Gearwork [WaR]

A collection of mellow, warm lights cast a yellow glow over the ballroom, glinting off the jewels woven into the ladies' hair and sparkling upon their sequined dresses. These were the civilized women, the Queen decided happily, as she toasted to her husband, the king, and then took a sip of champagne. Not too much, because god forbid she become intoxicated at a party such as this.

One of her daughters, the eldest, was nearby, talking to a young man. The Queen narrowed her eyes in distaste, taking in the lad's scruffy appearance. The young man had clearly not had a haircut in a while, his mop falling almost to his shoulders and competing with Sylvia's blonde locks for length. The Queen sighed. This was an issue best resolved quickly. She got up and strode away to find Sylvia's fiancé.

Peals of laughter rang through the air, echoing among the gold and pearl buttresses of the ceiling until it was a faint ghost of a sound, still finding its way back to Sylvia's ears through her veil and making her smile all the wider. She gazed into the eyes of the man she had just happened to bump into. They had engaged in conversation, and she had discovered that he was an inventor. This had, however, led to an awkward moment when he asked her what she did for a living.

"Well... You see, I'm, ah, a princess," she had said, wincing as the words fell from her lips. They just sounded so presumptuous, so better-than-you.

The young man immediately did as Sylvia had feared, dropping to one knee and bowing rather dramatically. "My lady." There was a smile in his voice as he said it, however, and Sylvia wondered if he had known all along.

"Get up, underling," Sylvia giggled. Ordinarily she was opposed to saying that word even jokingly, but there was just something about this man that put her at ease.

"As you wish, m'lady," he responded in kind as he jumped up and grasped her hands, spinning her around on the dance floor. He swirled her outwards, always teetering on the brink of release but never actually doing it. She knew he wouldn't.

He was drawing her in close, staring into her eyes, when an angry throat-clearing interrupted them. They turned and Sylvia immediately groaned, putting her head in her hands, while her dance partner dropped to one knee before the Queen.

Sylvia's mother strode forward to her frowning daughter, ignoring the kneeling man at her feet. "Darling, whatever are you doing, playing about with these men? It's not fair to your fiancé, to toy with his feelings like that," she said. Her voice sounded kind and concerned, but Sylvia knew it was all an act.

"Mother, enough! I don't love the Prince. I never have. I am only engaged to him because you want the power of his kingdom, I know! I'm sick of being your tool! I want to live my own life! Is that so much to ask?" Sylvia shouted, tears in her eyes. The party ground to a halt around them as the princess's statement and accusation roared in the silence.

Her mother was visibly displeased, but still attempted a smile. "Well, if that is how you feel... I suppose I have nothing more to say to you. Guards!" she called, bringing a pair of heavily armed and armored men to a stop behind her, "Remove Commoner Sylvia and her companion from this party at once. They are never to be allowed in this palace again."

Sylvia's fiancé, Prince Ralph of the North Isles, arrived just in time to see his bride-to-be thrown out on the street in a rather unseemly manner. He turned to the queen, who had pasted an expression of regret onto her face.

"What are you doing, Your Highness? That's my betrothed and your daughter that you're putting out on the street!" he demanded.

"Ah, yes. It's a tragic thing, but she was cheating on you in the most disgraceful way. I would not condone such behavior. I am, however, certain that she will see the error of her ways and come back after proper consideration."

Outside, the inventor that had been dancing with Sylvia helped her up and dusted off her now-ruined dress. "Well, m'lady, it seems only fitting I introduce myself. I am William Steam, inventor of several nifty little gadgets, and it would appear I just got Princess Sylvia disowned."

Sylvia giggled a bit hysterically and shook her head, although there were still tears in her eyes. "That's commoner Sylvia, eldest of four sisters, and daughter of a horrid controlling mother also known as the Queen. Don't worry about it. It was all my fault. That explosion in there... It was years of anger building up at my mother. Horrible woman. Arranged my marriage before I could even speak to protest it!"

William's eyes widened under the brim of his top hat. "Really?"

"Really. I was only about two years old and my mother was already making calls to the kings and queens of nearby territories to see if they had any sons about my age to marry me off to. That's the only reason she kept having kids with my father, so she could use them as tools for power," she explained, pushing the toe of her expensive dance shoe into the dust.

