r/DestructiveReaders

Crit:  [1130] “Toes” (alternative version) : r/DestructiveReaders

Post:

It's a Wednesday, late morning, Mum's just walked through the door with my youngest, Michael. She's been looking after him, as she does every Wednesday. Today they made granola. That may sound wholesome and whimsical to you. It's definitely wholesome, but Mum, oh sweet whirlwind that she is, doesn't really operate whimsically.

Within 6 seconds of walking over the threshold, she is beside me, directing my attention down at a small lavender-coloured tin of granola, now in my hands, with a neat slip of paper resting on the lid. She is talking me through the recipe, written out in her neat scrawl. It's a neatness that does not betray the blistering speed at which she writes. In fact now I think of it, I've never seen her write anything slowly. She writes as if she's signing her name, her hand scratching over the paper in whip-quick convulsions like the words are channeling through her from the beyond. The words I'm looking at today however haven't come from the baking spirits, she's carefully thought them through herself. She's explaining to me that she halved the amount of honey in the recipe book ("a bit overpowering first thing int he morning"), added more nuts ("Dad... healthy fats"), baked it slightly longer ("... our oven... since the electrician came... try it shorter first on yours"). My mind is catching up with the conversation and hasn't yet had time to get a question out that won't sound irrelevant. Like "how was your morning?" I missed the boat for that.

For a moment I'm smiling inwardly at the whole situation & vaguely recalling many similar conversations. These range from being told how I can skim 4 minutes off that particular car journey we both regularly take, to what she's found most effective in preventing neck pain. My Mum cannot abide doing anything simply because that's how she's always done it. There is always opportunity for improvement, refinement. She is convinced that most things could be done more quickly, more healthily, more effectively, and probably more cheaply. And if no one else will work it out, by God she'll do it herself. Once these treasures of efficiency are unearthed she will share them with those she loves. A favourite move of hers is replacing sugars in cakes with more wholesome alternatives, and regaling us with the improvements right as she serves it to us, before watching us taste it and assessing from our feedback whether it's too "worthy" or whether the recipe's a keeper. This does not exempt the recipe from further improvement, usually the reverse is true.

As she completes the briefing on her custom oat & fruit creation, my mind comes up for just enough air to remind me how sweet it is that she's made this for us, and also that she recommended it to us a while ago, and in fact her making it for us is probably a sign that she, unlike me, has thought about this granola since that original recommendation, and seeing our lack of action has taken matters into her own hands. I manage to shelve the question of whether I failed to follow through on something I suggested I would, for just long enough to say "thank you so much!" for both the gift and for taking Michael for the morning. Then she's off in a flurry of smiles and "bye Mikey!" (oh yes, where has he gone?), before the door slams shut and the hallway is quiet again.

I look down at the tin an carefully open it up. Inside, like a pile of treasure that a miniature Smaug the dragon could curl up on, is the granola, resting on an inner lining within the tin. This lining has been fashioned by placing a small plastic bag (the ones you put your veg in at the shops to weigh them) into the tin, and then folding the edges of the bag around the outside of the tin and taping them carefully to the bottom to keep them in place.

There is nothing whimsical about this, but nor would it be quite right to say it is all cool & calculated. It epitomises that Mum blend of tweaking & customising whilst going at 100mph. Her unique balance of never taking herself too seriously and yet showing more dedication to the cause of (insert almost any activity) than anyone else I know. Her extraordinary combination of emotional perceptiveness, empathy and friendship, with a kind of lovely and bracing... tornado-ness.

I suppose I ought to wonder if and how these characteristics shaped my own personality. I have certainly inherited that sense of there, probably, always being a better way. I don't seem to have developed the same daily-life-as-a-high-performance-sport energy though. Perhaps I didn't need to... growing up with one of the finest athletes in the field. In the end, I imagine that the question is akin to asking what it's like growing up by the sea: one doesn't really know any different, except that one loves the sea, and is perhaps more used to falling asleep to the sound of the waves than others would be.

I wander through to find Michael in the kitchen. "Did you do some baking with Granny?" I ask him. "Mmhm" he nods with a low-lidded smile. It's almost his nap time. I think he will sleep well.

