooking the back garden, watching from the window as the amber and Citrine flares of the season smouldered into the cold ashes of winter.  

Inside, the saffron painted walls and blond floorboards threw up golden nimbuses of light that cast sunny reflections in the soft bronze of her hair that waved and lifted gently in the shy breeze that came drifting furtively in through the open window, sidled past the dark brown curtains, and whisked lingeringly about the peculiar creature, fluttering the short, flaring sleeves of her pink summer dress. The bedspread beneath her folded legs was an aged white with a drooping sunflower whose sprightly lustre had long since been washed out while opposite her stood two large mahogany wardrobes. The room in general was of a rather spare and Spartan character with only those bits of furniture to diminish and diffuse the empty and somewhat unlived in quality of the place. Even the girl-like being on the bed wasn't enough to completely dissipate the vacant air of the room, sitting as still as she did on the bed, quiet and unmoving as an ancient monolith.  

"Autumn! If you sit by the open window like that, you'll get a cold." Suddenly, Viola was in the room, sweeping in towards her to shut the window.  

Autumn bent over the small, portable whiteboard in her lap that she always carried with her, little, alabaster fingers curled around a whiteboard pen while her hair swung forward to soften the arch of her cheekbones and expose the swan-like curve of her long, statuesque white neck as she concentrated on making visual the words of her thought. Viola had never quite managed to figure out a way to give her a voice that would have a melody natural to Autumn's own unique and compelling personality. Every attempt engendered only mechanical echoes and shadows of a human voice. In them, she only ever heard the futility of her own quest for another sympathetic voice. And so, she had dispensed of voices. For a while, Autumn had communicated by pen and paper after which trial and error (and having gone through several pens and sheaves of paper as she was an indefatigable questioner), they had arrived at the much more feasible solution of a whiteboard.  

What's a cold? Were the words revealed in green ink when she held the board up. 

"It's uh, well, it's an illness you get when you spend too much time in cold temperatures without wrapping up warm first. Your nose gets all red and starts dripping stuff all the time, your throat starts to hurt, you're always sneezing and coughing, and generally you just feel s****y and probably cranky." Viola explained, trying to be as lucid and thorough in her answer as she could in order that she might avoid a barrage of follow-up questions, an experience she had already been subjected to in the past.  

I don't think that could happen to me were the newly scrawled, acid green words. 

She smiled and with a mischievous and teasing lilt to her voice responded, "Of course not. You're too sweet to ever get cranky." 

The head dipped again to hurriedly wipe away the words with a few vigorous sweeps of the hand before the elegant fingers went to work on penning another message. You're cranky every morning. Does that mean that there's just some natural sourness in your personality? 

Viola laughed and it was a laugh that was alive in a way that not many other laughs were, it was a free and exuberant thing, a wild and enchanting faery child that danced, skipped, and glowed in a way that she herself no longer did. Even so, it still carried within it the dissonant ghosts of a former, happier self and the haunting echoes of a soul deep loneliness and sadness that stifled and dwindled the light of that laugh down to a flicker as it faded away into a tragic and bitter sigh, just like it always did now.  

"Got it in one. Never been sweet once in my entire life. I was just born a bad seed, I guess." A depressing smile that somehow distorted regret and resentment into one appeared on her face. "Warped from the very start." She added softly, turning her head to stare out the window even as her thoughts turned inward.  

Grey clouds sagging with rain crawled across the face of the sun as if even they were reluctant to obscure the radiance of that light and as the prospect of that bright and serene sky dimmed, cinereous shadows peppered Viola's face just as brass aureoles had illuminated Autumn's. They pooled across the dark chocolate hues and planes of her oval face, accentuating the prominent cheekbones, the broad, smooth forehead, the finely sloping nose, the wide, full and pink lips that parted round perfectly even white teeth; the hollows beneath her upturned eyes and the spaces under those straight, thin eyebrows that eventually slanted off and downwards into perfect flicks were darkened into tenebrous shade whilst light strayed into and was lost in the soft mass of long hair that fell loosely in sable curls, and just like the rest of her, her narrow, long-lashed eyes were dark but with a hidden depth of starlight in them, like the lustrous reflections seen in a ribbon of black satin, the obsidian irises shone and wavered with brightness like willow bark caught in the mirror of a night-lit river.  

She was much taller than Autumn, soaring to almost six feet, her shadow as vast and upright as that of a colossus, and as her curvaceous and womanly figure turned back towards Autumn, it was suddenly borne in upon the mechanical girl's mind that her own body would never change and develop, was without even the potential or ability to grow to such potent femininity. She realised this with a curious wonder and a pang that she couldn't quite define or understand.  

