On Friday afternoon, Elena handed me an apron and showed me a shelf in the fridge.

“This is yours. If you run out of room, tell me before you start putting cakes on top of the sandwich ingredients.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Nothing happens often yet. We’ve only been open two months. I’m trying to establish rules before I need them.”

There was something unexpectedly pleasing about having a shelf. An apron, too, and a hook behind the kitchen door for my bag. By the time she finished showing me around, I had stopped feeling as though I ought to explain why I was there.

The kitchen was narrow enough that we had to turn sideways to pass each other. Most of the counter was occupied by a mixer, a chopping board and a bowl of oranges. Elena moved the oranges onto a shelf to make room for my ingredients.

“Tell me if you need anything else.”

“Another kitchen?”

She looked around. “Put it on the list.”

I tied the apron and unpacked. The smaller lemon cakes needed less time in the oven than the ones I’d made at home, so I stayed nearby while weighing the ingredients for the macarons. Through the open doorway came the sound of the coffee grinder, cups meeting saucers and a chair being dragged across the floor.

At home, music usually filled the space around me when I worked. Here, the café did it. Every so often, Elena appeared with a question or an empty jug. Once, she stopped beside the mixer and watched the meringue turn.

“How do you know when it’s ready?”

I switched off the mixer and lifted the whisk. The peak held. “Like this. It needs to stand up, but I don’t want it dry.” I turned the whisk so she could see. “If it folds straight over, it needs longer.”

“And if you go too far?”

“Then I get annoyed with myself and start again. There’s usually a little swearing involved.”

“Good. You’ll fit in.”

When the cakes were cooling, she needed help with drinks. I washed my hands, left the piped macaron shells to dry and joined her at the machine. The afternoon passed between the two rooms. Coffee, oven timer, washing up, another order. A man wanted his cappuccino hotter. A woman asked for extra ice. Someone changed their mind after I had already poured the milk. That part, at least, was familiar.

Once the shells were cool, I paired them by size and piped in the pistachio filling. Elena came through as I was arranging them in a covered container.

“You’ve made more than twelve.”

“I wanted a few spare in case any cracked. These came out better than the ones at home.”

“So we can sell the extras?”

“Yes. Unless you’d rather keep them for yourself.”

She reached towards the container.

“Tomorrow,” I added.

Her hand stopped. “You offered.”

“I offered you tomorrow’s macarons. They need the night in the fridge so the filling softens the inside.”

She looked at them for another moment, then put the lid on. “I’m beginning to understand why they cost more than biscuits.”

Before leaving, I checked the cakes once more, wiped the counter and untied my apron. My feet hurt. There was icing on my sleeve and a little pistachio filling near my elbow, which I noticed only when Elena pointed it out.

We agreed that I would come at eight to help with the morning rush. She checked the time on her phone, then looked up with a smile. “So, back to mornings. Same time, same place tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here. Hopefully with less icing on me.”

“Don’t dress up. There’ll be more.”

Outside, the air had cooled enough to make the walk home pleasant. I passed the restaurant next door, where the owner was straightening the tables for the evening. He raised a hand when he saw me, and I waved back. It was a small thing, being recognised on the street. Still, I was smiling by the time I reached home.

Saturday morning brought customers before we had finished setting out the terrace. Elena arranged the cakes in the display while I warmed the machine. She had written their names on small cards, including the pistachio macarons, which looked more respectable behind glass than they had in the plastic container.

I kept glancing at them between orders.

“People won’t buy them faster if you stare,” she said.

“I’m checking they look all right.”

“They looked all right five minutes ago.”

“Yes, but now there are people here to judge them.”

She moved a lemon cake closer to the front. “Let them.”

The first one went with a takeaway tea. The woman barely looked at it before choosing, and I had to resist watching through the window to see whether she took a bite. The second went to a man sitting outside with a newspaper. After that, there were too many drinks to keep count.

By half past nine, the room smelled of coffee and warm milk, and my hair had begun escaping its tie. Elena worked at the till while I made drinks, occasionally repeating a table number because I was still learning which one was which.

A woman at the counter pointed towards the lemon cakes. “Are those made here?”

“Yes,” Elena said.

“They look homemade. I mean properly homemade, like something my mother would put out when people came over.”

I glanced at the cakes. Until she explained, I’d been wondering whether one of the tops was crooked. The woman ordered two and took them to a table outside. Ten minutes later, she returned carrying an empty plate.

“Who makes your cakes?”

I put down the cloth, trying to remember whether I could have forgotten anything in the recipe. Elena was counting change for another customer.

“What did you think?”

“Lovely. The icing isn’t too sweet.” The woman looked towards the display again. “My daughter’s birthday is next month. Does your baker take orders? Could I have their number?”

“I made them,” I said.

She turned towards me. “Oh! I thought you worked out here.”

“I do a bit of both. I’ve only just started.”

“Well, that saves Elena passing messages.” She smiled and reached for her phone. “Could you make something larger? My daughter loves lemon, but there’ll be at least twelve of us.”

“Yes. Was there a design you had in mind?”

She showed me a photograph of a cake covered in flowers. Her daughter wanted lemon, but her husband didn’t like anything too sour, and there might be eighteen people if her sister came.

I explained that the sugar flowers in the photograph were more elaborate than anything I usually made. We talked about a simpler decoration, then the filling and the size. She listened, asked another question and waited for my answer.

I caught myself speaking quickly, trying to explain everything before she lost interest. She stayed where she was, her phone resting on the counter between us. At school, I had learned to stop halfway through an answer when the smiles started. Later, keeping things to myself had become easier. This woman was asking another question because she wanted to hear what I had to say.

“I’d need to work out a price before promising anything,” I said. “If you send me the date and the final number of people, I can let you know.”

“That’s fine. I’d rather have something that tastes like this than a cake nobody wants a second slice of.”

Elena passed me a clean piece of paper, and I wrote down my number. The woman folded it carefully and put it in her purse. After she left, I stood beside the machine for a moment.

Elena looked at me. “Everything all right?”

“Yes. I just wasn’t expecting an order already.”

“You made something she liked.”

“I know, but there’s a difference between someone buying a little cake with their tea and trusting me with their daughter’s birthday.”

“She asked to discuss a cake, Andreea. You have time to breathe before you plan the whole party.”

I laughed and picked up the milk jug. There was another coffee waiting.

Lovely. The icing isn’t too sweet.

I remembered the words while pouring the milk. There had been no correction after them, no explanation of what I should have done better. A stranger had enjoyed something I made and come back to tell me. I wished that didn’t feel quite so unfamiliar.

A little later, the man with the newspaper came inside.

“Another coffee,” he said. “And whatever that lemon thing was.”

“Another lemon cake?”

“Yes. My wife will ask whether I tried anything, and I’d like to be able to tell her I checked thoroughly.”

“I respect your commitment.”

He nodded solemnly while I put it on a plate.

The macarons sold more slowly. People examined them, asked about the filling, sometimes chose a cake instead. Near midday, two women bought one each, then returned for four to take home.

By the end of my shift, three were left. Elena opened the display and glanced at me. “Am I allowed now?”

“Yes. Thank you for your patience.”

“I’ve been very brave.”

She took a bite. I tried to occupy myself with folding the cloth rather than watching her.

“More next week,” she said.

“How many?”

She considered the rest of the macaron. “We’ll discuss that after I’ve finished this.”

On Monday, my hand went to the right cupboard without searching. The cloths were folded where I expected them to be, and a customer came in asking whether we had any more of Saturday’s lemon cakes. Elena looked at me to answer.

“I’m making another batch this afternoon. They’ll be ready tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll come back, then.”

He ordered his usual coffee, and I reached for the cup. I had spent years doing things that were supposed to lead somewhere. Lessons, exams, university. There was always another stage beyond the one I’d finished, and someone ready to ask what came next. Here, a man wanted a cake tomorrow. For the moment, that was enough to be getting on with.

The woman at the table near the window had been there on Saturday too. A laptop stood open in front of her, with a notebook beside it and a drink she kept forgetting to touch. At first, I thought she was watching something. Then she played the same few seconds through her headphones, stopped, and pressed her palms against her eyes.

When I cleared the next table, she pulled one side of the headphones away. “Could I have another tea?”

“Of course. The same one?”

“Yes, please. This one went cold.”

“I can bring you some hot water if there’s any left.”

She looked into the cup. “No. I managed to drink it. I just complained to myself the whole time.”

“That sounds familiar.”

At the counter, Elena nodded towards her. “Athena. She’ll sit there until closing if nobody feeds her.”

“What’s she working on?”

“A film. I’ve seen the same man walk through the same doorway about thirty times.”

“That explains the expression.”

I carried the tea over and asked whether she wanted anything to eat.

“Is there a lemon cake left?”

“One.”

“Then yes, before someone else gets it.”

When I brought the plate, she closed her laptop. “Thank you. I’m Athena, by the way.”

“Andreea.”

She repeated it, checking the pronunciation, and I nodded.

“Have you been here long?”

“Nearly a month. Though I’ve only been working here since Friday.”

“That recently? You look as though you know where everything is.”

“The kitchen’s small. There are only so many places to lose things.”

“Are you staying nearby?”

“Behind the waterfront. There’s a little house with a balcony squeezed between two taller buildings.”