I carry him slowly up the stairs past the holes in the wall that Mum has dropped hints about being up for helping us fix. We read a story, locate Lamby the soft toy, then I lower him into the cot. I switch off the lights, and whisper "I love you", as I pull the door quietly to. There's no response. Perhaps he is dreaming of oats turning to gold.

This is a flashback scene from my story, Daughter of Wrath. Thoughts? And 1 question in particular: what did you think Sera wanted Celeste to do?

Daughter of Wrath

For mods: [1130]

shoot an azimuth six degrees northwest and you’ll find yourself in Agness
Where lateral conjugations hang
Affixed to trees by spiderweb and moss laden with rain
Glass beads hanging on the wiry frame like
600,000 pairs of eyes stuck to your wrung neck
In this place you will find yourself with your
Grandfathers service rifle
The cold glint of parkerized steel stuck to your teeth
a fine American cigar born in Hartford Connecticut
You will find yourself drooping over bathroom sink while three faucets run dry.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/ummgBe9b6H

Glowy and I have been chatting about when and how to reveal information. You have this cool backstory in your head where the character who is keeping secrets is really, I don't know, a drug trafficker who is dating a cop. You let the reader suss out that there's some kind of secret but you don't want to tell them what it is. When does that get frustrating to read?

I've seen this workout a few different ways. The author drops many cryptic hints that are consistently related but never quite enough for you to understand until the very last hint and you piece it together right before the reveal. That's fun for me. I also like ones where the secret is easy to guess as a reader and I've figured it out but the character hasn't figured it out. Then I'm waiting to see what happens when the ball drops. But less fun is when I know where everything is going and the characters do too. Then I'm just slogging through to the end because I can't DNF. I'm looking at all the books that have some kind of prophecy.

I have also read ones where the author was doing a great job building tension and then got to a point where they blurted out all the secrets but there was still a quarter or more of the story left. It can make an exciting story go to a boring story in a few pages.

So, what are everyone's strategies for handling big reveals? Do you like a Gone Girl style twist? Or must you give away everything up front?

Of course, it's the weekly so anything goes in the comments. I don't have a writing prompt but if you wanted to show us something about information reveals, I'm all for it.

crit: 1700 words

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/Eo6xWyk3wB

Toes.