She abruptly bent over the whiteboard again and began scribbling rapidly. Within seconds, she was holding it up and displaying a new message for Viola's perusal.  

I'll never get a cold because my body never changes.  

There was a complicated wavering of expression on Viola's face as if she was trying to balance her own natural reaction against the response that she thought she should give. "Well, no..." 

Even the leaves change. Why is that? 

Viola turned to stare out the window again, watching the ochre and rust coloured leaves fall as if their slow descents would scry on the air for her reasons and motivations for their movements that she could give as explanation to the curious girl on the bed. Finally, she said, "Everything has its season. The time for those leaves is up and now it's time to make way for the new." 

Season? Flashed the new message in spiky green. 

"Right. You don't know what that is." She smiled patiently and came over to sit down on the edge of the bed, just inches away from where the pink soles of Autumn's bare feet pointed outward as she sat with her legs folded under her. Viola leaned back on her hands, tilted back her head to stare up at the ceiling, and pursed her lips in thought as if pondering where to begin her explanation. "Well, there are four seasons in a year and in each one the world changes and looks different. There's Winter where all the leaves and flowers die and stop growing for a while. It gets really cold and there's wind, rain, fog, frost, hail, and sometimes even snow which can be fun for building snowmen and snowball fights." 

Snow?  

"Oh, right. You haven't seen any snow yet." She furrowed her brow thoughtfully for a moment. "Well, it's white and soft and falls slowly from the sky, even slower than those leaves and a lot smaller too, in small little flakes so that it looks like there are just all these tiny little white dots falling from the sky. If enough of them fall, the streets and everything gets covered in them like they're all wrapped in a white blanket. It's a lot more solid than rain so you can build things out of them like little men with hats, scarves, twigs for arms, pebbles for eyes, and carrots for noses." She chuckled suddenly, a sound bright with nostalgic joy and remembered laughter of times past. "As a kid, me and a bunch of other kids from the street would make a competition of it and there wouldn't just be snowmen but snow families. Snowwomen, snow children and once someone even tried to make a snow dog although it just came out looking like a big lump." 

What about snowball fights? What are they? Autumn held aloft the query with her mint green eyes shining avidly as if the excitement of a real snowball fight taking place in front of her had already quickened her pulse and inflamed her heart. Even the words themselves were sloppy and near illegible as if the contagion of her eagerness had spread to her fingers and made them too tremulous to write properly.  

A grin still remained on Viola's face as she cast her mind back to those carefree times. "Snowball fights are these terrible, hellish wars waged on the streets. The choice of weapon is as big a handful of snow as you can pick up which you roll into as roughly a solid ball as you can and then throw as hard as you can at the nearest target which is usually someone's face. Don't forget snow is very cold and so a frozen lump of it hurts like a b***h. It's horrible, friends turn on friends, mothers attack their own children and just walking in the streets can be as dangerous as walking across a minefield. Casualties include anyone with a face." 

Slender Man would be okay, though. Once again, the words floated up into the air like loosed balloons and a slight smile similarly drifted over Autumn's face, with the effervescence of a ripple of foam frothing up gently across the surface of a river. Although she was voiceless, the muscles in her face did move and allowed her expressions to light up with more animation and naive fervour than a child's. Her muteness was oddly eloquent as the silence of her lips meant that her eyes always sparkled and spoke.  

Viola laughed that laugh again, the one that was almost carefree but still had too much tattered pain dogging it to be truly joyful. "It looks like you've been messing about with my video games, after all. But our man Slendy would own the battlefield. No face and those long arms? Someone could try to hit him in the head but he'd just brush it off like it's nothing and be up and ready with two snowballs before the other person could even blink." 

I wish I could be in a snowball fight. 

Soon after those words had risen up into the air like the sorrowful glow of an old moon, they dropped back down into Autumn's lap and her eyes and expression suddenly turned wistful as she gazed out the window as if she were imagining crystals of snow piled up into glittering white banks instead of the orange and brown ash-heaps of summer that were there now.  

The little crinkles at the corners of Viola's eyes lifted with the rest of her face as she smiled indulgently at Autumn. "Maybe you will some day. You never know, it might snow this year." 

And you'll show me how to make a snow family? 

Viola's smile went a little lopsided as it turned rueful. "Well, I can't promise you any snow dogs but I'll try my best given that it's been a long time since I played in the snow." 