William seemed unfazed, extending an arm to his companion. "Well, m'lady, I have something I would like to show you."

Sylvia hooked her arm through his, a smile pushing through the dirt and misery smeared across her face, and they walked off down the crowded cobblestone street. A girl standing in the shadows of one corner started to call out to William, but stopped mid-cry when she noticed Sylvia walking beside him.

"Who's that?" Sylvia asked curiously as they passed the girl. She noted the girl's ragged clothes and considered giving her some money.

"That's a friend of mine. Her name is Lucy. I sometimes pay her to run errands for me," William said.

"Why don't you just give her money? She clearly needs it."

William threw his head back and released a booming laugh, drawing the attention of those around them, before he replied. "She isn't as poor as she likes people to think. Her act clearly worked on you. Besides, if I paid her to do nothing, I'd have a much harder time getting her to work for me."

"What sort of errands does she run? They sound like they're important to you."

"Many sorts of things... She picks up orders and delivers them for me, sends messages for me, occasionally orchestrates a certain event," William said casually.

"Orchestrates? What does that mean? I know what the word means- but you're telling me that little beggar girl can arrange for stuff to happen?"

William smirked. "You'd be surprised."

Sylvia had nothing more to say to that, and they strode forward in silence for a while, the people before them parting like the Red Sea before Moses. Sylvia suspected their ragged appearance caused them to appear as beggars to the other folk. She wasn't sure whether she liked the idea or not, after years of meticulous upkeep under her mother's watchful eye.

William suddenly stopped, jerking Sylvia back to reality, and she found herself looking at an old clock tower, much shorter then more famous ones. It looked worn down, as though the clock keeper had just given up years ago and abandoned the location. William pushed the creaking door open and grandly beckoned her inside.

Sylvia hesitated a moment, feeling like this was a threshold. If she crossed over, the door would slam shut and lock behind her, leaving her trapped in William's strange new world. She had only gotten a small taste of it so far, but she was not sure if she liked it. Nonetheless, she turned and followed William into the shadows of the entryway, only to quickly be blinded by a massive burst of light.

She cried out in physical pain, pressing a hand to her eyes, and William grabbed her shoulders to steady her as a wave of light and heat hit her.

"Sorry about that, m'lady, I forget how bright this place can be to those unaccustomed to the fire. You can open your eyes up now. No worries," William said. He sounded genuinely apologetic, and she slowly blinked her eyes open to see the true form of the massive building.

The old clockwork was still turning, much to Sylvia's amazement, although it wasn't being used to power the hands of the clock. Instead, the massive gears were autonomously working the bellows for a massive furnace situated at the base of the clock. The smoke, she realized with wonder, was being funneled up to the top of the tower by a complex chimney system.

"It's a factory," she said in amazement, her eyes drinking in small details like a huge anvil, a warped piece of metal sitting haphazardly atop it, and more steel sitting nearby, some only melted chunks, and some twisted into more refined shapes.

William followed her line of sight and sighed, pulling her over the heap. "Ah, yes. All my projects, years of my life wasted. My dream, Sylvia, is to create a living machine, a machine that can think for itself. I've come close a couple times, but I've never been able to create a self-sustaining power source of the size and power that such a machine would require. I went to the Queen's party to beg for funding for my project, but as you can see, she and I did not part on the best of terms."

Sylvia raised an eyebrow. "Erm, I'm sorry, but I didn't get any of that. It was all technical talk to me. Why am I even here, anyhow? I can't help you at all!"

"Well, originally my plan was to use you to get close to the Queen so I could ask for the funds- apologies, by the way- but I didn't know you were already engaged. I also didn't predict her fury being great enough to throw us both out on the street, but when she did, I felt it was my fault and thought it only right that I take you into my home," William finished, laying out his version of events from start to finish and ending with a rueful smile.

Sylvia sat down hard. "You know, I should be mad at you. Logically, I should be extremely mad at you. But I'm not, and you know why? Because you did a great thing. You set me free of my witch of a mother, and for once in my miserable life I don't have to worry about how to sit or proper posture or marrying a man I don't love."

"...wow. Your mother really did a number on your brain, didn't she?" William asked with a grin.