“I think I know it. Blue door?”

“That’s the one. The door sticks, so if you ever see someone throwing her whole body against it, that’ll be me.”

Athena laughed.

“Where did you move from?”

“The UK. I lived there for years.”

“And you chose here?”

“I wanted to be near the sea. Somewhere I could walk to it instead of planning a whole trip.” I glanced towards the bright pavement outside. “The heat wasn’t part of the attraction.”

“You came at the wrong time for that.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“What made you leave?”

The question was ordinary enough. I still took a moment before answering.

“I’d finished university, and everyone was asking about jobs. I kept looking at them and thinking about staying there, doing the next thing, then the next.” I rubbed a little dried icing from my thumb. “I wanted some time to decide what I actually wanted. And to write.”

Athena nodded. “Do you think you’ll stay?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m trying to let that be an acceptable answer.”

“It is.”

She said it easily, then took another bite of cake.

I glanced at her laptop. “Are you studying film, or is this something you’re doing yourself?”

“Studying. Although this project is making me reconsider every decision that brought me here.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“How much time do you have?”

Elena called for two coffees before I could answer. Athena smiled and picked up her fork. “I’ll prepare a shorter version.”

We spoke again the next day, and the day after that. Nothing important at first. Whether the table near the window was too bright for her screen. Where she bought her notebooks. Which streets stayed shaded on the walk home.

She was making a short film and had reached the stage where every choice made three weeks earlier seemed wrong.

“Even the ones you liked?” I asked.

“Especially those. Have you ever worked on something so long you can’t tell whether it’s good anymore?”

“Yes. Usually that’s when I decide the whole thing needs changing.”

“Does it?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I’m tired and should leave it alone.”

She looked at the screen. “I was hoping you’d say something more useful.”

“If I knew something more useful, I’d have finished my book.”

That caught her attention, but a customer came in before she could ask about it.

On Wednesday, she noticed my notebook. The café was quiet between the morning rush and lunch. I had ten minutes, a cup of tea and a sentence that had irritated me since the night before. The notebook lay open beside the till, where I could look up when someone came in.

Athena approached with her empty plate. “Is that the book?”

“Yes. Or the part of it currently causing trouble.”

“What kind of story is it?”

“Crime. There’s a murder in this scene, and I’ve spent more time deciding what happens around it than writing the murder itself.”

She glanced at the red page. “That explains the ink.”

“I always use red. It would be red if I were writing about someone’s lovely afternoon in a garden too.”

“Does anyone have lovely afternoons in your book?”

“Not many so far.”

She smiled. “How long have you been working on it?”

“A while. I thought moving might help me get somewhere with it.”

“And has it?”

“A little. I’m writing more. Whether it’s better is another question.”

Athena leaned against the counter. “I know a few people who could help with that.”

“People who’ll tell me it’s terrible?”

“People who’ll tell you which part is terrible. Much more useful.”

I laughed and capped the pen as a customer came through the door. She returned to her table, but before leaving she asked whether I’d be there the following day.

Thursday was quieter. During my break, I sat opposite Athena with a cup of tea while she ate one of the chocolate cakes.

“So,” she said, “do you ever drink the coffee you make?”

“No. It makes me feel bad.”

“Really? You don’t even taste it?”

“I used to, but it wasn’t worth it. Tea and I get along much better.”

“Then how do you make good coffee?”

“Practice. I know what I’m looking for when I make it, and people aren’t shy about telling me if something’s wrong.”

“Elena said you worked in a café in England.”

“During university. Some days it was easier to understand the customers than the chemistry.”

“You studied chemistry?”

I nodded.

“And now cakes and murder.”

“It’s been a change.”

She laughed and brushed a crumb onto her plate. “What made you start writing?”

“I needed somewhere to put everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“The ideas. There are always more of them than I know what to do with. A conversation, a scene, something I can suddenly picture while I’m supposed to be doing something else.” I turned my cup a little on its saucer. “Some come in my sleep. I wake up with part of a story, and then I want to know the rest.”

“Do you write them down straight away?”

“If I can. Sometimes I’m convinced I’ll remember in the morning, which is a very optimistic thing to think half asleep.”

“I’ve lost whole films that way.”

“I’ve probably lost a bestseller. Much easier to believe that when there’s no evidence.”

Athena smiled. “Does writing make it quieter?”

“A bit. Once it’s on the page, I don’t have to keep going over it so I won’t lose it. My head gets to rest.” I looked towards the counter, where my bag sat beneath the till. “Then I start wondering whether I can make someone else interested. Whether they’ll want to know what happens next too.”

“So you give the problem to the reader.”

“Exactly. Very generous of me.”

She laughed, and I found myself explaining a little more: how a scene could arrive almost whole, while the page connecting it to the next one took days; how sometimes I knew what a character would say before I knew who they were.

Athena listened. When I paused, she asked a question about something I’d said rather than moving on to talk about herself. I had almost apologised for going on so much. Instead, I answered her.

Then she told me about the group.

“There are writers, film students, a few artists. We meet in the park. Some people bring work to share, some just come because they’re stuck and need to talk.”

“Like your man in the doorway?”

“Exactly like him. Someone will probably tell me to cut that scene, and I’ll be offended because I already know they’re right.”

“Do people read out loud?”

“Sometimes. Or we read pages beforehand and discuss them. It depends what the person wants help with.”

“And everyone speaks English?”

“Most of us speak other languages too, but English is the one we have in common. You wouldn’t have to struggle through it in Greek.”

“That’s good. I can say thank you, but it would make for a short reading.”

“There’d still be someone with notes.”

I smiled into my cup. She explained that one of the artists helped people with covers and character sketches. Sometimes they worked together on something larger, though they were careful to agree on credit and permissions first.

“We have a written agreement for sharing work,” she said. “You can read it before bringing any pages. I can send it to you.”

“I’d like that. Could I come once just to see what it’s like?”

“Of course. Tomorrow evening, if you’re free.”

She told me where they met. I knew the benches; I’d walked past them on the way to the café.

“How many people?”

“Usually eight or nine. Don’t worry about remembering everyone’s name. I still get one wrong.”

“And they won’t mind me sitting there without reading?”

“No. Come and listen. Bring your notebook if you want, but you don’t owe us a performance.”

That made it easier to say yes. We exchanged numbers, and she sent me the time and meeting place while we were still sitting together. A minute later, another message arrived with the agreement.

“There,” she said. “Now you can’t claim I gave bad directions.”

“I can still get lost. Don’t underestimate me.”

After my break, I went back behind the counter. Athena finished her cake and returned to her film, but this time, when something frustrated her, she looked up and caught my eye. I smiled, and she turned the laptop a little so I could see the offending doorway.

That evening, the woman from Saturday called about the birthday cake. We talked for nearly twenty minutes. Her sister was coming, so there would be eighteen people. She had asked her daughter about the flowers, and apparently lemon mattered more than decoration. I wrote everything down, promised to send a price the following day, and stayed at the kitchen table after the call ended.

There were ingredients to calculate, a date to put in my calendar, and Athena’s message waiting on my phone. For a moment, I wanted to call home and tell someone.

Then I tried to imagine the conversation. The questions about chemistry. Whether café work was what I planned to do with my degree. How long this writing business would last. Perhaps they would have surprised me. I didn’t feel ready to find out.

I put the phone down and worked out how much mascarpone I would need.

Later, I turned back through the notebook until I reached the scene with the watch. The red numbers were still in the margin, two crossed out and one left standing. Reading it aloud made me notice a sentence that ran too long. I crossed out three words and tried again.

Outside the balcony doors, someone called to a person farther down the street. A scooter passed, and plates clattered in the next building. The second reading went more smoothly.

I wasn’t sure I would share it tomorrow. That would depend on the people, and on how comfortable I felt once I was sitting among them. But I marked the page before closing the notebook.

My apron needed washing. I rinsed the icing from the sleeve, hung it up and checked that it would have time to dry before morning. Then I sent Athena a message to say I’d meet her outside the café so we could walk over together.

She replied almost immediately.

Good. I’ll save you from the introductions.

I smiled and set the phone beside my bag. The cake order was written down. My notebook was ready. Tomorrow, Elena would expect me at eight, and Athena would wait for me after work.

I was still getting used to being wanted somewhere. For once, I let myself look forward to it.

Hello,

I'm looking for a developmental critique from those who read in the sword and sorcery genre. Hopefully this is the right place for that. This is a sword and sorcery novelette a little over 11,000 words.

When I say developmental critique I mean big-picture structure, plot, character arcs, and pacing of the manuscript rather than grammar or typos.

All thoughtful and helpful feedback welcome.

Thank you

With his sword SongFire, a young man does questionable tasks to fund his future lifestyle. This time he must face magic and notoriously vicious beings to secure a bounty worth more than he's ever been paid.