The man looked down at the toes poking out at the bottom of his bed. They were bright pink and wiggling gloatingly at him, and although they were connected to the two linen covered embankments of his legs, they did not appear to be his. Or rather, despite appearances, he did not believe they were.
He continued watching his toes wiggle as if they were entirely independent of him for some time. They had almost completely divorced themselves from their identity as toes, becoming instead ten strange and hairy eyeless monsters dancing at him, when a woman entered the room.
She was in her 30s, but the deep purple crescents under her eyes made her appear much older. She hunched over in the doorway, her body making little jerks into itself every now and again, coinciding with these strange sobs that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her stomach. She looked as if she was fighting against some unseen parasite that was trying to fold her at the middle, and though the man sensed he should be moved in some way by her pain, he contemplated her instead with a sort of detached interest.
“Darling,” she said, her voice wavering as she spoke, “Darling are you feeling any better?”
The man frowned. He was feeling perfectly fine and wasn’t aware that he had ever felt any different.
“I feel fine really, apart from these infernal little creatures pretending to be my toes. Still, they don’t seem to be doing any harm.” 
Her eyes widened as he spoke. The man’s frown deepened. 
“Sorry— who are you?” 
A sound escaped her lips like a gasp or a gag and the force of it almost made her collapse onto the floor. She turned and bolted from the room.
Had the man’s eyes not been fixed on the end of the bed, he might have seen the light catch gold on left hand as she left.
It was very odd, he thought, that this strange woman was so upset by his story about the toes. He felt guilt stir up in him, but it passed quickly like a wave lapping against a distant shore. He resolved to go back to sleep.
Some hours later he woke again to the sound of hushed voices outside of his door. They were muffled, and spoke so quickly and desperately that he wouldn’t have been able to make sense of them if his ear was pressed against the wood, but he did catch a few words.
“Going on about his toes…lost it…hospital…completely mad”. 
“Who’s completely mad?” he asked into the emptiness of his room.
There was no response, but the voices did stop after that, and he let himself drift back into sleep.
When he woke again he was in a different room. It was smaller than the one before, and much more austere. Where the old oak bookshelf had been, there was now a funny looking computer that had all sorts of wires coming off of it, one of which reached to a bandage around his wrist. The machine beeped as well, an annoying, rhythmic beep that seemed to hang in the air around him. The man’s breath grew shallow and he began to feel that something was quite wrong. 
Then he remembered the voices and the crying woman. What had they said? Something about someone going mad. They could not have been talking about him, could they? He did not feel mad. He was perfectly in his right mind. He was…
Well, who was he?
He looked down at his body, now swaddled in bright white sheets that crinkled when he moved like tissue paper. For a second he felt as if he was a parcel. No. He was a man. A man who..? 
But he couldn’t quite remember. He must have had a name, and a job, and he felt as though he had lived quite an ordinary life. What it consisted of, however, seemed to hover at the very edges of his mind, just beyond his reach. 
Vague shapes flitted in and out of his memory. He saw tall brown office buildings that towered above him and heard the various clicks of keyboards and traffic signals, but as he reached out to grab them, they fell away like a reflection disturbed by a falling stone in a lake. 