Sylvia laughed, her bell-like voice ringing the same way it had while they were dancing. "Well, you're stuck with me now. I don't have a home and I'm not prone to sleeping on the streets."

"I'd say yes, but I live here, its filthy, and I only have the one bed."

"I wouldn't have it any other way."

William's bed was tucked in a loft, precariously balanced between two frozen gears. The young man had insisted that Sylvia take the bed, as she was a delicate lady and bound to catch cold if she was not properly cared for. Sylvia had brushed these concerns off and told him that no matter, he had taken her into his home, she wasn't going to steal his bed.

"It's not stealing if I'm okay with it," William argued.

"Well, I don't like it."

"Just sleep in the bed!"

"Where are you going to sleep then?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does."

William finally groaned and gave up. "Will you be satisfied if we both just sleep in front of the furnace?"

Sylvia smiled in satisfaction. "Yes it would."

They pulled the blankets off of the bed and laid them down a comfortable distance from the flames of the furnace, using the thicker one to insulate them from the cold floor, and the thinner to cover them. Sylvia fell asleep staring up at the churning gears, and her dreams were troubled.

She was running, jumping across the teeth of a massive gear, never making any progress forward or backward. Every time she made a rotation, she could glimpse William, standing on the bed loft, reaching out for her hand. She tried to grab onto him, but she could never quite reach. Her mother suddenly loomed up behind her, forcing her to run faster, but she stumbled over one of the teeth, and fell down, down, down...

She jerked awake, her chest heaving, with what was now a ripped and filthy dress plastered against her skin with sweat. She slowly pulled herself upright, taking the time to separate nightmare from reality. The two were not so different lately, Sylvia thought sadly as she lowered her head back onto the only pillow, which William had insisted she take.

She stared up at the ceiling at the massive gears, endlessly laboring to work the bellows and produce the fire in the huge furnace. There seemed to be an odd rhythm to the way they turned, perfectly synchronized and never faltering. As her nightmare faded away and was replaced with thoughts of the previous day's events, Sylvia broke out into a grin. Whatever the day would bring, she was free, free of the wicked woman who had attempted to control her all her life.

She lay like that for a long time, contemplating her uneventful life thus far, and wondering what would come next for her. William's words swam unbidden into her mind, how he wanted to create an animal of steel. Sylvia wondered what such technology would mean for the land, what it would do and what effect it would have on their future. She pictured a city of metal, everything powered by gears and steam, and with high-tech canes, umbrellas, transportation. There would be no end to it!

The images of gears whirling were still on Sylvia's mind when William woke up, yawned and stretched. "Good morning, my flower. How are you?"

Sylvia noted with amusement that he had forgotten to take his top hat off before sleeping, and it was now squished on one side. "I didn't have a very good night of sleep, but believe me, I'm better then ever."

"Very good, very good. Why didn't you sleep well?"

"I had a nightmare about running across a gear. It was constantly turning, and turning, and turning. It wouldn't stop." Sylvia frowned. "I think you were there too."

"Constantly turning? That's... that's genius!" William shouted, shooting upwards and throwing back the blanket. "Of course! It's so obvious! I mean, I live in a tower powered by gears! How could I not see it? Constantly turning!"

Sylvia was confused. "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

William hopped to his feet and helped her up, a smile painted across his face. "Gears turning... If I put two gears together, spinning in opposite directions, they would keep each other going! That's the power source! Endless movement!"

Sylvia frowned. "Wait, I'm not getting it. Are you saying you can make energy with just two gears? No crank or wire or plug or anything?"

"Indeed!" William said happily, dashing to the massive heap of crippled gears by the fire and beginning to dig through it, sending chunks of twisted metal flying every which way. A couple flew directly into the furnace, and as Sylvia sidestepped one, she wondered, not for the first time, if this man was entirely sane.

"What the blazes are you doing now? I thought you said those were your failed projects!" Sylvia shouted over the roar of the furnace. The greedy flames had fed on the fuel of steel and grown in size and volume.

"They were, yes, failed, but with this new revelation comes new hope! I know I had some in here that came close to my perfection. Now, I can finally achieve that goal!" he yelled back, hurling another gear over his head. It skidded to a halt at Sylvia's feet and she picked it up, curious.