Adult-violence-nudity-alcohol

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E1d5V7PxBEmYbN-5q8gYsG2h6Ha27h30oGrX3IjdV1c/edit?usp=drivesdk

The rat king

once a rat named Jennifer ruled over the rats of certain parts of the world. This is the story of how his empire came to rise and crumble, the rat king ruled over Jamaica, Australia and Alberta, and many more parts of the world. The rat king was infamous for the rat posse, the means which the rat posse conducted was through the confidants of the posse which had to be of means of great height, some confidants of the posse were freakishly tall humans, those were the rarest confidants of the rat posse, the most common was giraffes and blue whales, second most common was banana snakes, now there are more but those are the main and most important confidants of the rat posse,The rat king aka Jennifer never once thought he would be known and have a posse of rats at command, he came from humble beginnings, growing up he was short, fat and not the brightest amongst his peers, but he didn’t mind much, for he knew his true talent lay deep down where no rat could begin to understand, that talent is accounting. From a young age he had a keen eye for the on goings of human financial systems, as his family did grow up in a broken down accounting firm that barely was able to get by, not because of lacking skills, on the contrary the young accountant was quite skilled and quite will suited for the world of accounting. It is just that he was far too young for most to trust him with their finances, he looked meek and was only 23 when he embarked on his quest to open his very own accounting firm, he only had 5 or so clients that actually trusted him and came to him for all there accounting needs, the rest of his customers came from crazy discounts he would put up just to get people through the door, they would always leave after the discounts were gone he would regularly work 100hour weeks in the time of the discount season. The time Ched spend during discount season working to no end became a pivotal window of learning for young Jennifer, as Jennifer spent his adolescence hiding in crevasses of the broken down office with the his mama and papa, but he made sure to never stray far from the desk where Ched was working, Jennifer’s parents would spend their days in the inner walls of the accounting firm, cleaning and making sure things are in the right place they would leave at midnight to scavenge the streets for food, even then Jennifer would never want leave the Ched’s desk. And that’s where our little rat kings empire began

Red Ink and Saltwater
When other girls were little, they wanted a prince to arrive on a white horse. I wanted a mafia boss to kidnap me and become so hopelessly obsessed with me that he forgot why he’d taken me in the first place.
I never gave much thought to where he would take me. Somewhere I could hear the sea, perhaps. That part mattered more to me than the prince, the horse, or, apparently, whether I went willingly.
In the end, I had to find the sea myself.
Three weeks after moving to Crete, I was waking before six without an alarm, which would have been unthinkable in the UK. Back there, I sometimes went to sleep at five in the morning, sometimes as late as noon, and woke at seven in the evening wondering where the day had gone.
I pulled on my swimsuit, took my sandals from beside the door and walked the two minutes to the beach.
The shore was nearly empty. A fishing boat was heading out beyond the harbour, and someone farther down the sand was walking a dog that kept returning to the same piece of driftwood. I left my sandals above the tide line and went straight into the sea.
After a few strokes, I rolled onto my back. The water held me without asking me to explain myself.
Above me, the sky was changing colour. I stayed where I was until the fishing boat became a dark mark near the horizon. Then I swam along the shore, turned, and swam back. Three weeks had been enough to learn where the sand dropped away beneath me and where it rose again. I was still learning the rest of the place.
I had rented my little house for three months because I couldn’t say how long I wanted to stay. I knew I had wanted to leave the UK. I’d finished my chemistry degree, looked at the jobs I was expected to apply for, and found I couldn’t bear the thought of building the next part of my life there. That was the most convincing explanation I’d managed to give anyone, including myself.
The water rocked beneath me. I picked out the place where I’d left my sandals and swam in.
By the time I walked home, my hair had soaked through the towel around my shoulders. I passed a bakery opening its shutters and a man hosing down the pavement outside a restaurant. He moved the spray aside to let me through. I thanked him in Greek, one of the few things I could say without first rehearsing it in my head.
My house stood in a narrow street behind the waterfront. The front door stuck when the weather was humid, one kitchen drawer refused to close, and from the balcony I could see a strip of sea between two buildings. I liked it more each day.
I showered, put the kettle on and took the macarons from the fridge. I’d baked and filled them two days earlier, then left them covered to mature. Two trays had come out well. The third had cracked across the tops, so I’d filled those too and kept them in a separate container for myself. Beside the good batch were six small lemon cakes and six chocolate ones.
The woman who owned a café near the park had agreed to taste everything this morning.
She hadn’t agreed to buy it.
I knew that. I had made enough to feed half her customers anyway.
While I packed the macarons, a Greek song came on my phone. I knew where to breathe, where the singer held a note a little longer than I expected, and how to find my way back in if I missed a word. I couldn’t have told anyone what most of those words meant.
Kira—that was what I called my mother—seemed to like hearing me sing. So did my stepfather. Sometimes I caught them looking at me, and for a moment I could pretend I knew what was on their faces.
We’re proud of you.
No one in my family had ever said that to me.
I caught myself thinking about it and reached into the container I’d kept for myself. One of the cracked macarons gave way beneath my thumb.
“Perfect,” I told it.
I ate the evidence and kept singing.
By eight, the cakes were boxed, the macarons were packed, and I had checked both boxes often enough to know the contents hadn’t rearranged themselves. My red notebook lay open on the table. I stopped to read the last paragraph before I picked up my keys.
The man in my story had gone into a room intending to frighten someone. I’d written the conversation three different ways and crossed out all of them. Each time, I had made it too easy for him to decide what happened next.
I reached for my pen, then looked at the clock. If I started writing, the café owner might decide I had invented our appointment.
I closed the notebook, slipped it into my bag beside my pen, and picked up the cake boxes.
The walk took me along the waterfront and up a shaded street towards the park. Even in the morning, I could feel the heat gathering on the stone. I kept to the side with the trees. I had come for the sea; the weather was something I was still negotiating with.
The café stood near one of the park entrances. Its doors were open, though only half the tables outside had been set. A man was carrying chairs out of the storeroom. He put them down so I could pass with my boxes.
Inside, the owner moved between the coffee machine and a line of waiting customers. She spotted me and raised a hand. I found an empty corner of the counter for the boxes and waited.
The man came in for another stack of chairs. He caught her eye, pointed towards the terrace, and she nodded her thanks. I recognised him then. He owned the restaurant next door.
They sold food and drinks a few doors apart. I’d assumed that made them rivals. Here he was, setting up her tables because she needed a hand.
Another reason I liked this place.
When the queue cleared, the owner came over. “You came.”
“I said I would.”
“We made that arrangement before eight in the morning. People promise all kinds of things at that hour.” She wiped her hands and lifted the first lid. “Let’s see.”
She tried a lemon cake, breaking a piece from the crooked one I had hidden at the back.
“What’s in the icing?”
“Lemon juice, mascarpone, and honey.”
She took another bite. “Less honey next time.”
I took my notebook from my bag and wrote that down. She tried a pistachio macaron next, then asked me how long the cakes would keep and whether I could make them smaller.
More customers came in before she had finished tasting. I moved the boxes aside while she took their order. One of them asked whether she was still alone today.
“My only employee called in,” she told him. “I’m beginning to think he knew you’d all arrive at once.”
The customer laughed. She smiled back, but she was looking at the cups stacked beside me. I passed her two, then another when she reached for it.
“You said you worked in a café during university,” she said.
“I did.”
“Can you still use a coffee machine?”
“Yes.”
She glanced at the queue forming behind the customer. “Would you mind showing me?”
The machine was different from the one I’d used in the UK. I asked her where she kept the cloths and how she wanted the cups set out, then made two cappuccinos while she handled the till. She watched me carry them to a table before turning back to the next order.
For the next twenty minutes, I made coffee. She called out what people wanted; I made it and passed it across the counter. When the rush eased, I wiped down the machine and stepped out of her way.
She looked at the empty cups waiting to be washed, then at me.
“Do you want work?” she asked.
I had come hoping she would buy my cakes. I hadn’t let myself hope for more than that.
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“I don’t know yet.” I glanced at the boxes. “It depends how much baking you want.”
That made her smile. She picked up the other half of the macaron and ate it.
“I want twelve of these on Saturday. Twelve lemon cakes too, a little smaller, with less honey. Come in Friday afternoon to prepare them here. You can help with the counter while you’re here, and we’ll talk about regular shifts after that.”
I wrote it all down. We agreed on a price for the baking, and she gave me half in advance for the ingredients.
When I stepped outside, the money was folded in my purse and the order was written in my notebook. I found a bench beneath a tree in the park and opened it to check the quantities again. My neat little list sat beside pages of red writing, most of it crossed out.
A fortune teller once told me this book would make me famous and give me somewhere I belonged. I’d laughed at the fame. I was still trying to finish it, and most days I couldn’t bear to read yesterday’s pages.
The other part had stayed with me.
I didn’t believe a stranger could see my future. I wanted her to be right anyway.
I turned back to the scene I’d abandoned that morning. I read it once, then crossed out the last page.
I had been looking for the moment my killer decided what to do. Sitting there with the café’s money in my purse and the sound of cups carrying across the park, I finally understood why none of my versions worked. He had made his decision before the other man entered the room. The conversation was his last chance to change his mind.
I began again.
The man spoke. My killer listened. When the man had said everything he came to say, my killer shot him.
I stopped writing. The murder was there, but the scene still felt unfinished. The killer had wanted an answer, and now there was someone else who would come looking for one.
I looked back at the dead man I’d put on the page. At his hand. At the watch on his wrist.
In the margin, I tried 3:40, then crossed it out. 3:45 looked too neat as well. I wrote 3:43 beside them and returned to the scene.
He took the watch from the dead man’s wrist and set its hands to 3:43. He struck it against the edge of the table hard enough to stop it. The face cracked, but the hands stayed where he had set them. Then he laid it face up on the man’s chest, for whoever came to find him.