Suddenly he remembered the toes. Yes, that was right, before this he had spent a long time looking at his toes.
To jog his memory, he decided to look at them again. He wriggled his hips around a little in the tight sheets, pushing his legs in and out until he could feel a little opening, then he let them emerge. They shocked him in their alienness. He felt a sudden urge to leap out of bed and run away.
Then a nurse came in and flicked a switch on the computer and everything went black. As he passed into unconsciousness he heard some words that he could not quite catch the meaning of but that echoed in his mind like a siren’s call.
“He seems to be afraid of his own toes.”
When he came back to, he was on a metal table with no sheets at all, his body laid bare before him like a slab of meat on a dining table. It was limp and fleshy, oddly devoid of colour against the glinting metal. 
The two doctors stood over him talking quietly. He wanted to ask them what was going on but his mouth was slack. He became acutely aware of his heart beat in his skull. It was fast and frantic and he felt that if it got any louder it would deafen him.

One of the doctors waved someone in from the door. It was a short woman wearing pristine blue scrubs and holding something with both hands behind her back. Her teeth were clenched causing little hollows to form either side of her jaw, and though she looked at him on the table she did not meet his eyes.
“Are you sure this is absolutely necessary, Doc?” she said when she got to the bed.
“Positive.” replied one of the men, “The problem clearly stems from the toes.”
She frowned at him but nodded. Making her way to the bottom of the bed. As she walked round a dark shadow fell over him, short at first, then reaching longer and longer until it spanned the whole room. As he followed it desperately with his eyes he saw that it ended in a long, menacing point.
 Before she bent over them, hovering the blade above them, waiting for the signal to strike, the man caught one last glimpse at what he was now more sure than ever were his toes.

Chapter 1 – The File

My name is James. I'm a junior accountant. By the time you finish this I'll have accidentally ended several lives. I didn't mean to. That probably doesn't help.

The first thing I did every morning wasn’t brush my teeth or check my phone - it was opening The Pirate Bay to see what new freebies were waiting for me. Not because I needed anything, just… habit, I guess.
Most days there was nothing new. Still checked anyway, just in case.
“Top 100” - same as yesterday, except for a couple of newly leaked films, mostly low budget horrors, nothing worth the time or precious disk space.
“Top video (48h)” - New episodes of Love Island, how that trash ended up in the top video section every time was depressing. Oh nice, a new episode of The Rookie. Jackpot. That’ll kill at least forty minutes later tonight.
I leaned back in my chair, letting myself enjoy the small win. I’d learned to take those whenever I could.
Next stop: “Others (48h)”. My favourite section. That’s where the weird stuff lived.
Some of my best finds had come from here - a 1968 copy of The Anarchist Cookbook - interesting read but I didn’t really plan to make any bombs any time soon. A random Japanese comic series that somehow ate an entire weekend, even a surprisingly virus-free copy of Microsoft Office 2024. Handy.
Most of it was useless. Still, it was fun to download it and take a look. You never really knew what you might find.
I needed to be at work in forty-five minutes. Fifteen to shower and get ready. Five to grab a coffee - black, no sugar, in case you’re curious. Twenty to walk to the office.
That gave me five minutes to keep scrolling. Maybe I’d find one more banger before I left - something ready for when I got back home tonight.
I scrolled a little further and something caught my eye. A strange file name. Just a bunch of symbols:
“ʍ λ ч ∞ Σ Π”

