The Aesthetics of Good and Evil in David Copperfield

Their mother did not speak to them dur­ing their jour­ney home. The sun was far in the west, and in another hour the it would begin to set. The sky was blis­tered crim­son over the rocky desert sands that were in the west­ern hori­zon. The sun became an infected orange, swollen and preg­nant with expec­ta­tion. A hot wind puffed at their dresses and veils, and the sand at their feet swirled into small dust dev­ils. Elizabeth took one last look at the city behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck prick­led. A shiver crawled over her skin. The city gates and its build­ings were wells of black against the bloody sky. Turning away, she pat­ted the flanks of the don­key to urge it for­ward. The beast lifted its ears and quick­ened its step. Their mother uttered a com­plaint about the increased pace that the ani­mal assumed, but Ruth looked at Elizabeth with a grave nod of understanding.

In my exer­cise below, I made use of Kun'Letero–a char­ac­ter I made for a blog hop con­test I par­tic­i­pated in about two weeks ago.

I hope I did well in this exercise! :)

Kun’Letero walked into a clear­ing. The ground was cov­ered with green moss except for the part closes to the huge tree stand­ing in front of Kun’Letero. The tree was gnarled and its branches were bare and leaf­less. It was black in color and the ground a few feet around it was black as well. The trunk of the tree was thicker than five men stand­ing abreast and it was the tallest tree in the Forgotten Woods—a tree fit for the king of the wood imps. . A door was built on it. Kun’Letero twisted open the golden col­ored door knob and he pushed open the door. Immediately, the smell of death and decay poured out of the inside. Kun’Letero breathed in deep. He smiled a toothy smile as he entered his castle.

The inside was as worse as the smell. The ground was car­peted with the bones of the crea­tures the wood imps had eaten. Some were from the small wood­land crit­ters who lived inside the woods, some though belonged to the unfor­tu­nate humans who got lost and never found their way again. The humans were Kun’Letero’s favorite. He gave a cry of com­mand and from above him, from the small holes built inside the tree, other wood imps started to wake. Some rushed down hold­ing a cloak made from autumn leaves. This they tied around Kun’Letero’s neck. Others were hold­ing a staff made from the old­est tree in the woods. Kun’Letero held the staff and he felt the power of the green enter­ing his rotund body.

Kun’Letero shoved the wood imps with his staff and he made his way to the cen­ter of the room where his wooden throne was wait­ing. He sat on it with both of his feet propped up on one of the arm rests. The other wood imps stared at him wide eyed, wait­ing for his next com­mand. Kun’Letero eyed his king­dom. Druidic runes were etched on the walls of the tree. These made the tree invis­i­ble to the eyes of the other crea­tures. Vines were dan­gling from the ceil­ing; these were used by the wood imps to get to their holes. Kun’Letero drummed his long fin­gers on the arm rest of his throne. He then pointed at one wood imp with his staff. He barked another com­mand. The tiny wood imp gave a yelp and imme­di­ately rushed to pick up a femur lying on the ground. The femur still had pieces of meat stuck to it. Kun’Letero nib­bled on the bone.

This is quite rough, and I'm still work­ing to get to know my char­ac­ters. I also real­ize (after read­ing the many won­der­ful posts before mine) that I didn't quite stay on task as much as I should have, but I enjoyed the exer­cise a lot. :)

"My lit­tle room was my escape. Mother and Father had finally allowed me my own room when I turned 12. It was the small­est room in the house, which I allowed was only fair since I was the one per­son in the house who didn't have to share a room. It had one big win­dow, and I had a won­der­ful view of the street. I loved to watch all the com­ings and goings of the neigh­bors. You could call me a nosy Nellie if you liked, but I found a lot of new imag­in­ings that way and let my mind roam with all the pos­si­ble hap­pen­ings of our quiet neigh­bor­hood. I kept my lit­tle room as tidy as pos­si­ble, putting clothes away and dust­ing my crowded fur­ni­ture reg­u­larly. I filled all the empty spaces on my walls with things I thought were beau­ti­ful: Japanese wood block prints, a pic­ture of my fam­ily, a pressed flower col­lage Mary had given me for my 11th birth­day. I'm not sure how my par­ents man­aged to fit so much fur­ni­ture into such a tiny space, but, besides my bed and shelf, I had a tiny desk that stood against the side of my bed. As soon as I'd get home from school, I'd sit on the edge of my bed at my desk and get all my home­work done, and then give myself half an hour to write about what­ever I wanted before going down­stairs to do my chores. I wrote about the pic­tures on my wall, my day at school, the neigh­bors and their imag­i­nary lives. Having my own space allowed me to focus, to cre­ate my own world as I sought to bet­ter under­stand the world that I had been born into.