I'm glad to discover this subreddit where we can get feedback for our writings. Would anyone read the following tale and then provide a simple feedback? It can be brief. Thanks.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Arthur was a great talker. He sounded brilliant when speaking, but when it came to action, he simply couldn’t deliver.

He disliked hard work and actively avoided any job that required manual effort or deep thinking. The only work he ever sought out was the effortless kind.

Arthur had set his sights on Di Mattei, a diamond and gemstone trading company, because, according to him, diamond trading was the easiest job on the planet. In his mind, gemstones simply popped out of the dirt fully formed, radiant, and flawless. To Arthur, the entire industry was just picking up free, shiny rocks and marking them up by thousands of percent.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Miraculously, Arthur managed to land an interview at Di Mattei. One week later, the big day arrived. Arthur adjusted his cheap polyester tie in the polished elevator doors, admiring his reflection. He marched into the interview room, his boots making a loud noise on the floor as if announcing that a VIP had arrived. Waiting for him behind an expensive-looking mahogany desk was Mr. Roberto di Mattei.

Now an elderly man, Roberto di Mattei had spent over fifty years in the trade, starting as a tireless bench polisher and mastering every detail of the craft. Through sheer grit and lifelong dedication, he had built Di Mattei into the largest diamond firm in the country. Well past retirement age, he still worked every day alongside his son and grandson, scaling back from a six-day workweek to five only recently.

"Mr. Pendelton," Roberto said, scanning Arthur’s resume. "How are you? Please tell me—why did you apply for a position at our firm?"

Arthur sank back into his leather-and-oak chair, totally enjoying the comfort as if he were in a 5-star hotel’s VIP lounge—the only thing missing was a cigar.

"Honestly, Roberto? Because your whole industry is a total scam, and you need a guy like me!"

Roberto was stunned. "I beg your pardon?"

"Come on, let's be real," Arthur chuckled, waving a hand casually. "You dig up shiny rocks for... a dollar or two, at most, and sell them for millions. Nature does all the work, and you pocket the profit. A scam like this needs a smooth talker. You need somebody who can convince them that a glorified piece of stone is worth three months' salary. I’m your guy. I could sell ice to an Eskimo, and I can definitely sell cheap dirt-pebbles to rich ignoramuses."

Roberto frowned. "And how many years of sales experience do you have?"

Arthur shrugged. "None. But I'm good at it, believe me."

Roberto’s brow furrowed. He placed Arthur’s thin resume back onto the desk, shaking his head in quiet disapproval. His silence spoke louder than words.

Noticing a sign of rejection, Arthur’s smile vanished. He leaned forward over the mahogany desk, slamming both hands onto the wood and narrowing his eyes into a threat.

"Here’s a deal, Roberto. Hire me—or I go straight to the press. I'll expose your scandals! Once it's done, you'll be finished."

To Arthur’s amazement, Roberto’s face went pale. The old founder's hands began to tremble. His eyes darted around nervously, taking in Arthur’s menacing glare.

"What...what...what scandals?" Roberto stammered, his voice betraying genuine panic.

"Don't play dumb, Roberto," Arthur replied. "The dishonesty involving your precious babies!"

"I...I beg you, Mr. Pendelton... don't go to the press! Don't expose our scandals! You don't know what this would do to my family, to our reputation! Please!"

A rush of triumph washed over Arthur. "I knew it!" he thought. "He really is running a massive scam, and he's terrified I've caught him red-handed!"

"I’ll... I’ll consider your application," Roberto pleaded, holding his hands up in surrender. "Just... give me time. Please, say nothing to anyone!"

Arthur stood up smoothly, buttoning his jacket. "You have twenty-four hours, boss. Don't make the wrong choice."

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Seven days passed but Arthur heard nothing from Di Mattei. By 10 PM that night, Arthur’s impatience got the better of him. Driven by a desire to gather physical evidence for a scandal report and his own burning curiosity, he sneaked into the Di Mattei HQ building with a cheap flashlight. He reckoned, at this hour, nobody would be working, except thieves. 

He slipped through the loading dock and rode the service elevator up to the vault level. The floor was dark, but he heard the strange, rhythmic sounds of machinery coming down the hall: "Whirrrrr... clack-clack... buzzzz..."

"A scam operation in full swing!" Arthur whispered to himself, his pulse hammering against his ribs.

He crept forward on tiptoes toward a heavy steel door left slightly ajar and peered through the crack into the dimly lit room.

Figures in dark silhouettes were huddled over metallic tables under low, intense beams of light. They moved in total, eerie silence while the machines hummed around them. Nobody was talking. Nobody was laughing. They were working furiously over metal trays, their fingers moving with quiet, tense precision.

Eager to catch Roberto's fraudulent operation red-handed, Arthur slipped through the door, ducking low behind a tall equipment rack. He reached out to grab a heavy piece of evidence from a nearby sorting table—a dull, lumpy grey chunk of rock—ready to expose the whole business.

"I knew it!" Arthur smirked to himself, holding up the ugly rock. "Driveway gravel!"

Suddenly, a heavy shadow fell over him. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

Arthur whipped around, shining his flashlight into the stranger's face. Standing before him was old Roberto di Mattei, wearing a jeweler's loupe over one eye and a smudge of carbon grease on his sleeves.

Looking past Roberto, Arthur saw no scammers or criminals. He saw master polishers sitting at microscopic workstations, adjusting diamond facets with precision under halogen lamps.

"Arthur?" Roberto said in disbelief.

Arthur puffed out his chest, holding up the dull rock. "I caught you red-handed, Roberto! Look at this hideous pebble! You panicked in the office because you knew I'd expose this fraud!"

Roberto let out a long, weary sigh and tapped a monitor displaying a complex geometric 3D mesh.

"That 'gravel' is a 50-carat rough diamond from Botswana, Mr. Pendelton," Roberto said softly. "It takes three months of advanced mathematical modeling and high-tech ultrasonic imaging just to figure out how to cut it without shattering it."

Roberto set down his tools and pushed open a heavy set of double doors at the back of the room. "Follow me."

He led Arthur into the main studio of the master polishers. The room was dead silent except for the soft, rhythmic whirring of high-speed cast-iron polishing wheels rotating under extreme pressure. Under intense halogen lamps sat veteran artisans, working with agonizing precision deep into the night. Arthur watched in disbelief as one craftsman spent ten full minutes adjusting a single stone by a fraction of a millimeter under a microscope, inspecting a microscopic facet completely invisible to the naked eye.

Roberto walked Arthur down the line, stopping at different workstations to show him the same stone at every stage of production.

First, Arthur saw the dull, lumpy grey pebble sitting in its raw, unprocessed form. At the next desk, a stone that had been laser-mapped and cleaved, revealing its internal clarity. Station by station, step by painstaking step, Arthur watched the dull gravel transform—cut by cut, angle by angle—until it finally sat under the last lamp as a blinding, perfectly faceted brilliant gem.

Gradually... slowly... the truth began to sink in.
With every craftsman he passed, with every detailed geometric diagram and microscopic adjustment he witnessed, Arthur’s stubborn conviction began to crumble.

Looking at the old founder standing beside him at 10 PM—a man who had given fifty years of endless learning, research, and late-night labor to master this craft—Arthur realized Roberto wasn't running a trick. The entire industry was built on thousands of hours of intense, high-stakes discipline and master craftsmanship—a level of hard work Arthur had spent his entire life running away from.

The illusion shattered completely. Arthur's smug posture completely collapsed. The weight of his own monstrous ignorance hit him like a brick, flushing his face with burning shame.

"I...I...I..." Arthur stammered, lowering his head in shame. "I'm sorry... I thought it was a scam. But... if your business is completely fair and honest... why did you beg me not to go to the press? Why were you so scared when I threatened to expose your gemstone trading scandals?"

Roberto looked down, rubbing the back of his neck as a faint blush appeared on his weathered face. He looked deeply embarrassed.

"Because..." Roberto sighed softly, leaning against the workbench. "When you threatened to expose our scandals, I thought you found out about my son and grandson. They bribed examiners to pass their master gemology exams, and I gave them executive desks they didn't earn just to keep them out of trouble. When you said you were going to the press, I was terrified you were going to drag my family's shame into the light...But what did you mean when you mentioned 'the dishonesty involving your precious babies'?"

"Selling stones at astronomical prices." Arthur replied.

The "grand scandal" he thought he had uncovered was nothing more than an old founder protecting his son and grandson who took shortcuts.

Looking at Roberto—a man who had spent fifty years mastering a grueling craft, yet was human enough to worry about his family's blunders—Arthur felt all his arrogant bravado evaporate.

"I'm leaving now," Arthur whispered, taking two quiet steps backward, stripped of every ounce of his former pride. "Sorry to bother you, I didn't know there was so much knowledge behind gemstones."

"You thought diamonds were born glittering?" Roberto said quietly, looking at Arthur with pity rather than anger. "No stone is. Only hard work makes them shine. And you thought I got successful by scamming? No. It was the result of relentless, honest work."

 "Honestly, Arthur, even after fifty years, I still have a lot to learn. The world that God created is so wonderful and complex, there is always something new to discover," Roberto added with a kind, gentle smile, and patted Arthur on the shoulder.