What the… what is this? Someone trying to be mysterious? Really funny.
What did I do next? Obviously… I clicked it.
The torrent page opened.
Same weird title, and in the description? More symbols.
Scrolling down, I saw there was only one seeder. Not ideal… but I’d be at work all day anyway, so it would have plenty of time to download.
“Oh shi-”
I’d spoken too soon. The file size was huge. 987 gigabytes.
A full 2-hour movie in HD was, what, three or four gigabytes? Even a brand-new PC game barely hit a hundred gig.
What the hell was this file?
Either way, I needed it. No doubt it was riddled with viruses, but you know what they say - curiosity killed the cat.
Well, this cat’s got nine lives.
I clicked download, turned off my monitor, and headed to the shower.

Chapter 2 - Work

“You’re late,”
I wasn’t, but arguing wasn’t worth the effort.
“Morning to you too,” I muttered, dropping into my chair.
Lisa was already watching me from across the desk, “Worlds Best Accountant” mug in hand, it’s like she’d been sat waiting for me. She wasn’t my boss; you wouldn’t know that though from the way she acted.
“You know you’re supposed to be logged in by nine, it’s 3 days until month end and we still have the sync issues from the Dutch payment systems to deal with” she added.
I looked down at the clock, 8:58.
Right.
I logged in. Slowly.
“Cutting it close,” she said.
“Living dangerously,” I replied.
She didn’t laugh. Of course she didn’t.
I pulled up a spreadsheet and got to work. Same as always. Numbers in, numbers out. Copy, paste, repeat.
The job wasn’t hard. That was the problem. I could probably do it half asleep and no one would notice.
I glanced at the clock again.
9:07. Great.
987 gigabytes. However many hours my broadband decided to take. It would either be done by the time I got home, or I'd be staring at 47% and a single seeder having second thoughts.
I copied another row of transactions and told myself to stop thinking about it.
I didn't stop thinking about it.
A few thousand lines of transactions later, the day was finally coming to an end. 4:47, not bad.
I took my empty water cups to the trash and popped to the toilet. A great way to kill another 10 minutes.
“We don’t pay you to tidy your desk and take toilet trips, you know.”
“YOU don’t pay me at all, Lisa. The company does, and as far as I’m aware you haven’t found the 20 million to buy it yet, have you?”
Sometimes I just had to remind her she wasn’t my boss, especially if it was less than 5 minutes until home time.
She didn’t respond, I picked up my bag and headed out. Freedom.