The gear was small, with six teeth, one of them almost melted off. In the center was a misshapen spot of blue, and what it was from, Sylvia couldn't tell. What caught her attention, though, was the eye. A small dent had made in the gear sometime during its construction, possibly on purpose but more likely on accident. There was a smaller dent nearby, but it went deeper and looked almost painful.

"Oh, Dear God help me, I'm losing it too. Madness must be contagious," Sylvia muttered, too quiet for William to hear over the crackle and roar of the flames. Nonetheless, she felt the need to pull a bandage from her pocket and place it over the deeper dent.

"There you go," Sylvia said, feeling oddly proud of herself even as William lost his faith. A cry of despair sounded from where he was, and Sylvia whirled to see him staring into the furnace in anguish.

"I... I threw it in. My best one yet. I was just getting into a habit of glancing at them and throwing them in without really thinking. I didn't realize what I had done until I saw it in there, melting," William said. Sylvia got the idea he was speaking to her although he steadfastly stared into the fire instead of looking at her.

Part of Sylvia was terrified. She wanted to leave this strange man now, to run and run away and never look back... but where would she go? Her mother had disowned her, and she wouldn't go near that witch ever again, even if she had to spend the rest of her life on the streets. Then there was William. She was still unsure who was indebted to whom in their case. He had gotten her thrown out of her home, and admitted to using her to get to her mother, but he had also taken her in, given a bed and a roof to sleep under.

Sylvia looked at the gear in her hand again. In the orange-red glow of the fire, it looked warm, friendly. She tucked it away and decided to stay here. She had nowhere else to go. She stepped forward and gently tapped William, now kneeling on the floor, on the shoulder. His reaction was violent, twisting around and grabbing her wrist, glaring at her with wild eyes.

"Have you gone mad?" Sylvia gasped in pain and shock, attempting without success to free her arm.

William shook his head wordlessly as recognition entered his eyes a split second too late. "Sylvia, I..."

"No," she whispered, backing away as his grip slackened. "No. I... I can't stay here. You're mad. You're obsessed with your... your gears and your fire. It's scaring me, William. You're scaring me."

He shook his head more vigorously now, but still did not open his mouth to protest her departure. Sylvia slowly turned, opened the door, and was met with the light of day for what seemed like the first time in ages, although she had seen it only yesterday.

She began her walk back, unsure where she was going but certain that it wouldn't be her home or William's. Every so often she reached into her pocket to touch the cold smoothness of the gear. As she passed a narrow alley, she was stopped in her tracks by a small voice.

"Miss? Miss? Yes, you. Weren't you with my big brother yesterday? Is he alright?" the voice asked. Sylvia took a tentative step closer and was able to make out the shadowy outline of a girl.

"Your big brother?" Sylvia asked. William hadn't mentioned this girl having a big brother.

"Yes, I saw you on his arm as you passed my hiding place here."

The pieces clicked together in Sylvia's mind. "William is your brother?" she asked incredulously.

"Finally. You're slower then a lame turtle. Now, what's happened to my brother? I can see it on your face, the fear and pain," Lucy said in a soft accent that Sylvia hadn't noticed before. She recalled a similar inflection in William's voice.

In that same moment, realization truly struck her, and she began to cry, tears paving tracks through the layer of dirt and mud on her face. She collapsed to her knees, and placed her head in her hands as passerby shot her disgusted looks. Lucy looked concerned.

"It's that bad, is it?" the girl asked softly, darting out of her alleyway and grasping Sylvia's hand. "Come here now. I can't help you if you don't let me. Stand up and follow me."

Somehow, the words managed to briefly penetrate Sylvia's haze of misery, and she was able to force herself to stagger into Lucy's alley before collapsing into tears once more. The girl disappeared for a moment before returning with a pot of tea. Sylvia didn't ask how she got it, although she suspected it was stolen.

The tea, once in Sylvia's system, helped calm her enough to tell her story. It really was nice tea, minty fresh and sweetened with something Sylvia couldn't identify. "I fear your brother has gone mad, Lucy," she hiccuped, taking another gulp of tea.

"This isn't the first time I've heard that, believe me. He's just eccentric, is what I usually say. To be honest, many women are scared off by his attitude. Is this something more than that?"