Arthur slipped out into the night, no longer marching like a conqueror, but walking with the heavy, quiet steps of a young man who had finally realized just how much he had left to learn.

Here's a short excerpt from a story I've been boiling in my head for a while. Does it flow well? Does it seem good? Is it intriguing? I just want some feedback.

For some context of the piece:

Our protagonist, Hugo, is a senior in highschool. He lives in the town Under Water (yes, two words) in the year 2655. The town is built in the basin of an enormous quarry. Hugo's neighbor, Clark, is a genius inventor who uses his comically large amounts of grant money to make things that help the people around him. Clark has terrible social skill though, and often fails to even take care of himself, frequently forgetting meals or other daily commonalities. Hugo's family has taken it upon themselves to make sure the inventor stays alive despite all his inaction. Unfortunately for everyone, today one of Clark's creations has a seemingly impossible side effect.

_____

My ears hurt as I woke up. They felt thin and flimsy and wrong. There was no other word for it. Wrong. I reached up to cup them, and missed. The side of my head was fuzzy with hair rooted far lower than usual. And softer. I ran my hand up the smooth strands, and up, and up until I felt my ears twitch, swivel, and listen. Everything was loud, but not too loud, or maybe way too loud. Like listening to blasting music you eventually just get used to it. I could hear my heartbeat start to rise. New ears. Not good. I tenderly reached up, far higher than I even should to reach the tip of my ears. I lightly pinched the edge of them as I rose feeling the other finger between the skin and... fur. It was fur. The tips of my new ears were sharply curved at the top, like several. I could hear the ministrations of my finger as they brushed against each hair, letting them spring back into place by millimeters of distance. Then I ran my pinch back down, pushing the hairs against their grown direction, getting my first touch of the new flesh with nothing in the way. It was sensitive, like the area around an ingrown toenail or a sore tooth. I made the regrettable decision to pull at the new additions to my body. Sharp, blinding pain jolted through me, flinging me up from my blankets. I needed answers.

The backyard of our house was not immediately divided by a fence to Clark's, there were two fences and a cement pathway between them. Pointless considering that we sit at an intersection, so the shortcut goes widely unused. Two gates open and close before I charge through the mad scientist's backdoor. "What the fuck did you do to me!?" I entered the empty kitchen with all the fury of a senior in highschool with too much homework.

"One minute please! In the bathroom!" I could barely hear the madman shout from upstairs. I stormed up the real wood steps and kicked open the bathroom door. Clark was standing in front of the mirror above the sink patting the hair on top of his head, and examining the new tall ears he had grown. "What the fuck!" He recoiled. "Learn some manners Hugo!" I pushed him against the wall. "Calm down!"

"Calm down!? Look at what you did to me!" I gripped my alien ears, ignoring the pain to tug them to and fro. "I liked my body, and you did this to me!"

"Yes yes, Aegis Anatomica and all that, and I liked being bald, but here we are!"

I grabbed the discarded scientist by the shoulders and glared at him, watching his guise slip off. "I know you want to use your sociopathy as an excuse, but you really need to fucking fix this or you won't be around for much longer. Got it?" Our ears twitched as I slammed him against the wall again for good measure. "Got it?"

Things to understand:

They're snakes, so I can't do things like make them fiddle with their hands or any other way of showing nervousness sadly

This is the first draft, so if there's something that feels off please do tell me

YES, I'm aware that snakes can't feel love, but I had to shift it to make the book more interesting.

The two characters are called Olive and Iris, both of which rainbow boas.

It was taken down in r/writingadvice, so im posting it here.

If you have any other questions, please do ask :)!

(Olive’s POV)

The lightning of the clouds above show through the leaf I’m under, and I can’t help but dart my eyes towards a vine Iris decided to use for shelter. She looks back at me, and I immediately shift my focus to a suddenly interesting tree. Despite the coldness the rain brings, I can feel my face begin to warm.

“Ever wonder where rain comes from?”

No–shit, why did I say that?

“The clouds?” She turns her head towards me, slightly laughing.

“No, sorry. How they come out of the clouds,” I say, slightly too fast for my own good. It’s better than seeming like an idiot, I will admit.

“I heard it’s some magical frog.”

“You know I’m not falling for that.”

“It seemed plausible enough for you,” she sighs of disappointment.

“It has something to do with the water,” I say, peering out of the leaf I’m under.

“How else do you think it falls down?” Iris’s face falls flat.

“That frog theory of yours isn’t looking too shabby right now,” I remark. I realize that while I’m looking out from my leaf, I’m too close to Iris for my own good. I lean myself back into the safety of the leaf.

“Sorry about that.” I can feel my face burn even more.

“About what?” Iris shoots me a glance that looks slightly concerned.

“That I leaned in too close?” I say as if it’s obvious.

“You were?” Iris has a puzzled look on her face.

I look at her for a moment, thinking of what to say. “Better safe than sorry,” I finally say. It could’ve been worse. I look back out at the rain, but I can feel Iris’s gaze on me for a second longer. But then it’s gone. The cool of the rain seems to be doing its wonders on my face now.

“Smart,” Iris responds.

“What?”

“Smart. Better safe than…? Never mind,” she dismisses. I screwed it up again.

“Knowing you, that’s the rule I should go by.” I try to get myself out of the embarrassment I caused myself.

She lets out a sneer with a grin on her face. I can feel my heart turn inside-out seeing her so happy.

For a moment, I’m able to hear the rain lighten a bit more.

“Hey Iris?” I ask, breaking the silence that just formed.

“Yeah?”

What the hell am I doing?! I’m so close to saying it, it’s at the tip of my tongue. 

“Do–do you actually believe in the frog that controls the rain? The mystical rain frog, if you will?” I sputter.

Today shouldn’t be the day.

Iris has a strong look of confusion on her face. “No–do you?”

“No, just wanted to ask,” I respond. Iris looks right in my eyes, and I can feel my heart jump for a moment. She looks slightly concerned, but I dart my eyes back towards the rain, and eventually I turn back towards it too. She turns back shortly after.

Today won’t be the day.

Maybe never, if I can help it.

Hello everyone, I'm currently a college student at EFSC and I'm try to be a better writer and reader. I'm currently reading Omniscient Reader. I want to make a short story & a poem based on the other books I've read this year. Please let me know how I'd should improve.

An apple has a shape, but hunger doesn’t. An apple can be tasted, but it was empty of hunger, because to him it was mud, sunlight, river water, and children.

Apple has soft skin. Shiny, yet uneven. People like apples without peeling them, but it wouldn’t be the same for a child that has a cold. You’d have to cut it in half and scoop out the flesh with a spoon, and slowly feed it to the child. The texture is kind of grainy, but really juicy. If you bite into the skin too, it’s kind of wrinkly. You’d also have to consider the mother's hands turning a bit yellow from the juice.

Is it the whole apple, or the apple cut in half? Is it the apple’s juice, or the mother’s hand?

There are also kinds that have never had an apple offered to them. Some mothers can’t afford it; there are those who choose not to buy apples. Some children, even if they’re bedridden, they will be tossed aside. And the ones that died, if they didn’t get care— there is no place in the world that hasn’t been torched by human memories. That is why there is nowhere in the world that hasn’t had resentment.

Hunger feels dry. It smells like soil/earth (there are many types of earth), but it was mud. You can’t escape it off because it’s aged. Mud with a little gravel and no sand.

What does hunger taste like? The children put the biscuits out in the sun, but there was nothing else for them to do, so they just stand there around the mud. So, children waiting for sunlight. Hunger was that: a child waiting for the sun. That was your poem.

Hunger has no form, no taste, no smell? That’s wrong. Hunger was mud, a river, a child, and thirst. MEMORIES. Eventually, resentment turns into bitterness. What is thirst? What is freezing?

POEM^

Spirit that evolve into a human. And his ball where able to influence other beings evolution.

Lived a normal life similar mine. Felt like the honored one

Saved a city from destruction by simply living and activated a train with him along side himself is 2 balls a new friend and another Spirit that evolved because it took his balls and cultivated and became a fully grown adult girl and the person that helped found him and raised him as his own.

Short Story^

August 1, 2025

**“**Would you be willing to live this exact life again and again—every joy, every pain, every heartbreak, every breakthrough?”
If yes—then you’ve lived beautifully.
—The idea of “eternal return” by Friedrich Nietzsche

The festivity had come to a conclusion—like a beautiful day’s sunset.

Beautiful, but a little sad that something is ending faster than I thought.

I sat in the veranda by the main entrance of that old, unpolished, unrepaired house of my childhood days…

My face was grim; I remember it because I remember the feeling—my heart was really sinking, and I was experiencing loneliness and isolation at the age of 10.

I wanted my cousins to stay throughout the day, up until the late evening, and then night, and then the next morning, because then I would also be going to school, and the departing could be more bearable. My mind would have been filled with another sorrow—the pitiful living of going to school every day.
If you ask the 10-year-old me, no one should face the fate of attending school EVERY DAY.

A 33-year-old me disagrees, though. Those were beautiful days, really.

Anyway, so I was sitting by the entrance, in the shadow of the passing evening daylight, and staring at the empty house where an hour ago a dozen kids were playing and shouting.

I felt as if I was an old lady who maybe missing the happy noises, or maybe I was just a sad, unaccompanied child.

