Read it and weep (or don't - whatever's good)...

elvenscout742

Under the infinite dome of the sky, in the depths of the massive jungle of Pakhta, there lay an egg, roughly twice the size of a man’s fist. For three thousand years, it simply lay there, undisturbed, until one day a terrible creature, a demonic thing from the south that was human in size only, with all the other features of a snake but for six massively muscled arms, picked it up. As the demon put the egg to its mouth, it suddenly cracked open, and out leapt a small monkey.

“Ah!” the creature exclaimed, mildly surprised. “What manner of monkey are you, that you hatch from an egg that was about to be the breakfast of the nâga lord Yuril-Ravâna?”

The simian infant studied curiously its own arms, legs and tail, and then responded, to the surprise of the nâga: “I am Wu-Kong, son of Varuta, and I’m tired. Why did you have to wake me?”

The nâga ignored Wu-Kong’s question. “I am hungry still,” it said to itself. “I suppose I shall have to eat a monkey instead of an egg.” With that, Yuril-Ravâna, with incredible grace, dropped his entire body so as to devour the monkey. As he chewed, he felt a sharp cracking sensation, and then a terrible burning in his lower jaw.

The muscle suddenly hung limp, and Wu-Kong crawled out of the opening, a smile on his face despite his fur being drenched in venom that would have instantly destroyed the vital airs of any other monkey.

“GAH!!! WHAT WAS THAT!?” Wu-Kong heard the demon’s voice cry out in his head.

“I am Wu-Kong, son of Varuta,” he reiterated. “I am descended from the heavens to release this world from its burden.”

Yuril-Ravâna, without again resorting to his nâga telepathy, made his feeling perfectly clear to Wu-Kong with the expression of terror on his face. As he scrambled away, Wu-Kong laughed at the sight of the six-armed demon king scuttling along the sylvan floor.

When the demon was gone, Wu-Kong leapt up into a tree and started carving himself out a staff.

*

A month passed, and within that time Wu-Kong awed the other creatures of the jungle with his mastery of every martial art.

Then, one morning, the monkey warrior felt the earth shake, and swiftly emerged from his treetop cabin to see before him the most monstrous sight that had ever befallen the jungle of Pakhta. In the distance, devouring entire trees, was a new Yuril-Ravâna, but the size of a mountain. His jaw was repaired, and instead of their former green complexion his scales were black as coal. He seemed to emanate a fiery-orange aura, and his eyes filled with rage when they caught sight of the tiny monkey.

“Come to me, Son of the Sky, for I know you are able!” the awesome creature bellowed in a deep voice that, although lacking its former shrillness, was powerful enough itself to make the ground tremble.

Wu-Kong, whose father was the sky god Varuta, then drifted on the wind, the vital breath of the earth, to face the colossal nâga. “Leave this land, alone, and never return. I will let you have but this one warning before I release you from the pain of this life.”

Yuril-Ravâna simply laughed, and, with each “HA!”, a gargantuan ball of flame emerged from his mouth toward Wu-Kong.

While his opponent made merry with his laughing, Wu-Kong began to dance on the air twirling his staff as he did so. The Four Winds alternately drove the flames off into the four cardinal directions before they would have hit Wu-Kong.

After sixteen spheres of fire, the monster had to stop to catch its breath, and in this instant Wu-Kong drove forward with all of his might and tore between Yuril-Ravâna’s eyes into the throne room-sized chamber that was the beast’s skull.

The massive electrical impulses in the creature’s brain would have killed any other creature, but Wu-Kong leapt swiftly onward until he found the nerve centre: a tiny golden egg.

“So this is how you repent for your ill karma, my friend,” Wu-Kong commented, before cracking the egg open with a tap of his staff.

With that, the monstrous Yuril-Ravâna, who had himself only been an illusion, a reflection of the Ultimate Truth, cremated himself, and his ashes were scattered in the ten directions, and Wu-Kong faced the hand-sized Yellow Dragon that had been drawn out of the egg.

The dragon then grew in one second, but infinite tiny instants, to ten thousand – nay, a hundred thousand times its size, its flowing whiskers and myriad limbs glowing in the morning sunlight.

Shen-Long, the Celestial Dragon who had been cast out of heaven for its sins and forced to live three lives as a demon on earth, thus expressed his gratitude to Wu-Kong, his saviour: “You, Lord Hârya, are the Prince of the Winds, the vital air and breath of every living thing, who are known throughout this land of Indus as ‘Prâha’, and in the northern empire of Xia as ‘Qi’. Although you appear to be many and diverse, you are in truth One and Universal, incarnating at times to dispel this illusion.”

