The Skyseer [Story]

[Masterkick]

Hello everybody!

I am from argentina, and I'm learning english. I had to make as homework a short story in english, so I did it, then I read it, and said 'Oh my god, did I wrote this?'. So here you have it, hope you like it and I want you to please tell me of any kind of mistake you find. It is probably full of mistakes , so please be patient and don't kill me.

The Skyseer

The sun’s pale light barely managed to squeeze through one of the windows of the Unscathed Tower. It went through the third world war and the post-nuclear era, and it is still there, as a beacon of darkness in the flaming horizon. Every trader on earth knows about it, and has gone at least once to it.

The merchant opened the door and went up stairs. The tower itself is a broad stair, and it is said it goes higher than the clouds and higher than the sky, and in the top there is only darkness and stars. He started to walk up, stopping at every one of the tents, which are the shops traders put up to sell whatever they have for selling. He came from a distant land looking for provisions for his people. He was an experienced trader, so he knew that a piece of junk might be worth nothing for some people and everything for some other.

It took him a month to go up and down the almost never ending stairs, but he returned with everything his people was needing, and something that he bought from one of the shops at the top of the tower. Led only by intuition, he acquired a rare, star-shaped piece of jewelry, that the seller called “skyseer”. It was made of some strange mineral that reflected the sky, even if it was inside a cavern of solid rock, so it was like having the sky in your hands whenever and wherever you wanted. ‘It looks beautiful’ he said when he first saw it, but still he couldn’t realize its real power.

The merchant was sitting still, holding the skyseer in his hands. His eyes were closed. He had already done this a hundred of times since he found out what the skyseer was really for, but every time was different. Prairies of purple grass that reached as far as the eye can see, canyons that went down to where the ground becomes fire, sunsets of suns that were wider than the horizon. The skyseer showed him many things, some of them beautiful, some of them intriguing; when he used it, he embarked on a journey to worlds that were yet to discover.

Years and years had gone by, but the merchant was still alive, as the tower, as the earth, and as the skyseer. He was then an elder, and he no longer made the long journey from the village to the tower, a job that his son had inherited a week ago, when he was supposed to make his final trip. The skyseer had given him wisdom and knowledge, but he was old, and he was tired enough for not going to the tower for provisions any more.

The skyseer had been behaving strange lately. It was no longer showing him wonderful images of magic worlds, as if it was getting old with its owner. The last time the merchant looked into the skyseer he saw nothing but darkness, but he could hear a woman’s voice.
The voice came from far away into the darkness and whoever was calling seemed to be in pain. It said ‘You have seen the countless worlds we have visited, and of you I have taken my strength, but now it is time for me to rest. Take me with my kind, amongst the stars, because only there I will find peace and you will find answers’.

Since he had that vision, he found himself unable to look into the skyseer any more, but he remembered the words he heard that time, as if he could hear them now. He wondered what the skyseer was trying to tell him, why it was telling him this. Maybe it was him, and he had lost his mind, or maybe the skyseer was dying, but a piece of metal couldn’t die! The skyseer was no ordinary jewel, but it wasn’t alive. His mind was a hurricane of thoughts, but in the eye, he found some peace, and finally reached a conclusion. He will take the skyseer to the stars; he owed that piece of metal a lot, and if he was actually going crazy, he would take the opportunity to make his final journey to the tower, and live his final days on the top, where the sky is black and the stars are brighter.

The trip was long and exhausting, and he still couldn’t see the tower. If he’d died trying to get there, he wouldn’t have found peace because he couldn’t have been able to complete his final task, and so would the skyseer. That gave him the strength he needed to keep moving, he knew the reward was eternal peace. Ruins of long lost cities, great but unusable artifacts, all of what he had around no longer had a meaning for him. Now he was only thinking about himself and the skyseer.