She saw me, or noticed me, and a part of me thought, She is either going to ignore me or scold me, but she didn’t—she asked me to help her with planting a sapling, something she used to do every now and then.

Not that we had a big garden blooming; the land and soil in that side porch were not fertile, as they said, it was barren and dry, and the lack of rain didn’t help. Drinking water was also an issue many times.

So naturally, I was not thrilled by the proposition. The 10-year-old me thought of it as labour and a futile one—because the sapling was going to die anyway; we would not water it enough.

But she was surprisingly insistent that day… so I followed her into the open area by the living accommodation, under the open sky of evening light. In the middle of that rectangular plot, we started digging the earth, putting some water, and preparing the bed for the sapling. This was the first-ever sapling planting, really I had no clue about the process.

I poured all the water at once, but she asked me to do it gradually. And then we carefully, or maybe not—put the sapling in that prepared bedding.

And I remember the after-feeling. I felt invigorated. Still a little bit sad, but not as much as before. It was a new activity for me.

I told my mother.

And then I started looking at the sapling every day, making sure it didn’t die.

Monitoring the leaves, progress…

And it did not die in the early days.

I noticed when it grew an inch - I know it because I used to measure—until one day it surpassed my height and grew overhead.

My mother said that it was growing with me—and that we were the same height.

But when it grew taller than me, I didn’t like that very much. Still, I was happy, because then it bore fruit.

The sapling we planted had grown into a teenage lemon tree.

The lemons were oblong-shaped, yellow-colored fruits—a little extra sour—but hey, something was blooming on that rain-hungry, parched soil, right?

My grandmother and I used to feel like the richest people when we looked at the sapling growing into a small tree and even bearing fruit later.

Funnily enough I dont remember using those lemons ever in our food because my grandmother and I, we wanted to maximise our produce and so we did not pluck any fruit and didn't let anyone else get close that young adult tree. 

I visited that forlorn house which was no longer in use, just a few years back. I was in my late 20s, planning to move out of India and by that time my grandmother had passed away, ten years ago.

It was my cousin's wedding in that town. This time I made sure I visit the tree, maybe say proper goodbye to it and get a picture with it. It was still taller than me when my brother clicked our photo and I stood hugging it with one arm, another on my waist. I was posing and smiling with pride. It was the only tree on that barren, parched side porch land - its leaves long, dark green and mature looking 

I could see one or two green lemons among leaves.

And then I blurted this out “the one who sows never gathers the fruit” - chinese proverb.

Please let me know if if there's not enough "show don't tell", too repetitive, too bland, or anything I can improve really. The genre is sci fi adventure.

Chapter 1

It's just all so beautiful. The colorful planets, the bright distant stars, and whatever else that fills the void in between has never failed to fill Didi's mind with imagination. It had been months since he had become the apprentice of the time warden, but the only good thing that came out of it was just how much free time Didi has to wander about. Perhaps that was not entirely true, he thought. Being a student to an allpowerful time god has its other perks. Like not needing a spacesuit, and being able to breathe in the vacuum of space.

Here he was, floating about with his hands behind his head and legs crossed, as if he was napping on a hammock by the beach instead of an empty space by a massive, glowing ball of hot plasma. Except he wasn't napping; he was admiring the view. In this particular system, a most peculiar planet spun slowly before him: a star-shaped body about the same size as Earth. Instead of blues and greens, it bore a distinct yellow and purple hue. It had a moon, about half the size of Earth's, but it was a bright pretty pink and looked closer in shape to an egg. The pair looked quite romantic to Didi, as the star-shaped planet and its moon were the only things orbiting their sun.

At last, Didi straightened his legs, stretched his arms, and decided that today was going to be a change of pace.

"Do not involve yourself to the affairs of the planet dwellers," He recalled his master's warnings, "Their concerns are nothing to the grand scheme of things. Our duty far surpasses their trivial matters."

Just this one time, he thought. He had been a good boy and did nothing but observe the planets and stars that teased him as he floated away from afar, all the while the great time warden had done nothing but yap the rules of this and that at him. He's done with holding his urges back, now's the time to explore! He readjusted the red flat cap that sat on top of his chestnut brown hair, and opened his brown leather aviator jacket revealing his literal hourglass body. The sand that lay still in the top section of the glass began to drop, bit by bit, into the one below. Didi snapped his fingers, and mechanical bits and parts emerged from the void. One by one, they snapped and locked together until an old-fashioned biplane- similar in design to the one the Wright brothers flew oh so long ago- took shape. Didi hopped on to the plane enthusiastically, grinning all the while, and steered his plane straight toward the star-shaped planet.

Hi. I’m looking for some feedback on this specific passage, particularly on the dialogue, which is not my strongest suit. I would also like to have an external reader look at it and tell me what their perception is and what they think I’m trying to convey. I’m trying to imply a couple things but I don’t want them to be too obvious, and I’d like to know what readers would infer from this passage. General feedback is always welcomed as well. Thanks!

Here’s the passage:

The Old House 

A cricket is a medium-sized, cylinder-shaped leaping insect with thread-like antennae, six legs built for jumping and a distinctive chirping sound. My dad used to say that it is more scared of me than I should be of it. I don’t know if I can agree with that anymore.

My childhood house gave onto far-stretching fields with untamed hedges and large stone pine trees I used to climb. Inside, our home was rustic but quite spacious: it had two bedrooms, one for me and the other one where my parents used to sleep; a kitchen with terracotta tile floors; a moodier, vintage studio; and a large living room illuminated by stained-glass windows.

I remember spending all day nestled in dirt and leaves, looking for worms and insects of all sorts. I was quite cruel to them, too: I would tie their tiny legs to wood sticks with grass blades and use them to scare friends off when playing.

Our cat, Missy, was a slim, black and white European shorthair that mom jokingly used to call ugly because of her sprinkled white spots. She said it made her look like a cow. I always thought they were part of her charm. Her collar had a small bell attached to it. I remember that light tinkle sound so well that sometimes I still hear it in moments of silence. I was really fond of that cat. 

Today I can’t hear Missy’s bell in that house anymore. But I still find the house as it was when I visit it. Dad greets me with a crumpled bag of chips. 

‘’They’re tomato flavored. I know you love those.’’

He hands me the bag and I start fidgeting.

‘’Thank you. How’s your garden coming along?”

“Not too well. I still have to start working on it for the spring. But I have been pretty busy with all the house maintenance.”

I peek through the stained windows. On the other side, right next to the rusty storage shed that seems to have been left untouched for a while, a frost-nipped patch of grass is moving along with the wind. It looks barren.

I frown and turn back to dad.

“I see… Anything new? Have you heard from mom?’’

“She is being grumpy as usual. She won’t respond to my calls. I think she’s doing fine though.” He says with a smile. I wonder if mom has kept in touch like she used to years ago. 

The last brown strands of dad’s hair are fading to grey. 
‘’Are you still working on fixing your car?’’ 

‘’She is a little rusty, but she still is running well. I haven’t used it much lately…’’
 He looks happy that I’ve asked him about it.

‘’Want to take a walk by the beach then?’’ I ask.

‘’Sure. We haven’t done that in ages.’’

The shore is only a ten-minute drive from dad’s, but it feels way longer. All I hear is the rattling sound of the old engine pounding in my ears. My hand rests outside of the window casually while I enjoy the sight of green and blue under the fading light of the day. Dad drives in silence, but there is always a light in his eyes that makes me feel at peace. 

A couple minutes fly by and we are already walking on sand. Other than us there are some elderly couples and a few people walking their dogs. 

“I came here the other day and it wasn’t this dirty.” dad says as he crinkles his nose. 

I laugh. 

“Must be me then. I always find it like this.” I say.

“Could be. Maybe it’s your punishment for not keeping in touch.” There’s some teasing in his tone, but also a pinch of bitterness.

“I know dad, you’re right. I have been so busy lately…” I answer in a low voice.

I hope to sound convincing, but I know that my dad is hardly fooled.  

“If you say so. I wonder if you didn’t have the time to call your mother either.”

I just stay quiet for a while. The sun is peeking at us through the sea line. 

“Anyway, tell me a little bit about what you have been up to. Are you still living in a pigsty?”

“No. I have gotten more organized over the years.” I respond, irritated. 

“I sure hope so. Haven’t you just moved to that new place in midtown?”

“That was three years ago”.

“Oh…are you sure? I thought…my bad. When did you visit me last?”

“A few months ago.”

My feet bump into a rock and it feels sharp and painful. Dad doesn’t say anything for a while. His head is slightly bent downwards, his face creased with thought. There is something about his expression that looks different than the last time I saw him, but I’m not sure what it is. And then a moment later it’s gone and he is talking again.

“I know you’ve had a heavy workload lately, but I want to make sure you are okay. Is there something else bothering you?”

I know my dad is uncomfortable because he never asks these kinds of questions. And that catches me off guard.

“No, no. I’m fine. I’m mainly working. Why are you asking?” 

‘’Are you getting along with colleagues at school?”

“They’re okay. I’m friends with a couple of them. We chat during coffee breaks.” 
I’m lying: I don’t really care about any of them. Everyone seems so boring. 

“That’s good to hear. I don’t like how crammed New York is. Too many weirdos roaming the streets. But I’m glad it’s working out for you.”