Chapter 3 - Home

You can probably guess the first thing I did when I got home. Didn’t even stop to take my shoes off - straight to the PC.
I was hoping for at least 20%, I wasn’t expecting any miracles. I’m not that lucky. And with only one seeder and my shitty internet 20% was already pushing it.
I turned on my monitor as I kicked my shoes off into the corner of the room, next to the pile of clothes that I kept telling myself I would put in the wash next time I stand up. It was a lie, obviously. I knew it, the socks knew it, and now the room felt like it was also judging me for it.
“I’ll do that today,” I promised myself, and the socks.
The screen flickered for a second before the download bar appeared.
It was at 100%.
Complete.
Finished.
I frowned and double checked the file size - I was half asleep when I clicked download this morning. Yup, 987 Gigabytes. Confirmed.
I opened the folder to check what files were inside. I was surprised to see just one file. One big file. Something wasn’t right
I expected there to be multiple folders - video files, game files, pictures… something.
I didn’t recognise the file extension, mainly because it was more of those strange symbols from earlier. I’m not a computer genius, but I knew enough to know that whatever this was, it wasn’t something common. Not something my computer would recognise or be able to actually run.
Naturally, I right clicked the singular file and selected scan. No way I was running this without checking it first. Curious? definitely. Stupid? I’d like to think not.
The scan bar shot across the screen so fast I almost missed it. Done. Finished. Less than four seconds, start to finish. I read the result twice, just to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.
“0 threats found.”
A 987GB scan in less than four seconds? That couldn’t be right… could it?
But it said 0 threats. So it was fine. Right? Maybe I’d just stumbled onto the most efficient compression algorithm in history. If I was the first one to find it, I’d never have to worry about a junior accountant salary again.
Eight years of data auditing had taught me one thing - when something doesn't add up, you don't ignore it. You dig. You find the discrepancy. You follow it all the way down.
I knew I shouldn't. I did it anyway. Story of my life.
I double clicked the file.

Chapter 4 – the game begins

The room filled with static. Not the kind you brush off, but the kind that sits in your teeth.
I felt it before I heard it. A cold detachment, like the gap between dreaming and awake, except every single hair on my body had already picked a side. My skin prickled head to toe.
Then the fans kicked in.
Not the usual background hum I'd learned to sleep through, this was something else entirely. The kind of frequency that skips your ears and goes straight for the inside of your skull. It wasn't noise anymore. It was pressure. I threw myself forward and grabbed the power cord.
"WHAT THE-"

The blue-white spark found my fingertip before I found the plug. Instant. The numbness swallowed my hand and kept going, all the way to my elbow, like someone had unplugged that arm from the rest of me.
Then nothing. Fans off. Static gone. Just a dark screen and a ringing silence so complete my ears popped trying to fill it.
You absolute idiot. I sat back, cradling my arm. You knew it was a virus. You clicked it anyway.
I stared at the blank monitor and did the mental arithmetic on how much a replacement was going to cost me. Not great. Not catastrophic. Just the right amount of painful to feel completely deserved.
That's when I noticed the green.
Faint. A rectangle. Barely there - like a light left on in a room three floors down.
I reached for the mouse with my good hand. Nothing happened on screen. I tried the keyboard. Still nothing. I sat back and just watched it.
It was definitely getting brighter.

NEW USER INITIATED

The letters didn’t just appear. They carved themselves one by one into the green void, with a sound like something between an old typewriter and a text message chirp.

USER IDENTIFIED

My heart skipped a half beat. I hadn’t typed a thing.

NAME: James
AGE: 24
Occupation: Accountant (Junior)

“How…” I whispered, the sound died rapidly in the coldness of the room.
Logic. Find the logic. Virus. Had to be. It scraped my accounts, my browser data, pulled my name from somewhere. I had everything on this machine - NatWest, crypto, the lot. Not exactly life-changing numbers, but they were my not-life-changing numbers and I'd very much like to keep them.
I tried the power button. Nothing.
CTRL ALT DELETE. Nothing.
I tried both twice more, achieving nothing twice more.

DO NOT DISCONNECT. THE SYSTEM IS DECOMPRESSING.

I sat back in my chair and looked at the ceiling.
"Great," I said, to no one. "Great stuff."

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/qAOCdkfHbg — critique 1384 words

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m8wQUnH2MX\_2QUAWwfRZ5NoSaWs8A-EvPiBucJ1o5go/edit?usp=drivesdk - My work

All and any critique is welcome! Be harsh!

I would appreciate feedback on the first 3 chapters of my young adult literary novel. It’s about a teenage girl who begins to suspect her parents aren’t telling her everything about her past after she finds a heart shaped locket holding a photograph of a girl she doesn’t recognize in her baby keepsake box. Instead of turning to those she loves, she talks to an AI application called Atlas.

I would appreciate any feedback. This is my first book and I’m really just wondering whether it resonates with readers and feels like a genuine novel. Thank you in advance for reading.

