"We are clearly not in our homeland." For the most part, I didn't have a problem wit hteh slightly more formal speech your T'Awn use. But this line here from Meles seemed really stilted and false.
I'm enjoying the T'Awn's description of humans. Thought, though--if humans are so alien to the T'Awn, how would they be able to identify gender? I'm guessing that humans wouldn't be able to guess the gender of a lizardperson with any certainy. And since the clothing the humans are wearing presumably covers up the obvious bits of anatomy anyway, what's left to identify gender is more or less social construction--hair length, clothing, etcetera.
Speaking of description, I don't actually know what time period the human city you're describing is. Modern, medieval, Renaissance, what?
"'… you think he wanted us to fail to teach us… what? To accept our limits?' Kreel asked." The self-realization here feels a bit too easy. I think I'd rather see them struggle with the knowledge that Taq wanted them to fail, for a couple of reasons. The first is that you've set up a struggle for Meles with the idea that ability and knowledge are not the same thing as maturity, and the emphasis you've given it so far says to me that it's going to be a defining struggle as the story continues. (Note, I'm not saying that this emphasis is a bad thing or that it's poorly executed or anything like that; but it
is present, and if you let it remain present I think you'll be setting your readers up for disappointment if you don't deal with it.)
The other reason is perhaps a related point: Meles as you've portrayed him thus far simply isn't set up to make this observation or to deal with it. I know he's not the one actually making the observation. But to be honest, you've given us even less of the twins. We know that they're older than Meles in years (at least, I think we know that) but we have no idea by how much or whether they're any more mature than him in terms of personality... so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that neither one of them is set up so far to make this statement either. They're starting to become a little more distinguished in my mind, I'll grant you, but maybe not enough to support this remark.
But mostly, yes, I want to watch Meles, all of them really, since for the moment the twins just seem to be package and parcel with Meles, struggle with the idea that they've been set up to fail. Because I'm evil that way.
"I think Brath was the first one to come up with a way to make his do more. Basically, he doubled the initial spell on it, creating a separate system within the first one. The outer was the basic teacher stuff, and the inner was a personal journal he also used for research." This explanation doesn't do much for me. It doesn't really tell us, the readers, much about how the magic system works, so it doesn't seem like new information. And I don't really see how doubling the initial spell--which, if you'll excuse my nitpicking, seems a bit awkward phrasing--makes it do anything different, as Meles earlier implied.
Okay, big dialogue-y infodump. Was willing to go along with it at first, but it seems to be stretching a bit long. Anyway you could break it up a bit? Have something happen in the middle? doesn't even have to be something huge, just something. And Meles's explanation of how he altered the spell seems a bit dry. Again,because we don't know the nuts and bolts of how the magic works like Meles does, the impact that the twins clearly feel is just kind of lost on us.
Again, some POV issues in this section. Originally I assumed that we were in Meles's point of view, since you didn't tell us otherwise and the other section involving these three used Meles as a viewpoint. But there were a couple lines that I tagged as being inconsistent with his POV... until I went back and looked at the rest of it, and so far as I can tell, you never really tell us
which POV we're in. There's so much dialogue in here that it's a bit easy to lose this fact. I'd almost characterize it as omniscient, except that the description of the human beings makes it fairly obvious that we're in
someone's thoughts here. Those thoughts, of course, could belong to any one of the three. Anyway, I don't think you want to slip into an omniscient point of view here, since it would be inconsistent with the other sections of the story, and since it's the alien viewpoint of the T'Awn that you're really selling here. (And since I personally don't usually find omniscient POVs all that interesting, but that doesn't matter. =P)
The cavalier response that Meles issues at the twins' concerns about their attempt to breach the boundary pushes him closer to the edge of unsympathetic. Especially since we have no idea what his thoughts are, since we still don't even know for sure who the POV actually is.
"Regardless of what you think, the best time to try something you’re not sure of is when you’re still excited by it!" I get the idea here, but the sentence was a little hard to follow.
"These people’s non-reaction to us makes that clear..." Another bit of dialogue that sounded stilted. Aside from the "non-reaction isn't a word!" response that the grammar nazi in me is begging to let out (at least, I don't think it is, is it? if it is, it shouldn't be, because it sounds dumb), which I could live with in dialogue, the whole reaction sounds too clinical. (Especially for their age, their knowledge, and what we know about--Meles, anyway, which I am projecting onto the twins because I don't really know much about
them. It's not something I would expect from something as apparently impetuous as these three are.) If I were them, I'd be freaking out some, at least in the privacy of my own thoughts--which doesn't translate to wild flailing and screaming but it DOES mean the fact that they're so articulate about this is kind of surprising.
The bit where "each tries to access his own power better"--aside from being another phrase in which you skirt around the issue of whose POV we're actually in--doesn't quite do it for me. I'd rather see what happens when one of them tries it. I don't mean spectacular explosions, just what happens in his own head. What does it feel like to run up against that block--both emotionally and, well, physically isn't quite the right word, but in terms of how he (whichever you pick) actually interprets being cut off. It'd be a lot more dramatic than just finding out from what the three of them are saying to each other.
Kodak might not be a bad person to have a viewpoint from during this scene, because he sees his power differently than the other two. (Of course, Meles might not be a bad person to have a viewpoint from either, since he's the one who engineered the whole situation. Of course, that depends on what his real feelings are and how you want us to view him.)
"Kreel stepped in with his own suggestion." Suggesting a compromise between the two ideas is hardly an innovative suggestion as your phrasing here seems to imply, but I like the way you're setting up Kreel as the peacemaker here. It's enough to give the twins some needed distinction. You'll have to give them more complexity as you go or it will start to feel like it's just a device to keep the twins separate, but it's enough for now.
Frog brings up a good pont, but not one that's really anything new, just one that I was wondering about already fro the previous chapters: Why ARE the twins just following Meles around like good little lackeys? (yeah, I'm exaggerating, you get what I mean.) I think there was something in the original text about an arrangement between the parents of Meles and the twins, but so far as I can recall that's not in this version, and even if it was... it wasn't enough for me in the original text, and it's not enough here. I think I'm still willing to wait on it and find out, but honestly if you could slip it into your current chapters as well it might give the twins--and Meles for that matter--some more characterization.
In response to Frog, you wrote: "My thought was that they'd first be overwhelmed by the location, then the people, then the people's reaction to them." That's fine, seems like a logical progression... but we don't SEE them being overwhelmed. You don't really describe their reactions and I think I've already harped enough on POV for one post.
Let's see... I caught the "nobody uses those dusty old stones" logic just fine though, (where Meles mentions racks of stones along the back wall that no one ever seems to use, and Frog asked why not... yeah, no problem so far as I'm concerned.)
Flo makes a good point. I thought it was logical for them to conclude that the cords led back--back home, at least, which seems like a logical step to back to their bodies--until of course Flo pointed out that they have no reason to suspect they're not
in their bodies. I suppose watching people pass around and through them like ghosts could be a pretty good hint, but being faced with all that ought to be pretty overwhelming too...hmm. Guess I'm on the fence on that one.
Anyway, I like the development in this chapter, and I'm comfortable with the pacing so far. Good work.