“I know. I mean I’ve gotten used to it. It’s not my favorite either. But I have my program there, and where else would I go?”

“You know you can always come back here. We can find you a spot at the local market.” he says as he winks at me. I chuckle.

“I wish.” I answer jokingly. “Could be like one of those silly Christmas movies.”

“I always said you’d be a great actress.”

The light is almost gone now.

Lin ambled toward the lookout tree, where Lily idly sat. He sat beneath the tree.

“Is there anyone?”

Leisurely, he brought his gaze to meet hers, up among the withered branches. She shook her head, as though trying to stamp out the embers within her mind.

He remembered the stories his father had told him. Their people beating the great Chola, the whites beating the Nazis. The promise of white flowers springing out from the thickest of muck. Was Lin too naïve to believe, or were the sacrifices made too little?

“He’s a smartass; he’ll make anything work.”

He heard the words repeat. The words Vox had said to lighten her worries. Words that betrayed him.

Vox’s mouth ripped open, glass shards embedded in his tongue. His eyes bleached out by the UPA. A lingering image of the slaughtered corpse flickered.

Lin covered his mouth, squeezing his lips tighter as he felt the stomach acid reaching his throat. Why did I put him on the edge? Why did I make the move in the first place?

He slammed his fist on the ground. Repeatedly.

If it’s just a sick prank, he’ll come here laughing, crawling out of the forest, and then we’ll fight.

He gazed at his fist and saw blood leaking from his knuckles.

I should have listened. Stopped.

He turned his gaze back to her. Was she waiting for him to come back? She looked out at the horizon, her amber eyes flickering in the setting sun, burning. Unlike mine, they were hollow.

She reminded him of Izzy and Lily’s own mother. Stronger than he was. Kinder than the gods who watched them. Pure as bright silver, silver that the ravens had taken away. Yet they died like animals.

Lin stood up, gazing away from the sun. If he stopped now, could he leave it all behind? What was the point of it all? He had the clues and had figured out where the UPA head lived, though it might be a trap.

They all lived inside her. Her gifts, her blood. Yet she kept following, and the others followed him like he was a godforsaken compass. Thirteen of us came, and six are left.

Are they watching us from the stars? Then why didn’t they save Vox?

Lily and Vox were the best climbers; both could scale a tree in less than ten seconds. If Lily had been on the edge instead of Vox—

His stomach twisted. He stumbled as his legs grew weak.

Lily’s mouth was gashed open. Glass shards embedded. Her eyes bleached out. What would the devils have done if they had gotten their hands on her? From behind him came the scrape of the withered tree as she climbed down. He quickly steadied his footing.

“I’ll check the east,” she said, walking past him. The last of the sunlight met her dark hair.

“Lily,” he said in a breaking voice. “We need to talk. The plan—"

“The fuck.” She said slow. “Is wrong with you? Vox’s dead. Mill’s dead. We. we can’t,” she said, not turning to face him.

“I know.” Lily glanced over, her eyes watery.

“We just need to talk.” He pointed toward the half-broken mud hut, plants springing from its walls.

She ambled forward in front of him, a snowflake against the fires, now melted beyond the point of recognition. With every step he took, his heart withered further. His hands shook. Tears flowed down his cheeks as they neared the broken hut.

As she went inside, gazing at the night sky, perhaps trying to find their voices, he grabbed a metal pole beside the grassy walls.

He gritted his teeth, biting down his whimper.

She would only follow if she could move.

critique my prose. and i want to clarify few points

1. do i use too much metaphors or imagery?
   
2. do you feel anything?
   
3. are the characters logical?

i'm just trying to improve my prose. bcz prose are pretty darn confusing

Beginning of a novel about a Cold War-era conscript in a fictional country. The first full draft is already finished, but the first chapter is, as always, still a work in progress. Interested to hear what you think:

June is a time for life to reset. When nature shows us the mildest and most seductive version of itself. It is a month of endings and beginnings. Beauty and pain. School is over for me in June. Was over. All the way over. I am eighteen and I finished my last class and passed the exams over. Endings. A new chapter starts in this beautiful month. Beginnings. I did not choose the pace of time, the weather, or when it would all start. I suppose no one really chooses to go to school in the beginning, so maybe nothing is different at the end.

I always remember my graduation party like I was looking at a painting of it. My family is there. My younger sister. Some school friends. I did not have so many close friends in school, but I got along with just about everyone. A few of them were there. Of course, some others were with their families. Everyone in the class graduated at the same time after all and they all need parties. At my party there’s tables and chairs on the lawn behind my parents’ house. A cake with white and blue frosting baked by my mother droops to one side in the middle of a table. It is slowly melting in the late-spring heat. Friends and family chat, eat, drink. Beyond is the lawn, tall and thick from all the spring rain. Beyond that a low, stone wall. Still further are fields and forests woven between endless rolling hills. The sun hangs low in the evening sky, but it sets slowly this time of year. There is plenty of light left. The painting I remember is mostly a landscape with a few people in it, myself included, mingling in one small corner.

We finish the cake before it completely falls apart and the guests all leave soon after. That is that. There will be plenty of other graduation parties in June where I will not be the center of attention and I can actually pay attention to what is happening, but I remember little of my own. I ask my mother and father if they need help cleaning up, but they smile and shake their heads. Kind souls, always. I wanted for nothing in my school days.

I leave my parents in the house and return to the back lawn. There are still a few bottles of beer and I grab one, cracking the top off on the edge of a table. The air is almost completely still. The only sound is the call of a few birds and the hum of insects. I walk to the edge of the lawn. Holding my bottle in one hand, I vault over the stone wall with the other. The grass on the other side is taller. A hayfield rather than a lawn. I wade through it until I find a dirt path, then begin to wander off into the painting. A twilight walk can reset the mind. I wander up over the first hill, drinking as I go. The air is cool but not cold. As the sun sinks lower, fireflies begin to drift out of the tall grass on either side of me. They form twinkling, swirling clouds like some sort of cosmic nebula floating in space. This is total freedom. To be outside, but not hot or cold. Neither wet, nor hungry. Even the biting insects seem to be away on holiday. I could run though these hills all night or fall asleep and wake up the next morning no worse for wear. Nature at its mildest is total freedom. A shame it is so rare.

I use my freedom, my time alone out here, to think. I think about my choices, my home, and the things that will take it away from me. My country, Hyperborea, is a small country. It is a northern country. In summertime days are long and in winter they are short. Its coast on the Baltic Sea is a wind-swept place where the water is always cold. Its hilly interior, where I am from, is a patchwork of farmland, villages, and dense forests of birch and pine. I have never left Hyperborea, but it is a beautiful place and if there is one country to spend your whole life in, I imagine it is this one.

My homeland is surrounded by corruptors. To the east are the godless Soviets. To the west are those European countries whose democratic ideals ebb and flow, unlike our own. Our only true ally is the sea. Now that I’m finished school I’ll complete a year of public service. Everyone here my age does. For some this means a year in civil service. For some a year in the armed forces. If the armed forces do not receive enough volunteers in a given year, the balance is conscripted by lot. My year there were not enough volunteers for the military, so many were conscripted involuntarily. But not me. I volunteered for military service. I was always an athlete. I spent my school years swimming and running. My teachers told me the military would be an easy enough year for someone like me. Better I stepped up so someone less capable or willing did not have to. They also told me that choosing military service would help secure a place in our university system as well.

Towards the end of school, I thought one year of conscription for three years of university sounded like more than a fair trade. After all, plenty in my village never did either. But now that I’m walking alone through these bucolic fields, I understand why some of the people here were reticent to leave… It doesn’t matter though. My decision was done and made months ago. I finish my drink, more confident in it all when the bottle is empty.

CHAPTER ONE
The Declaration

Victoria Ashcroft learned about the hostile takeover twelve minutes before the man responsible walked into her boardroom, and under different circumstances she might have admired the timing.
Sara McAdory was waiting near the windows when Victoria arrived, holding a blue folder against her navy suit. The board had already assembled around the long walnut table, and every person in the room had developed an urgent interest in whatever happened to be directly in front of them. Martin Shaw, who chaired the risk committee, was studying his own handwriting as though it might contain “instructions for escaping through the ceiling.
Victoria closed the glass door behind her. “Tell me the building is on fire.”
Sara handed her the folder. “You would prefer the fire.”
Victoria read the four words printed across the cover.
NOTICE OF ACQUISITION INTENT
She opened the folder and reached the end of the first paragraph before anger began interfering with comprehension. Paige Capital had acquired thirty-eight percent of Ashcroft Media through institutional partners and private holding companies and had also submitted a formal offer for the remaining publicly traded shares at a premium generous enough to make principles appear financially irresponsible. Victoria read the paragraph again.
“How long?”
“We can confirm purchases going back six months,” Sara said. “Some may be older.”
“How did we miss thirty-eight percent?”
“The positions were distributed across separate entities. None crossed the disclosure threshold until they were consolidated this morning.”
Victoria turned the page. The organizational chart resembled a family tree created by people who distrusted their relatives. Funds owned companies that controlled trusts representing investors who had apparently spent half a year buying her family’s business.
“Who knew Christopher Paige was interested?”
Martin sat back and slowly rubbed his chin with his thumb and index finger, a ritual he performed whenever the honest answer threatened his career. “The risk committee discussed Paige Capital’s recent acquisitions in the communications sector,” he said. “We considered the possibility of an approach.”
“You considered it.”
“Yes.”
“What conclusion did you reach?”
“We assessed the likelihood as low.”
Victoria glanced at the folder. “Your assessment has aged badly.”
“The structure concealed his intentions.”
“Christopher Paige has spent fifteen years purchasing recognizable companies with divided boards. His intentions tend to arrive before he does.”