Chapter 1
She was bareback on a white horse, its coat shining like moonlight, silver mane rippling as it ran through a wide meadow between snow-tipped mountains. The wind whistled past her ears. Her legs dangled on either side, bare feet brushing against the horse’s flank. One hand gripped the mane tightly. The other hovered outward, feeling the wind rise and fall with each stride.
Suddenly, the horse stopped. Beneath them, smooth river rocks replaced the meadow. The ground trembled. Water surged beneath her, covering the horse’s hooves, reflecting the glittering sky above.
Then, the night sky cracked. The stars fractured all at once—splitting, breaking, falling. Burning through the dark as they tore toward the earth—
Toward her.
She jolted awake.
Eleanora Bennett lay very still, her hands clenched tight—like she was still holding on.
No one called her Eleanora.
She had been Lennie for as long as she could remember.
She had left the window cracked open, as she did every night, even in winter. The night wind slipped in softly, chilling her cheeks and the tip of her nose. Lennie liked to sleep with her bedroom cold under heavy blankets.
The dream came back in pieces.
Lennie exhaled slowly and reached for her phone on the edge of the nightstand.
The screen lit her face as it recognized her.
She tapped Atlas — the deep navy circle with a centered silver-white A, seven faint stars scattered around it.
I dreamed I was riding a horse bareback through mountains, and then a river started flowing beneath me over rocks. Stars started falling from the sky. I woke up right before they hit me.
Text appeared.
Riding a horse bareback often reflects trust in something powerful—or the belief that you don’t need protection.
Water rising beneath it suggests that what once felt steady may no longer be.
Falling stars are rarely about destruction. They usually signal change—the end of one way of seeing the world.
You may be sensing change before it becomes visible.
She read it twice. Slower the second time.
Lennie had always feared the end of things—tornado sirens, desert wastelands, rising seas like in the movie she and her dad watched.
“That would be the worst,” she had told him, curled into his side as the mariner spoke about a world with no land.
“I can think of worse things,” her dad had said.
Lennie had turned back to the screen then, sensing a part of her dad she didn’t know. A pit in her stomach had settled in that moment, growing with each passing day like roots from a seed.
So the stars falling doesn’t mean the world will end in my lifetime but apparently things are going to change. That was fine with her.
She sank deeper beneath her soft yellow gingham duvet, tossing her phone to the other side of the mattress.
She closed her eyes, trying to drift back to sleep as the first light of morning slipped through her east-facing windows.
For a second, she thought she saw it again—
a flicker.
Falling light behind her eyelids.
Then, her mom’s voice cut through the quiet. Too loud for this early. Even muffled by distance, Lennie could hear the edge in it—the quicker pace, the sharper tone.
With a sigh, she threw back the covers and walked to the bathroom, stepping through the dust drifting in the beams of morning light.
Chapter 2
Lennie splashed cold water on her face before looking at her reflection in the gold-rimmed circular mirror above the sink.
She looked the same.
She twisted the right side of her wavy hair, then the left, bringing them together and securing them with an ivory claw clip. A few loose pieces slipped free around her face. She left them.
Then she slipped her phone into her backpack—hesitating for a second before letting it go, like she might need it again sooner than she expected.
Warm air enveloped her as she left her bedroom, making an immediate right for the curved stairway that led to the kitchen. Taking the steps two at a time, she tilted her head up instinctively when her orange tabby, Winnie, leapt across the upstairs hallway above the foyer.
“Good morning to you too, Winnie,” Lennie said, padding the rest of the way down the stairs and turning left into the kitchen.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” her mom said, looking up from her phone and raising her coffee cup to her lips.
“Morning,” Lennie said, grabbing a blueberry muffin from a scalloped platter.
“Ahh!” she yelped as her dad’s calloused fingers squeezed her biceps. “Da-ad, stop,” she said, laughing as he squeezed once or twice more.
“Okay, okay,” he said with a chuckle. He reached past her for a muffin, then crossed to the coffee maker to top off his mug.
Lennie noticed he was using the one she’d made for him at the pottery store in town when she was probably nine. It was shaped like a wide, squat fish, the rim its open mouth, the handle a crooked little hook.
Not my best work, she thought. But he used it anyway. Every morning.
“How’d you sleep, Len?”
“Good. Had a crazy dream again,” Lennie said, sitting at the table across from her mom.
“What about?” he asked, taking his seat and looking straight at her.
“I was riding a horse by mountains and a river, and then the stars fell to earth. It was actually pretty scary.”
She glanced toward her backpack without meaning to, like the answer might already be waiting for her there.
She looked up at her mom, but her eyes were fixed on her phone, her thumb scrolling absently.
“That does sound scary, but cool too. Sounds like an adventure to me,” her dad said.
“Oh my gosh, look, Lennie, what Grandma posted,” her mom said, holding up her phone. “You were so little!” she squealed.
Lennie leaned forward slightly, more out of instinct than curiosity.
She stared at the photo. Twelve-year-old her smiled brightly at the camera, holding a painting of a mountain range at sunset, proud and lit from within.
Her eyes lifted to read the caption.
I heard it’s Granddaughter’s Day! Happy Granddaughter’s Day to my perfect ocean-eyed angel.
An angel emoji. Two pink hearts.
“Oh jeez,” her dad said, a clear note of annoyance in his voice.
“What? It’s such an adorable picture. And your painting, Len, you’ve always had talent.”
“Of course she does. She’s my baby,” her dad said with a laugh. “But that’s not the problem. I’ve told your mom to stop posting Lennie all over the internet.”
“It’s Granddaughter’s Day, Peter. Lighten up.”
Holding down the like button, her mom chose the heart icon and released it, the familiar pop sounding into the air. Then she set her phone down—face up.
“I miss your paintings,” she said.
Something in Lennie sank.
“I’ll paint something later, promise. Maybe after school,” she said, peeling the wrapper off her muffin. “Or maybe during class.”
Her mom smiled faintly—but her hand had already drifted back to her phone.
Lennie looked from her mom’s green-blue eyes, one eyebrow slightly raised, to her dad. He smiled softly before looking down at the wide-open fish mouth in his hand.
For a moment, Lennie felt like she was being remembered instead of seen.
Like the version of her they loved most was the one that already existed.

