- Fruity20
- Jul 28, 2018
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Do you believe in magic, Tenno?
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Title: the mantis' wish
genre: xenofiction
word count: 651
foreword: After writing this piece, I gained a lot of respect for the writing process. then again I always had but not to this degree. After doing this mod challenge perhaps I should do more short stories I guess. The story you're gonna word started a bit  in the beginning but ended up getting as safe for work as possible once some tangents were removed. Thankfully the latest piece can be posted here safely. Now, I don't look to highly at my work. There's moment where I feel something is missing, or the dialogue didn't feel right and other things. It's a super common thing I must admit and I hope you guys still kinda like it despite that. And for anyone wondering why I didn't join thunderdome, I wasn't interested. I liked the prompt but I loved my avatar too much to risk getting it replaced. also for the aforementioned reasons before. thanks everyone form the writing server for helping me be my best.
quote:
The purpose of life to say is a very pressing matter. Most claim it’s something that happens. We barely exist before we were born and we clearly don’t exist once we’re dead. For others, they don’t care. One’s instincts are too strong to bother with the mere questions of life. To them, all that mattered was to eat, sleep, and mate. Repeat again until finally, one is no more.
For a mantis, this is universal as expected for their species. When two mantises finish their courtship ritual, there's two possibilities: One is that both participants go their separate ways, most likely to die of exhaustion after so much love making. The other is death by cannibalism.
Corey hated the second possibility. Death was something he always feared. He valued his well-being more than anything else, even the idea of hunting prey. When he was a young, he barely left his place of birth, hoping each day a bug was unlucky enough to reach into his grasp. Once he was older, he had no choice but to leave as the leaf he used to stand on gave out and sent him into the cold dirt. It was like a rite of passage. No longer was he the wee mantis boy of yesterday but the grown mantis man of today, but what about the mantis of tomorrow, he wondered?
Sunrise on the horizon. Trees dressed up their finest pinks and butterflies came out of undergrowth to spread their wings. He heard the buzzing below his feet, and the wet dew of morning drenched his feelers and hide. His wide compound eyes picked up the slightest sight of interest. The tree branch he stood upon provided him the ideal spot to see everything, especially potential mates. Regardless of where he looked, however, he never spotted any. Not on the flowers, not on the grass, and not on the logs or ponds or anywhere else. They’re hiding from me, I know it. They’re planning an ambush on me!
He turned around. No one. He rested his sight elsewhere. He moved up another branch every once in awhile to get a better view. Still no one. He flew down on a flower. Only a bee, who then threatened to sting him. He stumbled off the edge and landed on the cold dirt, his old friend. He laid there for a bit, looking up at the sky wondering what he honestly did in his life. Nothing. The sky itself could agree as it was far bigger than he ever will be. But just before he thought he was meaningless, he heard a voice. A strange accent he never heard before in these parts.
“Oi!” a distant voice exclaimed. “What ya doin down there?”
Coming down from a single web strand came a spider, an orbweaver, looking straight into his eyes. “Don’t ya know the grounds full of worms?”
“Who cares,” he replied, gloomily, “I’m more at home here than in the trees.”
She was silent then went bursting in laughter, shaking herself up and down. “Ya sure is a weird fella. Most mantises I know are more tree or grass buggos…say, what’s your name?”
She stretched out her front limbs, expecting a handshake.
“C-Corey,” he stuttered, helping himself up with the aid of her hand.
“How’s bout we get ya up there, ey..pal?”
“…Sure.”
The two bugs walked alongside each other, the sun in the sky slowly sinking down to where the land and sky met. As they looked onward, it seemed as though life did matter, regardless of whether you’re a spider, or a very paranoid mantis.
“Ya know,” said the orbweaver, looking at the sunset. “Great things are gonna happen someday. I don’t know what, but we might just like it!”
While the two interlocked legs, the sun finally left the sky, turning gold to grey. Time will tell when the next tomorrow comes.
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May 18, 2019 13:37
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May 15, 2024 10:24
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- Fruity20
- Jul 28, 2018
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Do you believe in magic, Tenno?
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Crit: we don’t need the faux-intellectualism in the first paragraph. “Corey” is a dumb name for a mantis (or a person). You probably don’t need to give the mantis a name. “The mantis” will do just fine.
There’s an interesting idea in the story of a mantis whose only hope for meaningful connection means imminent death. Follow through on that. Perhaps he finds it in the spider, only for the spider to betray him by doing what spiders do.
You have some lush descriptions here. Use full sentences unless you have a really, really good reason not to, though.
thank you for this critique. I admit the first paragraph was a bit unnecessary and was the result of me thinking i needed 600 words for the story. now I went over that number, it's safe to rid of it next time.
now for some personal bias, I don't really like calling a animal character (unless stated otherwise) their species name as that implies their the only one...okay that sounds dumb but when I wanna introduce another that's the same species, do I call them ms mantis or mantis 2?
I'm not sure honestly. besides that point, I admit they introduction of the spider was half assed at best and I should have given it more weight than an afterthought.
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May 18, 2019 18:11
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- Fruity20
- Jul 28, 2018
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Do you believe in magic, Tenno?
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So was the very last sentence
"Time will tell when the next tomorrow comes."
Just stop and think what it's telling the reader about the characters or the story.
I honestly don't know how to end the story without feeling too open ended...maybe I should just rewrite this.
Fruity20 fucked around with this message at 23:49 on May 18, 2019
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May 18, 2019 23:38
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May 18, 2019 13:37
