Ah! What a cliffhangar!

The last 2 sentences were absolutely perfectly executed. Lovely prose and now, you have your readers hooked. How can I not read more after this chapter?

My favorite line in this chapter:

"His blue eyes darted side to side like two blue flies trapped inside a pair of glass marbles."

Love it!

One line that I found kind of awkward:

"It shimmered in response to the caress of fingers and feelers of moonlight that found their way through the cascading branches."

I find "feelers" to be a really strange choice of word. I get that you were going for an unusual way to word this, and usually when you choose uncharacteristic words to describe things, it works to you advantage, BUT, in this case, the sentence was weird. I had a hard time figuring out what you meant. I would suggest replacing the word "feelers".

And just a quick note going back a few chapters to chapter 4 (Humble Breakfast). The characterization in this chapter was good, but towards the end of the chapter, I thought the dialogue was starting to get redundant. It feels like it's Shedyn and the King going back and forth. King says he likes her, but she's improper, she says "Yeah, you're right." King says he likes her again. Then again reminds her how improper she is. It feels like we've covered this already.

Anywho, I really like how we seem to be picking up some speed in chapters 5 & 6. I look forward to reading more!

~JR

I absolutely love your attention to detail. You have a wonderful gift of describing things. Some of my favorite passages in this chapter are:

"Shedyn slid her lips to one side of her face, raising an eyebrow at him."

"Her eyes drew along the contours of his profile."

"It was hidden behind gluttonous clouds, devouring the beauty of the night."

Your prose is not only poetic, but so lush with description that I can picture perfectly everything you describe.

I also especially like the small details emphasizing their race, like Aysyss's comment about Shedyn's 2 hearts, and when he comforts her, he rubs one of her wings.

I'm glad to see that we start to see a reason for Shedyn's occasional coldness. In general, she seems to be mostly rebellious and mischeivous, but not necessarily malicious. But every now and then, she's just a downright jerk--like how she interntionally hurts her brother's feelings when he seems to be nothing but sweet to her. It seems like the jerk-iness is more her acting out her frustrations, which is what I would hope, and that as the story progresses we see her grow up a little more?

You've got a really good start to this, and I look forward to reading more as soon as you update. Keep up the great work!

~JR

I think what strikes me most about this story so far is the abundancy of imagination that has gone into it. There are so many unique words and concepts and races of beings in just this first chapter alone, and the most fantastic thing about it is the fact that you've invested so much detail and background to each idea, that these beings, these words become real to the reader as they delve into it.

The only thing that I, personally, find detracts from the fresh creativity, is the fact that you have so many things spelled out for the reader as footnotes. I think for certain things, you could actually leave out the footnote, or let the explanation lie in the main text. Some examples are:"Runamaya"--you actually explain in the text that "Runamaya" is their real surname, so I think it unnecessary for the explanation at the bottom; "Hippudrak"--I don't see why you couldn't slip the discription of what these creatures are into the main text (i.e. "drawn by two fine Hippudraks, large creatures with the body of a horse, wings of a dragon, and head and tail of a snake.); "Draqhyraqy"--this footnote turned up towards the end of the chapter, I felt by then you had actually pretty much described the race well enough simply through your descriptions of Shedyn & Aysyss.

My point is that I find the footnotes too much of a distraction. I'd much rather just read through the lush prose of your story without the interruption.

And while I'm on the subject, you do have some really beautiful prose. So much of your wording flows like poetry. I think my favorite passage so far was the opening paragraph. Beautifully flowing and deliciously descriptive. Just lovely. What more can I say?

There was one section that was a little awkward:

"The news sat there for a moment, as Shedyn tried to comprehend it. She will never be there again. There wouldn’t be that plain, hard working mother she knew. Her mother had always stood out in their rich family, for she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. She had always been her sanctuary when her life in such an important and wealthy family got hard."

First of all, you change tenses in the middle of the paragraph. "She will never be there" should be changed to "She WOULD never be there". Also, you use the word "she" to describe both Shedyn and her mother and it gets confusing as to who you're talking about. It's difficult when you have 2 female characters, becuase you don't want to be repetative by using names too much. A suggestion I would have to differentiate the 2 characters would be to revise to something like "There wouldn’t be that plain, hard working mother she knew, that had always stood out in their rich family because she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. Her mother had always been her sanctuary when Shedyn's life in such an important and wealthy family got hard."

Anywho, really nice so far.

"her hearts, both of them, began to beat furiously" hmm. some interesting concepts here. A race with two hearts..i don't get if there's a practical purpose for that, or maybe because they have wings they need another heart to pump blood to the wings and all. Something new, anyway.

I like your names, though. "Aysyss Runamaya"...has a ring to it. As with "Hippudraks", i'm reminded of WoW's 'hippogryphs', though I'm sure you didn't intend it to be like that.

Your dialogues flowed nicely, and I didn't have any problems with them. Also I liked these "Medrachs", instead of saying 'mages', I thought it was kinda cool that they could change their appearances. I like.