Sylvia nodded sadly. "He made a breakthrough, thought if he had two gears spinning in opposite directions, the energy produced would be endless."

"That sounds like him," Lucy agreed. "What next?"

"He started going through all his old gears, looking for one that would suit his project. I'm not entirely sure what happened, it was so fast, but I think he was searching for one in particular, and accidentally destroyed it," Sylvia explained, the memory of William's reaction bringing a fresh wave of tears to her eyes.

Lucy whistled, and Sylvia noticed the girl had a large gap between her front teeth. It fit with her street urchin appearance, with ragged and greasy black hair, a black eye, and clothes that looked like they were fashioned from potato sacks or the like.

"Let me guess, he flipped out and scared you, and that's why you're here," Lucy finished.

Sylvia nodded, biting her lip almost hard enough to make it bleed. She pulled the gear out of her pocket and stared at it.

"What's that?" Lucy asked, moving to get a better view of the little metal disk.

"It's just one of William's gears. I kept it... I don't know why. I should probably just throw it away," Sylvia said, moving to toss the little gear away when Lucy grabbed her hand.

"Wait a moment. Why does it have a bandage on it?"

Sylvia released a slightly hysterical giggle at the memory. "Well, I thought it was hurt. It had this deep dent in it.... Oh, help me sweet Lord, I'm cracking up too, aren't I?"

Lucy raised an eyebrow, and appeared to really take a good look at the ragged appearance of the former princess before her, nodding in satisfaction. "You're perfect!"

"Perfect? For what?"

"Don't you see? You're a perfect match for my brother! You're both a little mad, you both have a thing about clockwork, and you both dress like you spend every night sleeping in a filthy gutter. It's a match made in heaven!" Lucy shouted, tossing her teacup against the stones, layering yet another stain on top of the alley floor.

Sylvia was utterly bewildered for a moment by the sudden change in this girl's demeanor. "Come again?"

"I'll try to put it in terms you can understand. I arrange for things to happen. I got my brother a spot at the party in the hopes that he would finally pick up a dame. Do you know how lonely the poor chap gets, with only his little projects to keep him company?"

Sylvia shook her head no and gestured for Lucy to continue.

"Very lonely. I was happy when he came back with you, you appeared to be a perfect match, but I had to make sure. One doesn't just go around choosing wives for their brothers without being sure. I contacted him last night and told him about the double-gear idea, and told him all the acting he would have to do to convince you. I needed to see how you'd react," Lucy explained, laying her plot out for the whole world to see.

For Sylvia, it was all a bit too much. "Wait. You planned all of this? All of these events, you planned for?"

"To be honest, I didn't think you'd have a fiancé or that you two would get thrown out of the palace. I was hoping you would have a magical evening at the dance, but your blasted mother had to interfere," Lucy admitted shamelessly, looking almost proud of herself.

A realization lit Sylvia's eyes and she shot upright, narrowly missing banging her head on a metal pipe jutting out of the wall. "I should go back to him, shouldn't I." It wasn't even a question, more of a statement.

"You should. You two are meant to be, Princess. The two of you will be together forever, like the gears of that design you really ought to try out. I think it could work," Lucy said cheerfully before melting away into the shadows.

Sylvia called out for the little girl again, but there was no answer. Now came the ultimate choice. Should she go back to William? Could she? His world was full of madness and lies, but she wasn't even sure if that was a bad thing anymore. She nodded firmly, even though there was no one else in the alley to see her. She took a tentative step forward into the light, then another and another. Before long she was dashing down the street, filthy hair and torn dress flapping around her as passerby sidestepped her in disgust.

Sylvia knew the clock tower on sight, even though she had only seen it from the outside once, and that was in the darkness. The building stood resolute, the hands still as stone. Sylvia decided that that was what set it apart. There weren't many clock towers already, as they were expensive to build and maintain. If a single part warped, it was costly to fix. William's tower stood apart from the few others there were because the hands were frozen.

Sylvia stood before the massive door and bit her lip, willing herself forward. She raised her hand, painfully slowly, and brought it down on the hard wood of the door. She waited, but no one answered, and she knocked again, and again. Worry gnawed at the edges of her mind. Surely William should have heard. She pushed her way through the door, and remembered to close her eyes against the sudden flare of light.