Wu-Kong, seeming to gleam with the light of the Ten Billion Suns, responded: “I have freed you, Shen-Long, from this earthly bondage, and will now allow you to rejoin the devas in heaven.”

As the Eternal Dragon floated into the aether, the devas in heaven, the ashuras in hell, and all the beings in all the worlds cheered as they looked upon victorious Wu-Kong, the Universal Spirit.

The_Minister

Was this meant to be a short storey, or a mythical history?

elvenscout742

Short story. I have a tendency to over-explain things when I get started, so I figured I should just not.

The_Minister

If it was a short storey then you wrote it wrong. The tone and word choice fitted a recounting of a myth within a short storey as opposed to a story itself.

elvenscout742

It's a parody. Short stories can be written with whatever type of language I want, and here I wanted to write it to resemble a Puranic piece or something to make that more blatant.

Anyway, even if one can't appreciate the mythical allusions, the piece's form shouldn't much matter for a general analysis.

MDP

No, you heard Firespinner. You wrote it wrong. Christ, haven't you read the short story rulebook??!

Amateurs.

elvenscout742

No... where can I get this rulebook?

Anyway, my English teacher and a number of my peers (including a guy named Chris whom I'm pretty sure also exists here) liked it. I personally am quite proud of it, so I don't really care.

If you have any more specific criticisms than just "it's not a story", though, I'll be sure to take them into account.

Sarky

Keep it civil, gents.

elvenscout742

Hmm... I thought we were, despite a mild bit of what I think might have been sarcasm.

MDP

Ah yeah its all civil, I just thought it was funny that someone can turn around and say - No thats not how you do it.
No offence to firespinner or anyone I just thought it was a fairly comical and blunt reaction to have.

On the piece, I read it a few days ago and got a bit through it and then stopped because I didnt feel like I wanted to read it, it seemed like a bit of an effort. I think that was because its in such a different style from what you would expect. But afterwards I went back and reread it and on my second attempt it went a lot better. Its a nice quirky interesting piece, feels like it should be part of a bigger picture but then all good short pieces tend to. Its good work.

elvenscout742

Thanks!

Well, I never really gave it a title, but when I saved it I created a new folder called "The Legend of Wu-Kong", and then named this file "Chapter I", but the odds are that there will never be a "Chapter II";) .

Firespinner

Firespinner wrote:

Was this meant to be a short storey, or a mythical history?

Not meaning to sound rude, but how can anyone take creative writing advice from someone who cannot spell the word story?

Anyways, it's an interesting piece. Very bizare language, and names, but interesting nonetheless

The_Minister

Deleted User wrote:

Not meaning to sound rude, but how can anyone take creative writing advice from someone who cannot spell the word story?

I tend to write with pen and paper so I may misspell words here that I normally wouldn't.

MDP wrote:

No, you heard Firespinner. You wrote it wrong. Christ, haven't you read the short story rulebook??!

Ok My response was short and hurried. What I meant was, it felt more like a recounting of a myth (kinda Japanesey) as opposed to a short storey. The language used, as well as the syntax was more a retelling of a piece of history, rather than a short storey written in the format of having happened within a short space of time. Do you get me now? Or are you even more confused?

Shad0r

First of all, who cares whether it’s a short story or "mythical history" ? What difference does it make?

Firespinner wrote:

I tend to write with pen and paper so I may misspell words here that I normally wouldn't.

Ok that is actually the worst excuse I've ever heard for bad spelling. Surely you can appreciate the irony of blaming the use of a computer for bad spelling. I've yet to see a pen with a built in spellchecker.

I read the piece and liked it but I got a little mixed up by it at the end. It's quite different than what I'm used to reading here which is good but I felt that you rushed parts of the imagery which only really touched on striking when you could have had an incredibly visual piece of work if you'd just helped the imagination on a little bit more.

TerrorFirmer

The format of the story made no odds to the fact I didn't like it.

I'm not saying it was bad outright, but it seemed a little too....like you tried too hard to make something seem so fantastic (in the make believe fantasy sense) that it seems too forced and...childish.

My opinion anyway...

AppleBack

I thought it was good although at times I did want to stop reading due to all the different words like, "Son of the Sky". I also laughed at the thought of a ninja monkey.

elvenscout742

Well, many of the names (see here and here) were taken from old stories. "Yuril-Ravana" (the first element, as far as I can tell, being my own creation) is a stock character in many of my stories, and frequently bares much more resemblance to the Ramayana character. Wu-Kong is probably more based on Akira Toriyama's reinterpretation of the character (who practices martial arts).

And anyone who has read English translations of virtually any Vaishnava literature (the Bhagavad Gita, etc.) will recognise the language style.