Why? 

"Why I haven't played in the snow?" Viola clarified with raised brows.  

Autumn nodded silently, green eyes serious and fingers still clutched around the still upraised whiteboard.  

Viola ran a hand through her hair, unwittingly ruffling and mussing it up, an old and unconscious habit that surfaced whenever she was deep in thought or caught off guard and was uncomfortable and uncertain because of it. "A few reasons, I guess. One is that it hasn't snowed in a while... but no, that's not the real reason. Well, really, I suppose I just grew up. As you get older, you just have too many other things to think about and worry about and not enough time to play in the snow. You just also lose interest in it sometimes. Snowmen and snowball fights just don't have the same magic for adults as they do for children. When an adult plays in the snow, they feel like a kid again. But when a kid plays in the snow, they are a kid. It's that difference that changes the experience. A kid looks at the world and is discovering everything for the first time and for them it's all amazing and wonderful and they can laugh at it all without a real reason. But for an adult, most of the time, you're just looking to recapture that feeling and you have to find reasons to laugh." 

Having fun in the snow isn't a reason? Autumn's face was so deeply etched with the lines of puzzlement that Viola felt that even without the whiteboard, she would've somehow read the question in her expression.  

"Only if you have someone to have fun with." Viola replied with a sad smile. "It's been a while since I had anyone like that and it's just pathetic to play in the snow by yourself." 

But you have me now. Autumn looked very earnest as she held up the sincere message and her eyes twinkled as she lowered the whiteboard and smiled sweetly up at Viola and as she sat there, staring down at the little and marvellous creature with the milkweed body and girlish proportions, thin, candlestick legs folded primly beneath her, gazing up with the chestnut leaves of her hair swirling about her guileless face with each movement, Viola felt her chest constrict with a multitude of emotions; a sudden and overwhelming surge of tenderness and warmth for the pure and lovely girl, intense - almost to the point of inducing tears- gratitude and happiness that such solicitude and affection were for her, and pride that such a open and generous heart had been crafted by her hands. 

She bestowed upon the girl a look that brimmed over with warmth and fondness as she said gently, even lovingly, "Yeah. And you have me. Just so you know." 

The next time it snows, we'll play in it together. The sentiment, expressed as a confident statement rather than a question, betrayed her unconscious faith and certainty that as in all things, she wouldn't be refused this wish (as indeed Viola never did for she could never deny even the smallest of whims to her sweet little creation) and that when it was made to come true, they would be together. Just like always. And in this way Viola had come to assume the shape of a fantastic genie to Autumn's burgeoning mind. With her constant acquiescence and indulgence of the mechanical girl's every desire, her wish giving powers appeared to the girl to be infinite. As if in anticipation of another confirmation of this belief, Autumn's eyes gleamed, her face lit up with the enthusiasm of her smile, and her small body practically vibrated with eagerness as she sat up on the bed and shifted closer to Viola.  

Viola looked at the girl with a smile that was kind, amused, and maternal all at once. She placed her hand over Autumn's, walnut brown over rosy marble, and gently coerced her into lowering the whiteboard. "Yeah, yeah, you spoilt girl, whatever you want. But who knows when it's going to snow again?" 

Autumn shook Viola's fingers off in order to turn to the task of wiping her whiteboard clean only to efface it again with her always vibrant words that carried with it the whiff of her vivacious personality, just as a cloud of fragrance wafts out of a perfume bottle, and Viola let go with a lingering sense of regret.  We can enjoy all the other seasons in the meantime. The words finally flared up like a sudden flame in front of Viola.  

"Of course we can. Maybe in the Summer, you'll finally get to see me in something besides sweatpants." Viola agreed with a small, self-deprecating smile.  

Summer? The question appeared in spiky green script just as it did in her expression. 

"Oh, right, I hadn't finished explaining all the other seasons to you. Well, Summer is that time of year when the grass is greener than you've ever seen it, there are flowers everywhere, the trees are full of leaves, all the birds have come back so you can hear them singing all the time, the bees are back too so they're all buzzing about in the air and pollinating which means people have to start watching out for bee stings and hay-fever- that's a kind of allergy where you're sneezing all the time and your eyes are just always itchy- and it's sunnier and hotter than at any other time of the year. Oh, and the schools are closed for the summer so you get a bunch of bratty kids running around more than usual-" 

She paused as she saw that Autumn was already bent over her whiteboard, no doubt scribbling another curious enquiry and sure enough when she held up the board for perusal, Viola smiled as she saw her suspicions confirmed and a question awaiting her answer. But where do the birds and bees go before Summer?  