What met her eyes, once they had adjusted, was a downright shocking scene. Two men were up in the bed loft, one clearly larger then the other. It was obvious that he was winning the fight, as he grabbed the smaller man's necktie and suspended over the massive gears. The smaller man's feet were desperately scuffing and kicking at the ground as he attempted to pull himself back from the brink.

Sylvia recognized them both on sight. "Ralph, what are you doing?" she wailed, catching the attention of both her betrothed and William.

"Sylvie? I'm winning you back, what does it look like I'm doing?" Prince Ralph shouted back, struggling to make himself heard over the grinding gears and roaring furnace.

"No! Stop!" Sylvia yelled, William echoing her protests and probably not helping his case.

"This man stole you, Sylvie! I need you back, and this is the only way I can accomplish that," Ralph said, his voice full of emotion.

Sylvia started for the ladder, intending on climbing up to the loft, when Ralph shook William threateningly, obviously intending on dropping the smaller man if Sylvia took another step. She froze in her tracks as her heart hammered in her chest, and Ralph eased William back towards him the slightest bit.

"Sylvia, I made myself love you. I knew our marriage was going to happen. I forsook all other women so that you would be all the sweeter. My whole life I've been planning around our marriage, and then you leave me? How could you... I loved you, Sylvia," Ralph said, and Sylvia heard a deep sadness in his voice. It hurt her to know that she was the cause of it.

"You did all that for me? For us? Why?" Sylvia shouted, hoping that if Ralph grew distracted, he would forget about the smaller man whose life he held in his hand.

"Your mother came to my home that day, Sylvia. She had an army with her, far more many then my parents could ever hope to muster. She said she would loose them on us if I wasn't promised in marriage to her eldest daughter. My parents had no choice. I was only four, Sylvia, and I remember that day like it was yesterday. Our marriage had to happen. I forced myself to make the best of it." Ralph looked at her with anguished eyes.

Sylvia bit her lip until she could taste blood on her tongue, thick and metallic. One man who was a perfect match for her in every way, but who was currently dangling by his tie above deadly gears, and another, who she could never love, but who had to love her. As she watched, William's severely misshapen top hat slid off of his head and tumbled into the gears.

"Stop, Ralph! Don't kill him! I'll marry you if that's what you want, just don't do this!"

Ralph jerked his head around in disbelief, his grip on William's tie loosening by just a fraction, but that was all it took. Sylvia watched in horror as the eccentric inventor she had danced the night away with plunged through the air.

Clarity reached her then, and the world froze around her. Sylvia thought back to the pond in the palace garden. She used to sit beside it for hours, tossing rocks across the water and watching them skip. She pulled the gear from her pocket and gently passed her thumb over it, feeling every small bubble and irregularity in the metal. She pulled her arm back, wincing as a muscle she hadn't used in ages protested loudly, and hurled the tiny projectile forwards, sending it flashing towards the gears. It wasn't a difficult throw- the things were monstrous- but there was a lot riding on it.

The gear bounced off the ground and rocketed upwards. One skip.

It hit the top of the furnace. Two skips.

It sent itself spiraling into the gears, ricocheting around more times then Sylvia could count before lodging between two important parts, and bringing them to a grinding halt. The tremendous screech resonating through the tower forced both Sylvia and Ralph to clap their hands to their ears and brought the latter to his knees.

There was a painful crunch as William hit the gears. He had luckily thought to put his arms in front of him while falling, not that it would have done him much good if the gears had remained in motion. Sylvia was no doctor, but she figured at least one leg and probably both of his wrists were broken. She ran forward, scooped up the moaning and bloody mess, and cradled him carefully in her arms so as to not disturb any of his injuries further.

"What the hell are you doing, Sylvie? I thought you said you would marry me!" Ralph shouted from the loft, moving over to the ladder. In that instant, Sylvia knew that it was no accident that William's tie had slipped through his fingers.

Sylvia shot him a glare and yanked a gauzy veil out of her tangled hair, surprised that it had survived this long. She held the corner in the fire until it lit, then tied the burning fabric around the bottom rung of the ladder. It was made out of wood, dry from years of exposure to the furnace. She figured it would catch fairly quickly.