The rest of the house held the same order­li­ness and clean­li­ness I sub­jected my own room to. Graham, Evangeline, and I were each assigned dif­fer­ent rooms in the house to keep in order. After they were cleaned, they were sub­jected to inspec­tion by our mother. Not a speck of dust or a mis­placed book escaped her atten­tion and if a task was not com­pleted to per­fec­tion, we had to do it over. In this way, we all became metic­u­lously spot­less peo­ple until the day we left the house."

The kitchen was drafty, with the only heat being a stink­ing kerosene heater that Mrs. Scott kept in the bed­room, The win­dows were pit­ted from the strong wind from the ocean blow­ing sand against them for decades. One was cracked and a piece of plas­tic had been taped overt it. Anne was star­tled when she opened a kitchen cup­board and a mil­lion roaches ran for shel­ter from the light. She found the tea where Mrs. Scott had said it would be on the sec­ond shelf between a small jar of Maxwell House Instant Coffee with the famil­iar blue label and a box of generic pow­dered milk. The han­dle of the small alu­minum tea ket­tle was cold to the touch. Mrs. Scott coughed from the bed­room. She could find no sugar to add to the tea. She heard the cough­ing again.

This is an excerpt from one of my wips. The pro­tag has just entered an antique shop where she hopes to find a job. Little does she know that the owner of the shop is a wiz­ard. Enjoy!

The pleas­ant tin­kle of a bell greeted her as she stepped over the thresh­old, her cheeks red from the wind. The room was thank­fully warm, almost stuffy. Morgan unzipped her jacket and looked around with inter­est. Like most stores in the city, it was long rather than wide and seemed three times big­ger on the inside than you’d expect from the street. To her right, book­shelves soared almost to the ceil­ing. She raised her eye­brows, impressed. To her left, tables, glass cases, and shelves housed “relics” that included a wire sculp­ture, a vio­lin, the com­plete skele­ton of a small ani­mal, sev­eral mod­els of clocks in var­i­ous states of work­ing order, vases and china, fur­ni­ture, a col­lec­tion of rare coins, and innu­mer­able inter­est­ing objects that Morgan would have loved to sift through if she’d had time. A worn car­pet under her feet pro­tected a hard­wood floor, but she could see sev­eral car­pets in much bet­ter shape—and prob­a­bly of much higher value—rolled up and stacked along one wall. There were even two tapes­tries, hung along­side oil paint­ings and the auto­graphed poster of a band she didn’t rec­og­nize. The whole place had a smell of slightly musty secrets.

Morgan looked around at the col­lec­tion of stuff with a ris­ing esti­ma­tion of Nuada Relics. Some of the “relics” were prob­a­bly just junk, but peo­ple would pay a lot for some of the items in here…

An air­plane was a cocoon, sealed, self-contained, dan­ger­ous on the out­side but safe as a cocoon on the inside. Vic Borders spent as much time inside these alu­minum can­is­ters as pos­si­ble. Buckled up, it was hard to get into trou­ble unless one’s charms were such that atten­dants had a habit of pour­ing you one too many. Even then, these mis­siles were equipped to anni­hi­late the aver­age personality—movies, music, mag­a­zines, and above all a dull roar that anaes­thetised the mem­ory of fail­ure. Vic would have hap­pily spent the rest of his messed up life fly­ing around the world for the Foreign Office. In fact, it would seem that that’s exactly what he was doing.