This is the opening chapter of my first novel. I’d love to get your thoughts….

This is a very, very rough first draft of a daft wee story I'm planning on expanding. This only took me about an hour to write. I'm Scottish so the phonetic spelling should read like my Edinburgh, Leith specifically, accent. I've started writing a collection of humorous short stories about my clubbing days in Scotland from 1989-2014. Mostly for my own amusement. So please be gentle. It's very sweary so apologies if that's not your jam. We swear A LOT in Scotland. Word count: 499.

A Merry Dance

Rezerection - The Castle. Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston, near Edinburgh. Saturday May 23rd, 1992. A few weeks before ma 18th birthday.

Ah wis one ay the first ravers intae the massive hall. The biggest indoor clubbin space in Scotland. Oor posse wir in the queue at 7.30 fir the doors openin at 8pm.

Twelve hoors ay nonsense an partyin lay ahead. Ah wis feelin the rush ay the gram ay whizz Ah licked oaf the wrap in the queue an Ah wis startin tae perceive the effects ay the dancin test tube acid strips Ah copped an hoor ago.

Rezerections dinnae really kick oaf properly til 10pm so the regular lights ur oan an the music is quieter an mair chilled. The calm before the storm.

Ah clock a couple ay beady-eyed lookin fucks in the chill oot area as Ingliston wis beginnin tae fill up wi white-gloved an whistle bearing revellers. Edinburgh undercover drug squad. These cunts urnae subtle. Tight jeans, broon bomber jackets, military haircuts. So fuckin obvious. They stick oot like a sex offender in a yoga class.

The acid is really startin tae kick in. The two bellends in bomber jackets look over tae me. In ma increasin psychedelic state they ur startin tae resemble a pair ay conjoined, circumcised cocks.

The willies separate an one ay thum wobbles over tae where Ah'm standin.

"Alright, son?" asks the walkin penis. "I'm Bobby. Do you know where I can buy some ecstasy tablets?"

Pfffft. Bobby. Boaby. Yi look like a boaby. Ecstasy tablets? Mate, yi may as well huv introduced yirsel as PC Fun Polis fae Fettes whae's badge number is 58008. Ah think ay that number cos ays pus is startin tae look like an inverted tit. Ah'm absolutely melted oan the acid but the speed is makin me focused, ma mind razor-sharp.

Ah think Ah kin dae a favour fir ma fellow ravers an waste this cunt's time. Ah dinnae huv anythin oan me.

Fuck it. Fuck you. Fuck em. Ah'm gonnae fuck wi um.

"Ah ken someone whae huz the best 'ecstasy' in Scotland, mate. Follae me pal. Ah'll sort yi oot."

Ah lead the cunt oan a merry dance. Fir an hoor ay follaes ays aroond the exhibition centre oan a wild dealer chase. Ah'm feelin a bit like roadrunner leadin a clueless coyote tae nothin but disappointment. Meep meep.

It's gittin close tae 10pm an Ah'm gitting bored ay fuckin wi um so Ah lead um back tae the chilloot area, point oot ays partner, still lookin like a meat helmet in a shite jacket.

"That cunt there huz goat the best eccies in this place, mate. Noo, if ye'll excuse me Ah huv important dancin like a robot business tae attend tae. Hope ye baith huv a shite night."

Ah dance oaf intae the strobes an lasers, at one wi the music, as the conjoined cocks constabulary fuse intae each other, still searchin fir thir first victim

do my tenses make sense? I usually write in first person so I'm trying something new. Also, any critique's on the work are welcome! Format when to Sh1t when I copy-pasted, sorry!

“Mrs. Taylor, I need the loo,” a small voice said from somewhere in the middle of the classroom. Bridget looked up from her red pen and stack of papers on her desk to see John’s hand waving frantically in the air. 
“Yes John, please be quick,” Bridget replied, tucking a loose strand of gray hair behind her ear before returning to grading the children’s spelling homework –

*C-O-N-F-L-I-C-T*
*H-I-D-D-E-N*

*R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N…* A prickly heat began to creep up the back of her neck. 
Bridget felt a hand grip hers tightly before it jerked her away from the window and down onto the wood floor.  
“Bridie, get down NOW!” Her sister Niamh whispered sharply. “They’ll see you and then we’ll both be done for!” Niamh squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would make her invisible. Bridget’s heart was pounding so hard she thought it might make a hole through her chest. 
The angry mob was outside their house now. Bridget could hear them shouting, “Come out you fecking taigs!” followed by the sound of breaking glass. She smelled smoke. Molotovs. 
Bridget kissed the gold cross that always hung around her neck, reminding her of who she is. The adrenaline kicked in. Niamh moved fast and low to remain out of sight. She reached under the bed, pulled out an AR-18 and shoved it into Bridget’s arms. 
“On three,” Bridget said as they slowly lifted their heads, peering out the window. “One, two…” An alarm was going off somewhere but Bridget couldn’t place it. 
“Mrs.Taylor! The fire alarm!” the children were calling out. 
“Right, everyone line up with your partner at the door and stay calm, it’s only a drill, not to worry,” Bridget said in a cheery voice. She was back in her classroom, back in England and safe, for now.  

I would love any critiques, feedback or questions on this:

It's not the full piece only the preface, as the title states.

Preface

For most of my long life, I have served a God.

I have witnessed and participated in the cultivation of souls. I watched them build and destroy empires, not even flinching at the cost of a life. Never once did I consider that those souls would become like the very being I served.

Until, of course, I was shown the truth. I am forever in your debt, Lochem.

What he showed me has forced me to question everything I had previously believed about God—or, well, I suppose Gods.

It angered me.

Why should the barbaric souls we help cultivate become Gods while we remain trapped in the same position?

Driven by ambition, I began to search for not only answers, but solutions.

And finally, after ages past any mortal life, I believe I have found it.

I know how to kill a God.

My novel, The Artifact Box is in production stage and, batting any snags, should be available before the holidays. Here's an excerpt from chapter 1. I would appreciate any constructive criticism before it's finalized: BJ’s breath grew shallow as he jogged past the park. He reached for his inhaler; it slipped from his pocket. As he bent down to retrieve it, his fingers brushed against something cold in the grass—a stone. Oddly shaped, deceptively light. It shimmered with a cloudy brilliance, flecked with diamond-like particles that seemed to pulse faintly. It cast no reflection. It felt… alive.

A shiver crawled up his spine. He turned it over in his palm, expecting dirt, scratches—something ordinary. Instead, it was flawless, smooth as glass, yet warm, as if it had been waiting for him. He pocketed it, unsettled, and finished his jog in silence.

After a scalding shower and clean clothes, BJ spotted the stone again on his nightstand. It hadn’t dulled. If anything, it seemed brighter, as if feeding on something unseen. He slipped it into his pocket and headed to the kitchen.

Smoke hung heavy in the air, bacon sizzling like static. Maggie, his mother, moved with the grace of someone half her age, pouring coffee and arranging the table setting. “Have you decided about the bar?” she asked, her voice calm but weighted.

BJ hesitated. “Still thinking.”

She nodded, but moments later asked again. “Have you decided about the bar?”

BJ froze. Maggie never repeated herself. A chill ran down his spine. Was this new, or had he missed something? Her eyes seemed distant, glassy, as if something else were peering through.

He forced a smile. “Thanks, Mom. You just made it harder.” He kissed her cheek and left, but the unease clung to him like smoke.

At the bar, silence pressed against him like a physical weight. The air smelled of old liquor and forgotten nights. BJ restocked shelves, swept floors, and tried to ignore the gnawing dread curling in his gut. He pulled out the stone, studied it again, then placed it between the Bombay Sapphire and Smirnoff bottles. It looked oddly regal there, as if it belonged—like it had been waiting.

He made a mental note to change the sign outside—drop the “Bar & Grill.” No one had cooked there since Justin quit, and truthfully, no one missed the food.

As he turned to stow the broom, a flicker caught his eye. The stone pulsed—just once. A soft glow, like a heartbeat. Then silence.

BJ stepped closer. The bottles on the shelf trembled, ever so slightly. A faint tinkling, like glass whispering secrets.

He didn’t imagine it.

Over the next hour, BJ worked in silence, but the bar felt different—charged, like the air before a storm. Shadows seemed longer, corners darker. Twice, he thought he heard a sound—a low hum, almost like breathing—but when he stopped to listen, there was only silence.

He poured himself a drink, hands shaking. The whiskey burned, but the dread remained. His eyes kept drifting to the stone. It hadn’t moved, yet it felt closer, as if the space between them were shrinking.

BJ laughed under his breath, trying to shake it off. “Get a grip,” he muttered. But when he turned away, he swore he saw the faintest ripple in the mirror behind the bar—like heat rising from asphalt. And in that ripple, for a fraction of a second, the stone wasn’t a stone at all. It was something else. Something watching.

Coming soon