Several weeks later, she brought William a present in the hospital. She had asked one of the firemen who had come running along with the paramedics to retrieve the tiny gear and he had done so willingly, although he was puzzled when she refused to tell him why. Sylvia fished a melted chunk of metal out of the furnace and spend hours slaving over William's anvil, resizing it and reshaping it until it was just right.

Now it was. Two gears, one with two layers, the other with a signature bandage over a dent, turned endlessly in her hands. She held it out to William to see, and tears of happiness gathered in his eyes.

Spoiler

Write-a-Roll story

Drama
Victorian
Human Main

Target Pokémon- Klang
Character Count- 30823
Rank- Hard

 

Claiming!

 

Introduction:

Okay, a quick description of the place, and the people in it. Yep. Settings as an intro is good as long as you don't overdo it. In yours, I can see where the story would start.

Anyways, some characters were set up and that's fine. Although I'm quite having this problem where you first took the POV of the Queen, then it switched to Sylvia. POV changes should happen between chapters. Since youn wrote a short story, one POV would look natural. And where the POV is, the readers would assume that it is the main character. You would not want the readers to believe that the story is about the Queen kicking out Sylvia because of reasons.

Plot:

Your plot, as a whole, fits what you wanted it to be. It is a Victorian romance, a perfect combination, and you melded it perfectly. The conflict fits the story, and the resolution too. Anyways, the plot is quite perfect.

For the characters. Each of them had their own quirks, which don't make them stereotypes, which most writers of those genres would usually commit. Let's take Sylvia. I think that there is a little fleck of modern view in her "philosophies in life". Usually, Victorian princesses are passive, like "I am 14 years old and I'm supposed to marry the Prince of Giraffeland who is 37 years old" kind of thing. I do believe that she is quite rebellious, by her reactions. She is supposed to be a pampered thing, or even spoiled. But the ways she reacts to the scene like "Been there. Watched that. Usual." Like she knows she's born to it. With that kind of life, she is supposed to have transitions. CHARACTER TRANSITIONS. Or development.

For the touch of romance. I think it fine. For Ralph, something not too Victorian. For those arranged marriages, the groom mostly is apathetic to the bride. First time I see someone like THAT. MAybe that's true, but I only bought half of it. I think that there is something more to that supposedly romance of Ralph-Sylvia. You know, hidden plans, behind the tables. If that is true, then you should have fleshed out the character more, make it more developed. It's your story, use your creativity.

For Lucy, I think she can be removed. I don't think she affected the story. Not that less is better, but you know Chekhov's Rule: "Don't include unimportant things." One must justify its presence. It must affact the plot. Something like that.

Anyways, I don't quite find anything sserious of such any fault.

Detail:

I like the prose! It fits the setting of your story. The prose of a story must always match its setting and the mood. In your story, the word choice is perfect and fits the Victorian theme. I can't really find anything wrong on your details, so you're good!

Grammar:

Yep, you're good here! I'd just leave a note saying you should proofread and such.

Inclusion:

Oookay... So Klang (the name) is not even mentioned! Anyways, I can see that there is your Klang somewhere. It looks like you really stuclk with your "Human Main" prompt.

While your Pokemon isn't the active side of actions, it symbolized one of the efforts of the one side of the relationship. It is good, and I just remind you to justify the existence of your characters.

Length:

Yep. Although, if you just fleshed out the characters, I think you can lengthen the story even more.

Conclusion:

Klang captured! Or Klantured!

Anyways, just the justification of your characters is the one thing you need to fix up. Anyways, you're so good you make my grades look bland. XD

---

Write-a-Roll!

Genre: So Romance. I'm not really on the Romance genre kind of thing. But I can say your story isn't original but not cliched. Anyways, I kind of like the story, and the relationship is working. That is the main point of Romance; if ever the relationship will work. Anyways, a pass here.

Setting: The story does sound like a Victorian age. Although you need to fix up the views and actions of your characters. Like girls back then were soft and delicate. Something like that.

Characters: Way too much effort that you didn't even used the Pokemon's name! Anyways, the readers can still know that the Pokemon is there. Goodies!

Verdict: I can say you can get the full reward of a Hard-ranked Pokemon for this event! Congrats!