"The birds go south in Winter for somewhere warmer." A thoughtful frown scrunched Viola's face. "I'm not really sure about the bees, though. I think some species of bees die while others just hibernate for the whole of Winter." 

And what does pollinate mean? The next question flew up almost before Viola had finished answering the previous one.  

"Well, pollination is how plants are able to reproduce. Bees like to eat nectar which they find in flowers. When they sit on a flower to eat nectar, some of the pollen from that flower rubs off onto that bee and then that bee flies off to chew on another flower -they're greedy b******s, I guess," Viola added with a wry smile and Autumn's lips parted in a grin that showed off her perfect teeth, "anyway, when that bee lands on another flower, the pollen from the first flower will fertilize the egg cells to make seeds. The pollen comes from the male part of a flower and so has the male gamete that can fertilize the female ovule." 

Autumn's mouth hung open and her eyes were wide with fascination, looking so much like a child at her first sex ed talk that Viola with much difficulty had to stifle a laugh.  

"Is that it for the questions? Or shall I carry on explaining the seasons?" Viola asked in a patient voice that only had a tinge of amusement in it.  

Autumn merely nodded in silent acquiescence and that sufficed as answer for Viola.  

"Ok, so there's also Spring which is the season just before Summer and right after Winter. That's when everything starts growing again so flowers are just beginning to bud and the weather is starting to warm up a little." A nostalgic smile crossed her face as she suddenly recalled, "When I was a kid, one of our neighbours had this big blossom tree in their garden and whenever the first of those white flowers showed up on the branches, that's when I knew it was Spring and Summer and the holidays were on its way." 

Do you think I can see it one day? The query bloomed hopefully across the board and in the keen and longing expression on Autumn's face.  

Viola seemed to visibly shake herself as if she had become unwittingly lost and mired in the fog of some long gone past and she turned to stare, startled, at Autumn as if she had completely forgotten about the girl and had to take a moment to remember not only who she was but where they both were. Once comprehension and awareness had returned and Autumn's question had fully registered, her expression contorted with the discomfort of some inner dilemma and the memory of some buried and withering pain.  

She turned her face away as if she were unable to look Autumn in the eye at that moment. "Maybe." She mumbled uncomfortably. Anyone else watching would've immediately been able to sense the insincerity in that response but Autumn was as yet still too naive and unversed in the ways of the world to recognise lying even in one as bad at it as Viola was. Besides which, her trust in Viola was implicit and unconditional.  

She beamed at Viola gratefully and the other woman seemed to sink further in shame and guilt and fixed her gaze even more determinedly out the window as though resolved not to meet those limpid eyes whose green glow seemed to have contained and distilled the last light of the Summer sun.  

An awkward silence followed as Viola refused to look at Autumn and she in turn watched Viola with growing concern and confusion as she wondered why the only person who lived in acknowledgement of her existence now denied her presence.  

Soon, however, Viola smiled and turned back to look at Autumn with a softened expression. "And then there's the fourth season. Autumn. When the air gets brisker, the winds start blowing, and the leaves turn brown and fall and the world looks like you." 

Autumn blinked slowly and then, predictably, bent over the whiteboard to concentrate on penning a response. Is that how you came up with my name? 

Viola grinned sheepishly. "You caught me. I looked out the window and everything reminded me of you so...I couldn't think of anything better." 

But my eyes are green. Isn't that more like Spring or Summer? 

Fingers lifted, brown as a robin's legs and skipped across the air to brush through the burnished front strands of hair that lay against Autumn's cheekbone and then Viola tenderly tucked those bits of loose hair behind Autumn's ear. "Even in the middle of Winter, there's still always the grass." 

Autumn looked down for a moment as if in deep thought and then her hand, with the pen clutched in it, began to move across the whiteboard again. I don't think I would've liked Spring as a name.  

Viola snorted. "Just be grateful that when I looked out the window for inspiration, Shrek wasn't in the garden." 

What would Shrek be doing in your garden? Autumn held up the question with a smile tilting up her lips and a spark of mirth dancing merrily in her eyes. 

Viola shrugged carelessly. "I don't know. Maybe he got lost. They did spend most of the first movie just walking. Who ever said ogres have a good sense of direction?" 

Something else you have in common with ogres then. Autumn's face as she held up the teasing message like a banner was mischievous and devious.  