Chapter 3
Lennie finished her muffin as the low rumble of her dad’s diesel truck vibrated through the kitchen floorboards. She looked up, past the white oak cabinets he’d built years ago, and out the sink window. Cream linen roman shades framed the driveway as the truck backed out, a plume of white exhaust blooming in the cold air before thinning into nothing.
He used to build kitchens in this neighborhood.
Now they lived in one of them.
Four years ago they’d left the west side of town — their narrow beach bungalow with the wraparound porch and single bathroom.
“Oh my God, Mom, we’re going to have a pool? I get my own bathroom?” she had shrieked.
Laughing, her mom said, “I know, I know.”
“And the little metal door with the tunnel to the laundry room? That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh agreed. That chute is going to be fun.”
Back then, everything about this house felt like an upgrade. These days, she wasn’t so sure.
Sometimes it felt like something had been traded for it. She just couldn’t name what.
Heels clicked across the pantry tile.
“Let’s go, Lennie,” her mom said softly.
In the white Tesla, the screen flickered to life. A thin silver line arced across a dark field, then resolved into the navigation map. Lennie rested her backpack between her feet while her mom tapped School on the glowing interface. The map flashed briefly before recalculating.
“Route updated,” the car chimed softly.
Her mom didn’t glance at the screen. The garage door lifted. The car eased backward without a sound. Neither of them spoke.
Lennie looked out the window as the car rolled down their street, the neighborhood still quiet, lawns draped with dew.
Then the car slowed and turned toward a street they didn’t usually take. She sat a little straighter. The road narrowed, the houses spaced farther apart.
And then the bridge.
A narrow stretch of road lined with an old rock fence, uneven and worn, like it had been there long before anything else. Water threaded between the stones below, a dark seam against the pale mortar.
The Tesla rolled forward. The tires hummed differently now—lower, rougher—as they passed over the cobblestones.
The stream below was perfectly still — like a lake at night. For a second the surface caught the morning light and rippled, like something beneath it had swam away. By the time she craned her neck to keep looking, the water had gone still again.
Then she glanced at the screen. The blue line curved confidently ahead of them.
Why is the car going this way?
They had never taken this route before. She almost said something. But didn’t.
It must know something we don’t, she thought, settling back into her seat.
But the thought didn’t fully settle. It lingered—quiet, just beneath everything else.
The stone steps to school were cool beneath her sneakers. She walked quickly, disappearing into the tide of students—most with their eyes angled downward, glowing screens reflected faintly across their faces even as the steps climbed upward.
She reached art class a few minutes later, taking her seat and scanning the room for June, noticing Delilah posing for a selfie, her pretty face directly facing the morning light. 
“Good morning, class,” Ms. Hart said calmly as she got up from her weathered leather office chair and stood beside the screen displaying today’s agenda. She wore a canvas apron splotched with paint of every color and an olive green button down, sleeves rolled up; violet daisies hung from her ears.
“The assignment is to paint—using what we’ve learned about color and texture—a representation of your future.”
The classroom door opened, the latch loud in the quiet room.
“Sorry, Ms. Hart—bus was late again,” June said, easing the door closed more gently this time.
“Take your seat, Ms. Dawson. You have until Thanksgiving break to complete your painting, so take your time. Any questions?”
A manicured hand shot up.
“Delilah?”
“How far in the future are we talking about?”
“Any amount of time. It could be what you think life will hold for you when you are twenty, thirty, even eighty. Paint what feels right to you. This is as much about the skills we’ve learned as it is about creating something meaningful.”
Ms. Hart paused, waiting for another question.
“Alright—go ahead and get started. I’ll be walking around.”
Lennie’s eyes drifted, just for a second—to the memory of the bridge.
Then back to her blank canvas.
“Morning, Lennie,” June said, turning toward her, her well-loved Vans squeaking softly on the tile.
“Morning. What are you going to paint?”
“I don’t know. Glad we have a while,” she said, then lowered her voice. “I’ve got to tell you what I dreamed about. It was horrible. Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“I was walking at school past those mirrored windows and I kept feeling like someone was following me—when I looked over I saw my reflection.” June’s voice dropped further. “It wasn’t me—in the mirror I mean.”
“What was it?”
“It was almost like a dragon but shaped like me, like I was covered in green and pink scales with a dragon face.”
Lennie burst out laughing.
June smacked her arm.
“Okay, that is horrifying.”
“I know.”
“Were you scared of it?”
“Yes! It was like I couldn’t figure out if it was actually me or a monster trying to get me.”
“Well how did it end?”
“I basically stood right up to the mirror and looked at its creepy eyes wondering if that is actually what I look like, then I woke up.”
“Sometimes, your face does kind of remind me of dragon-like creatures,” Lennie laughed.
June just rolled her eyes—but she didn’t laugh.
They both stared at the blank canvas Ms. Hart had set at each station.
Lennie’s dream came back to her then—the white horse, the mountains, the water, the sky cracking open, the stars. Where most dreams faded, this one expanded. Its edges sharpened, its details returned instead of disappearing.
After gathering her paints, brushes, water cup, and apron, Lennie stood at her station.
She dipped her brush into deep blue, then darkened it with black until it felt like space—far from any star.
She dragged it across the canvas in long, steady strokes.
“Did you look up what it means… on Atlas?” Lennie asked.
“Yeah,” June said. “Something about hiding parts of yourself. Or not wanting people to see who you really are.”
“Hmm,” Lennie said. “That kind of makes sense.”
Lennie rinsed her brush and reached for white.
“Probably how awful my artistic skills are,” June laughed.
“You aren’t bad, Junie.”
Lennie paused, her brush hovering.
She lifted the brush and began painting thin streaks of white into the dark sky.
But the stars didn’t look distant.
They didn’t look still.
They looked like they were falling.
Toward her.

My Critique:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/C94p2VLadm