After having walked the never-ending stairs, he reached the top of the tower. There he tried to look into the skyseer, but still he saw nothing. He thought of what he could have had done wrong, and suddenly he remembered what the voice had said, ‘take me with my kind, amongst the stars’. Going out of the tower at that height would have killed him, but he knew he may live long enough to return the skyseer with his kind. There is a hatch on the roof that leads to a very small room between the hall where he is standing and space. In this small room you can remove the ceiling and be exposed to open space. He went through the hatch holding the skyseer in his arms, and then, he removed the ceiling.

Space is cold and dark. There is no sound, no time, only darkness and light lie in the vacuum between worlds. Life was running out of the wise man who once had been a merchant, he was starting to think everything he did had been in vain, when the skyseer glowed in a burst of light that could had been seen from the most distant region of earth. He breathed out all the air he had left. But then, when he was both death and alive, he had a final vision, a gift of the skyseer.

‘Everything means nothing when you know that nothing also means everything. The universe you saw every time you looked into me is my home, where I live. Yes, I live inside myself, and you have been living with me since you first saw the wonderful worlds of where I come from. I was alone, I was dying of loneliness, but your company gave my hope, and you were to me like a friend. Our species live together inside one great universe, one great been, the mother of all us, but also formed by us. So now I will give you a gift that has never been given before: I will let you be inside my universe, where you will live forever; and I will live with and within the rest of my species, where time means nothing, and everything.’


The End

[Altara]

I love it when people post short stories on the forum. I do enjoy your tale and surprisingly you dont make many mistakes. Im not one for correcting punctuation but I will gladly help you enhance the story in other ways, its great knowing someone wants to learn.

• You need to maintain perspective by this I mean you need to choose to write in a past or present tense. Never switch between the two, unless it is a flash back (present to past tense) Even then though it is rarely used properly. For this story and how you've written it, I see it mostly in past tense. So you should try and convert it all to past tense like in this sentence "The sun’s pale light barely manages to squeeze through one of the windows of the Unscathed Tower. " You should trade the 's' in manages for a 'd' and it transforms the entire sentence. Another example: "The merchant opens the door and goes up stairs." Can easily be changed to "The merchant opened the door and went up stairs." But ofcourse if you are aiming for a present tense story, most use words like "I", "he", "she" or "we" instead of "the merchant" since using the words "the merchant" is used for past tense.

• Description is your friend- In the begining you start out well but going back to this sentence "The merchant opens the door and goes up stairs." is an excellent opportunity to make a setting, when writing a sentence try and ask yourself; "What is the door made of?" "What is the lighting?" "How is the air? Stale? Dry? Damp?" "Is it silent? Are the only things he hears his own foot steps?" Answering those add a ton of atmosphere that will do your story well.

• Try to avoid abreviations - When you write a story you need to be sure your target audience knows these abbreviations. A little hard to explain but bear with me. When you use the term 'III' nearly everyone knows what that means, but there could be a few who look at that and wonder "Did he make up his own thing?" Third is just as effective as III if not more. Especially the way you used it.

All together, the only huge issue is you needing to choose a writing perspective, with that it can draw in many more readers.
Now despite my nit picking I do like the story very much, as I said I love seeing people post their stories on the forums. What I love more though is people asking for help when they know they need it, so good on you. If you wish to take my advice and edit it I would be glad to reread it and if you need anymore help feel free to pm me.

[Signatus]

Nice story!

[Masterkick]

Hello everybody, and thanks for answering. I'm sorry I couldn't answer faster, I went on a mini-four-days-holiday, and I didn´t have a computer where I went. So, thanks to Altara's tips I changed the tense and tried to make it more constant (descriptions are in present tense because it seems to sound better that way), so now it should be a better story!. I was planning on adding descriptions but I am way too lazy , so next correction is going to have them added. And, sorry for reviving the post, but I'd like more people to read what I wrote, and I had to explain the various corrections I made.

See you!

[Bamm-Bamm]

I read it... And I like it very much. You really drew me in there (and that says something ). One point of critique: "goodies" in the second paragraph completely kills the atmosphere for me. Thank god it picked up pace again quickly