Viola narrowed her eyes warningly. "Something else?"

 

Well, there's also your face and smell.  

Viola's mouth fell open in mock affront and she levelled a finger menacingly at her. "You are getting too cheeky, dissing your creator like that. I should create another one of you and raise her right. She'll be called Spring." Her face was alight with hilarity and she snickered as she added, "Actually, maybe I'll make three more and name each one after a season. Get a complete set." 

The absurdity of this idea appeared to be too much for her and she dissolved into wild and uncontrollable peals of laughter, bending over and clutching at her stomach as she guffawed raucously. Autumn tried to smile but a curl of unease had unexpectedly and swiftly snaked through her, its coils knotted with uncertainty and confusion. Viola always treated her as if she were human to the point that she frequently forgot that she was essentially a machine and felt as though she had been conceived and born in the normal way and so even oblique references to Viola's status as her creator caught her off guard. This overt reminder, though made in jest, fell on her like a blow from a blunt instrument and she felt somehow stripped by it, as though all her clothes and skin had been ripped away to reveal the shinning metal beneath and expose her for the hollow imitation of humanity that she was.  

And as the last of Viola's cackles finally began to fade, Autumn tried to find the humour in the joke that as irreplaceable as Viola was to her, she herself was still a machine. And machines could always be replaced.  

Author's Note

This is going to be a pretty dialogue heavy story and somewhat episodic so any advice on how to keep the dialogue compelling and convincing would be much appreciated and of course, feel free to comment on anything else you deem necessary.

Reviews

[richieb]

I thoroughly enjoyed your story. Your talent and vocabulary skill of vivid description are once again stellar. Your attention to detail keeps the story fresh and real. once again your sentence structure and flow is very polished. The idea for your story is unique. Your creation tale is originated out of love and lonliness with no evil or violent back drama. Your natural skills as a writer will be on display through your book. Your challenge will be to keep this scenario real and interesting. With the same sex relationship looming you have an excellent oppurtunity to hold and fascinate your reader.
Keep your dialogue compelling and mixed with emotion and moods. Perhaps some background stories from Viola to continue to educate your reader. With your skills you will not have much difficulty. i think you find this story changing on its own, as the canvass is wide and offers many angles. I look forward to read more. You are off to a great start.
Richie.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your comments and will try to keep them in mind as I continue with this actually daunting task.

[richieb]

With the heavy dialogue planned, you may want to look at Hemingway as he was a master at dialogue. Have a great day.

[Cody Jeremy Thompson]

Man it seems that not even pinning this on my desktop could make me read it faster,frankly I blame twenty other things pinned on it. I like the start of this book and you seem to be heading for emotions rather than things happening,there's a word for that but I'd be damned before I actually look it up. Of course your signature way of describing surroundings and characters comes into play. I'd go into detail but I guess I'm too lazy,hope you'll write more of this.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you and I suppose this is going to be rather different from my other works in that there isn't much of a plot. I really want to capture the slow development of a relationship and try to write realistic and fleshed out characters so it's all going to be very episodic. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. :)

[Cody Jeremy Thompson]

Yeah I can see, considering they didn't move much, I think it fits your style of writing better because when you describe events I kinda get lost in the describing itself rather than the thing you are describing. Yeah it was a fun read keep it up.

[Kuro]

Ok, so the story starts getting really interesting pretty close to the beginning. The imagination is great, and I think the plot line is solid. The writing however is kind of opposite of my style, very long sentences. The pros of having that are that it is more descriptive, but definitely I think at some points the sentences are too long. For example:

"In a nondescript, two-storey terraced house where the terracotta colour of the bricks were crumbling into fading ruin and its clones marched in mundane formation down a residential street in a suburb in the Greater London area, the entity called Autumn sat perched in her usual place on the bed in the bedroom overlooking the back garden, watching from the window as the amber and Citrine flares of the season smouldered into the cold ashes of winter. "

1 sentence here goes on till a fifth line. I may try saying the same thing in your style:

In a nondescript, two-storey terraced house, where the terracotta bricks were crumbling into fading ruin, and cloned houses marched in mundane formation down a residential street, the entity called Autumn, sat perched in her usual place on the bed in the bedroom overlooking the back garden. She watched from the window as the amber and Citrine flares of the season smouldered into the cold ashes of winter, in the suburb, and around the Greater London area.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you very much. You're right, that does read better, though I might tweak it round a bit since I prefer the paragraph to end on 'ashes of winter' but I will take act on your constructive comments and work them into my edits.