Hey guys, can you critique this short story? It's a bit depressing in some parts, but I'm trying to learn how to work with setting moods in my writing. And I'm fine if you don't like it. Just tell me why you don't in a CIVIL, HUMANLY MANNER. I'm not going to consider anything you say if you start flaming me.
So thanks for taking time to read this note. :)
For the Love of Ahea
In the first days of my life I saw nothing but four sterile, white walls. This was where I came into the world-- a frog-like creature that you all came to know as an ahea. The slimy fragments of eggshell were scraped away in the matter of minutes after my birth, along with my brothers and sisters, and to this day I still wonder where. Auctioned off to a land far away from our beloved Atquati? Abandoned, for being too common to be of any value to their caretakers?
They came to me in my dreams, hazy figures shimmering against bright white-- it was the only color I'd ever known. The walls, the floor, even my skin, for I am what one calls an albino ahea. I could not see their faces-- how did they feel? Perhaps they were lucky enough to be sold off to a friendly owner, instead of being shunted from breeder to breeder? Showroom to ranch shop, then back again?
This made me wonder about my own caretaker-- who was he? I saw nothing of him, albeit a dusty food and water tin in the corner of my white room. Was he nice? Did he love me, like he loved his other creatus?
No, I thought. I am nothing to him, just like he is nothing to me.
To this thought I was filled with a great sadness, for the words resonated with a queer truth. He was nothing to me. I knew that if I had heard news that he had passed away, I never would've felt the slightest remorse, and would've instead cared only for my own being, but the worst thing about my own revelation was that he never cared about me, either. Never have I seen his face, heard his voice. When I was a young hatchling, my cries of fear or hunger always went unanswered.
It has been three years since my birth-- my skin is chapped from lack of moisture, and my eyes feel bloodshot, but I have found something even more spectacular:
A crack in my wall.
When I peered through it, I saw the second color I had ever seen in my life, more important to me than what little I'd seen before:
Blue.
When song of waves roared in my ears from the distant shores of Atquati, back when I was but a hatchling, and the evening cool settled into my room as the sun went down, I thought that just maybe, that was what it was like to see the color blue, and the day I discovered the crack in the white concrete, I experienced it for real, and it brought tears down my dry, dying skin. What I had seen was the soft tones of morning, right after the sun came up, and when the exotic Atquati bird calls sounded throughout the landscape. It was such an innocent color, like the light undertones of a natural ahea's skin, just when it breaks free from its shell.
I shoved a paper into the crevice. I decided I must never see light again, because for a creature like me, it is impossible to ever achieve it. The achievement of seeing blue was never meant for me, but I of all creatures must urge you to remember that every creatu in this realm deserves much better, even if they are ugly or "common."
Please, for the love of ahea, remember that we are Creatu, too.
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